EDA #13 Placebo Effect

Placebo Effect by Gary Russell

In Brief: The novel that asks the question "What would happen if the Foamasi were to meet the Wirrrn?" and DARES TO GIVE THE ANSWER!

And again it looks like I've been given false hope regarding the Eighth Doctor books. After the exemplary Seeing I we're back to the norm of mediocrity. There's just such a lack of ambition to many of the books it's extremely frustrating, as if the publishers have decided that they'd rather coast on the fumes of nostalgia of Doctor Who rather than attempt anything new. Placebo Effect is a dumb, cliched mess of a novel which manages to sour the memory of the stories from which it draws inspiration.

The book involves The Doctor falling into a scheme involving The Foamasi (from 1980's "The Leisure Hive") which is actually a red herring as the *real* threat is a plot by The Wirrrn (from 1975's "The Ark in Space") using the cover of the Olympic Games of 3999 (set a year before the events of 1965/66's "The Daleks Masterplan") to spread their genetic code across the universe and therefore amalgamate all other species into the Wirrrn hive-mind. There's also something about some religious zealots and bad comedy involving the aristocracy.

While the plot doesn't sound any sillier than other entries in the series the problem is that Russell seems to actually think he's writing a rather serious sci-fi novel that probes "the big questions". This probing mainly comes down to interminable passages as Sam tries to debate evolution and other themes with the religious order or when we get into in-depth explorations of the Foamasi social structure. This must have all seemed fascinating to the author, but the reader is faced with pages and pages of nothing happening while characters have discussions about matters that have nothing to do with the rest of the story.

When events finally do start moving (around 3/4ths of the way into the book) it all just becomes a gun battle as various factions of police run around firing at emerging Wirrrn grubs. And then at the end everything blows up through The Doctor ramming a cord into an electrical outlet.

However Placebo Effect at least wasn't painful, just dumb and very poorly paced. Gary Russell does seem to have some sort of strange ability to at least keep interest by throwing random items into the plot. However nothing really coalesces, so there's no sense of a story happening here, just a lot of different characters running around talking to each other before the big skirmish at the end.

Also, all of the good work in Seeing I is undone as The Doctor and Sam revert to being the underwritten pod-people the characters have been through too many of these novels. In making Doc 8 noticeably different from the controlling #7 they've gone too far and made him too light-weight. This version of The Doctor has no commanding presence or real impact on events, at times almost seeming buffoonish. And Sam, despite being a few years older, is still the "RIGHT ON!" 90s-chick that had grated so very much.

So, I have to report that Placebo Effect is another hum-drum entry in the series. Considering the poor hit-rate with these books I'm beginning to become very surprised that they were actually published on a monthly basis for almost 8 years.

EDA #12 Seeing I

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.

EDA #11 Dreamstone Moon

Dreamstone Moon by Paul Leonard

In Brief: The Doctor continues to search for Sam. Sam joins a group of protesters trying to stop mining operations for crystals which give their users dreams (both good and bad).

Thankfully Dreamstone Moon was a marked improvement from Legacy of the Daleks, however I'd wonder what something worse could possibly be (that isn't Internet slash-fiction). However the normal problems (so far) with the Eighth Doctor adventures are still present, a poorly realised Doctor and Sam, lack of interesting story and little depth to any of the situations, locations or characters in the book.

I'll try to keep to the positive though. Paul Leonard is thankfully a competent writer, the prose is decent and he's good at keeping events going. Unfortunately his pacing is very off, there's far too little set-up and the final act of the story is horribly stretched-out. It's a shame since the first part of the book is the most interesting as an example of much-missed world-building within the BBC range. I wanted to know more about why people were so reliant on the dreamstones and what they actually did. There was an opportunity here for Leonard to really get some decent character moments across, which is completely missed. Instead the stones themselves are really just an excuse to get to the moon, which begins to undergo some catastrophic changes.

There's a bit of "big business bad" commentary here on the mining/destruction of the moon for the stones, but it's all a little too heavy handed.

As for the continuing story of Sam and the Doctor being separated, I'm not actually sure if I'm seeing the point. In theory this should be allowing her character to finally become more well rounded and mature. Unfortunately she's as irritating and petulant as ever, making judgement calls whenever possible and generally acting like a spoiled brat. The editorial idea to create her character still boggles the mind, except still as it being a reaction to the notion that the companions in the New Adventures had been too complex and multi-faceted. Or something.

