Iceberg by David Banks.
In Brief: The futuristic year of 2006 is home to an Antarctic research-base trying to stop the Earth's magnetic poles from reversing. The Doctor, travelling solo, arrives on a nearby cruise-ship and discovers a plot by the Cybermen to take over the planet.
Again.
Iceberg really shouldn't work. Any of its ingredients taken on their own (The Doctor alone, the "near"-future, links to multiple past stories, the Cybermen, etc.) would normally be an exercise in tedium. However somehow David Banks has managed to put all of the parts together in such a way that, while not great literature, is very enjoyable. I think what makes the book work is that (unlike most of their television stories) Banks doesn't see the Cybermen just as a droning replacement for the Daleks or other monsters but instead remembers their original intent as a sort of proto-Borg 60s "fear of organ replacement" creation. It must have helped that he'd earlier written a book linking together all of "Cyber-History" (there's an entire sub-genre of Who-books based around trying to figure out its continuity) as well as his playing the Cyberleader in every 1980s Cyberman story (yes, really).
The book's author.
Oh, and he also played The Doctor briefly. If you know the context you win a cookie.
It's interesting that despite being the centre of the Metal Meanies from Mondas' revival in the 1980s Banks seems to have much more affection for the 60s more "robotic" version. This is obvious since Iceberg almost plays as a sequel to the Cybermen's attempted invasions in stories from that era.
It is best never to discuss their only 1970s appearance ("Revenge of the Cybermen"). Or worse to actually watch their only 1970s appearance ("Revenge of the Cybermen").
While it also may seem odd to have a book written in the early-90s based around stories made 25 years earlier a few things from that time are important. First, in 1993 Whodom was still in the thrall of the surprise rediscovery of 1967's "The Tomb of the Cybermen" in a vault in Hong Kong. For the TV-show starved masses it was like getting a whole new adventure. Also a hoax around the same time (which actually made it into Doctor Who Magazine) that the final (missing) episode of the Cybermen's debut in "The Tenth Planet" had been returned was making the rounds which made that story of great interest. Lastly the remaining episodes of 1960s stories "The Moonbase","The Wheel in Space" and "The Invasion" were released on VHS around the same period.
So 1993 was really the year of the Cybermen for Doctor Who fans. Many were getting to see the earlier stories for the first time and finding these Cybermen to be an interesting contrast to their more recent appearances. I don't think it's that the 80s Cybermen were rubbish (well except for maybe in 1985's "Attack of the Cybermen"), it's just that for the most part they were Generic Monster #2 who would show up every so often to try to take over a planet while waxing lyrical on the benefits of not having emotions. They were sort of like an army of tin-foil clad Mr.Spocks.
The Cybermen as they were in 1966.
Also in the 80s for the most part the writers had forgotten what made the Cybermen scary back in the day, that they weren't out to conquer but instead to turn everyone into them.
So cosmic Communists to the Daleks' fascism?
So with this aspect of body-horror and loss of personality being brought to the Cybermen works well. Also the book is really more of an extrapolation of the earlier stories rather than a sequel. While seeing those shows is good you still can understand what's going on without in depth detail (so in very "new series" in that respect).
The Cybermen show off their 1967 duds.
But as for the non-Cybermen related parts of the book, unfortunately Banks doesn't do so well. While it's not terrible unfortunately most of his characterisation never rises above caricature (The hard-nosed general! The Camp Actor! The Cynical Artist! The Plucky Reporter!) even for temporary companion Ruby Duvall. The first half or so of the book does drag a bit as we wait what feels like forever for the Doctor to show up in his Tardis-shuttlecraft (aka The Jade Pagoda). Although perhaps this build-up is intentional since another aspect of the 1960s Cybermen stories is how for the most part they're barely in them, rather than lurk in the background for the first half of the story until their big reveal half-way through.
