Doctor Who: The BBC Books #122 – Heritage by Dale Smith

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures

#57

Heritage

By Dale Smith

It’s difficult to talk about this one without spoiling it. Heritage revolves around something bad happening to a friend of the Doctor’s. A third of it goes by without revealing who it is, so it feels a little unsportsmanlike to name them in a review.

On the other hand Heritage isn’t really like Who Killed Kennedy, Eternity Weeps or Bullet Time. Those all featured a familiar character meeting an unhappy end, but it was just one ingredient of the plot, a tragic outcome that carried extra shock points because we knew the victim. Eternity Weeps, for example, had plenty of tragedy going on already; the added death was just a way of telling you that the Doctor isn’t going to wave a magic wand this time.

Heritage takes a more measured approach. There’s been a death on this dusty planet — two, really — and everyone is going to feel it for 280 pages. It’s Doctor Who in the form of a Western, where the characters fill the roles of archetypes. There’s a powerful, malignant man in control of the town. Psychotic killers for hire. Good men rendered apathetic with guilt. A blameless child. A vacuum filled by the innocent dead. And strolling into town, a stranger whom the villains hardly regard at all — but we know to be an “avenging angel, hiding behind the skin of a man.” A Man With No Name.

Perhaps the book was at a disadvantage with me because I already knew who the victim was. (A friend told me years before I had any interest in it.) And yet, all that foreknowledge really does is place the reader in the same position as the Doctor. It’s the Seventh, who after all doesn’t really do “caught by surprise”, who has come to Heritage to confirm a state of affairs he already seems sure of. He’s listless, he’s been putting it off; Ace is worried about him long before she sees a photo of the victim. There is a dread to Heritage that builds and builds. Who can it be? And then eventually — surely it can’t be true? (Or if you’ve been spoiled: please let me have misunderstood!)

There is a simplicity and a focus to it that I couldn’t help appreciating after so many books with subplots and characters galore. Those aren’t bad things but variety is always nice, and Heritage is a change of pace — quite literally, where the plot takes place over a day. The whole thing being absolutely drenched in its theme also felt like something a bit different. You could argue that it’s a bit too drenched and too simple, with the framework clearly recalling films like Once Upon A Time In The West and characters like the rum-soaked Sheriff having only one way they can go. But that didn’t bother me. It just felt like a Doctor Who novel with a clear sense of purpose.

In short, while I am still not a fan of the “kill off an established character” trope Heritage at least does it in a way that I think works. How and why this event came to pass is critical to the story, its characters and its themes. The absence of the dead character is felt at all times. You can’t accuse it of just going for shock value: the Doctor and Ace grow from the experience.

Heritage likely has the New Adventures to thank for some of that. You can easily spot them in references to Adjudicators or a “goddess” instead of “god”, and the heavy emphasis on the Doctor’s otherworldly and unstoppable nature which derives more from the NAs than his telly adventures. But there’s also a sense of the here-and-now with BBC Books, what with a gun-toting Cetacean (dolphin in a walker), and more significantly Dale Smith weaving all this into the ongoing narrative of Mike Tucker’s Prime Time. The Doctor knows that Ace is going to die and he doesn’t know what he can do about it. “I can’t change what I know to have happened. If I see you die, Ace. If I hold your body in my arms…” Because of that we get to see different sides to his character, so not just the dizzying force of nature who barely needs to lift a finger but also a frightened man who can’t bear to wield any power. “Sometimes, all I want to do is play the spoons in a jazz band, and pull ferrets from my trousers to make children smile.”

In a succession of quite chocolate-box PDAs (which is something I like about them!) a character arc feels significant. The Doctor has a good one here, rediscovering a sense of urgency that beats anything like guilt or fear into second place. “He reminded me what evil is, and he reminded me that it has to be fought, no matter what the consequences. Evil cannot prevail.” When we get to see the Doctor at full blast after all that it’s more satisfying than if it had just been his default setting. “‘I see you’ve even got an Emra Cradle — I haven’t seen one of those in centuries. What else is there?’ Wakeling spun back to face the Doctor, and found himself staring down the business end of a ripped and tattered umbrella. The Doctor’s expression was grim, his eyes hooded like a predator’s. Suddenly, they were alone in the universe, eyes in eyes. ‘Oh yes,’ intoned the Doctor, ‘a murderer.’”

