Clues by: Bruce D. Arthurs and Joe Menosky from a story by: Bruce D. Arthurs and directed by: Les Landau

 

“Clues” is written by: Bruce D. Arthurs and Joe Menosky, from a story by: Bruce D. Arthurs, and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 188, was the 14^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 88^th episode overall, and was broadcast on February 11, 1991.

 

It is a crime that “Clues” opens with a holodeck sequence of Guinan joining Picard in a Dixon Hill adventure that we then do not see.  Picard and Guinan as private detective and femme fatale are two actors at the top of their respective game having fun playing off each other.  It’s also the only sequence Whoopi Goldberg was available for in the episode and is falling back on a Season 2 trope of opening an episode on something that is at best only tangentially related to the conflict proper.  In this case, “Clues” is built on the mystery of why the crew was left unconscious for a day when passing a wormhole near a previously undiscovered Earth like planet instead of Data’s claimed 30 seconds.  The tension of the episode comes not from the question of if Data is lying, early in the episode there is indication that makes it clear he is lying and can lie, but the answer of why he is lying.  As a mystery there is just enough to fill a 45-minute episode of television, however, it becomes quite clear that this episode was developed without an answer to the mystery involved.

 

While it may be disingenuous to point out a character inconsistency once the reveal is had that part of the reason Data is lying is that Picard ordered him to, it weakens the episode as much of the tension comes from Data saying he cannot answer and denies Starfleet ordering him to but Picard does not use the logical follow up that would put the reveal in the middle of the episode instead of the final act.  The viewer should understand as being glossed over as to allow the episode to happen.  This issue can be explained as the episode was written initially by Bruce D. Arthurs who is credited both with the story and script, however, Joe Menosky provided the rewrite as his second episode this season after “Legacy”.  This is Arthurs’ only credit while Menosky continued to write for the franchise so it is likely he is responsible for how well the ret of the episode works.  It is a minor note in an episode that is otherwise fantastic at building tension and paranoia around the missing day.  The resolution of the episode is specifically subverting the expectation of a sinister alien incursion, instead the Enterprise simply became too close to an alien race that wishes to be left alone, and they agreed to the memory wipe.  Data cannot have a memory wipe and will always remember the missing day; however, the mistake that caused the episode was the crew overlooking things that became clues: a botanical experiment performed by Dr. Crusher and Worf breaking his arm are the biggest.  

 

Because of the little cracks the last act of “Clues” does decrease in quality because that’s where the explanation happens.  The aliens of the episode, speaking through Deanna Troi, are not given much exploration outside of xenophobia and isolationism.  Marina Sirtis does get some good material when she is taken over, initially being horrified of her own appearance in a scene that is played as a scene in a horror film and eventually being allowed to play the antagonist.  The aliens don’t become violent, but Sirtis is clearly having fun being threatening and more proactive however briefly than Troi is usually allowed to be.  “Clues” is an episode that works on melodrama.  Director Les Landau does not block the episode as a typical episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, instead taking inspirations from soap operas to bring out the melodrama while the memory is in question.  The final act is shot with standard blocking, deescalating the tension that has been built through the first two acts which are blocked often with techniques called backacting.  Backacting is a technique that happens in theater and soap opera where two or more characters are having a conversation, often one that is going to be turning dramatic, but instead of facing each other, they are both facing the audience/camera.  They are often blocked on slightly different planes of the set which Landau takes full advantage of for dramatic effect.  It’s because of the blocking in “Clues” that helps elevate the performances.  This isn’t an episode where characters get big arcs: Brent Spiner as Data is playing the character as normal, perhaps slightly less human than he normally would, but for Patrick Stewart, Gates McFadden, and Michael Dorn specifically they are giving into the melodrama.  There isn’t a specific character focused, but several characters get their own moments to shine and find a clue to indicate that a full day has passed.  The line delivery from McFadden at one point is explicitly soap opera enough that you would expect a dramatic sting, without going too far over the top to put this into the camp inherent in soap opera.

