Author: George Mann
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Rating: WORTHY!
I was pleased to be able to get a copy of this novel because it covers the mysterious time of the so-called 'war doctor'. In severe withdrawal after the Xmas Doctor Who show, I needed a good fix, and this delivered. It's not the same as actually watching The Doctor on TV I don't think any novel ever could capture that, but it did the trick. In this novel, we hit the ground running. We don't begin with his regeneration, but at a much later point - several centuries later - when he looks more like he did in the fiftieth anniversary special, and not long before he unleashed The Moment.
I have to say at this point that a lot of time travel stories: novels, TV and movies - and including the Doctor Who series - often make no sense. The problem is the time travel. For any Doctor Who episode (or any movie or novel where they have control over their time-traveling), it's completely valid to ask the question: given that the main character typically arrives in the middle of this problem he or she has to solve, why does the character not simply go back in time to a point before the problem began, and nip it in the bud right there?
Obviously the short answer to that is that the show, movie, or novel would be completely boring in that event because there never would be any thrills and spills, but it's nonetheless a valid question. In the Doctor Who series, they limply try to explain this away with vague hand-waving at 'crossing your own time line' and so on, but whatever explanation(s) they've ever given are always over-written by The Doctor himself who crosses his own time line and changes things with impunity in scores of episodes.
In this very novel, the Doctor expresses regret at not having dealt with the Dalek problem when he'd had the chance (in his regeneration as the fourth Doctor), when he chickened out of wiping out the Daleks at their very genesis. His weak excuse was some clueless hand-waving at how communities - even planets - had been brought together because of the Dalek threat, but he never once talked himself out of it by hand-waving at the billions to whom the Daleks have brought suffering and slaughter. The problem here isn't that however, but the war doctor's regret! Why regret it? He has a time machine. He's in a warlike mood! Why not quit regretting it and go back and kill Davros, solving the problem? If he went back early enough, he wouldn't even be crossing his own time-line.
Of course, then there would be no more Daleks, and the BBC would be short of a big crowd-pleaser and revenue-puller. Aye, there's the rub! So in order to enjoy this you have to let that go. You also have to let go the question of why it's been some 400 years of non-stop war when both the Daleks and the Time Lords can travel through space and time.
This brings us to Moldox - a planet reminiscent of Earth in the old Doctor Who story from the second (original) season,and an episode titled The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Moldox is all but destroyed by the Daleks, and is on its last legs, with a few pitiful resistance fighters trying to fight back using purloined Dalek weapons. As one of them, Cinder, thinks she's about to die, The Doctor crash-lands the TARDIS, destroying the Daleks and mutants working with them, and saving Cinder.
The Doctor informs her that he has to go to the nearby city to find out what the Daleks are up to, and despite her extreme fear, she accompanies him. It turns out that mutating humans to create new Daleks isn't the only plan they have. They're also building a weapon which will destroy Gallifrey and eventually win the war. With this information, The Doctor travels to Gallifrey to reveal this news, and Cinder tags along with him.
On Gallifrey we discover that Rassilon has been resurrected to lead the Time Lords, and he has a few dark secrets of his own. One of these involves employing a weapon which is described as being able to collapse black holes. Seriously? Black holes are in a perennial state of collapse. It makes no sense to talk of deliberately collapsing one. Exploding one, on the other hand, would be spectacular if it were possible, but collapsing one? No. Bad science!
There were some other issues with this novel. There always are, especially in a case like this where the novel can realistically never be as good as the TV show because it doesn't have what makes the TV show worth watching every minute: the visuals, the TARDIS noises, the lively companions, the Doctor himself. Novels are simply not the same. That was expected, so this is about issues other than that. I mentioned the absurdity of the black hole collapsing "bomb", but there were other, relatively minor things, but nonetheless important.
For example, Daleks are supposed to have a hive mind, yet we're told they have identification marks on their casing, just under the eye-stalks. I don’t get that. What is its purpose? How would one Dalek not know to which other Dalek it was talking? Why would it even need to talk out loud? Indeed, since it is a hive mind, why would it make a shred of difference which Dalek the other one was? You could have Dalek 'A' working with Dalek 'B' all morning, and then Dalek 'C' replacing Dalek A for the afternoon and it didn’t ought to make an iota of difference to the work being done if they're all linked. No matter with which Dalek you interact, it ought to feel exactly like you're interacting with the same one every time.
At one point some Daleks are described as having guns. I assume this simply means their weapon sticks. It just seemed weird to refer to them as guns. While we're on the topic, there are several new varieties of Dalek introduced here (and some old stand-bys such as the special weapons Dalek from TV's Remembrance of the Daleks during the tenure of the Seventh Doctor. I found myself wondering why. If the Daleks are as fearsome and deadly as they are, then where is the impetus to improve them or create varieties?
A big deal was made on the show where the thirteenth Doctor (Matt Smith, as it turned out, since Tennant's Doctor aborted his first regeneration, and the war doctor was slipped in there between Gann's and McCoy's Doctors) visited Winston Churchill and was witness to the Dalek 'regeneration'. These were to be the new, scarier Daleks, and yet every single show since then, they've been completely absent! I never got the point of revamping them if they're never going to be seen again. But I digress!
The writer did do an excellent job of writing in general, however. He shows us exactly why The Doctor would not have qualms about time-locking both the Time Lords and the Daleks: The Doctor reaches a point where he sees no discernible difference between the two races. Having said that, of course, the time-lock seems to have failed dismally, since the Time-Lords were indeed tied up by it, but not, evidently, the Daleks - not in the least, given how often they've showed up in the rebooted TV series!
However, let's get back to the book, which I recommend for those having the same withdrawal symptoms as me. It wasn't brilliant, and as I've mentioned, had a few issues, but it was worth reading, and I enjoyed it. it was really nice to see a little bit of a largely unknown and intriguing Doctor. John Hurt's incarnation is the only one of which we never had a series, so this book was welcome. Although it;s technically not canon, it did fit into the canon nicely, and was enjoyable.
The problem was, it never cured my withdrawal. I need more! Much more! You know the TV shows used to be almost weekly, in episodic form. Now at least we get a complete show each week, but we get them for only a paltry few weeks of the year. Why? There are scores of good writers out there who would love to write these shows. I demand more! Let's make it at least a half-year's shows - or even one every other week so we can get them for the whole year! We need a revolution! Demand more Doctor Who NOW!
