Shakedown, by Terrance Dicks (Virgin New Adventure)

Shakedown, originally a Virgin New Adventure, was republished by BBC Books as part of a series of novels called 'The Monster Collection.' These all featured images of New Series monsters on the cover art. Having a New Series Sontaran on the cover is fine with me, though the New Series Eocene on the cover of the newly repuglished Scales of Injustice seemed a bit weird. Nevertheless, I was glad to see Virgin novels being republished by BBC books. I was disappointed that the Remembrance of the Daleks novelisation rather than a New Adventure was re-released as the represenative Seventh Doctor novel. That said, the New Adventures were not really about reviving famous monsters, they were about doing new and exciting things with Doctor Who.

Shakedown began life as a fan made video production, featuring the Sontarans, but not the Doctor. It was scripted by Terrance Dicks, apparently for a very minimal fee. Terrance Dicks was later approached by Virgin, who wanted him to adapt it as a novel featuring the Doctor. Instead of changing the story of Shakedown to include the Doctor, Dicks did something rather more interesting. He wrote a basic novelisation of Shakedown, then included this as the middle section of a longer novel. This novel created a literary backstory for the fan movie. This involved the Doctor and his companions pursuing a Rutan spy.

Shakedown is written in that minimalistic, unfancy prose which characterised Terrance Dicks' novelisations. The middle section, based on the fan movie, is very reminiscent of his Target novels. However, it also draws on his Virgin novels too, with the playfulness and the endless references to other Doctor Who storie, especially Uncel Terry's own scripts. And with it being a Terrance Dicks, a female character inevitably gets threatened with rape.

As with some of his other novels, Dicks tends to make the Seventh Doctor seem more like Pertwee than McCoy, though he gets Bernice, Chris and Roz spot on. The Sontarans were portrayed more sympathetically here than in the Classic Series, one can see the emergence of the friendly Sontarans of the New Series. I was rather glad to see the Rutans getting a bit more attention here. I think they are a great monster.

There is some great world-buiding here, especially the planet of insectoid Oxford dons. Likewise, Dick's portrayal of the corrupt and anarchic Megacity has a cynicism to match the late Robert Holmes. The most striking character we are introdued to is the Ogron police chief, a polite and educated Ogron, who sips tea and eats cakes. Before we can applaud Dicks for breaking stereoypes, it turns out that this Ogron has been surgically altered. This is rather disappointing. Dicks just assumes Ogrons are all dumb because they conform to racially suspect stereotypes. Wouldn't it have been nice if Dicks had given us an Ogron who really did fail to conform to the cliche (without having been 'civilized' by surgery)? But we can hardly expect Uncle Terry to be progressive.

This is a fun novel with plenty of action. Readers who have grown up with Terrance Dicks' Target novels will very much enjoy this.

Canon and Conundrum

I absolutely love the New Adventure novel, Conundrum by Steve Lyons. I think it is among the best of the Virgin New Adventures. The sequel, Head Games is also a great book. Steve Lyons is a great Doctor Who writer. Yet I find it really hard to forgive him for a clever meta-textual trick he pulls in Conundrum and repeats in Head Games.

In Conundrum, we learn that a new Master of the Land of Fiction has created a fictional counterpart of the Doctor, who is called Dr. Who (and the real one is not?) and who has two grandchildren, John and Gillian. In the sequel, Head Games, we meet Dr. Who. Although he looks like the Sylvester McCoy Doctor, his personality is quite different, having a very superficial and naive view of good and evil. His answer to monsters is to wipe them out. Dr. Who references several TV Comic stories. The clear meta-textual implication is that the TV Comic stories did not feature our Doctor, but this Land of Fiction creation.

I realize very well that Steve Lyons meant all this in good humour, but I can't help seeing a certain literary snobbery in the idea of relegating all the TV Comic stories to the Land of Fiction. This is basically an attempt to create some sort of Doctor Who canon and to define the boundaries of what is Doctor Who and what is not.

Doctor Who has no canon. The BBC licences products, but it makes no attempt to define what material is part of the Doctor Who mythos. Doctor Who has no Gene Roddenberry or George Lucas who can make pronouncements about canon. I'm very glad it does not. I grew up with the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. I actually have a much fonder place in my heart for them than I do for the original Star Wars trilogy. When George Lucas changes things in the Expanded Universe, it really annoys me. I totally agree with Paul Cornell's claim that canon is just another form of bullying. To exclude a story from the canon is to say "No matter how much you might love this story, it doesen't count. So there."

There is a certain incongruity about a spin-off novel trying to exclude another spin-off from an hypothetical canon. I am a New Adventures fanatic, but there are plenty of fans who hate them. There are fans who hate the manipulative Doctor in the NAs and the bitter and violent Ace. There are fans who like the idea planned for Season 27 of Ace going to Gallifrey to become a Time Lord. Steve Lyons seemed to think that the TV Comic did not count. Plenty of fans think the New Adventures don't count and only the televised stories are genuine Doctor Who.

It is often pointed out that the TV Comic stories give the Doctor a somewhat different personality to the televised Doctors. The TV Comic version of the First Doctor uses magic and its Second Doctor invents things to make money, appears on a television chat show and carries a ray gun. Yet it ought to be apparent to a fan that even the televised show does not always get the Doctor quite right or achieve a consistent tone. Take the Seeds of Doom. I'm sure that Seeds of Doom went through a much more rigorous editorial process than Martha the Mechanical Housemaid, but there are still some oddities about that story. Seeds of Doom is a very enjoyable story, but in some ways it does not feel like Doctor Who. The tone of it comes closer to a spy thriller at times and in the end, the monster is destroyed not by the Doctor, but by an airstrike. Furthermore, the fourth Doctor does not quite feel the same as in other Fourth Doctor stories. He seems more of an establishment figure and much more ready to deal out violence. Robert Banks Stewart had not spent hours studying past episodes to make sure he got every detail right (as a fan would do); he just wrote it to commission. That is why the tone of the story is different and that is exactly why the TV Comic strips feel different to most Doctor Who stories. We would not exclude Seeds of Doom from the 'canon' because it is a bit different and neither should we exclude the Sixties comic strips.



Steve Lyons makes a really interesting point in Head Games about the TV Comic version of the Doctor having a naive view of good and evil and being ready to destroy anything that looks like a monster. While this is true of the Doctor in the TV Comic, it is also true of much of the televised show, especially in the Second Doctor era. The Doctor wipes out the Macra without knowing anything about them, he cheerfully blows up the Dominators with a bomb and he destroys the entire Martian fleet, even though they are a dying race. This is the sort of gung-ho attitude that Robert Holmes so brilliantly satirized in The Two Doctors.

There is another irony in the idea of the TV Comic being relegated to the Land of Fiction, that is that the whole idea of the Land of Fiction is a bizarre concept in itself and might just as easily have been something from the TV Comic strips. The Mind Robber might be part of an hypothetical canon, but there is no way that story would have been made in any period other than the Sixties era of Doctor Who. There is just as much a stretch to say that The Mind Robber and Terminus occurred in the same universe as to say that The Challenge of the Piper occurred in the same universe as Pyramids of Mars.