Ace has an arc of her own, as the Doctor’s initial lack of interest in getting involved leaves her to pick up the slack, at times angrily. She often considers her roots, what would have become of her if she’d never met him, how far she’s come under his tutelage. “She wanted to lash out at Lee, just to make the feeling go away. To make him realise she wasn’t a little girl any more. That’s what the old Ace would’ve done. Instead she snatched up her rucksack and flung it over her shoulder with slightly more effort than was necessary. Not as satisfying, perhaps, but a whole lot more sociable.”

She and the Doctor are a force to be reckoned with by the end of this, yet they still want to help others — even the irredeemable bad guys. I haven’t checked, but I strongly suspect Heritage was written just for them; it wouldn’t make as much sense with a different Doctor/companion combo. (This is where I find out it was originally meant for the Fifth Doctor and Turlough.) If true, again there’s that sense of purpose, not a book that’s just using whatever was to hand in the toy box. It’s their best writing in the PDAs so far.

The creeping tension followed by swift justice is of course very satisfying — well, it worked for all those Westerns. Dale Smith does wonders with this right from the start, as the guilty denizens regard the Doctor’s incoming shuttle as a new sun growing in size — a sign of impending doom. The plot’s major revelations are held back at just the right length, although eagle eyes might surmise some facts just from a little girl’s hairstyle. The chapter where the truth comes out is a necessity but it’s also an opportunity to get creative, as several characters unburden themselves at once to different audiences, the reader jumping from thread to thread. There are “quotes” at the start of chapters that offer tantalising glimpses of where things are going.

It’s well-written enough that it’s also satisfying just to inhabit, looking at all these characters under a microscope and feeling as trapped in their humdrum world as they are. That sense of crumminess and claustrophobia is of course part of their shameful motive. You’ve also got the adorable robot “Fussies” whizzing around cleaning things — and they also relate to something central to the story, ensuring that although they add to the overall sense of world-building they’re not just cute incidental details. Where, quite simply, has Dale Smith been all this time?

I’m hard pressed to nitpick Heritage, a book with a solid grasp of what each element is doing here. If I absolutely had to then I might say that villains Ed and Christa perhaps take the archetype thing to an extreme, or that I’m reasonably sure Bernard the Cetacean’s final scene is missing. (Did Smith hit the page limit?) At times I didn’t really like Heritage, because I’m sentimental and I don’t want a familiar character to be dead. But I’ve got to appreciate purpose and intention and it has those. Even when it kills off minor characters it is sat with, it is felt. The book honours its departed character well enough that it doesn’t feel like a repeat of “well, no one’s gonna miss Dodo”, but if it’s a dealbreaker for you then it can easily be consigned to the not-canon bin. I think Heritage is worth the gut-wrench.

8/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #121 – Time Zero by Justin Richards

Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures

#60

Time Zero

By Justin Richards

I’m not quite sure where to start with this one. It’s written by Justin Richards post-The Burning, so it seems likely that some arc plots are going to be resolved or kicked into a higher gear. Time Zero sort of does and doesn’t do that, which nicely fits its quantum theme.

Some of it is an “event book”, i.e. setting things up for future books — the next one in particular. But most of it is self-contained, perhaps even an example of a typical EDA at this point, including a cheeky effort to appear to finish one arc and then — surprise! — not do that. It’s mostly just a self-contained story with lots of action.

I say “just” as if you’re not getting a lot of actual book here, but you are. Richards has a whale of a time with multiple adventures going on in different time zones, all inexorably heading towards each other. And if you like inexorability, check out the chapters: he’s numbered them backwards so that the book becomes a countdown. (At first I thought the whole thing was backwards since the first two sections were. You can relax: he hasn’t done a Memento.)

