The Highest Science / The Pit

The TARDIS is drawn to the planet Sakkrat by a large temporal fluctuation, and the Doctor and Bernice discover that it has hijacked a group of invading Chelonians, a group of drug addicted teenage music fans and an entire commuter train. While investigating, the truth of the planet comes out, that its original inhabitants were destroyed by their own creation: the Highest Science.

That's about all I remember of the basic plot. I read it just as long ago as I read Transit and it didn't leave as much of a mark in my mind. I remember that the story follows some pretty traditional patterns, with the Doctor being caught up with the baddies (in this case the xenophobic giant-turtle-people, the Chelonians)and Bernice stuck with the drugged up kids, who even get her to partake of their poison of pleasure : Bubbleshake. And the poor commuters on the train, they just want to go home. Bubbleshake is one of those drug drinks that triggers memory loss in the user, so for her second adventure with the Doctor, Bernice is once more not exactly herself.

Author Gareth Roberts has a distinct writing style all his own, and one I did not immediately enjoy. I can't remember exactly why, maybe because the contrast with Transit was so harsh; we go from gritty and nasty "cyberpunk" to a more comedic way to telling a story. Robert's style would not be lost during the days of Douglas Adams as script editor in the Tom Baker era, and in fact three of his later efforts would be missing adventures that take place in exactly that timeline (I didn't review them, no). Roberts later went on to write episodes of Coronation Street and co-write the pilot episode of spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures with Russell T. Davies.

As for The Pit... there's not a lot to say aside from it's terrible. It's awful. The plot is so vague and thin on the ground that I can hardly remember any of it aside from what was written on the back of the book. But I remember thinking that I was not enjoying it at all, from the presence of a supposedly menacing Time Lord from ancient Gallirey right to some weak reference to UNIT. Not inspirational stuff by any means, and author Neil Penswick gets the dubious award of First Crap Novel of the New Adventures Range.

Everything had been going so well until this one came along. Series editor Peter Darvill-Evans had been doing such a good job, and then this. What was he thinking?

Oh right, he was too busy writing his own novel for the series. It's next.

NEXT EPISODES : DECEIT and LUCIFER RISING

Transit

Just as they get their new friendship going, the Doctor and Benny are separated from each other and from the TARDIS in a freak accident in the King's Cross station of the Sol Transit System, somewhere in Earth's future. Benny is blown down the stunnel to a far distant stop across the solar system leaving the Doctor to search for her amid an Earth culture reeling from a recent war against the Ice Warriors. But the true nature of the accident is not random; something is chewing its way through the system, destroying everything in its path; something that has possessed Benny and recognizes the Doctor for the threat he poses to its plans.

This is a brilliant novel. BRILLIANT. Author Ben Aaronovitch previously brought us the cracking script for Remembrance of the Daleks and has summonned even more creative energy to describe an Earth of the future down to such detail that you can smell it on the page. And I am not just talking the people he has populated the story with - even the mysterious Kadiatu Lehtbridge-Stewart - but the whole culture of Earth and the effects technology have had upon human society. I'll put it this way: when the novel actually comes with a glossary you know you're dealing with something different, and when the terms within are not just a collection of glib phrases but an actual lexicon of a future society ... fantastic.

The first time I read Transit I was... well, I was younger and really was aching for escape. The future vision created in the book is not the stuff of utopia - far from it - but it's alive, it's energetic, it's so different and still so the same. Is this a groundbreaking novel? For the series, I would say yes. The term "cyberpunk" got bandied around quite a bit when the book was being reviewed back then (1992 ... "back then"... oh hell...) and it met with the usual kind of decrying of fan snobs who said it was nothing like cyberpunk - but there's always going to be the elitists in any movement who want to be more radical than anyone around them. Is Transit radical? It's certainly different, with its unabashed commentary on sexuality in the future (the joyboys, and the small child prostitute with condoms tied into her dreadlocks by her mother), its insane level of violence (with one character even named Verhoeven after the director of the ultra-violent, and perhaps somewhat inspirational in this sense, movie Total Recall) and for the first use of the word fuck in a Doctor Who novel.

Yes. The f-word! OH MY GOD THE F-WORD. If the DWIN executive ninnies of the time weren't already all squirrelly about the vanilla sexuality in Timewyrm : Genesys you can imagine what this did to them. There was still that element of fandom that refused to grow up, and refused to let the series grow up in case it forced them to, but there it is, right there on page 41: Maybe time travels fucks with your mind, thought Benny. Of course this just opened the floodgates and the dreaded f-word would just fly out of every mouth in the series, until it got to a point a few years later where the word was dumbed down to the less harmful "cruk". Yeah, gee, I wonder what THAT means? Give me strength.

