NA #20 The Dimension Riders

The Dimension Riders by Daniel Blythe

In Brief: Odd events happening in 1993 Oxford and a 24th-century space-station are somehow linked. It's up to the Doctor, Benny and Ace to stop the Evil from the Dawn of Time™ that's to blame.

The Dimension Riders is about 3/4ths of the way towards being a good book. Unfortunately the rest torpedoes things and is also the final quarter of the book so leaves a bad taste in one's (literary) mouth. Events kick off with the regulars visiting an old friend of the Doctor's at Oxford University. Soon the Doctor detects a strange signal from the Tardis which leads him and Ace to travel forward in time to investigate, leaving Benny to stay in Oxford (and find that some of the university staff are in fact Time Lords in disguise). Meanwhile the 24th-century finds a destroyed space-station and the trigger-happy crew of a passing survey-craft. Laser-battles ensue.

Anyone who knows their Who will recognise that Blythe is stealing (sorry, I mean "echoing") a great deal of 1979's Cambridge-set almost-story "Shada" (or "SHAAAAAAADAAAAAAA!!!!!" for anyone who's seen Tom Baker's introduction to the video).

I'm starting to lose count now of how many books I've basically said the exact same thing about the apparent inspiration for a lot of these books. I guess with 1993 having been the show's 30th-anniversary many of the authors were looking to the past and saying "Hey! I'd like a bit of that!".

If the normal trend of anniversary years ending up being incredibly fanwanky I expect that 2013 will being us a story centred around Captain Jack being in a LTR with Adric. Plus of course my long dreamed-of Zarbi vs. Nimon BATTLE TO THE DEATH! story.

So again an author has taken some of their favourite bits from a few stories and mixed them together in a different way (and if you're going to rip someone else off you could do worse than Douglas Adams). The parts of the book set in "the present" are actually rather good, with sexy androids, time-travelling cars and renegade Time Lords (thankfully *not* the Master) clashing with a rather mundane backdrop. The problem is that Blythe *also* seems to want to evoke stories such as "Resurrection of the Daleks" and "Earthshock" (for a post-2005 audience think "42", "Dalek" or other equal butch and guns-filled action-fests) and this is where the book falls a bit flat. However at first with having both time periods' events happening concurrently keeps the interest high as the reader tries to piece together exactly what is going on.

Unfortunately it's when the plot-strands come together and "big bad" of The Garvond appears that all falls apart. The big problem is that as a villain the Garvond is just a bog-standard BWAHAHAHA I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!!1-spewer. Also the later parts of the book are almost completely set in the (somewhat dull) 24th-century space-ship which means that one's interest starts to wane. The Doctor's eventual dispatch of the baddie doesn't really make a lot of sense either, and is rather poorly written (he traps it in a book, or a fountain, or in the Tardis, or something). I suspect that may be on purpose since in fitting with the plot-thread starting in Blood Heat the reason that the Garvond appears in the first place is due to some unknown force meddling (*hint* *hint*) with time, so the Doctor solves everything by using the Tardis to sort everything out (again).

Another issue is that "New" Ace continues to aggravate/annoy. Ever since re-joining the Doctor and Bernice she's been a bitchy angst-ridden little troll with severe trust issues (although that still makes her more pleasant than Tegan, but not by much). I *guess* that at the time the thought was this was creating character-depth or something but it just makes Ace seem to be incredibly unpleasant and worthy of being left on a barren asteroid somewhere. As well it means that a small portion of almost every book since Deceit has had some mention of her "issues" and the Doctor's guilt for having manipulated her in the past. Really I just wish all involved would get over it and start having some fun travelling through time & space again.

But thankfully it's a minor point that can for the most part be ignored.

Overall I'd call The Dimension Riders as being somewhat mid-range in terms of quality. The writing's good, the characters are ok (as in I could remember who everyone was, not always possible in some of The New Adventures) and the use of two time-periods concurrently is interesting (I can only think of "Mawdryn Undead" in terms of televised stories that have tried the same thing. Strange that in a series about time-travel). So I'll say that the book is good but unspectacular and has a few too many problems to really be recommendable.

But at least the cover's cool.