 

Overall, although the resolution of “Clues” becomes almost too simple and is where it becomes clear that two writers worked on making the script work up to that point, it’s an episode that builds dramatic paranoia so well for much of its runtime.  The cast eats up the dramatic tension and the production uses well-worn tricks to just explore the fear of not knowing your own mind, even the reveal of something not inherently sinister still plays on that instability of not knowing what happened.  It’s an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation playing on an interesting idea over spotlighting a specific character and it makes it feel like a proper change at this point in a season that has excelled at focusing on character.  8/10.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Trials of the Jedi by: Charles Soule

 

There is an inherent difficulty in ending a multimedia event.  These types of stories have far too many branching paths to expect every audience member to have experienced all of them.  If the story is going to hold up over time there is an added danger of some of the stories to be inaccessible.  Charles Soule was responsible for beginning The High Republic and Trials of the Jedi is his novel closing it.  In writing an ending it becomes clear that Soule is touching on every arc that The High Republic had opened, meaning that although I have been reading all of the adult and young adult novels there are some stories finished here with which I am unfamiliar.  Soule’s style as a novelist is also to intercut between several stories in such a way that feels less like a novel and more like a comic book, a criticism I had with Light of the Jedi.  The final pages of Trials of the Jedi are where Soule’s style of prose works at its best, going for a visceral reaction of despair at the fate of Marchion Ro as well as a montage of where the characters’ lives are headed from certain happy endings, to bittersweet separation of lovers, to falling completely to the dark side, though with hints at possible redemption.  The prose works because the scenes are particularly short, Soule’s style favoring quick and snappy descriptions of actions and dialogue that lingers more on the emotion than exactly what is being said.  Soule also works on the logic that every scene should end essentially on a mini cliffhanger, so the pace of the novel is this back and forth between tension and resolution before that final montage brings the final closure.  For a novel this creates a staccato pace that does not ever settle into the rhythm that it should, though unlike Light of the Jedi because there is closure, and that closure is largely satisfying for characters that the reader has been presumably following these characters for the long haul.

 

Where Trials of the Jedi is most interesting is how Soule centers empathy.  The Force having a light and dark side does imply there is an objective standard for good and evil, with the Jedi and the Sith representing those sides of good and evil.  The High Republic has been questioning that morality at the core of Star Wars as a franchise and Trials of the Jedi commits fully to the Nameless being not inherently evil but misunderstood.  The breaking through of the miscommunication barrier by Elzar Mann and Avar Kriss feels like the first big breakthrough of the novel.  It’s where the tides of battle can turn and the story itself works around.  They are given a name, the idea of being Nameless indicating they are things and not worthy of humanity.  The Shrikarai as they are named is fitting as a name in terms of the onomatopoeic potential, but their own abuses are used as a way for understanding.  It is that breakthrough that collapses Marchion Ro’s empire and begins his downfall, though the final action sequence between Ro and Bell Zettifar is a secondary parallel of reclaiming empathy towards a villain.  There’s explicitly parallels to the films: Revenge of the Sith, Return of the Jedi, and The Last Jedi come to mind.  Soule keeps the path to redemption open for Marchion Ro because that is the empathetic thing to do.  He can no longer harm anyone at the end of the novel and it is a road he rejects, but the choice was there.  For Bell Zettifar it is also making the correct choice in leaving the path open, as Mann and Kriss make the choice to forego attachment and proximity for the greater good of the galaxy to provide the Nameless humanity and to stop the Blight.

