System Shock
It's 1998 and the Doctor and Sarah have returned to Earth again. Sarah is blown away by the level of computer technology that has come about since her day, and everything seems to be made by the same company, their products are everywhere. Behind the scenes, though, things are not what they seem at all; there's a race of mechanically enhanced snake-people hiding out under human skins, and a nasty computer virus named Voractyll is about to be unleashed on the world through the information superhighway in a bid to take over the planet. The Doctor and Sarah have survived through all sorts of adventures before but they need help this time, and it comes in the form of Harry Sullivan himself, older, wiser, and still a doofus.
Okay that's a sketchy plotline but I read System Shock back when it was published in 1995, so now 11 years later I'm a bit vague on how it all went down. But I remember liking reading it on the TTC on my way to work for a few days that cold November, and it left an impression somewhere in my memory to say "this was a good one".
But my reason for including it here is not necessarily to review the plot but to show how it was designed to fit into the series. New novels are always best suited to the gap between seasons rather then jam them in between adventures as they happen; I find that sometimes writers put our regular cast through the wringer to such an extreme in novels between television episodes that it's hard to see them back to their cheerful selves like nothing had happened. Yes, continuity is always going to suffer in one way or another; the series itself has already destroyed Atlantis in three completely different ways, made a bit of a mess of Dalek continuity, and even redefined the Doctor's origins, so throwing an adventure as intense as System Shock in between televised episodes would be unwise. One reason would be the recovery time for the Doctor and Sarah (not physically but really they never seem to get exhausted or shell shocked; the rest of us would be insane by now) and also the impact of meeting Harry Sullivan again years after he had left them. Sarah observes how she had just seen him recently (this would be in The Android Invasion) and now maybe a month later here he was having aged 20 years, her first real sense of having travelled in time aside from the adventures in history.
Harry himself is the subject of some fun continuity. Sometime in the mid eighties, Target novels made their first attempt to create original fiction based on the televised series, and they started with the short-lived companions series. All in all only three novels were produced, and one of them featured Harry Sullivan, written by Ian Marter himself. The events Harry Sullivan's War are actually referenced very briefly here, alluding to him doing some work at Porton Down before moving on to work in MI-5, his UNIT days long over. And at the end of the novel, there is a brief glimpse of somthing along the lines of relief from Harry when he watches the TARDIS leave, perhaps more disturbed from his travels with the Doctor than he let on. And on a further note of continuity, he meets Sarah again but in her "present" self of 1998 to reflect on what has just gone on. A reference to Sarah's own days after leaving the Doctor is made; drawing together the strings of her own life after leaving the TARDIS crew. By now it is no secret that Sarah Jane Smith will be in an episode of the next new season of the series alongside David Tennant and Billie Piper, but between her eventual departure from the regular series and her return for the 2006 episode, Sarah does indeed go on with a spin-off adventure, a reuniting with the Doctor, then with the Brigadier, and evntually falling into her own world of peril in a series of audio adventures.
But that's all in the future.
The point of all this? It's testament to how Doctor Who as a series can go on outside its own life on television and maintain its own mythology, with the companions of the Doctor having their own lives, their own adventures and maybe faring just that much better in life for having known him. As real people we all want to know that those we are close to in our lives will go on to be successful after we have gone our separate ways, and there is nothing better than seeing an old friend again and knowing that they have done just that.
NEXT EPISODE : THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA
Okay that's a sketchy plotline but I read System Shock back when it was published in 1995, so now 11 years later I'm a bit vague on how it all went down. But I remember liking reading it on the TTC on my way to work for a few days that cold November, and it left an impression somewhere in my memory to say "this was a good one".
But my reason for including it here is not necessarily to review the plot but to show how it was designed to fit into the series. New novels are always best suited to the gap between seasons rather then jam them in between adventures as they happen; I find that sometimes writers put our regular cast through the wringer to such an extreme in novels between television episodes that it's hard to see them back to their cheerful selves like nothing had happened. Yes, continuity is always going to suffer in one way or another; the series itself has already destroyed Atlantis in three completely different ways, made a bit of a mess of Dalek continuity, and even redefined the Doctor's origins, so throwing an adventure as intense as System Shock in between televised episodes would be unwise. One reason would be the recovery time for the Doctor and Sarah (not physically but really they never seem to get exhausted or shell shocked; the rest of us would be insane by now) and also the impact of meeting Harry Sullivan again years after he had left them. Sarah observes how she had just seen him recently (this would be in The Android Invasion) and now maybe a month later here he was having aged 20 years, her first real sense of having travelled in time aside from the adventures in history.
Harry himself is the subject of some fun continuity. Sometime in the mid eighties, Target novels made their first attempt to create original fiction based on the televised series, and they started with the short-lived companions series. All in all only three novels were produced, and one of them featured Harry Sullivan, written by Ian Marter himself. The events Harry Sullivan's War are actually referenced very briefly here, alluding to him doing some work at Porton Down before moving on to work in MI-5, his UNIT days long over. And at the end of the novel, there is a brief glimpse of somthing along the lines of relief from Harry when he watches the TARDIS leave, perhaps more disturbed from his travels with the Doctor than he let on. And on a further note of continuity, he meets Sarah again but in her "present" self of 1998 to reflect on what has just gone on. A reference to Sarah's own days after leaving the Doctor is made; drawing together the strings of her own life after leaving the TARDIS crew. By now it is no secret that Sarah Jane Smith will be in an episode of the next new season of the series alongside David Tennant and Billie Piper, but between her eventual departure from the regular series and her return for the 2006 episode, Sarah does indeed go on with a spin-off adventure, a reuniting with the Doctor, then with the Brigadier, and evntually falling into her own world of peril in a series of audio adventures.
But that's all in the future.
The point of all this? It's testament to how Doctor Who as a series can go on outside its own life on television and maintain its own mythology, with the companions of the Doctor having their own lives, their own adventures and maybe faring just that much better in life for having known him. As real people we all want to know that those we are close to in our lives will go on to be successful after we have gone our separate ways, and there is nothing better than seeing an old friend again and knowing that they have done just that.
NEXT EPISODE : THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA
Labels: Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith, The 4th Doctor
posted by Sean Hoover @ 8:05 PM
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