Shadowmind

Overall, I enjoyed this book. We get a few interesting new aliens, a nice twist on the possession theme, very few asshole characters, and we get a more plausible Ace back.

Sometimes we get a reminder that Ace was always smart and tough, even in non-military ways, and that she is a good person deep down despite her recent jerkitude. The mini-bombs are cute, her way to get herself out of trouble in the garden was creative, and I deeply enjoyed the way she had to relearn that a gun is not always the solution. The Doctor's trust in her is clear and unquestioned. He also trusts her to keep an eye on him at need. I deeply enjoyed the scene where Ace realized what was going on before the Doctor did.

And yes, the Doctor makes a few mistakes here. His inventiveness and ingenuity get him out of most, of course, but there are casualties. Sadly, it seems the characters blow them off a bit easily. It's one of the book's weaknesses.

Speaking of weaknesses, I mentioned we get very few assholes. This makes the one or two we do get stick out, which is another weakness itself. However, the author is being careful to show us that even bad guys have reasons for what they do. By the end, I found myself thinking that even for Doctor Who, this was incredibly kind. I didn't need a mustache-twirling villain, mind, but at about two-thirds through it got to the point that introducing one would have been not just bad, but painful. I'm glad he didn't go there.

Shadowmind

For a lot of people, Christopher Bulis has come to be synonymous with a certain style of Doctor Who writing. Sometimes it was called "trad", others called it "safe"...the more pejorative terms might have included "bland" and "hacky". But the basic concept behind all the definitions was the same. Find someone who can produce X number of words in Y number of days, with a plot that holds together reasonably well and a prose style that doesn't actively grate on the reader. If they can come up with a few witty lines of prose here and there, that's a benefit, but the main thing is that they should come up with Doctor Who that feels a lot like the Doctor Who people have already written and already read.

And yet, 'Shadowmind' isn't quite yet the work of the man who wrote 'The Eye of the Giant' and 'The Ultimate Treasure'. His regular characters don't feel on-model (the Doctor, for one, feels so much like a generic Wise Mentor figure that Bulis has him recite an actual list of old series monsters he fought, just to establish his credentials) and his prose is staid and straightforward, but his characters are likable (Kim Talevera and her grandfather are sweet and gentle people) and his setting exudes a certain fragile charm. The Shenn, for all that they're pretty much just Stock Sci-Fi Alien Race #22, are cute and fluffy and friendly, and Umbra, for all that he's Stock Sci-Fi Monster #27, at least has some interesting science behind him and exudes a sense of genuine menace in that way that evil, powerful children can.

Which is why the ending is all the more strikingly off-tone. We may never know whether Bulis was forced to end the book with a bloodbath by his editors (who were, let's face it, keen to develop a "mature" sensibility) or whether he felt that the book would seem more "grown up" if he killed off half the cast at the end, but it never feels like it fits with the rest of the book. The first three-quarters of the novel feel like he's developing a good Doctor Who novel for children; the last quarter feels like he's pulling the rug out from under those children instead of writing a book for adults.

That's not to say that there's nothing to recommend the book; again, the time spent on Tairngire feels calming and restful, and the crew of the Broadsword is likable and intelligent in a way that's just nice to read about. (John Rogers once called this "competence porn".) Even the plot, while not innovative, is a pleasant way to waste a few hours. It's hard to feel good about disliking Christopher Bulis, because there's not even anything really to hate. You just sort of want to give him a B- and explain to him that you'd like to see him try a little harder next time.

Chat: White Darkness

John: If we’re to start anywhere with ‘White Darkness’, it should really be the zombies. Because I think this one’s primarily known as “the Doctor Who book with the zombies”, and to some extent I think this misrepresents it. This one was very much a book about voodoo, not a book about “zombies” in the Romero sense. I think it did a pretty good job with that for the most part; how about you?

Dee: As I said in my entry, I was really relieved to see a book that didn’t assume all practitioners of the religion are assholes on power trips. Don’t get me wrong, we did have some negative stereotypes represented, but the implication was that these were also people being influenced by powerful beings with powerful telepathy, and it was a nod to the degraded rituals in Lovecraft. I give it a pass for that reason. I personally think that the followers of the loas are participating in a legitimate, positive religion. The Doctor’s actions and words gave credence to that within the world of this book. That mattered to me. But yes, to me it was more like Doctor Who Meets The Cthulhu Cult.