But there's no real sense that Sam being on her own (thinking initially that The Doctor had died back at the end of Longest Day) really serves any purpose. By the end of Dreamstone Moon they're *almost* reunited, except for a last minute plot-development where she again finds herself heading off into space with the Doctor continuing to look for her. It feels a bit pointless.

But otherwise not much else to say about Dreamstone Moon. It's at least a competent novel, but one which could and should have been much much better. There were some interesting ideas in it, but none which were given enough depth. Instead much of the book is spent involving characters running around avoiding explosions and cave-ins. It was all very forgettable.

EDA #10 Legacy of the Daleks

Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel

In Brief: Estro is the Esperanto word for Master!

Oh, and f*ck John Peel.

If I were to to a "ranking" scheme for these books, using 1 to 4 stars or some such, Legacy of the Daleks would make me want to go into the negatives. I've read inept. I've read boring. I've read psychic-squirrels.

However this is the first book that's made me want to find the author and punch him in the face.

So why is this one so special?

It's poorly written with bad characterisation and awful plotting. But that's nothing new. The extra spice which really raised my ire was the idiocy and misogyny that's thrown in.

The Doctor ends up searching for a still missing Sam on Earth 30 years after he thwarted the Dalek invasion). For those of you not up on your knowledge of 1964's "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" this is also where he dropped off Susan, his grand-daughter, so that she could get married to freedom-fighter David.

Well 30 years later and all is not well as Susan still looks like a teenager while David has become a portly 50-year-old. That's OK though since Susan still loves him and the reader gets descriptions on how she still likes to dress up sexy in the boudoir to cheer him up.

Ick.

Sorry, but this must be some sort of perverse wish-fulfillment on the author's part. I'd forgotten that authors other than Mark Gatiss tend to be misogynistic but I should have remembered Peel's avid descriptions of bouncy Thal-women and bare-breasted teenage prostitutes in his earlier novels. It's like Doctor Who by some trench-coated pervert in the park holding an issue of Penthouse.

Worse still than Susan's sexual escapades is the character of Donna (no, not *that* one), the only female knight of the realm. However she's not the only women knight due to talent but rather that because she can't have children she had to find some use for herself. Then after a novel filled with her angst and self-loathing she meets a man who loves her regardless and finally feels whole.

ARGHAGHRGHGHGHAG!!!! How the hell did this get published in 1998?!!

Ok, maybe I'll calm down if I just stick to the plot. There's something about a weapon left behind by the Daleks which The Master is trying to get while also causing a war between various post-apocalyptic feudal states of Britain. Mainly because he's bored. And also John Peel wants to needlessly fill in continuity gaps between stories which nobody cared about. At the end of the novel Susan, after seeing David shot dead by The Master, steals his Tardis and leaves him for dead on the desolate planet Tersurus.

Have I mentioned how much I despite authors having to "explain" various gaps in the series? Yes, in the show The Master disappeared for a few seasons and then came back close to death hiding on Gallifrey, but the viewer could fill in the rest with their own imagination. Fans like Peel for some reason can't abide these gaps and demand some form of concrete answers. This is the sort of person who should never be allowed to write for Doctor Who as they kill ingenuity and imagination stone dead.

I really just want to throw my hands in the air and say "this was awful, moving on" Even as an "Eighth Doctor book" Legacy of the Daleks fails, Peel just had him act like the Jon Pertwee version throughout. It's like the author is stuck somewhere in the early-70s but also in the mind-set of a somewhat dim 12-year-old boy.

So, Legacy of the Daleks is a perfect storm of awful. It's not just bad, it's offensive. What's most frustrating is that the opportunity to have The Doctor and Susan meet again after so long is completely squandered, they actually share a scene for something like 2 pages. But John Peel isn't interested in characters or emotional content, rather he wants Doctor Who that's just about villains and monsters. Ugh.

EDA #9 Longest Day

Longest Day by Michael Collier

In Brief: Yes, yes it was.

Plot of book: Doctor and Sam land on a lunar base in a distant system. The base is monitoring the nearby planet Hirath which suffers from temporal instability, or something. It turns out that the species that runs the base didn't originally build it but took over after it had been abandoned by the monstrous Kusks, who have now returned to claim the base and the planet below. Or something. They want both back for a probe which landed on the planet and is causing the rifts which (all together now) THREATEN THE ENTIRE GALAXY.