Warlock, by Andrew Cartmel (Virgin New Adventure)

I really liked Andrew Cartmel's first New Adventure, Cat's Cradle: Warhead. There were a number of elements that made it great, the mysterious grim and foreboding Doctor, the non-linear plot, the peculiarly sparse dialogue and the surreal sense of a near future setting. Sadly, Warlock lacks all these elements that made Warhead so delightful.

Warlock has some great prose at times (and in a few places, some really bad prose) and some wonderful moments, such as the drug dealers using their drug to sound out who is an undercover cop and the way the gangster is destroyed by body language. However, it is seriously let down by a rambling and meandering plot that failed to engage with me. Cartmel also does an appalling job of trying to address the issue of vivisection, making out animal experimenters to be fiends who kidnap pets (animals for experimentation are specifically bred for that purpose) and enjoy torturing them for fun.

The Doctor does very little in this story. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Doctor-lite stories can be really effective. Birthright for instance has the Doctor only appearing a few times, yet the entire novel is filled with the sense of the Doctor's unseen presence. Warlock lacks that sense of the Doctor's presence or importance. He seems entirely incidental to the plot. The regular characters do very little as well. Cartmel puts the focus on his own characters, who are the most part, rather uninteresting and difficult to like. Perhaps it was down to the change in style, but even given several years maturity, Justine felt like an entirely different character to the person we saw in Warhead.

Being such a massive fan of the New Adventures and Warhead in particular, I expected a good deal more from this novel.

Zamper, by Gareth Roberts (Virgin New Adventure)

It's commonly stated that Zamper has a poor reputation among fans. Personally, I rather enjoyed it. While I loved Tragedy Day, I was not massively impressed by Highest Science, the Gareth Roberts novel that fans seems to love. I don't think Highest Science is particularly better than this novel.

Zamper sees the return of the Chelonians from The Highest Science. They are as well presented here as they were in that novel and the two main Chelonian characters are nicely characterised. Their anthem is really funny.

On the whole, the cast of characters are interesting, though a few are a bit lacking in depth. Smith was interesting at first, but then turned into a generic pseudo-companion. I was a bit bothered by the fact that the author killed off so many of them and his decision to give the two female villains very gruesome deaths.

The companions are handled really well here. I actually found myself liking Bernice, who I normally despise. On the other hand, the Doctor comes across in this story as incredibly bland and colourless. Roberts was never great with the Seventh Doctor, but he really failed to get him right here.

The Zamps were nicely creepy and there was some thoughtful exploration of the arms trade from the author's typically left-wing perspective. It's not one of the highlights of the New Adventures range, but it's certainly not one of the worst.

Twilight of the Gods, by Mark Clapham (Bernice Summerfield novel)

Twilight of the Gods was the last in the series of Bernice Summerfield novels published by Virgin. It provided a resolution of several story and character arcs within the series. Perhaps I was at something of a disadvantage in reading it, as I had only read two of the Benny novels before, Down, by Lawrence Miles and Dead Romance, also by Lawrence Miles.

I think if you read Dead Romance as part of the Faction Paradox range, as I did and therefore saw that story as a standalone, you will be massively disappointed by Twilight of the Gods. Dead Romance was simply an amazing novel, one of the best I have ever read. While it touches on Doctor Who, it is something that can stand on its own merit. I find it incredibly difficult to integrate the epic cosmic horror of Dead Romance with the very average sci-fi plot of Twilight of the Gods. They feel like two different fictional universes (though perhaps if I had read the novels in between the two books I would not feel this way).

Twilight of the Gods provides an explanation of who the gods of Dead Romance are and shows them battling for supremacy on the planet Dellah. For me this completely undermined Dead Romance. In the Miles novel, the gods were a mysterious and terrifying unseen force. Here, they are a bunch of squabbling, incompetent aliens, whose leader talks like an American television presenter.

Twilight of the Gods is for the most part a reasonably decent story, but it lacks either the celebratory mood or the epic climax necessary to conclude a lengthy series of novels. The novel also lacks the sense of cosmic apocalypse that its theme demands.

Set Piece, by Kate Orman (Virgin New Adventure)

I found Kate Orman's Left-Handed Humming Bird a little on the heavy-going side, so I was a bit worried about this one. Nevertheless, as it is Ace's departure story (one of them...), it was pretty essential reading. I was pleased to find that it is a much easier read than Left-Handed Humming Bird and much more enjoyable, while still having all the Hurt/ Comfort elements that Kate Orman seems to love so much (amusingly she actually entitles one chapter Hurt/ Comfort!).

The opening chapter is remarkably disturbing. A woman is forced to participate in brutal surgical procedures against her will, along with other humans. For three weeks she has been participating in the torture of an escape-prone prisoner who turns out to be... have a guess. As with Kate Orman's previous novel, Set Piece is a novel that deals with real physical, as well as emotional pain.

Set Piece sees the return of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, the very likable character introduced in Transit. She is effectively re-introduced without tedious exposition. She comes across as an highly-intelligent, but also a very dangerous character. She has now mastered time travel, with terrible consequences.

Kate Orman clearly loved the character of Ace and in this novel she gives her depths that have not been matched in any other New Adventure novel. This is a truly mature Ace. She is not the confused teenager, but neither is she the thuggish and mentally scarred veteran that we see in previous New Adventures. Set Piece has Ace stranded in ancient Egypt and adapting to new circumstances, while at the same time having a profound self-consciousness about her role in them. Finally, she becomes a sort of Time's Champion, protecting earth from menaces created by rifts in time. It might have been nice to have seen Ace become a Time Lady, as was originally planned, but this is a strong departure for her too.

My favorite part of the book was the parts set in ancient Egypt and Ace's interaction with that culture. It felt very authentic, much more than the attempts of some other writers to do ancient Egypt. The stuff with the Paris Commune was also interesting, even if my conservative instincts are irritated by Ace siding with the revolutionaries. I was a bit irritated by the presence of a number of dream sequences. They are quite well done, but dream sequences in the Virgin books have been done to death. It is very much an NA cliche.

The Doctor is very well written here. Kate Orman very much goes for the NA Time's Champion interpretation. Accordingly, she makes him quite god-like, yet at the same time quite vulnerable. With the presence of Kadiatu and the focus on Ace, Benny still manages to have an interesting part to play in the book. She is perhaps less irritating than in other novels, but I still dislike her overconfidence.

The plot about metallic ants taking advantage of time rifts is very much secondary to the character studies going on. The plot is simply there to develop the relationship between the Doctor and companions. Regrettably, the threat is apparently to the whole of time itself (a very Moffaty trope). I really dislike stories in which the entire universe is threatened. It just reduces the scale of the Doctor Who universe and is never really believable. We might also ask why the Time Lords don't deal with a threat to 'time itself.'

This is a novel about history. It is about how history is paved with suffering and tragedy and so often feels futile. It is about how individuals relate to history, playing their part and ultimately being unable to alter its course. Yet the novel urges the notion that every struggle, every battle, every tear shed really does mean something whatever the outcome.

