I continue my journey through Virgin's early 1990's Doctor Who 'New Adventures' novel series, featuring the 7th Doctor, with occasional dips into the sister series 'Missing Adventures' featuring Doctors 1-6. I posted a while back about the range up to Gareth Roberts' Tragedy Day, but I don't intend to cover each novel in either series in depth, merely to pick and choose.
Legacy is probably my favourite of Gary Russell's early novels, although his McCoy felt much more like Troughton to me (curiously unlike his Troughton in Invasion of the Cat-People!). Justin Richards' Theatre of War wasn't anywhere near as bad as some online reviews had led me to believe, and whilst obviously not up to the standard of his later work it was an enjoyable read all the same.
Next up was a book I'd been looking forward to reading for some time now: Andy Lane's All Consuming Fire. I've only recently re-kindled my affection for Sherlock Holmes and having thoroughly enjoyed the depiction of Conan Doyle in the 4th Doctor 'Missing Adventure' Evolution (by John Peel) I was intrigued to find this novel treating Holmes & Watson as real people in a tale told as if it were a Holmes story, near enough. Early on I found myself questioning if I really wanted these two worlds to be brought together. What could they offer each other? How would one compliment or enlighten the other? To be perfectly honest I don't think it works. Holmes and the Doctor don't get on - but not in the same way that the Doctor doesn't get on with his other selves, so it's an uneven clash that does neither character any favours. Consequently for periods each has to be side-lined while the other does what's needed for the purposes of story development. Watson and Bernice are consistent throughout and have clear roles to fill, whoever they're working with. Ace is used as a kind of guerilla enigma and by the time she enters both Holmes and Watson are so far out of their depth that you can't imagine either of them ending up without some sort of resultant breakdown or psychiatric trouble. And there's the rub: this works as a Doctor Who story, but as a Sherlock Holmes story it's too far fetched to fit in with the canonical works. Lane makes a good stab at staying faithful to Conan Doyle's style through Watson's narrative passages but as with Anthony Horowitz's The House of Silk you can't avoid observing the more detailed and exact, knowing prose of a modern author as opposed to Doyle's often broad brush-stroke (yet effective and economic) approach. I just wonder how it might have been if Holmes and the Doctor got on really well and it was Watson who was suspicious and mis-trusting of him instead..?
It's not quite a fan-gasm piece, but I'm wary of takes where fictional worlds collide. After all, how many of us would like to see Miss Marple aboard the Liberator, or Father Dowling accompanying the away party from the USS Enterprise..?!
I was equally looking forward to Terrance Dicks' Blood Harvest next, not least because even if Dicks' work isn't always the most in-depth it's always immensely readable. Also this was the point where the 'Missing Adventures' came into being and Blood Harvest was a prequel / sequel (literary time paradox alert!) to Paul Cornell's opening 5th Doctor MA Goth Opera. Despite Peter Darvill-Evans' claims in the introduction to Goth Opera I don't believe either book would be as rewarding if read in isolation - particularly with what they both add to Time Lord mythology - and I'm glad I looked at them as a two book 'special'.
Once I'd got used to the 1930s Chicago cliches and atmosphere in Blood Harvest, my main issue with it was the same as my issue with the 4th Doctor section of the BBC EDA novel The Eight Doctors: Dicks seems to feel he wasted an opportunity with State of Decay on TV and wants to give the planet more people and more of a society. So it's no longer just the one settlement and the three who rule, there's more Lords and peasant settlements out there, and possibly more vampires too. This really undermines a lot of the setting and appeal of the TV story and the horror from the locals that there could be anyone else on the planet except themselves and their Lords.
Dicks tells an atmospheric story, split betwen Chicago and E-Space, although what comes across as period charm and character development may read to some as mere padding before the story gets anywhere exciting. You can't deny that there's a real feeling that Dicks loves the subject, and loves what he does, and this really comes across on the page. I've nothing to reference his Al Capone or the Chicago gangland culture against (it's never really interested me, I'll admit) but it reads as authenticly as the subject and genre requires, whether it's cod or not. Blood Harvest may not be his best work by a long shot, but it's perfectly readable and enjoyable nontheless.
The end teases the reader gently into Goth Opera, and the blood-filled arms of Virgin's golden boy Paul Cornell.
It's obvious from the start that Cornell writes brilliantly for the 5th Doctor as well as Nyssa and Tegan. In fact Tegan may have come across as a less objectional character at times, and with necessary humour, if she'd been annotated on screen the way Cornell justifies and excuses some of her more forthright outbursts on the page. I'm rather surprised that Cornell didn't write any further 5th Doctor novels as he's clearly fond of the team and had thought a great deal about how to use them most effectively, how to play to their individual strengths, how to give them all something meaningful to do in the story and how to involve cricket!
Goth Opera achieves its aim to evoke the mid-Davison era whilst also confidently taking the story and its settings beyond what could have been achieved on TV at the time or indeed would have been deemed suitable for broadcast at the time. It opens the 'Missing Adventures' series in a non-taxing way with quite a short read (considering how long some of the recent NAs had been) but I can't help wondering if Terrance Dicks had got to the point in Blood Harvest earlier maybe both stories could have been combined as one? therein I think they are inextricably joined. I enjoyed both books, but at times I wondered if there was a strong or focussed enough story driving through the middle of both of them, and in Goth Opera particularly there are a lot of side distractions and procrastinating passages which maybe add context and build mythos but don't drive anything forward necessarily.
One stortelling aspect they share is that both authors are careful to present balanced arguments with sympathetic characters and points of view on both sides of the coin. This is worthy of note and praise.
On the whole the books in this post have been varied and rewarding and both the NA & MA ranges seem to have hit a regular high standard of writing, story-telling and characterisation. I'm looking forward to Simon Messingham's Strange England already...
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