Time of Your Life

Somewhere else, across space and time, the Doctor has gone into hiding on the planet Torrok. Haunted by the events of his trial and the revelations of his future, he has taken a time out from his travels with the express intention of avoiding meeting Melanie Bush as long as possible to give himself time to recover. His rest is cut short by interferance by the Time Lords themselves, and the Doctor is propelled into a head on conflict with the local broadcasting firms, who are showing some incredibly violent television to a population who are unable to see anything beyond their televisions.

So here we have another of those famed sci-fi cliches about how bad television is and what a prophet of doom it is and how everyone who watches television will be turned into sheep in the future. Sci-fi writers love this kind of thing, and in Doctor Who it has already been touched on in Vengeance on Varos as well as referenced in previous novelized adventures (and in the future adventures would be a pivotal plot factor in the episodes Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways). Problem with doing it this way is the Doctor is again being shown on television as a contestant in a game that will see him victorious or dead; he's done this on Varos already, and Leela several novels back was also subjected to such rigours. And it all smacks of the Stephen King novella turned Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man.

Did all this repetition put me off, though? Not really, no, because Steve Lyons is no stranger to Doctor Who, and at the time of this novel's publication he had put out a few adventures already and laced them with humour, character intregue, and fantastic dialogue. I will readily admit that no Lyons novels exactly leap into my head as examples of now Doctor Who should be done, but at the same time I don't cringe at his name the same way I do at the likes of Peter Darvill-Evans, Neil Penswick, and Mike Perry and Robert Tucker. And sometimes Pip and Jane Baker.

Lyons gets the honour, though, of creating the first ever non-televised character for the series. Yes, by now reading this blong in a linear progression a reader would be acquainted with the likes of Jeremy Fitzoliver (sometimes with the third Doctor) and more recently Erimem (with the fifth Doctor), and there are plenty more to come, but the first ever character to be officially sanctioned by the BBC is one Grant Markham - a computer programmer geek fanboy. Grant has some of Melanie's background in computers but I am relieved to say that he does not have the whining irritating factor of Adric, nor is he shifty like Turlough was originally. Grant joins the Doctor at the end of the sory but only appears one more time in print, with his departure story not even part of the Missing Adventures range. Open ended, some might say, but in a future book, Instruments of Darkness, he is mentioned in passing, proof that he made a lasting impression on the Doctor.

Unfortunately, he doesn't get a chance to make one with the readers.

NEXT EPISODE : KILLING GROUND