Set Piece was a massive improvement on Left-Handed Humming Bird and is a great example of how angst can be done really well.

Suggested soundtrack: Nocturnus- The Key

Down, by Lawrence Miles (Bernice Summerfield novel)

Despite loving the Virgin Doctor Who novels, I really dislike Bernice Summerfield. She has always come across to me as too clever and confident, as well as horribly self-righteous. That tends to keep me from taking much interest in the vast range of Benny Summerfield spin-offs released by both Virgin and Big Finish. It does seem that unlike me, Lawrence Miles likes Benny. He writes well for her, though it did not make me like the character any more.

This is of course Lawrence Miles' second novel. He had not yet become the legend that we know. In Down we see Miles' enthusiasm for world-building, his love of deconstructing tropes, playfulness with language and flirtation with intellectual concepts. Yet he has not started his career of shaking fictional universes to the core and rebuilding them in twisted form. That would be seen in his second Benny novel, Dead Romance, which would be re-released as a supplement to the Faction Paradox series.

Down is not as accessible to the new reader as Dead Romance. Down is far more closely tied to the continuity of the other Bernice Summerfield books. In particular, Down is part of a story arc regarding a super-advanced race inhabiting a Dyson Sphere called 'The People.' The parts of the book that deal with this arc are perhaps the least interesting aspect of the novel.

Down offers two likable supporting characters in the persons of Benny's two student's, Ash and Lucretia. While these are great creations, I don't get reviewers who say that Miles' other books lack interesting characters. Christina Summerfield in Dead Romance is just as strong, as is Homunculette in Alien Bodies. The action hero Mr Misnomer is amusing, particular in his discussion of his own character guidance notes! I am not at all keen on comedy Nazis, but Miles a reasonably good job with the Neo-Nazi character Katastrophen.

Unusually for a Miles novel, this is an action adventure. Of course, it is all a big send-up of all the cliches and tropes of pulp science fiction and fantasy. We get a hollow planet inhabited by an ecosystem with Dinosaurs, ape men and Yetis. I am a little reminded of Terry Pratchett's books. It has the humour, the playfulness with language, the mocking of tropes, the likable characters and the hard science fiction concepts. Like Terry Pratchett books it all gets a bit confusing towards the end.

As with all Miles books, there is a strong postmodern streak running through the narrative. Much of the story is told through the recollections of Benny as she is interrogated. Given the inconsistencies in the story and the impossibility of her having access to the interior thoughts of the other characters described there is a huge question over the reliability of the whole story. We are even give the perspective of a criminal psychologist who offers his commentary on Benny's account. Alongside the usual postmodern literary theory on display, Miles' favorite intellectual concept in this novel seems to be Jung's theory of Archetypes.

I like the handling of the subject of transmat technology, with Lucretia's conviction that she dies during the process of molecular dispersal. Miles makes a brilliant statement:

"The machines could easily copy you without killing the original, but they were programed to slaughter you first, because the hardware companies didn't want to rock the economy by letting people know you could produce exact copies of valuable objects out of thin air."

I have never found the idea of matter transporter technology very believable, mainly because the idea that you can create an entire living, breathing, conscious human being. Even if the same matter is used the process of putting all the parts together must be impossible. If you can do that, you can do anything. You could instantly manufacture any piece of machinery, no matter how complex. Hunger would no longer be a problem as you could produce entire herds of livestock. Species would no longer become extinct, because you could always replicate new members of the species. I know they have replicators in Star Trek, yet the characters always complain that replicator food does not taste the same as real food. If Worf or Picard coming out of the transporter is the same as the Worf or Picard that went into it, they could surely replicate food that tastes exactly like the original.

Down is not one of Lawrence Miles' grand cosmic operas, but it is a deep and intelligent novel.

Sky Pirates! by Dave Stone (Virgin New Adventure)

Leaving aside the Seventh Doctor's apparent resemblance to Ken Dodd, the cover of Sky Pirates! is very misleading, as is the blurb on the back. Sky Pirates! holds out the promise of a light-hearted and funny adventure about pirates. While the book is filled with humour, it is actually a really dark, bleak book about genocide, with very creepy pirates, hideous monsters and some of the most graphic violence and gore in Doctor Who.

The influence of Terry Pratchett on Dave Stone's writing style is very apparent. There is a clear difference in tone, however. Pratchett's novels contain a lot of cynicism, but they still have a warm, gentle fondness for humanity. Sky Pirates! takes a much bleaker view of life, with much less likable characters, even if it does highlight how people in the most miserable situations thrive on hope. A definite similarity to Pratchett is the way everything becomes a bit chaotic and confusing somewhere after the halfway point; the difference being that Stone's novel is pretty confusing throughout. The style is very verbose and the dry humour can sometimes get in the way of understanding what is going on. Some of the endless footnotes become irritating and the silly appendices are pointless. Nevertheless, it does generate plenty of laughs here and there. It is one of the longest of the Virgin New Adventures. I think it could definitely have done with being edited down to size a bit.

The monstrous Sloathes are one of the novels' highlights. These monsters could comes across as rather generic shape-shifting slimeballs if written by anybody else, but Stone gives them a very colourful character. As a story about a parallel universe, Sky Pirates! is highly effective. It creates a vivid, but bizarre world long before you realise that it is not the normal universe. There is a real sense of location and history about the places and peoples in this novel. Dave Stone definitely shares Lawrence Miles' talent for world-building.

Chris and Roz had only just be introduced in the previous book, Original Sin. The author does a great job of helping the reader to get to know these characters better. Benny also does well out of this book, her relationship with the Doctor having matured considerably at this point. As regards the Doctor, Dave Stone provides the most shocking portrayal of the Doctor since Cat's Cradle: Warhead. If you hate the idea of the Doctor being a god-like figure, then you will hate this novel! Not only does the Doctor manipulate nearly everything that happens in the book, but he produces all kinds of objects from nowhere and his clothes in a pristine condition throughout. At the climax, he grows in size and becomes his other other self, a sort of cosmic being.

I found Sky Pirates! quite a difficult novel, but I certainly did find it enjoyable in places.

Original Sin, by Andy Lane (Virgin New Adventure)

I think Andy Lane's All Consuming Fire is a really great novel, so I had high hopes for Original Sin. I certainly did not enjoy it as much as All Consuming Fire, but I was still impressed with the fruits of his creative talents here. Original Sin has taken some criticism for being very heavy on continuity references, but they don't detract from the story. I got a little frustrated when it was revealed who the villain was. I won't spoil it for anyone who has not read the novel, but I don't see the point of bringing back an old villain just for the sake of it. I think one story was sufficient for this particular villain. Nevertheless, whatever the merits of including him, he was portrayed very effectively and came across as quite chilling.

There is plenty of humour and fun in this book. Nevertheless, there is also a lot of tragedy and suffering in it. The new reports detailing violent events at the start of every chapter are poignant and there is a strong theme of the pain of memories. The way the Hith changed their names to reflect the fate of their people has enormous pathos. Original Sin presents a very bleak future world. I don't think it is conveyed with the same realism and immediacy as Transit, but it is still a very interesting one.

