Seeing I by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman
In Brief: Sam must save a planet from an evil corporation while The Doctor spends years trapped in the perfect prison.
The main feeling I got while reading Seeing I was relief. Relief that the BBC Books series had finally produced another good book. Actually a *very* good book.
For those keeping score the other good books in the series so far have been Vampire Science(by the same authors) and Alien Bodies. The rest have either been dull, vapid or war-crimes against literature.
It's become clear, now that I'm 12 books into this series, that The Eighth Doctor Adventures took a lot longer than the New Adventures to figure out what it wanted to be in terms of how to continue Doctor Who in the late-90s. While the Virgin line had taken a bit of time to find its stride (quality did flail wildly over the first 10-12 books) even with the earliest books there was a sense that the authors were at least trying to take the series into a new direction, away from what had been on television. So far the BBC books have struggled to do the same, with far too much reliance on nostalgia and the return of old monsters and characters. Of course with it being almost 10 years by this point that the show hadn't been a part of the social psyche (aka On TV) such a strategy is understandable, people's memory of the show was what it had been back in the 70s and there was hope the books would pick up new readers as a result.
So why was Seeing I such a good read? Blum and Orman ignore nostalgia and get back to the core strengths of engaging story, well-developed and interesting characters and good quality of prose style. Most importantly they finally give us a look into Sam and the 8th-Doctor's personalities and thoughts, which has been mainly missing over the past 12 books. Sam in particular has suffered in never really moving away from the very limited character brief that Terrance Dicks set for her back in The Eight Doctors of "cheeky teenage girl who gets into trouble".
Seeing I fulfills and completes the promise of the recent series-arc of Sam being separated from The Doctor by having her settle on the planet of Ha'Olam (after the events of Dreamstone Moon) and accept that she won't be travelling in the Tardis again.
She's unaware that The Doctor, in trying to locate her, ended up locked in a prison on the same planet.
So having the reader get to know Sam in "downtime", as she becomes involved in various groups trying to make society better and begins to mature, allows us to finally feel that there's a fully-formed person in place. Essentially Orman and Blum reject the parts of the character they didn't like (so basically everything) and replace her with a more rounded version. She's still a bit irritating and too much of a 90s "right on!" sensibility, but it's miles away from the cipher that originally ran into the Tardis.
There's also more allusions to her character somehow being manipulated in order to be the "perfect" companion for The Doctor, with a hidden and failed "Dark Sam" being her true self.
The Eighth Doctor also gets some needed development, as he finds himself locked away with nothing to fight against. Rather than being the grand-manipulator he was, here he is forced to accept that he may not be able to escape from every situation and actually accepts that he has lost to his captors (prior to being broken out by Sam once she finds out his predicament). While it's the normal Kate Orman technique of torturing The Doctor in order to give him some depth it works well here, as he's not able to bounce back the same as the 7th did in the New Adventures. The Doctor at the end of Seeing I seems a much more haunted character.
As for the rest of the book, the plot itself is in large part a critique of Big Business as the corporation INC essentially runs Ha'Olam through owning all business. People work by shuffling through huge amounts of data using integrated eye-ports, which is actually stolen technology actually being used for more dastardly aims. By the end of the book a conspiracy is revealed and the real culprits defeated (The gestalt race "The I", who throw advanced tech at lower species to see what they do with it). It's all good stuff.
So now I have some hope again that The Eighth Doctor Adventures will prove to be worthwhile. Perhaps the series can now build off of the developments of Seeing I, with a more mature Sam and better developed Eighth Doctor continuing their adventures in time and space.
