NA #11 The Highest Science

The Highest Science by Gareth Roberts

In Brief: Future episode-writer Gareth Roberts (The Shakespeare Code, The Unicorn and the Wasp, Planet of the Dead (dear lord), The Lodger) gets his name on a Doctor Who-related story for the first time. The result sees the Doctor chasing a Fortean Flicker to a desolate planet, battling a villainous evil master-mind, meeting a militaristic race of giant tortoises while trying to save the passengers of the 8:12-train from Aldgate.

After the heavier fare of Love and War and Transit delving into Roberts' light-hearted style was a welcome change. I realised, much to my surprise, that really The Highest Science is the first book in the range which has has a sense of fun, despite being filled with death and destruction. It manages a lightness of tone and humour to counteract the darker elements of the novel in a way which is *very* post-2005 (and also extremely 1970s). He's taken the verve and style of the original show in its heyday (so pre-1980) and merged it with a more up-to-date and fast-moving story. In that way it's really almost a precursor of what we'd be getting on television 13-years later with the revamped series.

So while the book isn't as serious or "deep" as previous novels I found myself enjoying it a lot. One of the things like the most about Doctor Who is that one gets a constant variety of type of story thrown at them. Historical costume-porn is followed by futuristic sci-fi is followed by emotional angsty-drama.

In that sense these books are proving to be very much like the show itself as each of the authors has each brought something new to the table (for better or worse). Also the novels *finally* seem to be shedding the awful continuity references to the past and allowing the Doctor & Co. to go to new places and meet new aliens. In that sense The Highest Science could very much be converted into being a "modern" story since there's nothing requiring a great deal of knowledge of past characters/events. Dumping the rather been-there/done-that Ace was a great move by the publishers since it really allowed the series to shed some not-needed baggage. The more I get to know Bernice this time around the more her character reminds me of Amy. I can very easily picture an older Karen Gillen saying her lines.

We also get our first proper "villain" in the series (no, the Timewyrm doesn't count) with the evil Sheldukher. For once he *isn't* an evil-force-from-the-dawn-of-time or all-powerful alien. As such the Doctor gets a chance to match wits with an opponent and the result shines. I also liked the Chelonians (who were totally mentioned in "The Pandorica Opens"!) despite their being a bit of a combination of the Ice Warriors and Sontarans in tortoise-form. Contrasting their militaristic single-mindedness to the Doctor works really well.

I guess the only real negative from the book is the that there are a couple of plot-threads at the end which are not satisfactorily tied up (The "812s" in particular). It almost feels like Roberts got to his page requirement and decided to wrap up things up as quickly as possible and not bother to do a 2nd-draft. Still that's a minor niggle in a book which has so much going for it and that manages to have a real feel of the show. This is the first book in the New Adventures series that I'd actually recommend to a fan of the post-2005 years without fear that it'd be thrown at me with great force.