1968. Another year another outfit.
But despite this shortcoming I still enjoyed Iceberg. I think this is probably about as good as a book about the Cybermen can be since there is the problem that perfectly logical robotic beings aren't great conversationalists and therefore are limited from having the requisite gab-fests with the Doctor (The Daleks had the same problem until Davros turned up). And while setting the book in 2006 (remembering it was written in 1993) is a bit silly it doesn't create too many problems. We're missing the Internet, mp3-players, lap-tops and cell phones but there *are* overdone pat-downs for International travel.
Cyberwant!
So overall a good read. It's starting to feel like the range is getting its groove back.
Oh, and for the record the things that *call* themselves Cybermen in the post-2005 show totally aren't. So there.
Birthright by Nigel Robinson
In Brief: Bernice has found herself trapped in 1909 London struggling to deal with a killer (and long dresses) while Ace is stuck on a distant planet ruled by the insectoid Charrl. The Doctor (and the Tardis) are nowhere to be found...
First off I can now forget the pain of the awful Shadowmind since I found this to be very good read that helped raise my opinion about the series again. While it's not as envelope-pushing or mind-blowing as other NAs it's very entertaining. Also it's a much better effort than Robinson's earlier Timewyrm: Apocalypse. The only negatives really are a rather poor climax (another virtual landscape and an ending that doesn't really resolve anything) and the author's over-love of 1960s continuity references (of course this was written back in the day when 1967's The Tomb of the Cybermen was the most awesome thing ever since a copy had then recently been rediscovered in Hong Kong). However these minor issues don't really get in the way, and the references to the past are actually made to work within the context of the plot.
One of the things that's been interesting in reading through so many of the New Adventures comparatively quickly (considering originally they were released every month or two) is seeing how the focus of the books has moved more and more away from the Doctor and onto his companions. I think this change was probably necessary in ensuring that the concept could work as books rather than TV. With a few hundred pages of material to fill you need to have interesting characters with depth. With the Doctor being "the alien" it would be too easy to lose all mystery about the character.
So the lion's share of Birthright is given over to Bernice as she's forced to cope with being flung from the Tardis into Edwardian London. However despite his not appearing the Doctor's presence is felt throughout with little clues and coincidences that help Benny. We get the feeling that the events of the book have been set up for Bernice to figure out as some sort of test.
Also the Doctor is busy dealing with the plot of the next book, Iceberg.
It's an interesting idea that hopefully will be brought into the series proper at some point, especially since we now regularly get those "Oh God we can't manage to film everything in time!" Doctor-free episodes every so often. Actually for some reason those often turn out to be season-highlights ("Turn Left" for instance actually made the character of Donna tolerable...)
So while having a Doctor-free novel could have been a disaster (I mean the series is called *Doctor* Who after all) it instead cements Benny as the central character at this point in the series. With her travelling with such a mysterious and alien Doctor as well as a bloodthirsty-soldier version of Ace she really becomes the reader's identification figure. I've often found that Doctor Who, regardless of its medium, really depends on its regulars to keep the viewer/reader's interest. With such a (normally) small regular cast it's not like other programmes that have half-a-dozen characters to choose from if we don't like one. So if the regulars don't work then it can be a struggle to maintain interest. Proof of that can be found in the 1980s when (as one of many problems) there seemed to really be no one on screen that the audience could take some interest in. Gone were the days of Sarah Jane, Jamie, Jo, or even Leela and instead we had the horror of Tegan, Peri and Mel.
That's why Ace in 1987 was so important, she was practically the first truly likeable regular the show had seen since at least the late 70s.
While these characters were never given the depth of Rose or Amy at least the best of them were "likeable".
So with Birthright temporarily taking the Doctor out of the picture and instead concentrating on Bernice we get a really good chance to get to know her. While Ace does show up later on her contribution is small which I think shows how limited that character had really become since coming back into the series (she's really just there to beat people up/shoot them). Also she's now become so paranoid and bitter towards the Doctor's manipulations that she's almost a caricature.