The initial germ is a satisfying bit of continuity. Fitz is carrying out his wish (see Camera Obscura) to go on an Arctic expedition with George Williamson in 1894. This is “something [he has] to do.” His friends meanwhile aren’t resting on their laurels: Anji has finally decided to go home and, in an abrupt break with tradition, actually does that. Eighteen months pass in her normal job and life, including a reunion with Dave’s distraught family.

Quite an unconventional way to get rid of a companion, doing it at the start like that, and sure enough we’re not done here. Out of the blue she’s recruited onto a military mission to Siberia. Meanwhile the Doctor has discovered what looks like Fitz’s expedition journal up for auction, and quickly gets involved in a web of intrigue that ends in — contain your surprise — a trip to Siberia. Soon the three of them, one over a century in the past, are chasing around the same Siberian castle while murderers and alternate-reality dinosaurs run amok.

It’s very busy. You may, like me, wish to keep a record of all the different groups taking part. Richards helpfully channels his occasional habit of getting distracted into lots of very short chapters, which keeps the plot-lines coherent and gives Time Zero a moreish readability. If, like Anji, you can’t be bothered to learn everybody’s name then that’s all right, since there are murderers and dinosaurs around to reduce the numbers… eventually. The key players and their goals are distinct enough, if not all fully known from the outset.

As the backwards chapters suggest, the plot is fairly complicated. It involves a man with an unusual relationship with gravity, a man who might be a ghost, two people in disguises, impossibly distant galaxies and impossibly frozen fire, dinosaurs, two military groups with their own Siberian missions and let’s face it, very probably a certain character originated by Lawrence Miles somewhere in the mix.

As with the groaning character list however, you don’t need to take on the burden of understanding the plot: explanations will be provided, and at some length, and several times over. A popular criticism of Time Zero would seem to be the Doctor’s commitment to explaining things like quantum theory, and to be honest fair enough. The book slows down when it comes time for the Doctor to tell one group after another how this all works, only for some of them to still not get it. Frankly I’m at a point where quantum theory (which is disputed here as much as it’s reinforced) is functionally indistinguishable from magic. I think I started hearing soothing wildlife sounds after a while as a defence mechanism.

Perhaps the complexities of quantum theory and the differences between light speeds etc caught me off guard because it’s otherwise such an action-oriented story. There are some great images, like a man terrifyingly transforming into a black hole, and many excellent set-pieces, most of which revolve around a team of mercenaries. Anji is caught in several life or death struggles with them; perhaps most memorably she gets herself stranded alone on an airplane as it’s about to hit a mountain. That (incredible) moment ends up highlighting one of the book’s weaknesses, however: sometimes it’s action for action’s sake, as in that case where we’re really just doing the James Bond version of “escape only to be recaptured.” Similarly the bloodthirsty Captain Hartfield and his men, executing scientists left and right, transcended terrifying for me and just became monotonous. “I will shoot you” doesn’t leave much room for characterisation.

The regulars fare better. Fitz and Anji have rarely been this forthright. Fitz’s decision to go on this voyage in the first place is a sign of character growth, but it’s also fun watching him occasionally apply his out-of-this-world experiences to the dangers around him. He builds a meaningful friendship with George, which has its own dramatic ups and downs, and his affection for Anji and the Doctor comes through in spades. I particularly liked this nod to long-time readers re the Doctor’s amnesia, and Fitz’s continuing duty of care: “‘So it’s a paradox?’ Fitz said. ‘In fact, it sounds like the granddaddy of all paradoxes.’ He blinked. ‘Sorry, forget I said that,’ he murmured.”

Despite one of the more hair-raising experiences of Fitz’s life, which is saying something, this is still more Anji’s story than his. The quiet way she goes back to work is disconcerting when she’s someone who’s been in the TARDIS, but that just speaks to who she is. Richards then finds more depth while she’s there, quietly showing her loneliness without Dave: “[She was] ignoring the fact that in her sleep she had pulled the other pillow down so that it was lying beside her in the double bed.” This swings both ways, with her eventually considering that “‘home’ was the TARDIS.” Her specific concern for Fitz, who might be dead for all she knows, is especially poignant: “As she sat cross-legged on the floor, the discarded telephone beside her, Anji was still crying. She cried for herself and for Dave. For Dave’s Mum and Dad. She cried because she had been crying for so long she no longer knew how to stop. And she cried for shame — for knowing that every time she had said Dave she meant Fitz.”

