Millennial Rites

It's 1999 and the Doctor and Melanie are in London in time for the festivities of New Years Eve. Melanie looks up some old friends while the Doctor gets in touch with some people from his own past, and both paths lead to the same place: a plan to run a computer program that will over-write reality and allow a brooding sentience a foothold into the world.

Again, another novel I read a long time ago when it first came out in 1995, and I mention it here as more of a continuity piece than a stellar piece of plot and writing. Rites was the first story in the series to take place on New Years Eve between 1999 and 2000, playing on the growing concerns the media had for the future of the world when all the computers hit 01/01/00 (and obviously nothing happened), and since that time Millennium Shock and the first TV movie on FOX also have been set on the same evening - and none of their events coincide despite the fact that two tales take place in the same city. Ah continuity. How can this series have none when it counts? That aside though, Rites fits into the tapestry of what was, at the time, a loose arc of future-current history in the series' fledgling new adventures range as published by Virgin press, and draws on previous tales to bring characters together in its narrative. Anne Travers, menaced by the Yeti in The Web of Fear is now a Dame, and after the events at New World University in Downtime is petrified if another incursion by the Great Intelligence. Her parinoia is joined by that of Ashely Chapel, now a millionaire but in the past an associate of Tobias Vaughan during his bid to sell out Earth to the Cybermen. They have the best of intentions, as the Doctor cannot always be there to save them, but despite his warnings their plan unleashes an even worse fate where his own dark nature begins to seep through in the form of the Valeyard.

To me, Rites is more of a piece of the puzzle than it is a stellar bit of writing on its own. I don't remember buying into the alternate-world scenario very much while I was reading it, where Melanie is transformed into Melaphyre and is an authority figure. Even with that freaky Bride of Frankenstein hairdo on the cover, I don't really think Mel was ever leadership material. Still, once it's all back to normal things slot back into place; Mel and the Doctor heading back to parts unknown but the Doctor's fate already known to the readers (this was at the time the only novel written to fill the gap between Trial of a Time Lord and Time and the Rani, but now there is substantially more material in various media to extend their time together).

I promise I'll read it again more thoroughly; at best I just skimmed it trying to reignite my old thoughts. And if I have something better to say, I'll be back to edit.

Meanwhile...

NEXT EPISODE : THE ONE DOCTOR