 

Soule does not simplify the choice for empathy as a road without consequences either.  Ro is put in prison and given the option to improve, but the actions of those who follow him are also examined.  Ghirra Starros’ ending comes to mind as the prime example of someone who has not changed, equally lacking the potential to do so.  The outcome of her arc is that her daughter is dead and in her own grief she denies the reality, coping by rationalizing the death as her daughter following in her own footsteps and feigning death as an exit strategy.  This is after a genuine attempt to reconnect with her daughter.  It is essential that it is a genuine attempt at reconciliation that will never come to parallel that Ghirra has the potential to change unlike Ro, although her ending indicates that she will not change.  Compare that with Azlin Rell who falls completely to his madness by the end of Trials of the Jedi, that fall correlating with the Dark Side taking him.  It is notable that there had not been red lightsabers in The High Republic as far as I can recall until Azlin Rell, hoping to alleviate the pain, creates one by in his pain bleeding a kyber crystal.  Yet, while he has fallen and is likely on the path to becoming a Sith, Soule hints that redemption is still attainable, although that would be a different story to tell.

 

Overall, Trials of the Jedi in many ways is the story of hope returning to the galaxy while riding the fine line of finishing the stories of every character who has featured thus far in The High Republic in some way.  There are story and character arcs here that don’t even get a mention in this review because of how much Charles Soule has to pack in here, which is why this is for me stronger than Light of the Jedi.  His style is less of an issue with the ending of a story than the beginning, even if Trials of the Jedi takes a while to get going.  Once it does it reaches some incredible highs despite the slow start and the stylistic issues.  8/10.

Devil's Due by: Philip LaZebnik from a story by: Philip LaZebnikk and William Douglas Lansford and directed by: Tom Benko

 

“Devil’s Due” is written by: Philip LaZebnik, from a story by: Philip LaZebnik and William Douglas Lansford, and is directed by: Tom Benko.  It was produced under production code 187, was the 13^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 87^th episode overall, and was broadcast on February 4, 1991.

 

Like “The Child” before it, “Devil’s Due” is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that started its life as a proposed script for Star Trek: Phase II.  Unlike “The Child”, it is coming from a production team that is far more competent in what an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation should be.  “Devil’s Due” is also not an episode that forces a character through an assault and childbirth of sorts, instead taking a fairly straight deal with the devil as the con that it is.  The devil is initially couched in the science fiction language of a godlike alien who has purchased an entire planet’s souls and society after a millennium of prosperity, now returned to arbitrate the deal with signs and wonders.  These are the aspects of the episode that feel the most reminiscent of Star Trek from the 1960s, although it has been updated for the then present of 1991.  Marta DuBois plays Ardra, the devil in guises of the many devil figures of various planets.  There is a Klingon devil that makes brief appearances with a particularly unsettling makeup design.  It’s just a Klingon with a mouth that is split almost into a beak which is effective with its creep factor.  Ardra as a character is also just a particularly fun portrayal, director Tom Benko clearly telling DuBois to channel John de Lancie as Q.  DuBois is not playing a devilish character as a temptress outside of a select few scenes, but as an agent of chaos, taking advantage of the letter of the contract over the spirit of the contract.

 

The back half of the episode is a courtroom drama to untangle the contract that this society signed a millennium ago in the hopes of finding a loophole as Ardra is working to the letter and not the spirit of the contract.  The running theory is that Ardra is actually not the devil figure, but somebody else taking advantage of a contract put on a society.  Again it is DuBois’ performance in this sequence that is particularly fun as there is rightly the question of whether or not the devil would have to use mystic powers to give this society prosperity and perform her actions or technology.  It is eventually revealed that she is a con artist and whatever deal this society made was not with her, if a deal was made at all.  The ending is a nice little subversion of the original series trope of a godlike alien being responsible for an episode, again this script being structurally and philosophically close to an episode of the original series.  Where the episode really succeeds is adding itself to the large pile of episodes focused on Data as a character.  It opens with Data performing an excerpt from A Christmas Carol on the holodeck and Brent Spiner playing Data playing Ebeneezer Scrooge is this fascinating layered performance of someone who would be a good Scrooge play Scrooge far worse than he could to keep in character as Data.  Data is actually giving a good performance as Scrooge, he is imitating the emotions and those imitations are what acting is all about according to certain schools of thought.  This connects to the trial in the back half of the episode where Data is the arbiter due to his impartiality.  This is a small element and clearly meant to put Data at odds with his own sense of justice, using his own ability to approximate emotion to give Picard and company time to find the loophole for the conclusion.