The fact that Anji survives this ordeal and still wants to go home is a great note to leave her on: happy, appreciative, but not in need of the Doctor at all times. However this isn’t her last trip in the TARDIS. Time Zero ends with the timeline in tatters, meaning it’s no longer safe to send her to “modern day London” because that might not be what it is. I’m certainly not mad that we’re keeping her around for a while longer — the camaraderie has got so good I’m a bit confused why we even need to get shot of her. (It’s not as if the actress has itchy feet, and anyway, Fitz is staying.) Richards at least contrives a very good reason to put off her departure, but I suppose anything might be better than “he won’t take her home because um,” which I guess we just fully aren’t resolving now. (At this point I’m guessing it was just an editor’s note to keep her in a holding pattern.)

The Doctor has some of that aloofness that Richards brought with The Burning. He captures the character’s confidence: “Once inside the building, the very fact that he was inside the building seemed to serve as his credentials.” Neither of the disguised characters, with their own agendas, are able to pull the wool over his eyes; the scene where he exposes the Duchess works very well: “‘You are a very clever man,’ she said. ‘Well,’ the Doctor replied with a smile, ‘if I was that clever, I wouldn’t need your help.” And there’s the climax, where he leaves the fate of the world up to another man’s willingness to die for it. Cold, but necessary; a far cry from the TV Movie.

By rights the most memorable Doctor stuff in this ought to be his dressing down of Sabbath, who is in this of course. (I didn’t even need the big reveal: when a mysterious “large man” is mentioned on Page 6 it’s unlikely to be Father Christmas.) Sabbath’s plan ends up a mess that gets him rightly mocked from all comers, including the “Duchess”: “‘There was always a chance I might not succeed here,’ Sabbath said. ‘No?!’ [She] sounded scandalised at the thought.” The Doctor gets some moments of triumph about it, notably: “The universe works the way I say it does, not the way you assume.”

The main issue with this is simply one of context. Camera Obscura already had this debate one book earlier, albeit with less evidence, and went about it in a more interesting way. Sabbath was also a more rounded (behave) character then. I’ve seen him circa Time Zero referred to as a Bond villain, which I get, but I’d place him more as the Master in one of his “foiled again yet still inexplicably confident” moods. He’s even got the disguise! (And the impractical plan. Did he stay with Curtis for years, decades?) His myopic outlook on timelines, effectively the plot of Ghost Light writ large, is beginning to wear thin, and I’m starting to wonder why the Doctor hasn’t found a jail cell for him or some such. He’s just a man, with one heart and a boat full of monkeys. Stop arsing about and get on with it.

Once you get to this point in Time Zero it’s busy getting its ducks in a row for the next book, which is all well and good — and quite sneaky, even name-checking “a race against infinity.” But it made me wonder how much substance is actually left over for Time Zero. I’m wary of movies and TV shows that always have their eye on the next sequel or season, and there’s a little of that here: Anji’s story has arguably stalled, and the entire plot is a mix of fuel for The Infinity Race and (truly inexplicably, but why not I guess) a last minute retroactive explanation for the monsters in The Burning. We also meet the next companion, Trix, whose involvement here is mostly shenanigans. Paul Cornell introducing Bernice Summerfield this ain’t, although her unpredictability has obvious potential.

Time Zero is one of those books that does what it sets out to do with practiced gusto, Richards ably demonstrating his skill with action, thrills and comedy. As often happens he’s clearly got an idea he’s excited about and we’re gonna hear about it (quantum theory), but mostly not to the extent that you’re not having a good time. It’s an energetic example of the mad chaos of the EDAs, that would perhaps pack more of a punch if it hadn’t followed such a strong novel. Ah well: there’s a sense of the workman about Richards, what with his keen collaboration in the arc, which suggests that Time Zero was happy just to show up and set off its fireworks.