Or something.

And then at the end Sam thinks The Doctor is dead and leaves in an escape-shuttle.

Although The Doctor isn't dead and now has to go off to search for Sam. Why that is I don't know.

If this all seems fairly dismissive towards Longest Day it's because of the simple fact that the book is crap. Crap crap crap. Not awful crap though, but desperately boring crap. I think what the author *wanted* was a harrowing and horrific story of survival in a dangerous and unusual environment. But that goal is missed and Longest Day is filled with uninteresting characters wandering through a dry wasteland randomly being killed by a time-eddy or rampaging Kusk.

Or something.

Oh, and Sam whines a lot.

The problem isn't that the book is too nasty as there have been decent nihilistic Doctor Who novels in the past such as the 7th-Doctor New Adventures by Jim Mortimore (Parasite, Eternity Weeps, etc.). But those books were lifted by the author's skill and dark sense of humour. Everything in Longest Day is written with the utmost seriousness and solemnity, which just makes everything tedious and irritating.

However the poor quality of the book, especially after the underwhelming run of Eight Doctor adventures so far (with only 2 out of 9 books being decent), reflects the problem of Doctor Who in the late-1990s. Longest Day was originally published in March 1998, which was in that period of time when Doctor Who was at its lowest point of visibility ever. After the 1996 McGann movie had flopped in the US the prospect of any new series was mired in rights-hell (and public apathy). So for most people Doctor Who was a show that had been cancelled at least a decade ago (as many didn't actually know it had been on air at all past 1985) and was best left as a bit of silly childhood nostalgia.

So it's little wonder that the series is obviously suffering at this point. Doctor Who at the time was an idea on life-support, a distant memory held onto by only the most hard-core fans.

This was still a year before Russell T Davies' Queer As Folk appeared on TV and showed the world the truth about the lifestyle and relative normality of Doctor Who fans (oh, and gay men).

Still, none of this is an excuse for the book being so bad. Longest Day is simply one of the the dullest Doctor Who stories ever written and should never have been published. There's no spark of life to the story, just poorly fleshed-out characters wandering through a dull landscape with little purpose. It's one thing to have to deal with an alien planet that looks like a quarry and aliens with funny eye-lashes on TV due to budget constraints but surely the written word can manage something a bit more ambitious. It's bad enough having throw-backs to the story-style of the 1970s, but the landscape doesn't also have to match.

Although Collier is not alone as many authors of these books have done the same thing, gone for misplaced nostalgia rather than look for a new direction to take the series. But considering that these books were being aimed at long-time fans rather than new readers having obvious allusions to the past is somewhat understandable even though it is always the wrong thing to do with Who. Here's hoping that this rut gets broken soon, the series needs to look forwards again.

EDA #8 Option Lock

Option Lock by Justin Richards

In Brief: The Doctor and Sam must confront a country estate, a secret society and a hidden space-station.

The plot: The Tardis is forced to land near an English country estate which several hundred years earlier had been the landing site of a crashed alien ship. As an escape pod said aliens were able to put their "essence" into a stone which gradually gathers enough power to recreate them. To this end it controls the old families of the region to do its bidding and provide a large amount of energy. A plot is hatched to try to force several nuclear missiles to hit the house so that the aliens can emerge. The Doctor thwarts all.

I wanted to get "the plot" out of the way so I can stop trying to remember what actually happened in the book. While Option Lock is better than Kursaal that's hardly high praise. It's just another average entry, not bad but in no way interesting. Also it has a problem of containing only enough story to really fill about 70% of its pages. Although it's not as padded as Kursaal there's still a lot of the book which could have been edited out without the novel suffering.

I'm really starting to miss the amibition of the New Adventures. While not loved by all there was always a sense of the range trying something new to see what worked (and what occasionally didn't). There's just too much of an "aim for the middle" mentality with much of the recent books. There's nothing particularly wrong with the range trying to be more "straight-forward", but it doesn't have to mean the results are dull.

A big problem is that most authors have yet to be able to make the Eighth Doctor and Sam interesting. Sam is just too generic and old-school and no authors seems able to fill out her character at all. While The Doctor fares somewhat better removing the darker aspects of the character means the result can be a bit too light, the mystery has been reduced a bit too much. With the surrounding story and characters don't grab the imagination the result is rather flat.

