Warchild by Andrew Cartmel
In Brief: A tale of psychic teens and killer hounds.
One thing to know about Warchild is that it wraps up Andrew Cartmel's "War" trilogy that started way back with Cat's Cradle: Warhead which was book #6 in the series (oh so very long ago) and then continued in the more resent Warlock. Unfortunately *another* thing to know about Warchild is that it's not quite as as the other two books, although this really only means that it's still very good.
The main issue for me was the rather poor structuring that Cartmel used, in that about 2/3rds of the novel feels like a 1st-act setup with subsequent events being rushed through in the final 50 pages. With all of the New Adventures being in the 250-300 page range I almost suspect Cartmel saw the page-limit approaching and realised he had to quickly wrap things up. It's a shame since while events are somewhat drawn out they're never less than totally engrossing. Basically the book should have been longer.
But back to the good. Cartmel's strength, as in his 2 other novels in the series, is his excellent writing-style, particularly in his characterisation. Most of the events in Warchild follow those of the earlier books, especially concerning the character of Jack and the state he's left in after Warlock (his body in suspension and mind held in a dog). Most of the book is actually devoted to characters from the earlier novels rather than the series regulars, in particular government-agent Creed.
The Doctor and Benny are mainly absent as they spend their time reviving Jack's body in the Doctor's house while Chris is undercover as a monk at Ricky's school. Of the regular Roz gets most of the action, although she's somewhat more Ace-like than recently as she joins up with a military crew dealing with the problem of thousands of dogs suddenly forming a giant pack and turning on their owners.
Interestingly although Warchild is set about 15 years after Warlock (which was around 10 years after Warhead) this book is much less "futuristic", other than a few mentions of holographs this could have been set in the 1990s rather than 2030s. As a result the book feels far less dated the earlier ones. I'm thinking that the "Cyberpunk" trend of 1992 was less popular than in 1996 when this book was published, the future wasn't quite looking so bleak.
This being a Cartmel book we're also privy to some more of his personal politics. Rather than concentrating on the "horrors of technology/pollution" or Animal-Rights here we have some in-depth views on the psychology of leadership. Much of the story revolves around Creed's son Ricky and his ability to sway other people's emotions and the threat this can pose if put into the wrong hands. Perhaps having the long "1st-act" concentrating on the menace of the controlled pack of dogs helps show what the menace of having an Alpha Male human in charge of society would be like. Cartmel is definitely of the ilk who sees humans as mildly over-evolved apes so this animalistic leaning fits.
But it's the plot-line around Ricky that leaves the reader feeling that things don't really come together. Everything gets wrapped up a little too quickly.
However this is a minor complaint about what was still a very good book in the range. I admire Andrew Cartmel's ability to weave a good story around a central concept that's worth some contemplation (the impact of body language and how it can cause others to fall into line). This alone puts Warchild well above so many other books (and indeed TV episodes) that have rather simpler tales to tell.
Just War by Lance Parkin
In Brief: It's 1941 and the Nazis control the channel islands and possess a new super-weapon with which to win the war against England. Aliens, parrallel-dimensions and alternate-timelines are (surprisingly) not involved.
It's getting more and more difficult to find ways of saying "the book was very good indeed" with the recent run. Other than Shakedown (which was more juvenile than bad) I think it's been at least a dozen New Adventures since I ran into a poor entry in the series. I have to wonder if the decision to finally get rid of Ace (or rather the version of the character we had towards the end) helped to inspire the various authors involved. Or it could just be that after some notably lesser efforts there was a greater effort put into quality control and in particular having fewer "first novels" thrown at the reader.
And having David A. McIntee not write anything after the horrible First Frontier was a boon.
Although ironically Just War is Lance Parkin's first book and it's one of the strongest entries in the series. This is a great book for the regulars and in particular Roz gets a chance to gain some real depth during the book as she pursues a romance in WW2-London (not so easy for a woman from the 30th-century). Roz really reinforces that having an older companions (in the case in their 40s along with the 30-something Benny) for The Doctor is a very good thing, having someone who is more of an equal leads to a much more dynamic setup compared to the screaming-youngsters so often seen on TV.