Original Sin introduces new companions Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester. They are a really enjoyable pair. Of course, the naive rookie cop and the seasoned cynic are a bit of a cliche, but it still works. Bernice is portrayed pretty well too; she comes across more believably in this than in some novels.

Andy Lane really captures the manner and feel of the Seventh Doctor, but I was a little bothered by the Doctor's moral uncertainty. I would think that he would be able to give a much better moral justification than he does. The ethical debate about murder came across as a little tedious anyway. I do have a problem with the author's broad brush condemnation of empires. History shows us that successful empires have to allow a fairly high degree of tolerance and pluralism toward their subjects. Small nation-states tend to be much less tolerant of minorities than large empires. Given that All-Consuming Fire dealt with British imperialism, it is clear that Lane intended the Earth Empire to represent the British Empire and its failings. I think this is harsh. I would argue that though the British Empire could be brutal and had abuses, it was in many ways a force for good in the world.

Original Sin is not one of the best of the New Adventures, but it is a reasonably decent novel, though I don't know why the cover shows Tony Robinson wearing a safari suit.

Parasite, by Jim Mortimore (Virgin New Adventure)

Parasite is not one of the most popular of the Virgin novels. It's certainly not one of my favorites, but I can't say I was particularly disappointed with Jim Mortimore's work here.

As might be expected from a novel entitled 'Parasite' there is an immense sense of visceral horror, with various forms of body infestation described. The sense of body invasion certainly gets under one's skin when reading. I am faintly reminded of Neal Asher's 'The Skinner,' which also creates a similarly vivid alien ecosystem.

The Artifact is beautifully described. The sense of a totally alien environment is a little reminiscent of Arthur C Clarke's Rama novels. The notion of mountains, oceans and jungles floating in a vast zero gravity environment is quite breathtaking. While the world-building is excellent, the plot did tend to meander a little too much.

As with Blood Heat, Mortimore puts the characters through an immense amount of physical and psychological trauma. He does this in an intelligent way, however, and avoids the gratuitous pain that Simon Messingham inflicted on his characters in Strange England. The author does, however, make the mistake of too many New Adventure novels in killing off too many characters. Sometimes it is nice to see characters survive rather than die miserable deaths.

The Doctor's role in the plot is underplayed; the attention is given to Ace and Bernice, though I think this book captures the Seventh Doctor well. It seems clear to me that Mortimore was very keen on the NA portrayal of Ace as a violent thug. The Ace we see in this novel is very much an aggressive person who has been conditioned by her intense military experience. As perverse as it is, I really do tend to prefer this NA portrayal of Ace to the rather uneven performances that we got from Sophie Aldred in Seasons 25 and 26.

Parasite is in my judgment a reasonably good Doctor Who novel.

Transit, by Ben Aaronovitch (Virgin New Adventure)

"In the rainy season when the rain rattled off the corrugated iron roof Kadiatu would sit with her father and listen to his stories. Many of them were about the first grandfather and his adventures with the Shirl, back in the days when the family lived on an island in the north. The Shirl was like Mr Spider, facing danger with guile and cunning always outsmarting his enemies. When Kadiatu grew up she wanted to be like the Shirl but her father said no, only the Shirl was like the Shirl.

So Kadiatu grew up with stories about the metal giants, the wicked machines and the spiders that could think. Later in the vast history archive under Stone Mountain, by the Cayley plains on Lunar, she learnt that every last story was true. In themne, the language of her parents, Shirl was the word for medicine man, for magician, for doctor."

Reading the Virgin New Adventures got me interested in Cyberpunk fiction. I read William Gibson's Neuromancer and was completely baffled by it. I could not make head nor tail of what was actually going on in that book. Transit is not nearly as incomprehensible as Neuromancer, but it is still a difficult book. The narration is sparse to non-existent, the grammar is odd and it is full of future slang. Aaronovitch does provide a glossary at the back, but it is still not comprehensive enough to completely equip one for reading the novel. Transit is a book that vitally requires a second read to be fully appreciated.

Some of the best of the Virgin New Adventures are difficult books to read. Timewyrm: Revelation, with its layers of reality is a difficult novel. Nevertheless, it has real literary depth and fundamentally shaped the direction of the New Adventures. Cat's Cradle: Warhead, with its minimal dialogue also needs a second read to be appreciated, but it is well worth the effort. The Pit, that depressing tale of Lovecraftian cosmic misery is painful reading, but contrary to what you may have heard from other fans, I highly recommend giving it a try. Blood Heat is not easy reading either. Transit is yet another NA novel that is hard to digest but full of rich and intelligent ideas.

Transit caused a lot of controversy because of the adult nature of its material. Perhaps the heavy violence might not be a shock after Hinchcliffe and Saward, but Transit was the first official Doctor Who product to use the F-word. The first NA, Timewyrm Genesys had referred to sex and featured a child prostitute. John Peel probably though he had been really radical after writing all those Target novelisations. Transit goes a lot further and gives quite graphic descriptions of sex. I am an Evangelical Christian, so obviously I don't approve of all this. Nevertheless, I understand why Ben Aaronovitch felt the need to include this graphic realism. The NAs were really pushing to make their range distinct from the more child-friendly Target novelisations. There was also a desire to imagine the Doctor Who universe as a real place populated by people who had sex and used bad language. To be honest I am less bothered by Ben Aaronovitch describing sex in detail or having Benny use the F-word than I am of Hinchcliffe featuring some very gruesome deaths during his producership or Big Finish putting in descriptions of horrible mutilation and torture in Project Twilight.

Taking some of the staples of the cyberpunk genre, Aaronovitch creates a very real world in Transit. He brings to life the lives of the characters quite vividly. The story is fleshed out with the details of future history, with social observation and those essential small details like the Kwik Kurry franchise. This world is a grim place, where corporations wield massive power and economic misery have ruined countless lives. It is also a post-war society, with the final defeat of the Ice Warriors in the Thousand Day War a recent memory. The Ice Warrior nest is not really necessary to the plot but it is a quite wonderful element, as is the opera inspired by Battlefield.

Transit seems to be set some twenty or so years after Seeds of Death. There are some quite strong connections between this novel and that serial. We have the heavy Ice Warriors, a mass transit system, a lunar colony and references to starvation. It is quite impressive how Aaronovitch builds on the world of Seeds of Death to create his own bleak vision of the future.

This is very much a book about poverty. The author does a fantastic job of capturing the lives of prostitutes, the squalor of overcrowded housing, the filth of urban living, the death of hope and dreams in the young and the reality of malnourishment and hunger. This is a truly left-wing book. Readers might have guessed by the link to the Tory party on this blog that I am a bit right-wing. I may be right of centre in my own politics, but I generally like Doctor Who to be left-wing. I think it is important that Doctor Who challenges society and challenges the establishment.