So to sum up while it's not spectacular, Birthright is a very solid entry in the series that helps bring the series "back to earth" after what seems to be a very long time (while I'm all for trying new things it is nice to get back to basics every so often).
Or maybe I just have a soft-spot for Victoriana in Who, for some reason the trappings of the 19th-century always seem to compliment the series well.
Shadowmind by Christopher Bulis
In Brief: A sentient asteroid forces a collective of psychic squirrels to create human duplicates in order to take over the galaxy via a giant carbon-blob.
All I can say is that I have looked into the madness, and it has looked into me.
And also F*ck this book.
I would not let Shadowmind win. I would not. I could not.
Stopping would have meant that it had won.
I was tempted oh-so-many-times to just give up and move on, but that would defeat the purpose of working through the run of The New Adventures. I still consider the series to be extremely worthwhile and have some of the greatest triumphs in the entire almost 50-year history of Doctor Who. It's just that along the way there is the occasional stumble.
The same as how when I first saw "Daleks in Manhattan" and wondered if I'd ever love anything again. Thankfully "Human Nature" came a mere 4 weeks later.
But ranking this...this...thing as a stumble would be too kind. Many times while reading I could feel my eyes refusing to lock on to the text and I had to often take a break before forging on. I now feel that the few poorer novels in the range so far (Genesys, Witch Mark, Deceit, etc.) were just softening me up for the barrage of tedium and stupidity that is Shadowmind. The sheer crapitude on display even begins at the terrible front-cover (BTW painted by the author as "proudly" advertised on the back).
The funny thing is that I didn't recall this book as being terrible, just unmemorable. Perhaps the 17 years since publication had erased the horror from my mind.
But what is it that made this book so awful? It's difficult to even know where to begin. At first things actually seem to be going ok. The Doctor has brought Ace and Bernice to the planet Tairngaire in the 27th-century for a holiday and to celebrate Ace's birthday. However soon they're thrust into the middle of things through an amazing plot-contrivance as they're the only spectators to the murder of a man who actually turns out to be a human duplicate (controlled by the Space Squirrels). Through some deduction I can't even now remember the Doctor helps the authorities to determine that the source of the duplicates has to do with the nearby planet of Arden.
So the first quarter or third of the book, while not being great (or even good) literature by any stretch is at least somewhat diverting. However that actually makes me hate Shadowmind just that little bit more due to the faint glimmer of promise. It's like a taunt.
The true awful of the book sets in as the Tardis is stolen and the three regulars board the starship Broadsword to help defeat the power behind the duplicates and also retrieve the ship. The biggest problem I had was that at this point the book becomes just-plain-wrong as the Doctor defers constantly to the military and basically stops being any sort of active presence in the novel. It was as if the book were being written by the author of the worst ever episode of Star Trek: Voyager (how do you choose just one?) who only knows of Doctor Who through watching a single episode of Resurrection of the Daleks.
The Doctor (and really the show in general) has always had an anarchic streak at the core of its appeal. Having the character here acting as a deferential consultant is just irks. He even wears combat fatigues and a helmet for much of the book, a sight I couldn't imagine ever happening in the show proper.
I hated hated hated it.
As well, Ace basically stops being recognisable as anything based on Sophie Aldred's performance from 1987-1989 in this book and instead turns into Starbuck from the new BSG, albeit 10-years early (and with less depth of character, which amazingly *is* possible). Or it's maybe more that she's now almost cartoon-like in her blood-lust (or rather just lust in general, bouncy-bouncy). Thankfully Benny is still around to be the fully-rounded regular character, although unfortunately here she's very much sidelined. As for the non-regular characters it's almost really impossible to really differentiate them since author Bulis is extremely poor at characterisation (as well as everything else). Plus they're really really boring.
Think Enterprise boring.