John: But we don’t really see much of the Cthulhu stuff until the end. For a lot of the book, it’s Doctor Who Meets the Sinister Germans, with a side note of “Hey, remember ‘Live and Let Die’? That was pretty cool, wasn’t it?” Don’t get me wrong, I agree that McIntee was trying to treat the religion with more respect than usual. Dubois, as the houngan the Doctor enlists for help, is a positive character. (Although the “You must trust me, a white guy who’s different from all the other white guys!” scene is a bit patronizing.) But there’s a lot of potent imagery that McIntee’s playing with, despite the fact that I think he knows he’s playing with fire, just because it’s so archetypal. The sinister voodoo ceremony undoes a lot of good intentions, but he can’t help including it because it feels like you have to have a big “evil voodoo ritual” set piece. Likewise, although much less problematic, the Germans are all stereotypical World War I Germans. We even get one with a duelling scar, don’t we?

Dee: See. I think you’re wrong, there. I think that there’s a lot of indicating that the Cthulhu cult is the dominant force. The Germans have a black guy on board, one they don’t even really know why they trust. The museum has it all there. It’s not as obvious as in a Lovecraft story, because McIntee is saying “What if Lovecraft hadn’t made all those cultists paper characters? What would a cultist be like? What would happen to people around them? What kind of place would they thrive?” And I think that is why I like it: I’m a Lovecraft fan who wants more depth in that world than good old Uncle Howie wanted. I think Uncle Howie would be horrified at this book, and I don’t so much mind that given his horrible racism. I like the world a lot more than I like him. That’s why I don’t mind Howard Phillips being something of a nice guy.

John: I can agree, Lemaitre has more depth and motivation than your average Cthulhu cultist. Again, I think there’s a long way from what McIntee wrote to actual racism, and I think he wrote with the best of intentions. I just think he also wrote in big, broad, sweeping brushstrokes, and not all of the details got filled in. And speaking of Lemaitre, is this the point where we talk about the “Hey, that’s French for ‘The Master’” red herring?

Dee: See, I missed that completely, because I realized right from the beginning who Lemaitre was. Given that, it never occurred to me to wonder. Sorry, Mr. Author David McIntee Man sir! So you can talk about it if you want, but I won’t have a lot to say. “Master” is loaded in the Whoniverse, but not so loaded I doubted my first ident of the character.

John: I missed it the first time too, but I caught it when I went back after reading his three novels with the Master in them. He’s kind of known for having a very...detailed take on the character. But we’ll get to that later. There are certainly plenty of villains in this one even without the Master...let’s see, we have Mait, Carrefour and Henri; Karnstein, von Stein, Reichmann, Froebe, the U-boat captain whose name I can’t remember; Bobo; Sam and Etienne...am I missing anyone?

Dee: The unnamed hotel clerk, possibly. Otherwise, no. I think you might be able to count Woodrow Wilson in there, briefly, for the racist remark McIntee reports and makes clear he justly dislikes. But yes, plenty for the Doctor and Companions to oppose. And thank goodness for good characterization, because I’m finally seeing what people like in Benny and Ace is having a reality check.

John: This is kind of where you start to realize how writer-proof Benny is. Her basic brief is, “I get to be the extremely competent smart-ass who knows all the tropes of adventure stories and doesn’t fall for them, and oh by the way I’m also a super-smart archeologist!” If you can’t make that work, you’re just not trying. And Ace...the next few books are where Ace really starts to sort herself out. It’s not all in one go, and it will get worse before it gets better (this is by way of a warning, because she does hit some pretty unlikable depths over the next six or seven books, and you don’t have the benefit of reading them out of order like I did and knowing she improves a lot.) And the Doctor is well-written, too, I think. Not so much to the Seventh Doctor’s brief of being always one step ahead of the bad guys and having a master plan, but that’s sometimes a plus. It can get tiresome if the Doctor always knows everything the bad guys are going to do before they do it.