Transit set into motion a new movement of future history in Doctor Who where the new authors would go to play from time to time - most notably Kate Orman and Craig Hinton. Yes, there would still be alien places, and there would be adevntures back in history, but the future would look a bit different now. And so would Doctor Who.

NEXT EPISODES : THE HIGHEST SCIENCE and THE PIT (a double bill because I promised Jay we'd be ready for the 8th Doctor by autumn...)

Love and War

It's the 51st century and the Doctor and Ace come to the planet Heaven. They are there just to relax while the Doctor looks for a book, but soon it becomes evident that the Doctor has some other agenda and Ace is once more a pawn in his plans. While she becomes involved with a Traveller named Jan, then Doctor crosses paths with one Professor Bernice Summerfield who is on Heaven for an archaeology dig, until she and her group are threatened by the monstrous Hoothi, and eventually by the plans of the Doctor himself.

Paul Cornell is back with one of the most intricate looks into the future that the series has had so far. Heaven is a massive cultural melting pot of different species, most notably though it is a refuge where Humans and Draconians exist together in peace sometime after a Dalek war, but the threat of attracting the attention of the Sontarans remains. And the Silurians have come out of hiding and also live alongside Humans, having taken on the new name of Earth Reptiles. And the Hoothi have plans for all of them.

Odd name, yes, but it's not actually Cornell's own. The species name is borrowed from one line from The Brain of Morbius way back in the Tom Baker era, when Maren says "Even the silent gas dirigibles of the Hoothi I felt in my bones while still a million miles distant,". Cornell, being a fan himself, has taken that one line and fashioned his whole story around it. Just who are the Hoothi? The best way to sum them up is intergalactic fungus that spreads through spores, and they're ready to invade, with Heaven being their first stop to conquest.

In dealing with them, the Doctor pushes Ace too far, and she finally leaves him in a rage, her life having been subject to his whims and under his control for too long. Ace has grown far beyond the 16 year-old girl she was when she met him in Dragonfire, and she can see what he has done to her and to others he has met along the way.

Assuming the role of new companion is Bernice Summerfield, a professor of archaeology from Heidelberg Unversity on Earth who prefers to go by "Benny". The first companion of many who does not appear on televised episode, Benny is older than Ace (late 30s is the best guess) and more mature, but still with parental issues of her own (mother killed in the Dalek war, father missing, presumed dead)and a bit of wariness around the Doctor after seeing what being with him has done to Ace.

At the time of the book's printing, Ace had been the sole companion for 6 years, and her departure was felt through fandom the same as any others who had been with the Doctor for a long time. There was a lot of complaining, and there was also the usual amount of "Thank god she's gone," from fans with nothing better to do than criticize everything about Doctor Who and not enjoy any of it (the Fat-Assed Anti-Fans as they are known). Myself I was annoyed that she was leaving, as the whole Doctor-Ace team had been one of the most successful in the series, right along with the fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith, and the fifth Doctor and Tegan, and with the show off the air for 5 years at this point letting Ace go seemed like another admission that there would never been any more episodes made. But change is good; and although Virgin Publishing were not allowed to regenerate the Doctor, they changed the companions and made good choices doing it. I would eventually grow to really enjoy Benny's wry comments in the TARDIS, and she would become a fan favourite in her own right and earn not only her own spin-off series of novels and audios (the latter with Big Finish) but eventually the character would be cast to appear in some of Big Finish's Doctor Who range as well, alongside Sylvester McCoy and Sophia Aldred in their roles.

But before we get there, we have some more ground to cover.

NEXT EPISODE : TRANSIT

Nightshade

I've been trying for weeks to get something to say about this one, because Mark Gattiss is a fantastic writer, and really knows his Dotor Who. But do I remember this book? Vaguely, at best.

What I do remember is English countryside in the 60's, and a retired TV star from a show called Professor Nightshade, and an alien invasion. A deep space monitoring station not unlike Jodrell Bank. The Doctor acting all defeatist and gloomy - the first time we see him really start to dip into his own inner pool of misery.

And then there's Ace. Falls in love, sort of, and then chooses to leave. But the Doctor won't let her go; he still needs her. And the rift between them starts to form, and it's not going to take much more before Ace has enough...

Ah well. Maybe reviewing all of these is a mistake if I do not remember everything. Just hit the high notes, maybe?

NEXT EPISODE : LOVE AND WAR