One of the things that I love about the New Adventures is how politically correct they were. Back in 1992, we Tories were still in power, inflicting misery on poor lefties like Aaronovitch and Equality was not big on the agenda. It was actually considered radical to be seriously concerned about racism. Ben Aaronovitch had introduced a new brigadier in Battlefield who was both black and female. My biggest shock when I re-watched Battlefield was that there was not a trace of irony about it. These days you can be sure that this move would have been accompanied by some ironic humour at the expense of the now unfashionable political correctness. In Transit, Aaronovitch continues his politically correct agenda by giving the Brigadier a whole line of descendants in Africa, the fruit of a liaison he had with a local woman in Sierra Leone. Thus we have Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, a great new character who is really quite likable.

Despite being a massive NA fan, I don't care much for Benny. I quite liked her in this novel. She is not her normal self through most of it, being under the possession of the alien intelligence. Both her possessed persona and her struggling real persona are fun to read. The Doctor is very well written here. He is philosophical and moody, but without any excessive angst. He still shows the old manipulative tendency that we enjoyed so much in Seasons 25 and 26.

The basic plot about the sentient computer virus is reminiscent of various Doctor Who stories about computers going rogue, but the surreal final confrontation in cyberspace is genuinely original. I also like the scary transmogrified humans that the sentient virus creates. The description of them as 'cake monsters' is really freaky.

There is a real sense that the author is doing challenging things with Doctor Who. Like Lawrence Miles' books, there is that edgy, unnerving feeling to Transit. We fans must never get complacent with the show and retreat into the comfort of loving stories about old monsters and villains and tried and tested plots. It was books like this that demonstrate the real creative energies that were at work amongst Doctor Who writers during the wilderness years.

Essential soundtrack for reading: Front Line Assembly- 'Tactical Neural Implant'

No Future, by Paul Cornell (Virgin New Adventure)

"It's my opinion that the Doctor symbolizes the best values of British life. Eccentricity, the creative amateur, and civilization."

Can you believe that there are fans who don't like this novel? Maybe you are one of them. After all, I hate Pyramids of Mars and every other fan adores that story. If you hate the New Adventures, you are not going to like No Future. If you hate Ace being an angst-filled, violent bitch, you will hate No Future. If you hate gratuitous continuity references, you will also hate it.

No Future brings to a conclusion the story arc concerning a series of temporal alterations that began with Blood Heat. It also concludes the story arc concerning Ace's bitterness toward the Doctor. Naturally, this calls for Cornell's trademark emotional drama. This is a tale of bitterness, betrayal, but ultimately reconciliation. From this book onwards, Ace comes to terms with the Doctor (though I think she never really forgives him, as can be seen in Head Games). Forget about that hypocritical drunk, Bernice. The New Adventures should not be celebrated for introducing Benny, but for what they did with Ace. Instead of just taking a character from the television series and writing stories with her in, they took her and developed her in exciting and disturbing ways. We actually got to see a companion who was angry with the Doctor and who resented him for the things he did. This boldness with the character of Ace is what makes the Big Finish Seven/ Ace stories so dull. The Big Finish stories just want to recreate Season 26 (except with Hex thrown in some of them). The Big Finish writers just want that 'nice girl Dorothy' (as Mel described her in Head Games).

No Future reintroduces the Meddling Monk as a villain. This was a risky strategy. The danger with the Master is you make him too suave and charming. The danger with the Monk is that he ends up being there as a cute comic character. Cornell portrays the Monk masterfully, giving him a real depth. He at first appears in the guise of a record company boss who is very clearly modelled on Richard Branson. When his identity is revealed to the reader, we encounter him as a very kindly clerical figure. In this guise he shows his talents at manipulation. There is a beautiful moment where Ace breaks down before the Monk and confesses to him every sin she has ever committed and even makes some up. Despite his apparent kindness, however, this Monk is a much more evil and twisted character than the one we saw in the Hartnell years. Of course, he still gives us some camp fun; there is a wonderful moment when he sings "Don't know much about history!"

The Monk is portrayed as a second-rate, would-be Doctor. He is not only full of bitterness about past defeats, but is also full of envy towards his more accomplished counterpart. What I loved most about this portrayal was the fact that he not only plans to give the Doctor a prolonged agonising death, but he also seeks the ultimate revenge- to steal the Doctor's companion. In an almost soap opera style, the Monk attempts to seduce Ace away from the Doctor and make her his own companion. The Master never tried that. In the end Ace reveals herself to be manipulating the Monk and betrays him, yet it is obvious that she was genuinely tempted to betray the Doctor.

Not only do we get the return of the Monk, but we also get the most unlikely returning race- the Vardans! Cornell does a great job of giving the Vardans some background, history and character. We are also treated to a female Chronovore. The climax of the book echoes The Time Monster, with the Chronovore capturing the Monk to be tormented for eternity. Evidently he escaped, as he has recently reappeared in the Big Finish audios.

Cornell always does interesting things with the Brigadier. We get to see how much he admires the Doctor as an embodiment of English virtue. Perhaps in tribute to Barry Letts, Cornell reveals that the Brigadier is a Buddhist. The Brigadier believes that the Doctor is a Bodhivista, one who has gained enlightenment, but who remains in this world to help others. This is a fascinating spin on the Doctor Who mythos.

No Future is a fitting climax of the dark, angst-filled initial phase of the Virgin New Adventures. I think it is a brilliant and adorable novel and one of Cornell's best works.

Strange England, by Simon Messingham (Virgin New Adventure)

Another Victorian house, another bunch of weird characters, and another artificial environment.

Simon Messingham clearly wanted to be Marc Platt in his early career. In this novel we get a Victorian house with weird characters, a glowing being and lots of talk about things changing. Does that sound like a certain story by Marc Platt to you? It turns out that this is an artificial environment created by a TARDIS. Does that sound like another Marc Platt story? I don't like Ghost Light and I found Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible a bit too heavy, so a story that attempts to hybridise the two is not really going to catch my interest. It does not help that the Virgin New Adventures had gone to town on artificial environments, so a another one here is not terribly interesting.

Ghost Light just about worked by showing (in a rather cartoon way) how the Victorian era could be a little strange from a contemporary perspective. Strange England rather misses the point and assumes the reader will recognise some kind of normality in Victorian England and then attempts to make this already alien environment weird. It does not work. Victorian England is already an alien place to the contemporary reader, so trying to turn it into a surreal Wonderland does not work. One stars to get tired of all the strange and bizarre elements that Messingham throws in to keep us puzzled. The slow pace makes it especially tedious.

Strange England is filled with violence and pain. I am a little more accepting of violence in the NAs than I am in the television series (or Big Finish). The NAs were aimed at an adult audience and were trying to push boundaries. I don't like the violence, but I understand and appreciate what they were trying to do. I think Messingham goes rather too far. A lot of the violence of this book feels quite pointless and gratuitous. We did not need it. Thankfully, after all the violence and horror we at least get a nice happy ending for the two main minor characters.

Strange England was very much one of the weaker New Adventure novels. It could almost make you wish you were reading a Mark Gatiss novel. Almost.

St. Anthony's Fire, by Mark Gatiss (Virgin New Adventure)

This post got removed during last week's blogger problem.



The Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice meet reptilian genocidal religious fanatics and human genocidal religious fanatics.