 

Overall, the biggest drawback to “Devil’s Due” is the clear fact that it was meant to be an episode of Star Trek: Phase II.  While the performances across the board are great and Tom Benko’s direction focuses on the chaos and the character, the script is one that feels often from a different time brought thirty years into the future.  It’s different from what Star Trek: The Next Generation has become but that does not make it a bad episode, it just does not make it particularly notable when compared to the episodes around it.  On its own merits “Devil’s Due” is a good time, a pastiche of a story archetype that has been around for centuries.  7/10.

Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by: James Luceno

 

“Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?  I thought not.  It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you.  It’s a Sith legend.”  These are the opening lines from a monologue given in the film Revenge of the Sith to break Anakin Skywalker with the hope that he can save the woman he is unhealthily obsessed with.  It is what Palpatine needs to make a man fall to the Dark Side with a false hope sealing his doom.  It is a lie.

 

Darth Plagueis by James Luceno proposes that Plagueis was the Sith who took Palpatine as apprentice, passing on his mission for immortality when, as is the cycle of the Sith, he is killed by his apprentice.  The tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise is not a lie.  It is what manipulated Palpatine to become the charming but manipulative senator seen in The Phantom Menace.  Darth Plagueis is a demystification of a scene that hinges on that exact mystery being ambiguous to work.  Providing answers to questions that don’t need answering and yet for two thirds of the book Luceno makes those answers at worst satisfying and at best an engrossing character study.  The cycle of apprentices killing masters is integral to Luceno’s ultimate point.  The first six Star Wars films were always going to end the way that they end, Darth Vader is doomed by the narrative to be an apprentice killing his master and the cycle is broken through acts of mercy.  That is perhaps why the first third of Darth Plagueis is devoid of mercy, Plagueis’ master Tenebrous laughs in the face of his own death at Plagueis’ hands.  He dies with pride as the cycle continues.  Luceno characterizes him as broad and comic, villains from their own perspective are often portrayed that way.  Clive Revill and Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi respectively have their own understated camp in their performance of cackling villainy.  Tenebrous’ camp villainy is an overstated death, Plagueis’ is a sinister observation of how it is to die and then pick up the pieces as a respectable capitalist.

 

Palpatine, given no first name in the previous canon, becoming Sidious under Plagueis’ tutorship is a man fully sold by the same temptation to which he will give to Anakin Skywalker.  While Luceno puts truth into the lie of Plagueis the Wise, Plagueis does still die by the end in a manner to parallel Sidious’ own end.  Plagueis and Sidious have had their fun in the end: convincing several others that they are the true apprentices of Plagueis and Sidious only in sequences that make the rule of two utterly ridiculous.  There is a jovial quality to the middle of Darth Plagueis, the sequences which stand as the strongest in the novel.  Luceno is an author whose strengths lie in these types of dissections of villains, his later novel Tarkin being equally interesting because of how it gets into the head of a villain.  Darth Plagueis is a novel, however, that loses sight of the cycle by the end.  In demystifying the lie of Darth Plagueis the Wise, James Luceno devotes far too much of the novel to being a prologue to The Phantom Menace and the prequel trilogy as a whole.  There are sequences of podracing because people enjoyed the podracing sequence of The Phantom Menace and by the final act of the novel the events of the film are happening.  Luceno keeps the focus on Palpatine, however, outside of killing his master Palpatine’s narrative is asking the audience to conjure the key moments of the film.  This does not add context to The Phantom Menace, it simply summarizes the plot from the perspective of a different character.  It leads to approximately 100 pages of the novel to be unnecessary.  Luceno spends two thirds of the novel side stepping the problem but as it creeps in slowly and weakens the whole greatly.