Of course for a TV show someone younger *does* make demographic sense.
Although unfortunately Chris has yet to really been given a chance to shine, most of the time being too much portrayed as a naive and immature. Although the authors *do* like to go on about his physique...
But through and through this is Benny's book. Most of the narrative centres around her mission for The Doctor to investigate a suspected German super-weapon that's been spotted near the occupied island of Guernsey. Passages as she's captured and tortured by the Germans are the most harrowing and intense events in the entire range of books as Parkin pulls no punches. We know that what she goes through *hurts* and it's through luck and skill that she's able to escape, not a rescue by The Doctor. Having a version of The Doctor who's more the background manipulator was a running theme throughout the New Adventures, however more and more there is foreshadowing that it's eventually going to come at a price.
Also Parkin goes a good job of not making the Nazis typical stereotyped villains through having most of the characters (bar Benny's torturer Wolff) be *almost* sympathetic. At the same time the English are not complete good-guys but instead must act as people do in a time of war.
So to sum up: Interesting setting, well-written characters and a satisfying resolution to the main mystery (the "super-weapon" is slightly advanced technology that is due to The Doctor being unwise in discussing ideas to a scientist on an earlier visit to Germany ). Just War is a fault-less, if intense, entry in the series.
Shakedown by Terrance Dicks
In Brief: The Tardis crew are chasing a shape-changing spy who carries a "terrible secret" Hot on their heels are everybody's favourite potato-heads, The Sontarans.
What to say about Shakedown? Well, other than that it's written by Terrance Dicks. It's a typical Dicks effort in being a competently-written if extremely straight-forward book. Still, he knows how to put together an efficient Doctor Who story and really make it tick. Of course that's hardly a surprise considering the many many TV-stories he had involvement with through writing or script-editing from the 1960s through 80s.
And at least the novel never reaches the "no more than minimal description" depths of a Target novelisation.
However, what's notable about Shakedown is that it's partially a novelisation of a filmed story, albeit one that originally had no involvement at all from The Doctor.
Back in the wilds of the mid-1990s, with it obvious that no new show was liable to ever appear in TV, some fans with resources at their command managed to produce several direct-to-video stories with a Doctor Who link. So with rights to some aspects of the show available (certain monsters and/or characters, but not The Doctor or Tardis) several videos were made which were semi-officially in the Who "universe". One of the more notable (as in having somewhat (comparatively) of a budget) was "Shakedown: The Return of the Sontarans", which was written by Terrance Dicks and starred several Doctor Who (and Blake's 7) actors, albeit none in their original roles.
And some weird looking Sontarans.
The other video of this ilk worth mentioning is "Downtime", although it's a big mess of Yeti, computer viruses, The Brigadier, The Brigadier's daughter, 2nd-Doctor companion Victoria and Sarah Jane Smith. There were also a series out there concerning the X-Files-like investigations of one Liz Shaw and another featuring Autons.
In terms of quality (as memory serves, I should probably try to track down a copy to re-watch) "Shakedown: The Return of the Sontarans" wasn't great, mainly due to the severely low budget of the production (of course we *are* dealing with the Doctor Who universe here) . However despite this hindrance many of these videos were quite fun and better than they should have been, mainly through being very obvious labours of love for all involved. These were productions by fans who wanted to make Doctor Who like they remembered (which explains tendency to use aspects from the 60s and 70s rather than the more recent stories) since the BBC obviously weren't interested.
It could be argued that the show we've been getting out of Wales since 2005 is the ultimate version of this sentiment.
So using an author like Dicks makes sense and the style of story (straight forward action-adventure in space) is quite a contrast from the at times confounding plotting of stories from the 1980s.
Some familiar faces in unfamiliar roles.