Mark Gatiss is really not a good writer at all. He seems to either come up with unimaginatively traditional Doctor Who stories like Nightshade or else 'everything but the bathroom sink' jumbles like Victory of the Daleks. St. Anthony's Fire, is very much in the former, like his previous New Adventure.

The biggest problem with St. Anthony's Fire, apart from the very standard Whoish plot, is the all-out assault on religion. This novel seems to suggest that everybody who has faith is a deluded fool and all religion causes terrible atrocities. The Betrushian religion is built on a misunderstanding about an alien race's activity and leads to genocide. The Chapter of St. Anthony's Fire kidnap people, brainwash them, force them to endure terrible suffering for no reason and commit genocide. There is not the slightest suggestion in the book that some religions might 1) be true, 2) be believed by intelligent people, 3) not commit terrible atrocities, 4) Do acts of kindness and benevolence. Obviously, there are lots of oppressive religious groups in the world, but the kind of one-sided attack on religion in this novel is clumsy and unpleasant.

Even as a critique of religion, St. Anthony's Fire fails because it does not portray any appealing side to religion. An intelligent critique of religious belief and activity has to address the fact that religion does appeal to people. The Chapter of St. Anthony (how they came to centre their religion on a minor saint makes no real sense) are so horrible and brutal that nobody would ever want to join them. Hence, they have to brainwash their converts. Yong, the Chapter's leader is a cartoonish character who tortures kittens. He is a sort of religious version of Fu Manchu.

Gatiss is okay at writing for the Seventh Doctor, Bernice and Ace. The problem is that he does not do anything interesting with the regulars. Ace only joins the Chapter because she has been brainwashed, so nothing much new is revealed about her through it. We get an old-fashioned companions separated from each other and the Doctor routine, just like the old days. The resolution of the book is uninteresting too. We get a very Star Trekkish technobabble-based solution to the problem.

Just wait until Mark Gatiss becomes the next producer of Doctor Who.

Conundrum, by Steve Lyons (Virgin New Adventure)

'I trusted you,' stormed Ace, waving a trembling finger in Benny's face. 'I trusted you and you grassed me up to the bloody Doctor!'

'Don't you play the injured party with me!' she snapped grabbing Ace's arm and pushing it roughly away from her. 'I've bent over backwards to accommodate you- I should have known from the start, you're nothing more than a selfish maladjusted killer!'

In my opinion, Conundrum is the best of all the New Adventures. It has an experimental style and offers a playful postmodern touch, but is also highly readable. I first read Conundrum when I was 13 and found it much more enjoyable to read than some of the other Virgin New Adventures. I found it puzzling that the two companions seemed to be so moody and that Ace hated the Doctor so much, but I accepted that. When I later came to watch the Seventh Doctor televised stories, I was surprised to find that Ace was not as moody and aggressive as she is in this novel.

Conundrum is a sequel to The Mind Robber. I would venture to say that this sequel is actually a bit better than the original story, which had a rather weak plot. Lyons creates a very English provincial town in a rural backwater and populates it with a weird collection of cliched characters from different literary genres. The plot seems to shift from murder mystery, children's' adventure, superhero comic and horror until we discover the nature of this world. Cleverly, the story is narrated by the Master of the Land of Fiction and so we get a narrator who interacts with the characters he is describing. One of the most hilarious moments is the narrator's amazement at the Doctor's ability to come up with a scientific explanation for a superhero gaining his powers.

One of the things I really enjoyed in this story was the soap opera drama between the Doctor, Ace and Benny. This was the high point of the NA angsty phase, but it was Steve Lyons who really made this drama fun. Many people love the New Adventures for introducing Bernice, but hate the way they handled Ace. I am the opposite. I don't like Bernice at all, but I love the NA version of Ace. Lyons manages to show the nasty side of Bernice, presenting her as a self-righteous, hypocritical and manipulative bitch. I find Bernice too overconfident and too clever for her own good. I find it impossible to identify with her. NA Ace on the other hand, is a loser. She is a talentless failure who blames everybody else for her problems and just wants to lash out. That is a terrible attitude to have, but it's easy to empathize with her. There is something of Ace in most of us who aren't lucky enough to be as confident and clever as Bernice.

I am not entirely happy with the suggestion that John and Gillian were not really companions. I suspect that back in the 90s, Doctor Who fans were a bit more closed-minded about what could be considered canon. These days, many fans would be more open to seeing the TV Comic as canon. Of course, that Conundrum is canon need not rule the TV Comic out of the canon. The Doctor never actually denies having two grandchildren called John and Gillian, he just does not recognise the Land of Fiction duo as being them.

The revelation that the Land of Fiction was originally created by the Gods of Rrrragnarok is cool.

Conundrum is the best of the Virgin New Adventure novel and should be essential reading for any fan.

Blood Heat, by Jim Mortimore (Virgin New Adventure)

The late Dr. Who and the Silurians

I first read this New Adventure novel when I was twelve years old. I found it hard going, but I did enjoy it. I think I did find the dark tone and harsh portrayal of the characters surprising. Significantly, however, I read this novel and without having experienced Ace and the Seventh Doctor on television (I got into Doctor Who after it had been cancelled). This is probably why I love Ace being a violent, angsty bitch. This is how I experienced her character. A lot of fans who watched Seasons 25 and 26 in the 80s hate NA Ace, but I feel a strong sense of ownership over violent, angsty Ace. That was just how I experienced the character.

Probably what I appreciated about Blood Heat when reading it as a twelve-year old was the simplicity of the premise- What if the Doctor had died in the Wenley Moor caves and the Silurians had taken over? I can't imagine my younger self appreciating a novel with a more complex theme, like Christmas on a Rational Planet. Although this novel has the dark and grim heart of the more 'Rad' NAs, it has an accessibility in its premise that can draw in anyone who loves Doctor Who (even if they do end up hating what it does with the characters). Perhaps it also helps that Blood Heat looks for inspiration less to the televised story Dr. Who and the Silurians, but more to Malcolm Hulke's novelisation, The Cave Monsters. Like the novelisation, it even has pictures.

Blood Heat is really grim. It is full of death and violence. It features the aftermath of a nightmarish apocalyptic scenario portrayed more realistically than Day if the Triffids. Nevertheless, it is how he handles the characters that makes it all the more grimmer. Poor Jo Grant is rendered insane and dies a slow, lingering death after having a miscarriage. The Brigadier becomes a warmongering bully. Benton becomes a brutal thug. Only Liz Shaw remains a sympathetic character (perhaps more so than in Season 7). These are characters that have had to deal with horrible and terrifying situations and it has taken its toll on them. This is ultra-realist Dr. Who. The Silurians come across as pretty nasty too, though Morka (the nasty one in The Cave Monsters) has matured and become more sympathetic. We get a glimpse of hipe when we are told that in Bernice's time, humans and Silurians are at peace.

As with the other books in this period of the New Adventures, Ace is at her most psychotic and violent. I found it really interesting how Mortimore handles her. She is shown to be a monster, but we get to understand why. Remarkably, she actually feels that she likes this nightmare world more than the real earth, especially when she finds that her old friend Manisha ironically survived in this timeline.