7/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #120 – The Suns Of Caresh by Paul Saint

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures

#56

The Suns Of Caresh

By Paul Saint

BBC Books seemed very keen on new authors at this point, with several trying out just for the space of one novel. (I’m sure the lack of return visits had more to do with scheduling than with them not impressing anybody; none of these “first goes” are as bumpy as Virgin’s.) The Suns Of Caresh is the latest and it shows us what Paul Saint — apparently a pseudonym for Paul Beardsley — has to offer.

For a while I wondered if he’d taken an original manuscript and stapled on just enough Doctor Who to make the grade. The book is initially about a non-Time Lord: Simon Haldane, an unfulfilled geek living in Chichester. He loves to read sci-fi novels when he’s not working at his mind-numbing factory job. Enter Troy Game, a beautiful young woman from another planet who can’t remember exactly what she’s doing here. Simon takes her in and his life quickly adapts. Meanwhile, some sort of threat is turning people to stone.

I’m not even mad if this was a touched up original manuscript as it’s quite an entertaining (if distinctly wish-fulfilly) setup. “Normal man adjusts to alien in his life” could be a sitcom; however, Saint (let’s stick with that) is clearly one of those writers like Paul Leonard or Nick Walters who really wants to know more about aliens and planets, as he invests a lot in Troy Game and her home of Caresh. There are lots of immersive little details about her, such as her appearance (short hair, big irises, no earlobes), her abilities (she can sing in an otherworldly way, read thoughts and replicate other languages), her social oddity (clothes are optional) and her customs (sex is strictly seasonal on Caresh). There are also little bits of secondary cleverness, like how her “language telepathy” doesn’t work over the phone and is actually the result of external interference.

Then there’s Caresh: a planet with two suns and an irregular orbit, unpredictable seasons and climates, different islands with their own levels of technology and antipathies towards each other, and giant locust monsters into the bargain. This is no “it’s a desert so I guess it’s called Aridius” situation, thought has clearly been applied.

He’s also spent time on the plot, or rather plots, as there’s a lot to get your head around. It’s here that Doctor Who gets back into the equation (you can exhale everybody) as the Third Doctor has been cajoled into investigating a time fracture on Earth that extends from 1972 to 1999. He encountered the earlier part during his Earth exile. (Saint going for controversy here with his UNIT dating!) A Time Lady with whom he is familiar, Solenti, catches him on his post-Three Doctors adventures and explains that this has something to do with another Time Lord, Roche. The Doctor has a matter of days to sort this out but for some reason, aiming for the 1972 dig site, he ends up in Chichester at the other end. The Doctor and Jo soon encounter time disturbances, stone bodies, a Time Lord in a mental institution, a dead TARDIS, monstrous “Fates” and Troy Game. And somewhere in all that is Ezekiel Child, the archaeologist from 1972 who is somehow a younger man in 1999.

The book is not short of ideas. Saint sprinkles in little ones as well, particularly when it comes to TARDISes. Jo reminisces about witty off-screen trips: “Sometimes it landed in UNIT HQ, often when she least expected to see home again; once it landed on a planet covered entirely by an ocean that was nowhere more than knee-deep; on another occasion it materialised inside a small cave, blocking off the exit so they had no choice but to depart without ever seeing what the world outside looked like. This had frustrated the Doctor no end.” Saint spends more than the usual amount of effort just on the TARDIS noise: “The twilit Dagusan ruins echoed with the moans of a gigantic living engine.” / “The TARDIS began its familiar landing noise, something between the roar of an animal and the sound of a very large slab being dragged over concrete.” And TARDISes feature interestingly in the plot, with one accidentally draining a lake when its doors are eroded open, and the Doctor’s one suffering a disastrous autopilot malfunction and crashing through various objects and cars — a spectacular sequence that eventually got a big laugh out of me: “‘This cannot be happening.’ Two men were carrying a large sheet of plate glass across a quiet road when they saw the TARDIS heading for them.”