 

Darth Plagueis is a novel built upon proposing the truth to a lie.  James Luceno sells the lie as truth quite well almost entirely through the cyclic framework.  He knows how to get the audience entertained by a villain without making the villain sympathetic.  For Plagueis and Palpatine they would always have ended up villains, their respective masters just accelerated the process, reflected with Anakin’s fall being through manipulation.  It is just the obsessive devotion to rehashing elements of canon that weakens the novel in the end as the epilogue’s direct quoting of The Phantom Menace for closure, accidentally ripping the closure that came several pages earlier.  Darth Plagueis is a novel whose single misstep nearly unravels all of the work Luceno had done and leaves the book struggling with its identity.  6/10.

The Wounded by: Jeri Taylor from a story by: Stuart Charno, Sara Charno, and Cy Chermak and directed by: Chip Chalmers

 

“The Wounded” is written by: Jeri Taylor, from a story by: Stuart Charno, Sara Charno, and Cy Chermak, and is directed by: Chip Chalmers.  It was produced under production code 186, was the 12^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 86^th episode overall, and was broadcast on January 28, 1991.

 

“The Wounded” is about what happens after war.  Scriptwriter Jeri Taylor introduces the Cardassians, a reptilian race previously engaged in war with the Federation.  Peace is an uneasy one, compromises made on both sides and wounds not allowed to heal.  They have been hastily plastered over with hopes that nature will take its course.  The inciting incident is a Federation starship going rogue and attacking a Cardassian ship, pursuing and destroying a supply ship, and the Enterprise are sent as peacekeepers.  War must be avoided at all costs.  The Federation could not afford another extended conflict after The Best of Both Worlds.  The underlying question of “The Wounded” is whether or not these attacks are a man scarred by his experiences in war have gone rogue or if the Cardassians are preparing their own attacks.  The man in question is Captain Benjamin Maxwell, played by character actor Bob Gunton, whom we are told is a rational and emotionally stable man.  Transporter chief Miles O’Brien, played by Colm Meaney, served under him for a number of years during the war.  Representing the Cardassians is Gul Macet, played by Marc Alaimo, who is equally insistent that they only want peace and the outposts are for scientific research.  There are a number of elements that make “The Wounded” stand out as an examination of war’s aftermath, however it’s the final twist of the episode that despite acting outside of protocol and on no evidence, Maxwell is correct.  The Cardassians are preparing for war, slowly but surely, obviously for a future episode to pick up, but in doing so it means that the episode still keeps Maxwell’s decisions in a framing of morally abhorrent.  Gunton gets a monologue about how bureaucracy will not move nearly fast enough to stop the war from coming earlier in the episode, and with that ending his framing is not justified.  The Federation likely would not have gone to war anyways even if the proper channels were used as they are bleeding.

 

Taylor structures “The Wounded” as an incredibly dialogue heavy episode, steeping the events in this melodrama all while dedicating several scenes to showing characters existing in their lives.  It’s almost the opposite structure of the previous episode “Data’s Day” as the daily life becomes background, yet integral background, to the events of the main plot.  The decision is made to hang the emotional weight of the episode on Miles O’Brien, pushing him closer to becoming a major player in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  O’Brien’s experiences in war scarred him emotionally, while he knows that the current peace with the Cardassians means he should not fear them he still becomes cautious with them around.  There is an excellent scene between O’Brien and one of the other Cardassians in Ten Forward examining how much self-loathing the war had imposed on O’Brien.  Meaney plays it as a man desperately attempting to be the better man and believe that since despite the self-loathing, Maxwell must be a stronger man than he is and equally avoids the temptation.  Meaney later plays opposite Gunton as Maxwell equally well, singing and Irish song to eventually talk the man down.  O’Brien finds the peaceful resolution to a situation that had already killed 650 Cardassians.  These scenes would not work nearly as well if Taylor hadn’t given O’Brien’s character a much needed exploration in some quiet if humorous scenes opposite Keiko, played by Rosalind Chao.  It’s already surprising that Keiko returns immediately after her introduction, as surprising as O’Brien being given a plot, but Chao and Meany have excellent chemistry.  The scenes are simple, mostly discussions of food from their respective cultures which are particularly great, but they are enough to further them as a couple in the early days of their marriage.  This is the most humanization O’Brien has gotten in the series thus far, while he had been given several larger scenes in the previous season giving the character a plot is a leap of faith in Meaney’s ability and further cements “The Wounded” as an episode of groundwork for later plans.

