The Empire of Death

The Doctor and Nyssa attempt to travel back to 1851 once more but instead are drawn off course by a ghost that appears to be and claims to be Adric. The TARDIS arrives in 1863 in the presence of Queen Victoria herself during a seance in which she is attempting to contact the lost soul of Prince Albert, the seance being conducted by a young boy who can speak with the voices of the dead. The boy claims to have come into contact with the Other Side when he almost drowned as a child, and now he can comminicate back and forth through a submerged portal. The Doctor and Nysa know a dimensional rift when they see one and know how dangerous it can be, but to the Monarch it is a new land to be made part of the Empire.

For starters this novel should have been done a bit earlier in my review cycle instead of at the end of the Big Finish "season" as it deals with the lingering spectres of Adric's death and Tegan's departure, indicating that they were both very recent events. Nyssa's confusion and upset at them though is a bit forced, dimming by comparison to her confrontation of the Doctor in Spare Parts. Still, the issue I was always curious about, the deal with the Master running around in her father's body, that is actually addressed here for the first time. I'm just not a fan of how David Bishop writes on the whole.

The supporting cast of the novel are a bit on the disposable side, showing up for a bit, a huge chunk of background information thrown into the narrative, and then they're gone. After watching this year's Tooth and Claw I found myself thinking of the Queen Victoria from that script and loaning her attributes to Bishop's characterization; the Victoria in this novel suffers from her tale being used as narrative, rather than being told from her own perspective, which is something I feel can insult the intelligence of the reader from time to time.

And whats the story here anyways? I think I lost track of it somewhere. Is this a deliberate invasion or an accident? Why exactly did the Doctor get summonned to the Other Side? And this whole angle of duplicates from one side of the rift to the other - that was sprung on us rather suddenly. Maybe I was sleeping when I read it, or maybe the story spent too long getting somewhere and by the time it arrived I had lost interest. And then out of nowhere there were demons.

One big thing I take issue with where Bishop's writing is concerned here is his ready-made cannon fodder in the form of loosely defined soldiers. When it comes time for there to be a battle, there are suddent heaps and heaps of them, but up until that time I was never given the impression of a very large military unit present. The same thing happened in Bishop's previous novel, Amorality Tale with the third Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and a ton of posessed policemen (I didn't review this one on purpose - I couldn't stand reading it again) called into action as soon as something close to a "final battle" scene was required.

So that's it for this set of adventures; back to the TV series.

NEXT EPISODE : ARC OF INFINITY