My complaints about this book are few and they mostly relate to continuity. I disagree with the author's view that Dr. Who and the Silurians is set in 1973. I am unhappy with the notion that the 'Silurians' are from the age of the Dinosaurs (the Doctor called them Eocenes and they knew about apes).

There is a real depth to this book. The theme of children and future generations is used and explored really effectively. Blood Heat is one of the true classics of the New Adventures.

First Frontier, by David McIntee (Virgin New Adventure)

The Doctor: If you were sleepwalking, it must have been quite a nightmare.
Jack: You wouldn't know.
The Doctor: Don't be too sure; I once had one where all my old foes chased me round a soap opera.

I'm not keen on the Master. I think one of the strengths of the New Adventures novels is that for the most part they kept the Master out of it. Until First Frontier. The Master is mostly handled well. He actually comes across like Ainley rather than Delgado. It's helpful to get a story of how he recovers his Time Lord nature and nice to revisit Survival. On the other hand, his confrontation with the Doctor at the climax is depressingly predictable.

First Frontier does a good job of portraying paranoid America in the 50s. The Tex-Mex food helps to give it a sense of being a real place. Perhaps the novel would have benefited from a little more humour relating to the UFO themes. It is generally agreed amongst fans that the biggest strength of this novel is in its in depth portrayal of the alien Tzun. They are given an history and one is made to sympathize with them.

McIntee includes a lot of action in the novel. This is unfortunate, because like a lot of NA writers, he is not very good at describing it. Despite the action, the book does have a fairly slow pace.

MCIntee captures the Seventh Doctor rather well. Ace is very well portrayed and the references to the changes brought about in her by Survival are good. Bernice is also nicely portrayed, even if she is not left with much to do. I like the fact that she comes across as quite ignorant of the culture of the time period. In some novels, Bernice was a given an unbelievably comprehensive knowledge of the Twentieth century. The vast majority of minor characters in the book are military types who are not terribly interesting.

For those wanting to see how the New Adventures handled the Master, this is definitely the book to read. It's not brilliant, but it occupies an important point in continuity.

Nightshade, by Mark Gatiss (Virgin New Adventure)

Hawthorne: 'We let this - this person and his freakish friend waltz in here without so much as a by-your-leave! Within five minutes he's telling us what to do...'
The Doctor: 'Story of my life.'


We all know that a lot of Doctor Who stories have looked to the Quatermass television show for inspiration. This had become such a well established notion that Lance Parkin actually wrote an article seeking to minimise the impact of Quatermass on Doctor Who. We even discover in Remembrance of the Daleks that Bernard Quatermass and British Rockets Group exist in the Doctor Who universe, thus making the Quatermass stories part of the Dr. Who canon. Nightshade is intended as a sort of homage to Quatermass. Not only does it feature an alien menace that would fit in well on that t.v. show, but it also makes references to a fictional show 'Nightshade' that is very obviously based on Quatermass.

Surprisingly, given his later work, this book is quite serious and lacking in humour. Not that I mind that. Some of the best NAs were quite serious and humourless, for instance Blood Heat and Cat's Cradle: Warhead. To my mind there are three problems with Nightshade. The first is pace. It is dreadfully slow. For a story with such a simple plot, it could have been made a lot faster.

Secondly, Ace's relationship with Robin is not handled very well. It never seems quite believable. I also rather doubt that Ace would be so keen to settle down in the 1960s given her very negative experiences of that period in Remembrance of the Daleks.

Thirdly, although it is quite well written, I found Nightshade rather dull. The idea of an alien entity trapped on earth which is killing people in an isolated community is such an obviously Doctor Whoish idea that there has to be some kind of new angle to make it interesting. Gatiss fails to provide one and it just feels like a very generic Dr. Who tale.

On the positive side, it's nice to see the Doctor's relationship with Susan brought up. Gatiss had clearly not watched An Unearthly Child before writing this because he wrongly refers to Susan's school uniform. Susan and her fellow pupils were not wearing uniforms in the first Doctor Who episode.

Nightshade has a reputation as one of the strongest New Adventure novels, but this seems to be mainly among those who disliked the general ethos of the Virgin stories. As somebody who appreciated the more radical experiments in the NA era, I found Gatiss' novel very pedestrian.

Christmas On A Rational Planet, by Lawrence Miles (Virgin New Adventure)

"I've done so much. Saved entire races whose names I can't even remember. And why? Because of reasons. Because of principles. Truth, love, and harmony. Peace and goodwill. The best of intentions. Whatever I've done, I've done for these reasons. And there's been a price to pay. Sacrifices. People close to me have died. Four of my companions, hundreds of the universe's supporting cast. I could fill whole volumes with their names. Bystanders who helped me, perhaps for just a moment or two, and suffered for it. I've died myself, six times over. I have a responsibility. To every one of them, the living as well as the dead. If I let you succeed, if I let you make a world without reasons, then every sacrifice they've ever made in my name would be for nothing. They would have suffered, and died, and triumphed... all for no purpose."

Christmas on a Rational Planet was Lawrence Miles' first novel. Unsurprisingly, it is not as polished as Alien Bodies, the novel that is generally considered his best. Miles has expressed unhappiness as to some aspects of this novel. The plot is very slow and rambling. However, this is not too much of a problem. The slow pace allows much elaboration on it's themes and the creation of a good deal of atmosphere and climate. In this first novel, we see Miles' real talent: he is not so much interested in creating stories as building cosmologies and fleshing out fictional worlds.

I love the way Seventh Doctor era and New Adventures era writers bring up loads of cultural and literary theory (is this related to the fact that the Seventh Doctor dresses like a modern academic?). I am pretty sure that Lawrence Miles has been read an awful lot of postmodern and feminist cultural theory as well as poststructuralist literary theory. You can see a lot of his ideas in some of the intellectual currents of the late twentieth century. Miles deconstructs the very idea of reason and presents it as a form of unreason, an expression of male anxiety about women and the need to control things. While witch burnings and persecuting religion are commonly thought of as irrational, Miles presents them as an actual result of the mania for rationality. As a rational Christian who sees God and logic as fundamentally the same thing, I disagree with this idea, but I find it fascinating to see stuff I have studied at university coming out in Doctor Who. The big inconsistency in the concept, of course, is that the Carnival Queen, the embodiment of unreason, actually does engage in logical argument and reasoning (thus proving reason is fundamental to both discourse and knowledge).

Miles portrays the Seventh Doctor well (which is a shame, because it's his only Seventh Doctor novel. Come on, Larry, make peace with Big Finish, then you can write lines for Sylvester McCoy!). Roz comes across a bit like Bernice at times, but still has something to surprise. Her attempt to 'summon' the Doctor by attempting to kill Abraham Lincoln's father is mind-boggling. Chris comes across as a very likable character (he comes up again in two of the Faction Paradox books).