This is not, then, an author unfamiliar with or uninterested in Doctor Who, despite there being a fair stretch of it without the Doctor. See also, Saint’s world-building with Time Lords. He invented Solenti for this and treats her with enough confidence that I half expect the blind mystery woman and her regenerating guide dog to turn up again. He also imbues Roche with peculiar abilities, such as a very targeted and mischievous talent with regeneration. So many parts of The Suns Of Caresh feel like the writer has sat with them for a bit. It’s nice.

It’s still a lot to keep together, which perhaps explains why the overall framework feels paradoxically small: a lot of it is just characters hunting through a richly-described Chichester to either find dots on a scanner or evade death by stone-transforming Fury. This is later swapped out for Bognor Regis (whoa, slow down!) and then — mercifully for any sci-fi fans like the fictional Simon — Caresh, so we can finally tie all this into what’s happening there, viz an impending ecological disaster that has somehow set a couple of enraged Furies against Roche on Earth.

I enjoyed the deceptive and quite fun smallness of it all, buoyed by Saint’s skill with ideas of all sizes, but I don’t think he quite ties everything together. Simon is our point of view character for a while — a role he shares with Troy Game who to be fair has the more interesting perspective, e.g. thinking that buses are moving buildings — but he exits the book quite abruptly after 150 pages, never to be missed. This is perhaps just desserts for his incel-ish behaviour towards Troy Game, but such righteous misfortune still caught me by surprise for a pseudo protagonist. Perhaps I’m just struggling to reconcile this with the idea that — no offence Paul Saint, I know nothing about you — Simon feels a bit like an author insert at first. Other aspects of his life feel slightly too developed to be such non-starters in the end, like the flirty co-worker who somehow knows what Troy Game is called, and the occult journalist/foil who seems to have his own thing going on and then just isn’t in the book any more. All things considered he’s not beating the “already had half a novel on the go” allegations.

The wider plot stumbles a bit too. So much effort goes into the time fracture and explaining the time fracture, and on that score at least there is a great visual focal point in Ezekiel Child — but he’s barely in it, and his curious affliction of ageing and experiencing life backwards is entirely a reported event, despite being interesting enough to support a novel. (You might call it The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.) For all that I enjoyed the general hijinks in Chichester, with raid-the-toybox antics involving TARDISes and regeneration, the moment things moved to Caresh I wondered if we truly needed any of that; none of it meaningfully changes the pickle the planet is in.

That, too, takes a bit of explaining — and attempts are made, the phrase “Let me get this straight” is used more than once — but the beat for beat action on Caresh is still just more chase stuff, with escaping and recapturing and really quite redundant haircuts for the Doctor and Jo to get us to the image on the front cover. They’re sussed as suspicious types immediately anyway. (It’s difficult to mind what with the hilarious way it’s handled. “‘Jo!’ the Doctor barked. ‘I am not doing it and that's final.’ It was not final, of course. They argued some more and the Doctor eventually conceded, with rather poor grace … There was complete silence except for the combined hum of the clippers and the control room. Jo eventually broke the silence. She said, ‘Are you going anywhere special on your holidays this year, sir?’”) There’s some good derring do with boats and giant locusts to build momentum, but then a last minute misunderstanding from Troy Game pointlessly upends everything at the eleventh hour. It’s one of those books that puts a lot of effort into hitting its page count — quite slyly on Earth, and then pretty obviously on Caresh with stunts like that.

There are still interesting things to be found in the book’s secondary setting. Solenti has been hinting about leaving Roche’s work undone, which of course doesn’t sit right with the Doctor. This is where that annoying misconception comes in — but then right next to it is a very good moral conundrum about Roche’s plan and its consequences. Unfortunately the Doctor doesn’t need to weigh his options on it, he just drums up an (admittedly very neat) plan B instead. Which, hooray etc, but that’s then just another interesting thing that isn’t quite in focus. (See also, the Doctor deliberately not telling Solenti he has a companion. What was that in aid of?)

