Sky Pirates! by Dave Stone
In Brief: The Doctor, Benny, Chris and Roz find themselves in a nihilistic version of The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
But with song-and-dance numbers.
Insane, bizarre, probably divisive and quite quite enjoyable, Sky Pirates! is definitely one of the most memorable of the books in the entire range of New Adventures. While I imagine the book wouldn't be to everyone's taste the huge imagination involved in Stone's world-building mixed with his OTT writing-style meant that I was totally with this book from Page 1.
That's not to say that the book is perfect, it could probably due with a bit more focus and a bit of an edit (at 300 pages it's the longest of the New Adventures), but at the same time I don't mind a bit of indulgence here and there when the result is so enjoyable.
So what is the book about anyways? The Tardis falls into a small pocket universe known as The System, which is filled with a variety of humanoid species on a collection of rather improbable planets. However The System has been invaded by the villainous shape-shifting blobby Sloathes, who are enslaving the local population and stealing all of their pretty things. Add to this a pirate crew, a "chosen one" and a quest for The Eyes That Will Save Everything. The book goes for a bit of a "quest" feel as the regulars (including new additions Chris and Roz, a little underused) end up in various parts of The System over a course of several weeks.
Sky Pirates! is a great book for Benny, as the sense of humour which follows the character is really allowed to come to the fore-front as she's faced with planets shaped like snowmen and a sun with a giant smiley-face on it. However it's her view of The Doctor that really stands out in the book, as she realises that her earlier hope of being an equal to him was a false hope, at best she might be a prized pet. That's not to say that the book makes The Doctor out to be uncaring, but this is easily the character at his most manipulative and alien, getting people to do what he needs through subtle hints and false comedy. The climax in particular, as The Doctor faces the reason The System has him at his most God-like and terrifying (although that's not visible to most).
So while much of Sky Pirates! at first seems to be extremely OTT by the end it's surprising at how serious, and actually horrific, much of what happens ends up being. Like the earlier Parasite this is a disaster of huge proportions, with only the survival of a few giving a sense of victory (well relatively few compared to the earlier book's survival-rate of none). Still, the book is hardly a downer. In fact it in many ways pushes the Doctor Who envelope farther than any other book so far (and definitely more than almost any TV-story). Although I guess that's the benefit of a novel not having to worry about the budget.
So an excellent, if diabolical, entry into the series. This book has reminded me about how enjoyable Who can be when it goes for something new and succeeds.
Original Sin by Andy Lane
In Brief: 30th-Century Earth. Empires are crumbling, the rich live in luxurious floating Over-Cities while the poor toil in the dark below and people are randomly becoming insane killers. Plus ça change...
Oh, and The Doctor picks up a couple of new companions, Adjudicators (Future-police) Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej. And while the whole thing ends up being the fault of an old enemy amazingly it *isn't* The Master.
Original Sin is a very good book. One of the best in the series so far in fact. It's got that combination of good story, good writing and good characters that reminded me why I was investing my time in revisiting The New Adventures. I'd say that it's actually a smidge better than Human Nature even though the previous story was the one that ended up being filmed. Of course with it's futuristic world-hoppping sci-fi trappings you'd need a budget in the tens of millions to bring Original Sin to life, not just a school-house in Wales.
Something that's very interesting to me, reading these books, as to how one author can manage to make their characters really stand out and be memorable where another fails dismally. Why is it that Andy Lane's writing means I can easily follow everything that is going on, but an author like David A. McIntee (Sanctuary, First Frontier) ends up with some vivid description of scenery but I can never tell anyone apart. I guess it must just be a skill that some have that others lack, like musical ability.
Anyways, decent characterisation is just one of the aspects of the book that made it enjoyable. Lane's version of the 30th-century is one very much like that of "The Fifth Element", with an earth covered in massive high-rises and filled with all types of alien visitor. Although in a lot of ways this goes further than anything in that movie in making the place a tangible domain where people (and aliens) live. Throw into this setting Bernice and The Doctor, following the dying words of a large slug (aka Hith Warrior), warned of a danger to Earth. The threat is that people are randomly going insane and killing anyone in their path.
It turns out eventually that the culprit is one Tobias Vaughn, last seen as a stooge for the Cybermen in 1968's "The Invasion".
Having a returning villain could have been awful, as it has been in the past (The Master, The War Lords. etc.) but in Original Sin it works surprisingly well. Lane has taken care to make sure that Vaughn's appearance doesn't feel shoe-horned in. The character's presence has been thought through, with a plausible reason for him to have survived his earlier story and to still be around 1000 year later. While not mandatory having seen the earlier story does help though.
But alongside a good setting, villain, etc., Original Sin is notable in that we get two new companions for The Doctor in the form of Adjudicators (Future-police) Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej. The two join the Tardis since after siding with The Doctor against their corrupt employer it becomes too dangerous to stay on Earth after the events of the book. Considering Bernice is still around this makes for the most crowded Tardis-crew since Adric landed in Mexico. Of the two of them Roz is the better defined at the moment, mainly as we get a bit more of her back-story than with Chris. Also the fact that Chris starts the book looking like a large Teddy-Bear (thanks to a trendy 30th-century "Body-Bepple") means that he's more the comic relief to begin.
It's good to see the book series taking another step away from its TV-roots. If the publishers had tried to keep the stories based around the original show I don't think the New Adventures would have been even close to being as interesting as they are. Of course with the show back in TV it means that these books are now rather forgotten I do think that their influence has not been completely ignored as so many authors have since written for the show proper. They really did fill the gap between the adventurous original run and the more character-led stories (for the most part) we've had since 2005.