If you think that Paul Cornell books are a bit too rich in continuity references, you would be shocked by this novel. Christmas on a Rational Planet references nearly every single Doctor Who story. I love the way the vision of the future is narrated:

The centuries passed and America fell, but its curse lingered on. There in the future, there were two power-blocs, just as there always had been, and if they weren't the USA and the USSR, then they might as well have been. Ion-jet rockets pushed the frontier out into space, men with cowboy moustaches and stupid accents spreading their gun-law across the cosmos.

Finally, the Earth died by fire, great arks carrying humanity's leftovers away to safety. There were black-skinned slaves on the ships, same as always. The slaves were rough-skinned, one-eyed, and extraterrestrial, but a slave was a slave was a slave.

This is such a beautifully poignant commentary on the Doctor Who history of the future and how it ties together.

The New Adventures often had an unfortunate tendency to kill off characters. Miles rightly rejected this and in an interview once boasted that despite the violence of the book, it has a body count of zero. Miles would never have fallen into the trap of killing off the Master then resurrecting him then killing him off and then resurrecting him and then killing him off ad infinitum.

The Carnival Queen is a great villain, or can we call her that? She is certainly an antagonist of the Doctor. It's quite nice to have the Doctor faced with an opponent who is not only female and non-ranting, but also has the kindest of intentions. As with other god-like beings in the Whoniverse, she can only be defeated by conceptual means, hence the test of trust that decides the ending.

The Gynoid is a bizarre, but intriguing concept. The idea of relating gender to androids and gynoids is masterfully clever and is futher proof that Miles had been reading lots of postmodern feminism. I love the mysterious description of Gynoids "Gynoids aren't 'built.' Only Androids are 'built.' Gynoids just are."

Christmas on a Rational Planet lacks the intensity, pace and plot of Alien Bodies, but it is a brilliant New Adventure and shows just how deep Doctor Who can get. This novel offers a completely new way of looking at the cosmology of the Doctor Who universe and the ideology behind it. This was Lawrence Miles' great contribution to Doctor Who.

Cat's Cradle: Warhead, by Andrew Cartmel (Virgin New Adventure)

Doctor Who goes cyberpunk!

This novel is regarded by some people as being one of the defining classics of the Virgin New Adventures. On the other hand, it is a book that is hated by many more traditional fans. Cat's Cradle: Warhead was the first punk rock Doctor Who novel; it stuck it's finger up at everything that fans would want and expect from a Doctor Who novel. The things which so many people love about Doctor Who are swept away and Andrew Cartmel served us up something much darker and more brutal. We get a cold and calculating Doctor who punishes people, a thuggish Ace, an horrible glimpse of the near future, no monsters and we don't even see the TARDIS in this book. This is almost Anti-Who. For that very reason, I think it is a great novel.

Andrew Cartmel was unusual amongst Doctor Who script editors in never actually writing a Doctor Who script itself. One naturally wonders whether this has anything to do with the most interesting stylistic feature of Cat's Cradle: Warhead; it's minimal use of dialogue. So many scenes in this book go by with only a few words being spoken. The Doctor and Ace don't seem to talk much, which makes it distinct from other NAs, which made the relationship between the Doctor and Ace central to their themes. This absence of speech helps to generate atmosphere. It does, however, make it somewhat difficult to follow the complex plot. Cat's Cradle: Warhead is a book that definitely requires a second reading to be really understood. Another interesting stylistic feature is the non-linear narration. We meet Bobby Prescott and find out that he has witnessed a terrifying event before that event is narrated in a later chapter.

Andrew Cartmel's aim during his tenure as script editor was to add mystery to the Doctor. Viewers had become too used to knowing about the Doctor; that he was a Time Lord from Gallifrey, that he travelled in the TARDIS, that he was a kindly cosmic hero, etc. Cartmel continued that pursuit of a mysterious Dr. Who in his debut NA. He presents the Doctor as a force of nature, an unstoppable, unknowable, mysterious figure that manipulates all manner of events.

What I found most striking about the Doctor is that he passes judgment on people. Maria, a cleaner who is dying of the plague affecting so many in this period, helps the Doctor and then asks him to take her with him. He refuses because she knew about terrible cruelties and kept quiet about them. She has failed the Doctor's moral test and he deems her unworthy to be among his chosen few. It's impossible to imagine any other incarnation of the Doctor doing this. Perhaps another Doctor might have made a speech to her about her moral failing, but not quietly and coldly reject her in the way the Seventh Doctor does here. Perhaps this is the right moral verdict, but there is something terrifying about the way this Doctor rejects the pleas of a dying woman and abandons her to her fate.

The Doctor again passes judgment on Bobby Prescott, a serial killer who has been preying on teenagers. The Doctor hires a gang of teenagers, Prescott's would-be victims and gets them to hunt him down. After the Doctor has obtained from Prescott the information he requires, he asks him why he kills young people. He offers him a chance to justify himself. Prescott instead talks about his childhood, proving himself to be an utterly self-centred character. The Doctor ignores his pleas for mercy and abandons him to be killed by his would-be victims. It is terrifying to see the Doctor acting as an avenging angel; dealing out death and judgment. It's an uncomfortable idea, but I think it is a more powerful one than that of the Third Doctor who would always end up having mercy on the Master. The chapter with Bobby Prescott is a great moment in this novel.

Ace is not well developed in this novel. We don't get much exploration of her personality for the most part. What we do get is a picture that revolts a lot of 'Trad' fans. Ace in Cat's Cradle: Warhead is pretty much an hired thug. She is a brutal and confident heavy who is there to do the Doctor's dirty work. This is not how Sophie Aldred played the role and it is totally contrary to how many fans like to think of the role of companion, but it fits totally with the darker vision of the New Adventures. Ace is somebody who the Doctor has picked up and fashioned into a weapon. When Davros talked about the Doctor turning ordinary people into weapons in Journey's End, he was certainly right regarding NA Ace. Ace is given a nice exchange of dialogue with Justine in which the two characters challenge each other's belief systems. This dialogue creates a fascinating sense of uncertainty about the real worldview of Doctor Who. During Cartmel's time on Doctor Who, the show veered away from science fiction and introduced a remarkable magic realism or fantasy element. In this story, the Doctor's solution to the technological menace is a boy with magic powers, call them psychic powers if you will. This is worlds apart from Seventies Doctor Who were everything could be explained by science and the Doctor solved every problem with a gadget. This is New Age Doctor Who.

Andrew Cartmel seems to celebrate alternative youth cultures. He identifies the Doctor with the youths who delight in paganism, magic beliefs, environmentalism gothic culture and geeky computer games. This reflects the way Doctor Who was changing at the time. Doctor Who had fallen from the public consciousness. It was no longer an institution, but was becoming the preserve of fans, many of whom were Goths and geeks. The Doctor is not a cosy institutional figure here, but is a symbol of rebellion and chaos.

Andrew Cartmel defined the Seventh Doctor era and with this novel he helped to establish the direction of the New Adventures. Cat's Cradle: Warhead is not as enjoyable to read as Paul Cornell or Steve Lyons' NAs but it outclasses most of the Virgin novels in style. It is one of the most important Doctor Who books of the 1990s.