Much about The Suns Of Caresh is wobbly-legged in that “first time author” way, but it’s one of those where rather than be annoyed about it I just wished there had been more books to course-correct any imperfections. Paul Saint has a good imagination in or out of an obvious Doctor Who setting, and for what it’s worth he’s great at the Who stuff too, writing a very enjoyable and recognisable Third Doctor and Jo. (Honourable “not that bit” mention for the Doctor’s spiky temper tantrum towards Jo near the end. In the bin please.) Much of what I liked about it was its ideas and sense of fun; some of what I liked about it may not have even been intentional, such as the references to now quaint modern tech. (“He’d risen early so that he could surf the Internet before the lines were busy.” Bless! A thousand times bless! Mind you this could already have been social commentary by 2002. Depends on Paul’s internet speeds.) What I didn’t like so much was generally due to chewing it over afterwards — in the moment, it worked well enough. I’d say that despite some uneven patches this is a colourful entry and worth seeking out.

7/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #119 – Camera Obscura by Lloyd Rose

Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures

#59

Camera Obscura

By Lloyd Rose

Sabbath. His continual manipulations. The Doctor’s lost heart, and his diminished state. Fitz and Anji’s stress about all of the above. Lloyd Rose isn’t mucking about: Camera Obscura addresses all of it.

Not that we’re done here. Sabbath is still out there at the end, and the Doctor’s return to a more stable place is still ongoing. But Camera Obscura is a very satisfying update in the meantime.

Probably my favourite thing about it is the way the characters seem annoyed or frustrated by the same stuff that’s been bothering me. The Doctor has absolutely had it with Sabbath’s 4D chess moves, and tells him so: “Why don’t we just take it as read, and I’ll go off and do a lot of work and then you can come in at the end and tell me it was all your idea.” Sabbath has seemed one step ahead for a while now and that’s very much paused this week, as the Doctor gets in his face and goads him: “[He] suddenly stretched out across [Sabbath’s papers] like a cat taking over a computer keyboard.” / “I just came to get on your nerves. They are your nerves, aren’t they? Haven’t borrowed them as well?”

There’s nothing wrong per se with having a weakened Doctor and using an apparently superior foe to drive that home, but this is still Doctor Who and if he’s going to be ineffectual all the time then eventually it will become something else. Camera Obscura lets him get his groove back, and the resulting Doctor/Sabbath dynamic is thrilling. I’ve never seen the Eighth Doctor this furious, or Sabbath this on edge. That’s not to say the Doctor cows him into submission completely: Sabbath is still a powerful and self-righteous figure who (inadvertently, then deliberately) saves the Doctor’s life. But the playing field is more level now, as it should be.

The redressed characterisation goes both ways. Rose is clear about Sabbath’s pragmatism and the lack of a figurative moustache to twirl; he believes in what he’s doing. The two clash over their outlooks on time which helpfully lays out their conflict: “‘You think it’s either your kind of order or else it’s chaos. Why shouldn’t time be like music?’ ‘Very pretty. And what if you’re wrong, and every trip you so blithely take pulls out another thread in time’s warp?’ ‘And what if you’re wrong, and in paring down time’s possibilities you strangle reality?’” / “[Sabbath] seems to have the strangest ideas about how time works. I don’t think he’s got it right at all.”

Rose also highlights the physiological bond between the two, aka the stolen heart. This pays huge dividends for the plot, as we find out that the Doctor — while effectively mortal — is kept from dying thanks to his second heart living in Sabbath. I definitely let out an “oh no, not again” when he nearly got himself killed in this, as it’s definitely become a trope in the post-Adventuress era, but it’s a lightning rod for the two ersatz Time Lords in this as it pushes them both along as characters. The Doctor knows this keeps happening to him — you might say he’s had it with that, too — and is testing the boundaries of life and death, but he’s also unstable and doubtless still has some self-loathing going on. Sabbath is intrigued by the link at first, but for one thing it means he’ll have to see more of the Doctor, and for another he’s increasingly disgusted by what this otherworldly nuisance represents. In the end he gives up the heart, killing it at last — which looks to be the very thing that will let the Doctor recover. Progress! Movement! An underlining of who these people are and what they want! It’s like being back in the Blum and Orman glory days.

