EDA #15 The Scarlet Empress

The Scarlet Empress by Paul Magrs

In Brief:  A quest through a land of wizards, hairless guard-bears, giant spiders and an evil empress alongside a lizard-man, bearded-lady and a half-crazed Time Lady in her double-decker bus shaped Tardis.

It's becoming somewhat apparent that I've been slowing down in getting through these books. From an average of 3 or so earlier in the year I now seem to be getting through around one a month. However considering the number of times I've ended up writing "this book was disappointing" it's hardly surprising that I'm not tearing through the novels with the voraciousness that was once there. Also moving countries and other life upheavals has meant that fitting in the time for a 15-year-old series of books has lowered in the ranks somewhat.

However, I don't intend to give up on them since it gives me the chance to experience some "new" Who (well to me since the Eighth Doctor books were completely ignored at the time). The best thing about Doctor Who (for me) is is that "where will we go *this* week?" that so imbues the show at its best (IMHO). I've never understood the criticism of some that they can't stand the show since there's no regular cast each week, as if that's somehow a bad thing. However it *is* a bit annoying when you get a particularly good setting or situation.

Such is the case with The Scarlet Empress as The Doctor & Sam gate-crash a world of magic and wonders. The book itself is some of the best Doctor Who fiction I've read, well written and filled to the brim with great characters, charm and wit. We also get the introduction of Iris Wildthyme, an escapee from Gallifrey who travels all of space & time in a bus that's slightly smaller on the inside than the outside.

Also, The Eighth Doctor has really come into his own in the series, still based on Paul McGann and his youthful energizing of the character but with more of a connection to the past. If anything we seem to have a future echo of what will be on screen once David Tennant and Matt Smith appear.

While the plot of The Scarlet Empress is mainly a series of set-pieces it hardly matters as Magrs has created such a vibrant world, one which is very different from most seen previously. Here the planet Hyspero is a land of magical beasts and little explained wonders, akin to something out of Arabian Tales. One of the things I do after finishing each novel is go to The Doctor Who Ratings Guide to get a contemporary sense of what fandom though of it (and to see if I agree or not). Interestingly in the late-90s a lot of fans took issue with the overt use of "magic" in Doctor Who, since it just wasn't the norm.

However, coming to the book in 2012 such qualms are greatly lessened after televised adventures against witches, giant doll-houses and however the hell The Master came back to life during "The End of Time". Doctor Who has generally been Science Fantasy rather than Science Fiction, despite the opinion of many. It's about the fun of experience, even if you don't get all of the explanations (unlike much of say Star Trek, which is all about the explanations, even if you don't get the fun).

However this being a book written in the late-1990s its very post-modern and filled deconstructionism, as the prose flits about the place and characters have conversations around story-telling and narrative.  Iris, with her tendency to claim The Doctor's adventures as her own (and mention of previously unheard of adventures between the two) is a very new style of character, acting as both part of as well as comment on the story.  Such a complexity of story-telling is the usual in the series today ("Love & Monsters" on TV being the most overt example), but this was very new to Who in 1998.

But most importantly this is a glimmer that even in the Doctor Who dead-zone of 1997-2002 (post-move, pre-announcement of comeback) there were those ready to take the series into new directions. The Eighth Doctor Adventures up until now have been too much about rehashing the past and living off the fumes of nostalgia. Now it remains to be seen if much else in this series keeps up to the promise of The Scarlet Empress, but at least I'm living in hope again.

EDA #14 Vanderdeken's Children

Vanderdeken's Children by Christopher Bulis

In Brief: The Doctor and Sam get caught up in escalating tensions between two warring planets both laying claim to a mysterious derelict ship floating in space. Ghosts are involved.

The author of what I ranked as one of the worst of the New Adventures (Shadowmind) now contributing to the so far sub-par Eighth Doctor Adventures range. Need less to say I approached Vanderdeken'd Children with some trepidation. However much to my surprise I found that the novel managed to reach and maintain a level of "not bad (with caveats)".

One of the caveats is that the characterisation is somewhat light, these aren't the most memorable group of characters in the history of Who. But then that's nothing new to the series, we don't need in-depth character drama all of the time. The other issue is that things don't really wrap up well at the end, with a horrible timey-wimey time-loop explanation and is completely unsatisfying.

But, up until the end the book manages to keep a good sense of mystery going as The Doctor and Sam (impersonating government moderators) help to investigate the abandoned ship. Although it's essentially a spooky old house in space there are a few decent surprises along the way. I didn't have a feeling of tedium while working through this entry in the range as I have some others. Well except for anything not set on the ship, there's a bit of MILITARY EXPOSITION! going on throughout.

But other than declaring Vanderdeken's Children to be a decent book that unfortunately doesn't *quite* hang together there's really not much more to say.

Um, it's free of references to the past, which is nice after the continuity-fest of Placebo Effect. The Doctor is also decently proactive and involved in the story for once, there's been a bit of a tendency to keep him out of events a bit too much in these books. I realise it's most likely to raise the tension a bit it does make the character come across as somewhat ineffectual.

And Sam...is there. Despite the good work of some authors (most notably Kate Orman) to try to make her character work in the series the "right-on girl of the late-90s" remains an obvious struggle for many of them. Here she's just acting as Generic Companion who is a bit perky and gets into trouble every so often but otherwise has no notable personality (*cough* Amy Pond *cough*). While disappointing by this point I've just had to accept her presence and get on with it.

So, to sum up, book is ok. That's about it.

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.