In order to turn a 50-minute show featuring no Doctor or other parts of the show itself (other than the Sontarans) into an official Doctor Who book, Dicks has stuck the plot of the video itself into the middle of the novel. So while the crew of the solar-sailer Tiger Moth are being menaced by Sontarans and a shape-changing Rutan The Doctor & Co. are waiting on nearby planets and space-stations to rejoin the story-proper. If one didn't know about the video the seams aren't *too* visible, well except that a couple of characters who are killed at the climax of the middle-section show up again later in a "Ha Ha! I wasn't really dead!" manner in order to extend the story up to the needed 250 pages. Still, greater crimes of writing have been committed during The New Adventures.
Also, after the mature character-study of The Also People this book is a major step down in terms complexity of writing-style, nothing here is above a 12-year-old's reading level. However one of the appeals of Doctor Who is how the style of story one gets can change wildly from week to week, so it's not really a complaint, just something worth noting. So as such all of Shakedown's characters are fairly broad. And I doubt that it would really be possible for anyone to write an introspective Sontaran.
So, overall Shakedown is a fun if slight book. Terrance Dicks definitely knows how to keep the pages turning. So in the great scheme of The New Adventures I'd rank Shakedown as being good but a trifle disappointing since it never reaches the quality of his earlier Timewyrm: Exodus but is nowhere as awful as his vampire & gangsters opus Blood Harvest.
The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch
In Brief: The Doctor and company holiday inside a giant sphere that contains its own sun and two-trillion inhabitants. Conversations with God and Dalek poetry ensue.
Very possibly The Also People is the best entry in the entire New Adventures range. What's surprising is that such high praise doesn't come from a tale of high adventure or timey-wimey shenanigans but rather due to having a book based around well-written and interesting characters in an intriguing setting. While I'm sure the pacing and lack of "action" wouldn't be to everyone's taste (those sad sad people) there's a refreshing maturity to the novel that is hugely appealing. With such a large Tardis team at the moment getting a chance to slow things down and get to know the characters, in particular Chris and Roz, actually improves the entire series as we can get much more invested in events when we understand their impact on the regulars.
In contrast to Generic Companion #1 and #2 we've had throughout 2011 in the form of Amy and Rory.
Giving his companions a chance to rest The Doctor lands in the WorldSphere on The People, a super-advanced utopian society made up of a combination of biological and mechianical beings. Managing all (including the sphere's artificial sun) is the supercomputer God, who provides for all and asks in return only the occasional conversation and to be able to provide a mysterious yellow dip that nobody eats at parties. While of course The Doctor has ulterior motives (Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart ended up within the WorldSphere after the events of Set Piece) and there is a murder-plot thrown in, most of The Also People revolves around the regular characters as they get to know some of the citizens of the Sphere.
There's also some romance afoot as well for Roz and Chris, although as ever in Who it ends in tears. Benny gets some good moments as she's faced with a deeper understanding of the moral choices that The Doctor has to make, particularly around the now-feral Kadiatu.
I remembered a great deal of this entry in the New Adventures from my original read back in 1995 (in a good way), and was glad to find that the book hasn't aged a bit in the past 16 years (especially after the oh-so-90s Head Games). The Also People is also a great demonstration of how much the New Adventures strove to move beyond just being a tie-in to the TV-show. The appeal for much of Who (at least to me) has always been about how the series centres around throwing its characters (and the audience) into new and unusual situations and seeing the impact (both good and bad).
There's not really much more to say about the book since it's hard to be critical when there's so little here that warrants criticism. The Also People is funny, sad, moving, breezy, deep and everything good about Doctor Who wrapped up in 250+ pages.
Head Games by Steve Lyons
In Brief: An eruption of fictional-energy threatens the universe. The Doctor, with companions old and new, must deal with the results as his evil doppelganger Dr.Who causes havoc throughout time and space.