Almost a third of the book is spent as the Broadsword travels to Arden and we get many tests and minor battles on the way, each more tedious that the last. Unfortunately once everyone in landed the novel actually gets worse since the sheer idiocy of the "plot" is revealed. Main-villain Umbra, the afore-mentioned sentient asteroid, has a motivation of "just because" which just tops off so much else which is terrible in Shadowmind.
It's only been a few hours since I (with great effort) finished the book and already I'm getting a bit fuzzy on the details. It's almost as if my brain is rejecting the experience as one would a nasty assault. Unfortunately I willingly submitted myself so can't complain too badly, but really I should get over this completest nature and accept when continuing a pursuit will only cause more pain (yeah, right).
So to end this entry I'll just say that I found Shadowmind to be a literary Gom Jabbar, although far more sadistic and cruel.
White Darkness by David A. McIntee
In Brief: Deciding they need a holiday, the Doctor lands in 1915 Haiti. However he, Ace and Bernice find that War and Revolution is in the air, voodoo's-a-plenty, an ancient evil is underground and there's a cave full of German scientists attempting to perfect Zombie-gas.
As you do.
White Darkness gets bonus points for being the first book since Nightshade *not* to be set in The Future. While the recent run have on average been very good it's nice to have a change of scenery and not have to deal with space-ships and endless metallic corridors. While there's nothing inherently *wrong* with lazer-guns and flying cars it's good that the series occasionally remembers that we want Adventures in TIME and Space.
However rather than being a historical romp we've got more of a Bond-film (I suspect McIntee's seen Live and Let Die a few times). The book is definitely not aiming for deep or meaningful and really the just wants to give the reader a fast paced and entertaining story. Even the Doctor gets in on the act and trades in his usual costume for a white linen suit.
Unfortunately a few things get in the way of White Darkness being the success I feel it should have been; one of the biggest being that it's a bit crap. I think the biggest problem I had was that while the book would make a whizz-bang! movie (if Doctor Who could be made on a Hollywood blockbuster budget) it feels like this is the novelisation *of* that movie. Very little goes under the surface and most of the book is basic description of what is going on with dialogue mixed in. As a result I found it difficult to really engage with what was happening. Characterisation suffers since the motivations (or even physical descriptions) are light. Often I found myself getting certain people confused with each other or even forgetting what they'd done previously (the first couple of chapters in particular are confusing for this reason). Thankfully once McIntee starts killing some of the characters off things gets a bit easier to handle.
The other problem is that I didn't really find that the plot worked very well, it felt like rather than a cohesive story we had a number of ingredients which have been mixed together with no sense of a recipe existing (A literary cake-wreck?). I was reminded of my recent watching of "Silver Nemesis" which was torpedoed by having too much going on while forgetting to have an actual story to tell (Time-Travelling Jacobeans, Cybermen, the Doctor AND Neo-Nazis all arrive on earth at the same time to get a living statue??!). So the mixing of historical Haiti, voodoo, zombies, Mad-German Scientists and Cthulu (sorry, I mean the Great Old One) just doesn't work since nothing really seems to fit together. I'm still not even sure if the Germans were even connected with the rest of the story except to provide an cavernous-lair(tm) within which to stage the climactic battle.
Plus the setting of the story in 1915 is a problem since these are very much Ve heev vays ov makeeng yew tawk! Nazi-style Germans. It'd be like having hippies show up in the 1940s.
It's not that White Darkness is bad, it's just that there are a few too many faults to really recommend it. There are some good ideas but it just falls over in the execution.
Lucifer Rising by Andy Lane & Jim Mortimore
In Brief: The Doctor, Ace and Benny visit a futuristic research base located on a moon circling an Impossible Planet filled with Angels.
And the cover-artists' inability to even approach an accurate likeness of Sophie Aldred is starting to become an art-form in itself. Yes, that's Ace holding the gun.