Dee: I loved here how he was right so often, though. He knew what he was talking about, knew the history. Where he messed up, it was only nuance and not realizing what his Companions would get up to... like Benny picking up things in a museum in Haiti. And besides, this was supposed to be a holiday. I think this was the TARDIS putting him where he needed to be again.

John: Yes, it’s the perfect balance for the Doctor in that aspect. He’s generally knowledgeable about relevant topics, but he doesn’t have the kind of absurdly specific information that comes from time-traveling to after it’s all over and writing hints to his past self. It’s a nice change...and a trend that continues in our next book, ‘Shadowmind’. See you then!

White Darkness

"Doctor Who and the Zombies" has so much potential, doesn't it? And indeed, that's what you get in this book.

"Doctor Who and the Cthulhu Cult" has tons of potential as well. We get that too.

Thank goodness that once again, we have the real Doctor here! Also, thank goodness, this book is better than Lucifer Rising. The TARDIS crew characterization is strong, as is the plot. The engine of this book rumbles along smoothly if sometimes a bit loudly. Bad guys? We have them aplenty. Best of all, the actual religion of voudoun is left unmaligned.

For a pagan like me, this is crucial. I know enough about the zombie mythos to recognize that the process of creating a zombi has been shown to be a bit different by more recent research, and I can live with that. What would have brought me screaming out of the story would have been uniformly evil followers of the loas, and we were spared this.

That's not to say there aren't racially problematic points to this book. There certainly are, starting with the fact that with one exception all of the good guys are white or mixed-race. But as I said before, there are bad guys aplenty, and we get lots of those with white skin. We are not left having to deal with black equals bad and white equals good, which also would have brought me right out of the story.

I could have wished for more subtlety here and there. I figured out one of the identity issues early on, and "Doctor Howard Phillips" screamed out in a book which had already mentioned the Great Old Ones by name.

I'll forgive it all, though, for the moments of clarity experienced by Ace. I'll forgive it for Benny being genre-aware and realizing what's going on, for her determination not to be a screaming female, for her wry sense of humor. I'll forgive it for the Doctor explaining that the Great Old Ones will act a certain way and being right, despite all hints to the contrary and for his not-at-all quiet rage at the way the people of the island are treated.

Does it have weak points? Sure it does. This is the strongest outing since Transit, though, and I really enjoyed it.

White Darkness

The thing I think you have to understand in order to have any hope in hell of deriving satisfaction from 'White Darkness' is that it is, first and foremost, a love letter to the pulps. And when I say pulps, I mean the unreconstructed, practically paleolithic by modern standards pulps. The novel references Lovecraft, World War I Germans and voodoo in a sort of ur-pulp villainous scheme...evil voodoo priests team up with German soldiers to revive C'thulhu. It doesn't get more pulpy than that.

And this is, as often happens with Doctor Who, both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because as Paul Magrs famously described it, the TARDIS is really a machine that travels between genres. The Doctor frequently works best when he's bouncing off the well-established tropes of other stories, reacting against them in unexpected ways and making them respond in ways they're not used to. (The crude, but effective example on display here involves the Doctor chasing down the evil bocor Gilles Lemaitre through a network of tunnels...and using a laser cannon to cut shortcuts into the rock so he can get to the villain's destination first.) Plunking the Doctor down into a stew of pulp tropes is a good way of developing an interesting story almost by default.

The curse comes from the fact that those tropes are so old and well-established that they resist that kind of deformation. For all that David McIntee tries to show a more culturally aware and socially responsible view of voudou and Haiti, the old pulp tropes of savages making human sacrifices and dancing under the moonlight to their debauched and foreign gods still come out, simply because McIntee can't wholly let go of them and still create the kind of atmosphere that he's looking for. The most heroic native character is mixed-race, and even though I don't think the intent of it was racist, it's hard not to escape the problematic implications of making the "better" character whiter as well. Deliberately attempting to recreate a racially problematic era, it is hard not to bring the bad along with the good.

And frankly, this kind of subversion works better with a writer whose gifts involve wordplay and humor. You don't get that with McIntee. He's a functional writer whose strengths are plotting and concept, not characterization and wit. Twisting a genre trope on its head doesn't come naturally to him, because he relies on those tropes to sustain his novel when his narrative gifts aren't quite up to the job. (Take Colonel Mortimer, for example, who's basically a stock Marine character from Central Casting there to handle a role McIntee doesn't care to invest more energy into. Or medical examiner Howard Phillips, whose name might as well be Lovecraft P. Pastichey.)