Head Games should have been a very good book. Steve Lyons is a decent writer and he is playing with some decidedly good ideas here. Unfortunately a high level of quality only emerges in spurts as overall the novel is decidedly mediocre. The big problem is that much of the story is set on the very bland alien world of Detrios, where the "Fictional Energy" (from Lyons' earlier Conundrum) has resulted in a giant crystal "Miracle" hanging in the sky. While things do improve when the plot moves to 2001 England it still lumbers the novel with some markedly dull passages.
All of the energy leaking out has found its was to Jason, the earlier Master of the Land of Fiction. He subconsciously uses it to create Dr.Who, a comic version of The Doctor who decides that his alter-ego is actually a force for evil and that he and all of his followers (companions) must be destroyed. So what we have is a big metaphor for how The Sevenths Doctor's methods go beyond the black & white plots of his earlier incarnations/stories. His actions are always a choice between consequences (although aren't everyone's?) rather than simply "fighting eveil". While this greying of The Doctor's motivations seems common-place now (what with modern episodes like "Midnight" and "Amy's Choice" showing the character is less than a positive light) for the 1995 this was still fairly new territory.
The other method Head Games uses to comment on how manipulative the 7th-Doctor has become is through having his current Tardis team (Benny, Roz and Chris along and a cameo from Ace) meet previous companion (to the 6th and 7th Doctors) Mel.
I know, I missed her too.
The good part of Mel returning is that through her disgust of the actions of the current Doctor (basically forcing Detrios to suffer to save the universe) we get a good sense of how much he has changed from earlier "simpler" times. Unfortunately I think Lyons missed an opportunity to do something interesting with her character, since for the most part she comes across as a shrill and irritating screamer (so exactly how she was portrayed on TV). This would have been a great chance to try give her a bit of depth.
As a side note the big problem with Mel (as well as Peri) is that she was always too much of a "throw-back" character on the show, as if the production team at the time were looking to the 60s & 70s (in particular regulars like Victoria and Jo Grant) for inspiration. Unfortunately in 1985/86 having such a character was *exactly* the wrong decision to make; they needed something new to reinvigorate the series. Thankfully that happened in 1987 when Ace joined (although by then it was probably too little, too late). Watching episodes with Mel is frustrating, since Bonnie Langford *is* actually a very good actress but was unfortunately lumbered with a terrible character to play.
Ok, back to Head Games itself. While a lot of the book doesn't quite work it's still a hugely important part of The New Adventures. It acts as a big marker for how much the novels and The Doctor have developed since the early days. The book is essentially a big thumb in the nose to fans at the time who complained (oh how they complained, particularly in Internet newsgroups...) that the books just "weren't Doctor Who". As with modern times, a lot of people had a set idea of what Doctor Who should be like, which was The Doctor thwarting alien invaders and toppling corrupt governments and nothing else. Dr.Who exists to show how unsatisfying such a character can be. Not even Superman would be so empty.
The book also gives the reader insight into the 7th-Doctor, in particular when confronted by the manifestation of his 6th persona. We get into some serious continuity references here as we learn that the 7th Doctor "forced" himself into being to keep the unhinged 6th from becoming the evil Valeyard (if this doesn't make sense go and watch the monumental mess that is The Trial of a Timelord, if you dare). But again I'm discussing plot-points of the novel rather than actually reviewing the thing.
And that's the big problem, while the book has some BIG THINGS happen that are worth discussing the parts just don't add up to a satisfying whole. The narrative is too much of a mess and the non-regulars aren't interesting at all. I can see what Steve Lyons was aiming for and it was a good idea, it's just that he doesn't manage to pull it off. Overall Head Games, while clever, is just too much of a mess to recommend.
Toy Soldiers by Paul Leonard
In Brief: It's 1919 and aliens are kidnapping children and forcing them to become soldiers in a meaningless war on a far-off world.
The Doctor is not amused.
Toy Soldiers, like Zamper immediately before, is a book for which I held absolutely no memory. Re-reading it now I can understand why, the characters and situations just never rise above being "a bit dull". There's not enough plot to sustain an entire novel and several parts of the book are taken up with descriptions of various air and ground battles on the alien planet that become a bit tedious. Also the author becomes rather heavy-handed in his anti-war message so things turn a little preachy. While I'm all for a nice pacifist message I've seen it done better elsewhere (such as in Human Nature).