Many elements of Lucifer Rising reminded me of 2006's Doctor Who and CGI Devil Thing of Deathly Doom (or whatever it was called). However unlike its televisual counterpart the book doesn't suffer from a terminal case of the stupids (nor is it as Ood...). Despite the similar surface-trappings (off-planet team researching the left-over advanced technology of a long-dead race. Oh, and black-holes are involved.) the book has a tone and style that is quite serious and somewhat grim (although with the occasional lighter moment thrown in).
But the feeling I got most while reading was one of being rather disconcerted. Being so used to the normal Tardis Lands/meet new characters/see new place/etc the book through me for a loop since it starts some time after the Doctor & Co. have been in place.
And we don't even learn until the end why they went there in the first place.
While this sounds like a potential for confusion it actually works quite well. The technique really helps to keep you a little off-kilter so that you never *really* feel safe in this environment. While all is explained by the end it keeps interest-levels high as the reader has to try to piece together what is *really* going on and then go back and re-evaluate once certain answers are finally given. The novel also has probably the best written and realised non-regular characters since at least Transit and a great deal of intrigue to work though (things start off with a murder-whodunnit and ramp up to an apocalyptic climax).
We also have a much better use of new-Ace than in Deceit. After the events of Love & War (and really even since 1989's "The Curse of Fenric") we have a companion who has become so traumatised and bitter due to her relationship with the Doctor that she begins to willingly act against him. This rejection leads to a much more guilt-ridden Time Lord than anything seen before, as the Doctor realises that his earlier plans and schemes have hurt his friends and come back to bite him in the sonic screwdriver.
The thing that really struck me while reading Lucifer Rising was how much the books have improved and progressed since the unsure first-steps of the Timewyrms. This is really a very good book in any context. That's quite the change from the "for the fans" feeling that was present earlier on as the series has by now managed to transform itself into far more than just another spin-off.
I really appreciate that the publishers decided that the books would follow an on-going narrative rather than being a series of "one-offs". Many of the events in the novel are a direct result of what has come before, in particular all that has happened since the Doctor landed on Heaven back in Love & War. While someone could come to this book "cold" and still enjoy it having an understanding of how the ongoing narrative has built up to this point definitely does add (although it would involve willingly subjecting oneself to Deceit).
While it seems an obvious thing to do in this age of the story-arc it was quite the novelty back in 1993 after the far more discombobulated show we were used to.
I liked Lucifer Rising a lot. While not perfect (things go a bit wonky about 2/3rds through but thankfully recovers) it's another reminder that Doctor Who in book form was a very good thing indeed since it's freed from pesky things like budget and being meant for a "family audience" (I've never read any of the post-2005 so don't know if it's still the case). While of course I love that the show is once again on television reading through these books is reacquainting me to why I really started to love it so much in the early-90s.
Deceit by Peter Darvill-Evans
In Brief: Ace returns. And now carries a big gun.
To be honest Ace returning is really the only notable thing that can be said about Deceit. It's an extremely poor effort as a novel. While things start off promisingly and for at least the first half it feels like events might lead up to something interesting it just all falls apart by the end (and easily has the worst "defeat" of the enemy since Genesys). Not even the main villain Lacuna, a large-headed megalomaniacal lesbian with a giant vat of brains, can spruce things up. The big problem is that Darvill-Evans, despite being the editor of the New Adventures, seems unable to trim anything from the book. It's looooooong with many scenes that just go on and on with no purpose. Characters are captured, escape, have a gun-fight and are captured again.
Especially after the mid-point 20-page gun-battle the reader really starts to realise that many scenes can be skimmed as they add little to the plot. They just seem to be there since if the whole thing were actually a movie or tv-episode it would look sort of neat. I assume that the author was more trying to novelise a Doctor Who movie he'd really like to see but didn't realise that it's not as simple as just describing what you see in your head. Narrative sense and plot coherency are also helpful.