This isn't to say that the novel is bad--only that it aspires to be nostalgic and functional in a range that is rapidly becoming much more. We're still in a period where Virgin is finding its way, and certainly we've already seen much bigger stinkers from the range. 'White Darkness' works as a piece of fiction in a way that say, 'The Pit' utterly doesn't. But at the same time, it's hard to read 'Lucifer Rising' right before this and feel that the two of them belong in the same book line.

Chat: Lucifer Rising

John: So I guess the first thing that comes to mind is, "Wasn't it nice to read a proper, grown-up book again?" I mean, this one had actual characters, a proper plot, all that good stuff. Nice change after the last couple books, wasn't it?

Dee: Definitely. I mean, the book had its definite flaws, but I thought it was miles, light-years, above the previous few.

John: Well, the previous two. I think that 'The Highest Science' beats this one out. But that might be a little unfair, because my primary complaint about 'Lucifer Rising' is that none of the big plot points ever went anywhere in the later books. The big epic ending is Ace realizing she never loved Jan, Benny realizing that she doesn't need to hold onto her survivor's guilt over her mother's death, and the Doctor realizing that he's become too manipulative and needs to start killing people face to face, where he can watch them suffer. (Or something.) And they all became telepathically linked and best buddies, and the Doctor had a premonition of his impending regeneration. And NONE of that ever came to anything. Unless, if you want to be generous, you count the TV movie as the culmination of that last one.

Dee: Yes. But that said, the Doctor is back! The spraypainting the spybot is so very very Seven. I could see Sylvester McCoy doing that without even stretching a neuron, and it brought a real smile to my face. For the first time, I felt like we got to know Benny, too. Climbing into the food dispenser was a metric ton of awesome in a very small container. I found myself more relaxed reading this book, more confident that nothing that was completerly and utterly out of left field was coming. Even the bit characters meant something. I liked the relationship between Sam and his wife, for instance, short as the scene with them together was.

John: I agree on that score...although I think the juggling was probably just a titch too far. (Still funny, though.) This was definitely one of the major early triumphs as far as Benny went (although again, I think that 'Highest Science' did a good job of developing her.) It's funny that you mention "nothing that was completely and utterly out of left field was coming", though, because I felt like it did, at least twice. First with the IMC mercenaries...not only was their arrival not foreshadowed, but the entire piece of conceptual worldbuilding that explained why they were allowed to do what they did came after they arrived. And then at the end, the explanation of what the mushroom farm did felt like it was just sort of, "Oh, we need it to do something big and potentially universe-endingly scary."

Dee: It could have been playing the spoons! (That would have been too far in my book. Juggling, eh. No weirder than Four doing the hypnosis in The Ribos Operation.)

What I meant by coming out of left field was more in characterization than plot, and I think what you're talking about is more plot-related. Yes, holy cow, what on earth we have space mercenaries? is a valid reaction. I wasn't as put off by the mushroom thing because I was already on board for "this place does astonishing stuff and that's just asking for it to go terribly wrong" with the unexplained moon orbits.

What I really want to note here is the way I saw shades of The Impossible Planet in this one. Or, more accurately, how I think this was concept-checked in The Impossible Planet. Is it just me, or do you see that too?

John: Oh, totally. We've both been operating for a while now on the working theory that the NAs were a big crucible that they used to distill out the key elements of the new Doctor Who before it went to series, and this one is a clear influence. (We'll actually see the writer of 'The Impossible Planet' show up before we leave the Virgin books, in fact.) There are other books that influenced it as well, but yes, this is a clear ancestor.

Dee: Alas, there was no way they could pull this book off in a season. It would take the total season budget, period. But I can feel the aspects of it peeking through. Although I think I liked the characters better as people in The Impossible Planet, I have to say... but that's me. I did like that the Doctor could have left at any time, unlike the TV episode... but didn't. He was going to see it through.

John: Yes. Although I didn't like the whole, "The Doctor secretly uses mysterious telepathic powers to make people accept his presence without asking awkward questions" bit. Primarily because if he really could do that, he wouldn't get locked up as quickly or as frequently as he usually does.