 

The Cardassians from a production standpoint feel ever so slightly like a replacement for the Ferengi.  The Ferengi despite appearing multiple times in Star Trek: The Next Generation do not really have enough presence to make an intimidating villain, largely because of how their episodes were both intentionally and unintentionally given a comedic bent.  It also likely did not help that their designs and the direction their actors had been given were laughable.  The Ferengi’s two bulbous lobes protruding from their heads are a piece of design that look far too much like buttocks to be taken seriously with their rather strained voices.  In designing the Cardassians, by contrast, are far more subtle.  There is clear inspiration for what made the redesigned Klingons work quite well with head ridges that almost outline the upper skull in a way to make them look more reptilian in nature and a particularly pale makeup work by Michael Westmore.  Like the Klingons, there’s something intimidating about where the ridges are placed and unlike the Ferengi, director Chip Chalmers allows the Cardassian actors to speak closer to their normal voices.  Marc Alaimo as Macet is equally responsible for establishing the threat of the Cardassians, his performance flipping on a dime depending on whom he is speaking with from concern to charm, to an understated hostility.  He is the reason the twist at the end of the episode works.  For the bulk of the episode while Alaimo puts cracks in the mask that Macet is putting up for everybody, but they are subtle.  The character has clearly put his underlings up to investigate the Enterprise under enough plausible deniability but clearly speaks out of both sides of his mouth.  Alaimo never makes the character outright antagonistic, but the sinister undertones are there from the beginning and clearly are providing a base for a much bigger story to be told.

 

Overall, “The Wounded” makes a near perfect inversion of “Data’s Day”.  It rewrites several of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s past mistakes in introducing potential new villains and in introducing potential new characters.  Miles O’Brien feels like he is given a proper introduction here despite appearing as far back as the first season, Colm Meaney taking the material he is given in both hands and establishing the character as all too human.  “The Wounded” is a story about all too human hurt while having to close old wounds even if they will leave scars that are ripe for reopening.  9/10.

Loving the Alien by: Mike Tucker and Robert Perry

 

Ace is dead, long live Ace.  Mike Tucker and Robert Perry are for all intents and purposes the architects for the Seventh Doctor novels in the Past Doctor Adventures line.  From writing the debut to penning most of them (with Tucker taking Prime Time solo), their direction formed the basis for a story arc not only for the Seventh Doctor and Ace as an alternative take on Season 27 but also tying into the continuity changing hijinks of the later Eighth Doctor Adventures.  Loving the Alien is the culmination of that arc in this range, Dale Smith’s Heritage being a lead into this final showdown.  The Doctor fails.  Ace is shot dead after falling in love.  The Doctor can barely keep it together with added medical torture.  The rest of the novel plays out with the idea that she is not actually going to come back, or at least not in the way that we think.  There is explicitly a shift in the timelines, the reason for resurrection left vague and the Doctor not caring because his best friend is back  He is not going to question the gift, even if deep down he knows that this is not the Ace he met in Dragonfire.  Tucker and Perry structure so much of Loving the Alien around this central event yet what propels the first half of the novel is setting up for the reader the idea that Ace’s own decisions: rebelling against the Doctor and falling in love with a boy called Jimmy, is going to somehow subvert her death.

