NA #29 Strange England

Strange England by Simon Messingham

In Brief: The Doctor, Benny and Ace land in England, although it's an England that's strange. A Strange England. Where Strange things happen. But it turns out to not be the *real* England. Just a STRAAAANGE ENGLAND.

strange. strange strange strange. bizarro.

I remember, back in the mists of time (well, last August), when I started re-reading The New Adventures I was full of enthusiasm and somewhat surprised by the quality of many of the books (in a good way). Unfortunately that initial energy seems to be somewhat abating after what's been a bit of a run of mediocrity. I wonder if the pressure of putting out a book in this series each month (as well as for The Missing Adventures) was starting to take its toll by late 1994. Since The Left-Handed Hummingbird I've felt more like I've been reading first drafts rather than fully formed and edited novels.

However Strange England isn't a difficult or boring read, it's just that it felt like Messingham (another first-time author I see...) didn't so much write a book as throw together a bunch of random ideas. So we have:

-giant insects lodging themselves in the throats of Victorian school-girls
-a spooky mansion with killer vegetation
-glowing angels
-Time Lords
-a finale featuring thousands of rampaging mutants threatening crucifixion in a hellish fiery landscape.

Quite often Doctor Who (both in novel and on TV) is successfully able to mix together somewhat disparate items (aka Werevolves vs. Queen Victoria, Martian Pyramids & Egyptian Gods, etc.). Unfortunately that doesn't happen in Strange England so the "reason" for all of the Strange seems more like a last-minute excuse rather than an integral part of the plot. Basically very little in the book is real, and even the stuff that happens in the "real" universe makes little sense. I find the "it all happened in a virtual landscape/fake universe" excuse for having a story filled with oddities to be comperable with the "it was all a dream" cop-outs one gets with other genres.

After 250 pages of STRANGE! it turns out that everything is really all one big virtual landscape created by a previously unheard of Time Lady who had plugged herself into her TARDIS (Don't ask me why, I can't remember.) which The Doctor & Co just happen to stumble upon. The other big issue is that the final stretch of the book moves away from the random yet effective psuedo-Victorian setting into a realm of technobabble that would make an episode of Star Trek blush.

However the strange thing (yes, I know) is that the book wasn't an awful read in the way that some of the others have been, the author's writing style is actually quite good. The problem is just that the plotting and narrative is so awful no amount of quality prose can make up for it. While I've had the same complaint before during the series I think this time it bugged me more because it's been a while since there's been a *really good* book. It's like with the show itself, I can take bad episodes as long as there are good ones to level things out (for every Evolution of the Daleks there's a Family of Blood) but when things are mediocre for a long stretch I tend to get a bit bored (i.e. The Catherine Tate year).

Plus I can't believe there was ever a time when someone thought that what Doctor Who needed was a war-hardened plastic-leotard wearing gun-toting version of Ace. The character at this point is making the likes of Tegan and Martha seem well-rounded in comparison.

But yeah, Strange England = not good. Hopefully better is now to come...