EDA #3: The Bodysnatchers

The Bodysnatchers by Mark Morris

In Brief: Zygons + Victorian London.

The Bodysnatchers is hum-drum, regular, unambitious, knows its place, doesn't think to hard, only wants to amuse, etc. While it sort of manages it's purpose of mixing an old Doctor Who monster (The Zygons from 1975's "Terror of the Zygons") in a fan-favourite setting (Victorian England, including the return of Professor Litefoot from 1976's "The Talons of Weng-Chiang") and even manages to include a plot (almost) the result is seriously lacking. However we're not back down to the depths of The Eight Doctors but it's completely unambitious, not doing anything to push the boundaries of being a "traditional Doctor Who story".

The result is rather dull.

Very rarely in the history of the TV show are there examples of the production team *not* trying something new or going in a new direction with a story. The series has always been marked by the attitude of "let's see what we can try *this* week", for better or for worse. So having a book which is so definitively tasked with providing a "standard Doctor Who tale" is somewhat odd. But then we're still in the days reacting to the "it wasn't Doctor Who-ey enough" New Advenstures.

The suspicion is though that as the 8th-Doctor books were being published directly by the BBC the decision has been made to use the old televised adversaries that Virgin Publishing's New Adventures weren't able to use due to rights issues. While it's an understandable technique to create a demarcation between that series and the BBC-Books version here nothing new or interesting has been done with the returning Zygons.


"Or maybe we're just perfect as is?" Um, no...

The Zygons themselves, while a well-remembered monster, aren't actually interesting in of themselves. They're just another race of baddies aiming for conquest and unlimited rice-pudding. As such they're really no different than the Ice Warriors, Cybermen, Kraals, etc. With The Bodysnatchers being a book and all and not having the benefit of effective design and creepy voices they just become a bland lot of antagonists.

Also, The Doctor and Sam are still suffering from being underdeveloped. While the book just about gets away with it for The Doctor (since The 8th-version is deliberately more a man of action (scuba diving!) compared to his predecessor), Sam just just isn't working. There's no depth to her character, other than being a generic middle-class teenager with an irritating sarcastic streak. While the series has had "light" companions before it's a big demerit for these books in comparison to previous characters like Benny, Roz and (sometimes) Chris.

Although at the end of this book there is an odd passage that foreshadows that Sam may be encoutering a somewhat dark future, so perhaps this is all deliberate.

He says hopefully.

The Bodysnatchers however isn't totally a bad book. Mark Morris is able to string his sentences together in a decent enough way, even if the plot is rather weak (People acting weird, oh they're Zygons! The Zygons have a ship under the Thames, with giant monsters! It all goes BOOM!). But still, it's little more than a workmanlike endeavour.

There were also a few parts of the book that seriously irked. The ending is far too rushed, despite having a huge amount of lead-up (aka faffing-about). Minor characters disappear rather abruptly without any sort of closure and there several aspects of the book (particularly a sub-plot concerning bodies being stolen from a graveyard and related characters) which end up having little to do with the main story. But the biggest problem I had was how The Doctor actually deals with The Zygons. *spoilers* His plan of using a sedative to put them to sleep and transport their shop to another planet goes horribly wrong with the result being the painful death of almost every Zygon. However other than his saying "sorry" once there are no repercussions, he just bounces off to his next adventure. It's just completely wrong for the character, and to have it treated so lightly is uncomfortable.

All of these factors lead to the sense that the book needed a major edit prior to publication. But I'll cut The Bodysnatchers some slack since this is a series obviously trying to find its feet, much the same as with the early New Adventures. Hopefully things improve soon.