Also despite the rather camp Lacuna and her brains the book is extremely "macho", with Doctor Who-comic cross-over Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer (don't ask) being a cross of Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger (we get a lot of descriptions of his bulging muscles). This macho grunting butchitude extends to new-Ace, who instead of being the character we knew has transformed into Sarah Connor/Ellen Ripley after a few years in "the future". I don't understand the reasoning behind having her come back and rejoin the Doctor and the infinitely more interesting Bernice. I suspect that perhaps the desire was to have a more "action"-based character to contrast with the other more cerebral denizens of the Tardis.
It ranks as one of the biggest misfires in Whodom since they had an Australian and/or Matthew Waterhouse wander into the ship (and later outdone by having Catherine Tate foisted on all of time & space).
But what else to say about Deceit? As I said it's just really not good. And unlike other lesser books in the series it's not even ambition-gone-wrong (Witch Mark this means you). It tries to be a big futuristic space "epic" and just ends up being tedious and stupid. Possibly the low point in the series so far.
The Pit by Neil Penswick
In Brief: It's in some ways rather good. In some ways it's very bad. It's written in an odd style. With constant use of short sentences. And sentence fragments. And few commas.
Which gets a bit annoying.
Quickly.
The Pit has left me scratching my head a bit. "Known" by fandom as the *Officially Worst-Ever Doctor Who Book Ever Ever Ever* (based on a Doctor Who Magazine poll done back in the late-90s which put The Pit somewhere below a skin-rash in popularity) I was surprised to find that other than a few boring bits, and the aforementioned odd prose style, I sort of liked it. Well, maybe more that I appreciated the author's ambition. Although his execution not so much.
The story itself, or rather the "what happens" bits, is actually rather good. If grim. Benny asks the Doctor to take her to a Solar System which "disappeared" 50 years before her time so they could find out what happened. The location itself, and the events surrounding it's (spoiler) eventual destruction are well thought out and interesting (despite some unnecessary Doctor Who Continuity being involved). While there are no real stand-out characters other than the temporally-shifted poet William Blake(!!!) who accompanies the Doctor through much of the novel thankfully there's no-one as bland as found in likes of Time's Crucible or Witch Mark.
But I can't quite say that the book actually "works". Much of it feels like a bit of a slog.
A slog through short sentences.
There are a few factors that create a vague sense of tedium and I suspect they're the reason why the book has gotten a bit of a bad reputation through the years (amongst the few of us who have read the books that is). The first factor is the already mentioned writing style which is at best refreshingly non-standard and at worse downright irritating. The main thing that bugged me was how at times rather than get the text of a conversation we'd instead get a description of what was said. It means part of the book feels more like a precis than literature and makes the reader feel distanced from what is happening. Now while I imagine this was probably on purpose I have to question why the author would willingly write in such as way. Perhaps a firt-time novelist who thought it was clever?
Unfortunately when there *was* dialogue it was fairly awful. Characters didn't seem to be having conversations but rather spouting exposition and/or philosophy at each other. It felt less like people interacting and more like the author taking the opportunity to show off his religious/psychology knowledge.
The other thing I noticed is how the Doctor and Bernice are really peripheral to the events in the book. Actually, now that I think about it if they hadn't actually landed nothing at the end of the book would really have been any different. (Stuff would have still blowed-up-real-good). I suspect this probably annoyed some people who felt that this made the Doctor "ineffective" while ignoring that was probably the point. For once he's been caught up in a greater-power's machinations and is out of his depth. All he can do at the end is accept that fact and move on. I think a lot of people can't move outside of the context of The Doctor as hero and the attempt here to turn the character into something darker didn't go down well.
But despite the fact there are some really good ideas in The Pit the poor prose, meandering story, padding (exactly what was the point of the trip to Victorian London and Stonehenge?!!) and oppressively serious and dour tone keep me from recommending the book. Although I do appreciate that at least the publishers put out another book with its own distinct style and ambition (albeit one not realised).
I mean, if I wanted the same experience all of the time I'd watch Star Trek.
