Spiral Scratch

A visit to the Doctor's friend Professor Rummas on his library-world, Carsus, brings the Doctor and Melanie face to face with the grim image of Rummas' murder - and the Doctor's. Somehow the time lines have become damaged, and various Doctors and Melanies from different universes are crossing paths on the same mission: to solve the mystery of the Lamprey family before reality unravells all around them.

I hate multiple universe stories. Hate em hate em hate em. That is, if they're not done right. That old "alternate universe" clause gets bandied around far too much in science fiction for my liking, and although the Doctor only legitimately goes to such places twice in the televised series (maybe three times, we're still not sold on the events of Battlefield taking place anywhere but on this Earth), the phrase comes up to dismiss continuity errors and sloppy research by writers.

So Gary Russell wants to write about the multiverse. And you know what, he does okay. His plot threads never get away from him, the ideas are not too challenging to follow, and despite the fact that events are whipsawing all across time and space - indeed, some events are revistied several times from the perspective of different Doctors - it never gets confusing to the extent that the reader wants to throw the book away in disgust.

When I say multiple Doctors, though, we're not talking the whole set of six showing up, but different universe versions of the same - the sixth - Doctor. Essentially they're all the same, the most different one being the one all dressed in black with a horrid scar down his face, but he's not akin to the Valeyard, he's just the Doctor in black. And the same can be said of the different versions of Melanie, including a version of her from Earth where Rome's empire never fell, and a hybrid human-Silurian Mel. All different, and all the same. There are even glimpses of Peri, Evelyn, and Frobisher at times. No Grant, though.

Do I buy into the Lampreys being a real monster threat? Sort of. From how they are described I am more reminded of the Fendahleen than anything, but I have just looked up a picture of a lamprey on wikipedia and I am reminded of how creepy those things really are. Okay, I buy it. They're bad. And intelligent as well as ugly.

Remember back when I was doing Synthespiens and I said how I loathed writers who decided they would write THE last story before a pivotal event in the series' history? This is one of those books. This is meant to be THE final adventure for the sixth Doctor. And this time I do not mind. Owing to certain foolish decisions at the BBC back in 1986 we were cheated out of a final story for the sixth Doctor; there was no closure, no noble end, nothing. Just a cop-out. The last time we saw the Doctor in this incarnation on our screens was when he and Melanie left the Time Lord space station after the Doctor's trial was finished. The sixth Doctor never got fleshed out properly; we never really got to know him until years later when writers were allowed to go back and give him more adventures and new companions. Doctor Who is not one of those series where the phrase "too little too late" applies; I'll admit that I was never keen on the sixth Doctor before simply because I never got to see enough of him, and what I did see I did not enjoy. Well, my opinion changed over the years, and now that I have come to the end of his run (at least for now) I can say that I will miss him. Thanks to the efforts of the writers for BBC Books, Virgin Books and Big Finish, this Doctor has been allowed to ascend to a more noble stature than he was previously granted, which makes his departure from the televised series all the more irritating and sad.

NEXT EPISODE : TIME AND THE RANI