Dee: Maybe it's something he's just learning to use? Spitballing, as I agree with you it's very deus ex machina-y.

Other things I like: the idea of a multi-moon ecosystem-and-power plant-and-temple. That was awesome. It felt both natural and appropriately alien. I liked the multicultural nature of the crew. I liked the idea that they were in a money crunch... too often that kind of economy gets ignored in books, but it felt real. There was a sense of a greater universe of which this was one part, and that's hard to do convincingly.

John: Yes, that's the upside of Andy Lane's continuity fetish; he's engaging in some serious worldbuilding here, taking the background details of continuity that we saw in TV stories like 'Colony in Space' and doing some serious thought about what the world would be like given the glimpses we've seen of it...and what history would be like given the moments the Doctor's stepped into. It gives the book a sense of texture, of having a universe that's really lived in. (The downside, of course, would be the unsubtle winks to the past like the mention of the Hydrax. Those always seem to me like when bands shout out, "Hello, Minneapolis!" at concerts, just because they know they'll always get a cheer when they mention something you already know and love.)

Dee: Hee. Well, yes. In this case it works out well, though. It's not much different than things we've seen in the TV show, like the Macra in Gridlock. They didn't really add much to the plot, but hey, fans, we looooove you! And that texture is really important. It even adds to the idea of the Doctor having a lot of work to do to erase himself from things hundreds of years later, so I can solidly get behind it.

John: I can generally get behind it, but occasionally Andy Lane takes it a bit far. But we'll discuss that more when we get to 'Original Sin' and the scene where the Doctor reminisces about the footgear he wore on previous adventures. Likewise, I think we'll save Jim Mortimore's peculiar tendency towards whacking his supporting cast...unless you want to comment on it?

Dee: Nah. He seems to enjoy it a bit much, but then, that didn't happen as much as it should have even on the series, so. I do want to touch on Ace, though. I have reached the conclusion at this point that Ace is going to be like that kid I knew in high school who I had a crush on but then she went in the military and we just can't relate any more. And I'll have to be OK with that, but damn, you know? That's kind of where I am with her at this point.

John: Yeah...there's a lot more sturm undt drang to get through before we finally get a reasonable interpretation of the character. Although thankfully not a ton in our next book...which has ZOMBIES! Woo! See you there!

Lucifer Rising

My frustration with the line abated slightly with this book. For e first time in a bit I could actually hear Sylvester McCoy's voice speaking theDoctor's lines. I could see the movements as he would do them. I could even, I sigh to say, see Ace and hear Sophie Aldred.

That wouldn't be a problem if I actually liked the way her character arc is going. Frankly, I don't understand how we get from the Travelers to the current Ace, but I am going to have to let that go. So, given the Ace we are given, I have to say she is drawn pretty well. Within this book, the characters are consistent to themselves. That certainly puts it more than a cut above the other books lately.

I think this is the first book I feel I'm truly getting a sense of Benny, too. Before, she was mainly not-screamy and not-Ace. This book, she forms friendships. She tries to escape competently. She is actually helpful. I seriously want this trend to continue.

Most importantly and thank Gods, the Doctor is back. I missed him so. Yes, he's plotting. Yes, he doesn't tip his hand and he overshoots and it bites him on the butt. But it's the Doctor I recognize, and I am so thrilled to have him.

I can see points in the new series possibly influenced by this book, most notably "The Impossible Planet." The Angels in the atmosphere are replaced by the demon in the planet's heart, and the two planets in impossible orbits are replaced by one in impossible stasis, but the claustrophobic atmosphere is very similar. It's easy to imagine Davies thinking about this, knowing that he'll never have the budget to realize it, and telling someone he wants something like it. (Not saying that happened, but...)

And there are interesting ideas here: the simulated child, the feedback loop system, the theological implications. I'm still not entirely sure what was going on with Miles and the tribal history. I did like the fact that at least someone tried to make the future multicultural whose name was not Paul or Ben. I also liked the multidimensional aliens, although I thought they could have been more, well, alien.

This is a book that could have been made clearer, but it succeeded on so many points I don't feel like nitpicking. After the previous few, it comes as a complete relief for me.