However Richards can at least put together some decent prose, but the book needed a lot more. What was irritating is that some parts of the book were somewhat interesting, particularly early on as The Doctor investigates the background of the large house in which he finds himself a guest. It led to some early hoped which was unfortunately dashed.

After the promising start the book suffers after a sudden lurch into Mission: Impossible territory with stolen codes and secret nuclear bases. Then it meanders around a bit more before becoming a boring sub-James Bond ending involving secret underground lairs and space-bases. However at least the main antagonist, the hypnotist Mr. Silver *didn't* turn out to be The Master. The series doesn't need any more returning villains.

But at the end, while by no means a bad book, Option Lock is a rather mediocre entry in the Eighth Doctor Adventures. Here's hoping that the series improves soon.

EDA #7 Kursaal

Kursaal by Peter Anghelides

In Brief: Futuristic Theme-Park Werewolves.


Ugh.

Is that enough? No?

Ok. Blah.

Want more?

There is no more.

Ok, maybe a bitmore. But it’s difficult since Kursaal is by far one of the dullest entries into the lexicon of Doctor Who. In the “grand history” of the series (TV/Book/Audio/Smoke Signals) there have been good stories, great stories and absolutely terrible stories. However it's rare to have a completely boring one, of the televised stories I'd include only "The Sensorites", "The Dominators", "Underworld", "The Monster of Peladon", "Terminus" and "The Mark of the Rani". And even they have their moments. Even the lesser books have been somewhat interesting. Of the New Advenstures really only the books of David McIntee (First Frontier, Sanctuary, etc.) failed to keep my interest, and that was mainly down to his prose style.

Kursaal reminded me too much of those horrid Star Trek: TNG books that came out in the late-80s. The ones that all seemed to be rather low-key adventure that wouldn't challenge the reader nor shake up the series' status quo, as they had to work very much in the shadow of the show proper.
But having a "regular run-around" in Doctor Who really hobbles a story. The series is at its best when The Doctor & Co. are thrown into a new places or situation and seeing the result of their actions and interactions with the locals. However the requirement here is for said situation or place to be in some way memorable. Anghelides completely fails to make any part of the world of Kursaal interesting in the slightest, despite it being a massive terra-formed world that's being transformed into a planet-sized amusement park.

Oh, the werewolves come into things due to being the form of the original not-quite long-dead inhabitants of the planet, the Jax.

There's room for satire, or some interesting action, or decent characterisation, etc. But there’s none of any of it to be found. Everything is far too straight-forward and there’s no wit to speak of. The massive leisure-planet is still being built and is basically a large muddy construction site when The Doctor and Sam arrive. Archaeologists investigating an underground Jax site have no personalities (and most become werewolf fodder quickly anyways). The head of the "evil corporation" in charge of Kursaal is simply cliché, as is the head of the police force that turns up every so often to yell at The Doctor.

There's just nothing in the book to keep one's attention, no big mystery (the werewolves are being caused by a sort of space-virus, which is obvious about 50 pages in) and with a boring setting and dull characters the book ends up being a big load of nothing. Initially I was prepared to offer Kursaal a bit of a compliment for being the first Eighth Doctor Adventures to have no returning aspect from the series' past but there's nothing of any merit to fill in the gap. As much as The Bodysnatchers was irritating for the needless re-use of the Zygons at least it gave the author enough inspiration to craft a mildly interesting (if daft) story.

There's also not enough story to sustain Kursaal for it's 200+ pages, so a lot of needless chases and action scenes pad out events. While padding and Doctor Who are definitely not strangers it’s just far too obvious here. So there was a fair bit of skimming involved when it came to getting through the book.

As for the continuing development of the regulars:

-Sam gets possessed at the climax by the Jax and almost turns into a werewolf. Her failure to do so is most unfortunate as it would have made the character at least mildly interesting.
-The Eighth Doctor is perhaps proving to be a little *too* unprepared and rash since he verges at times on almost being a bit stupid.

Overall Kursaal might be the worst of the Eighth Doctor Adventures so far, or rather the least enjoyable. Even though other entries have been in many ways worse none have been so dull. What's annoying is that the set-up here could have resulted in something good if written by a better author. Unfortunately all potential is squandered as Peter Anghelides has written a book that is best appreciated by undemanding 12-year-olds.