Also the book is lacking a decent antagonist. While the reason behind the kidnappings (a big alien computer trying force technological upgrade through war) makes sense and fits in with the "pointlessness of war" theme it leave the reader feeling somewhat unsatisfied.
However there are some aspects of the book that work well and raises Toy Soldiers into the ranks of the "mediocre yet worthy". The novel makes good use of Chris and Roz for once, who in being separated from The Doctor and Benny for much of the book get a chance to develop as characters as they're forced to cope with 1919 attitudes. Roz gets some good moments as she slowly comes to realise the prejudice surrounding her darker than average skin.
Benny also gets a good chunk of the action, as she struggles to break her brain-washing when she is captured and sent to the alien war-zone. The Doctor is absent for long stretches of the book, which works well as it forces the other characters to figure out problems on their own.
While nothing in the book is actually bad the whole thing is just uninspired. There's nothing in the book that's really that much different from what has gone before in the New Adventures. With the subject matter and setting Toy Soldiers should have been one of the highlights of the series but as it is just remains a forgotten and forgettable entry in the lexicon of Who.
Zamper by Gareth Roberts
In Brief: The hidden warship-building planet of Zamper holds a Terrible Secret.
Don't they all?
Giant turtles are involved.
The quality of The New Adventures, over the (dear lord) 40+ books I've now read, have ranged from Excellent to Alright to Terrible to the depths of "My Eyes! My Precious Eyes!". I say this because while Zamper is not-a-very-good-book (a ranking just above Terrible) I say so more since it's a disappointment rather than it being the affront to my sanity that a few of these books have been.
The one with the psychic space-squirrels still gives me nightmares.
I should have expected that I wouldn't be impressed by the book considering that this is one of the few novels in the range for which I had absolutely no memory. Almost every other book in the New Adventures I recall some sort of snippet or event at least, however Zamper was a complete blank.
The plot: The Doctor & Co. crash on a planet that produces the galaxy's best warships through a lightly manned (4 people) underground base. Also present are a couple of The Chelonians (giant militaristic turtles last seen in Roberts' The Highest Science) who are buying a ship with which to reclaim past glories, or something. However the automated "Management" that runs the facility is breaking down, and the slug-like Zamps, who actually construct the ships are beginning to act very odd indeed.
The biggest problem with the book is that for the first 3/4rds or so nothing much really happens. Most of the characters just wander around the facility bitching at each other while The Doctor heads into some underground caves where he spends almost all of the book. With a less than interesting setting (a planet that looks like a quarry with purple skies. I thought these books were supposed to give us things *not* seen in the original series) and forgettable characters a decent plot would have at least livened things up. Unfortunately that decent plot is nowhere to be found here, as mentioned things sort of meander along until a "twist" (spoiler: The Zamps and The Management are actually EVIL (Bwahahahah!)) towards the end moves everything into silly-action territory.
Gareth Roberts has done his best, his writing style is still very good and up until the last act there's still a sense that there will be a decent pay-off. It's just that pay-off never happens and instead everything is concluded with everything and everyone (who isn't a regular) blowing up. As for the regulars, The Doctor is pretty much side-lined throughout although Benny does get some good bits when interacting with the Chelonians. Having Ace leave has been a definitely benefit to her character. However Chris & Roz have yet to show any real spark as part of the Tardis crew; Roz in particular suffering as she seems more and more like Ace-light in her stories so far.
So while I didn't find reading Zamper to be a chore (at least it's short), I did find it to be a completely sub-par entry in the series. While there have been worse Doctor Who stories (much, much worse) written that's hardly a defence of the book. No part of Roberts' effort here even seem to be trying to rise above mediocre, which is a shame for an author who normally manages to write something much better. I suspect that my new memories of this book will once again be quickly forgotten...