And speaking of the Sam team, Rose is great with the companions in this. The Doctor-Anji-Fitz dynamic is once again at its peak (it was also great in History 101), in particular Anji’s attitude of an infuriated older sister. She’s quick to call the Doctor an idiot for getting himself in danger, and she makes him painfully aware that he doesn’t know what it’s like to sit around hoping he’ll recover. At one point she tells herself that she will absolutely go home after all this if the Doctor survives — a moment of total vulnerability. But her indignation can be up there with the Doctor’s at times, as she brutally rips strips off his would-be assassin near the end, and Sabbath too, which was so satisfying to read. (Sabbath also gets some good old fashioned shade off her. “And that name! ‘Sabbath.’ Like a comic book villain. He probably thought that sounded cool too. I’ll bet his real name’s Melvin or something.” Yeah, get him!)

Fitz, good old reliable pal that he is, seems to be experiencing his own growing pains. He’s aware of not fitting into Victorian London in a way that suggests his usual bag of tricks might be running low; given the opportunity to attend a lecture about other forms of exploration, completely separate to the plot, he strongly considers it. But his loyalty is still there in spades, as he faces down an apparently homicidal Doctor urging him to leave him alone. I got the sense that Fitz, like the Doctor, was testing his boundaries here.

There’s heaps of character stuff in Camera Obscura and it’s all excellent. The plot is a different beast. Continuing a theme from The City Of The Dead, Rose has written another story that isn’t your typical A-to-B science fiction work, although it’s notably more sci-fi and less magic than her last one. The Doctor has detected a time disturbance in Victorian London. So has Sabbath. Both of them are investigating weird goings on that might be related to it. And that’s it for a while: there’s lots of atmosphere and oddity but not a lot of direction. There’s a curiously successful spirit medium with multiple personalities, and a magician with an impossible trick. What could be the link? And what do either of these things really matter?

Rose gets a lot out of the macabre trappings, such as an incredible technology that’s somehow reliant on mirrors, and a magician whose grand finale recalls Christopher Priest’s The Prestige. (The movie wasn’t out yet.) The weird goings on all trace back to the time disturbance, but you get the overall sense that Rose is exploring each weird idea in its own way; they seem only loosely connected at times. It doesn’t feel like a typical Doctor Who story in that way, but then as with a few recent books (including Rose’s last) that fits with the overall shape of the Eighth Doctor range at this time, more holistic and less rigid. The trade-off is an arguable lack of page-turning plot, but oh well: the Doctor’s various near-misses provide the missing jeopardy, and the damaged people he meets are all reflections of what he’s going through — there’s even a recurring theme of people being split into eighths. It all serves a purpose.

Style is a very memorable part of Camera Obscura, with Rose pushing it to some warped places that recall the New Adventures. There’s some body horror involving monstrous limbs and a toaster once the villain is revealed, and a sequence where Death is personified; this, as well as a subsequent scene needles at the Doctor’s past in ways that he no longer understands but we do, including some mental cameos from former Doctors. All of that recalls Virgin, which feels appropriate in a meta way when he’s casting about for his identity. In amongst all that though, there are moments of sudden violence and horror that stand out all the more for their conciseness, such as the Doctor helping the Angel Maker to complete her grim task, the private life of Octave, and the eventual fate of Dr Chiltern. Rose displays great range here.

Despite being a macabre story full of heavy introspection, pulse-racing indignation and varying shades of gothic horror it’s somehow lots of fun as well. The Doctor’s impish mischief-making against Sabbath is like letting the air back into the room after several standoffish books, and Rose is quick to underline the TARDIS team’s serious traumas with their playful brand of sibling warmth. The Doctor is in a better place at the end of this, seemingly recapturing the unusual magic of the Time Lords right up to the final page and echoing, very neatly, the obsession with his lone heartbeat at the start. Apart from the odd nagging typo (will we never be rid of them?) it’s a book of tremendous poise and intent which extends, I think, to its fairly minimal plot. It’s a pity Lloyd Rose didn’t write any more EDAs after this one, but Camera Obscura is a good note to end on: one of those load-bearing entries like Alien Bodies or Unnatural History that manages to be a good time as well. I hope the other writers take the right lessons from it.

9/10