Lords of the Storm

The Doctor and Turlough arrive on the planet Raghi where members of its lower social caste are falling ill, some dying, others vanishing mysteriously. Investigation of this points to the nearby moon orbiting the gas giant Indra - where a Sontaran force are preparing an elaborate and deadly trap in what will be pivotal victory over the Rutans.

Lords of the Storm was published in 1995, the first science fiction attempt by until-then historical writer David A McIntee, and I remembered enjoying it so much that I have just read it again, some 12 years later, and realized why I liked it so much. This book is fun. Pure unadulterated fun. It's got a solid plot, it's got the Doctor and Turlough working together as a proper team, which is something we never got to see in the televised series, and it's got an actual confrontation between the Rutan and the Sontarans.

The Sontarans only appear in Doctor Who a grand total of four times yet they are as often mentioned in favourite monster polls as the Daleks or the Cybermen. What they've got going for them is an established sense of culture; as a species totally devoted to war against one enemy for eternity, they would appear to be singleminded and hollow, but McIntee has taken the hints of Sontaran life offered on television and expanded upon them to create a full picture of why the Sontarans do what they do, even going as far as to explain why some of them look different than others, and why some have more fingers than others (because blaming it all on the BBC proper and costume people is kinda silly). There are too many of them to list, but there are references to previous Sontaran stories aplenty, and a few hints at others to come including a spin-off movie called Shakedown which could be a sort of sequel to this one.

McIntee does not stop at the Sontarans; he goes deeper into the psyche of the Rutans and their culture, but also takes time to touch on the mythology of the Tzun; an alien race he created for his seventh Doctor novel, First Frontier. It takes some sheer talent to pull all these threads togther to make a tapestry like this, but he does it. I remember after reading his first few attempts at Doctor Who - and I believe I said as much when reviewing The Face of the Enemy - that I did not enjoy the way he wrote, but when I read this... yowzers. The back cover blurb says he likes to play the Star Wars video game called X Wing as research, and he has captured not only the spirit of the game, but even bits of the movies themselves with his incredible space battle sequences.

I like the Doctor and Turlough as a team. Just the guys, travelling around together. Tegan's departure is still relatively recent at this point so the two of them have a bit of an awkwardness about them now they're without her, but it works. One can almost hear Davison and Strickson in their respective roles as the Doctor and Turlough, he's got them down so well. And there is even a mention of Kamelion, the Master's old shape-shifting robot, as a reminder that he's still somewhere in the TARDIS after The King's Demons.

Let's look at multiculturalism in Doctor Who for a moment. Raghi is not a colony like others before it; instead of being founded by corporations, the efforts to terraform and move to the planet were all privately funded by the colony's predominantly Hindi population - something else I can tell McIntee dove right into researching as he has nailed that as well. And this is not done by making the people of Raghi seem elitist or insular; it is just the way the colony came to be. After all, why should space only be developed by rich white men? Bravo, I say.

I'm glad I read this again. I really am. I would go so far as to say this book is pretty much perfect, and that's a huge heap of praise no matter where it comes from.

NEXT EPISODE : PHANTASMAGORIA