 

There is a world where this is a television story, and Sophie Aldred has decided to leave Doctor Who.  Being a novel, the timeline is corrupted somewhat and there is a slight uncomfortableness with the Ace that we have here because the Past Doctor Adventures won’t return to this arc.  Tucker and Perry leave the reader on this implication on where the Doctor and Ace will go from here, though there is an argument to be made that their story is going into its own new, adventurous territory.  After all, Ace has already left in Set Piece.  She even died in “Ground Zero”.  Tucker and Perry’s portrayal of the Doctor in Loving the Alien is particularly excellent.  The Time Lord is taken by the grief of losing Mel in Heritage and the very real possibility of losing Ace, bringing to the surface his worst impulses.  His decision to plant a bug on Ace so he can track her is the final straw to push her away.  Loving the Alien is a look through the Doctor’s past mistakes, with several footnotes reminding readers to check the other Past Doctor Adventures that have been leading to this moment.  Tucker and Perry examine the Doctor as over planning, the sequences in the TARDIS where he is emotionally distant from Ace are great as are the haunting description of his autopsy of her corpse.  The Doctor is planning for something far bigger than him but Loving the Alien despite being explicitly a sequel to Illegal Alien, isn’t actually all that big in terms of stakes.  Yes, there are timestream diversions that need to be put right, and they are put right at the end, but the extent of the diversions still leaves the setting of the late 1950s London looking like the late 1950s London.

 

Above everything else Loving the Alien is Mike Tucker and Robert Perry’s tribute to the atomic monster genre of film with a particular love of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass serials.  While not taking the plot from a Quatermass serial, instead using giant ants as our primary “monster” threat until Cyber technology can reenter the plot as the book becomes more of a sequel to Illegal Alien over anything else.  The British Rocket Group and the space program seen in The Quatermass Experiment and its subsequent film adaptation take center stage in the plot for the first half, there even is a character named Kneale as tribute.  Tonally this is great for the novel, Tucker and Perry setting it in a very specific period of history and the pacing of the book takes on the pace of a very early science fiction serial with flashes of film noir.  Cody McBride and George Limb are our two major returning characters, McBride now being an older private detective being hired by American reporter Rita Hawks to investigate a classic case of adultery that isn’t adultery.  The book keeps the film noir elements until the timeline slipping becomes slowly more and more apparent but having McBride and the Doctor both fill a detective role leads to some of the lighter moments of the novel which are particularly great.  George Limb doesn’t fare as well.  He works well as the villain of the novel being run on survival instinct and an accrual of political power.

 

This is where the larger issues of Loving the Alien comes through.  Itis packed to the brim with ideas and plotlines that are constantly shifting and twisting.  The atomic monster plot of the giant ants is resolved so it can shift to explicitly use Cyber technology for political gain that is incoherent.  The explanation of the Waverider as being responsible for everything is also far too quick after a lot of buildup.  Loving the Alien does set up its many twists and turns, however, outside of the central Doctor/Ace conflict it becomes a mess.  The most egregious is Ace becoming pregnant with James Dean’s child.  Yes, that James Dean who slipped a timeline and didn’t die in the 1955 car crash.  The actual pregnancy happens almost too quickly and Ace’s own feelings on potentially having a child are not explored before her death and when resurrected it is undone.  Jimmy as James Dean is a twist that feels more like an idea that Tucker and Perry had without thinking it through.

 

Overall, Loving the Alien works best in the first half with the mounting sense of dread in the reader as Ace goes slowly to her death.  This is a novel where Mike Tucker and Robert Perry take some big swings that really do pay off by the end, even if that ending becomes all too cluttered with the resolution not entirely involving the Doctor’s actions enough.  The characterization is fantastic, and it does feel like a season finale to the several books leading up to this.  It’s also a book that is begging for Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred to star in an adaptation as a pair with Illegal Alien.  8/10.

Stairway to Heaven by: Paul Cornell and John Freeman with art by: Gerry Dolan and Rex Ward

 

“Stairway to Heaven” is written by: John Freeman and Paul Cornell with art by: Gerry Dolan and Rex Ward.  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issue 152-155 (December 1989) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: Nemesis of the Daleks by Panini Books.

 

“Stairway to Heaven” is a one and done comic story all about modern art.  Okay, the modern art in question is basically the miniscope from Carnival of Monsters because this is the first commission for Doctor Who fan and now legend Paul Cornell, with editor John Freeman getting co-writing credit in the end.  You can certainly tell that a Doctor Who fan wrote this story, outside of the general idea of an art instillation having its own living society being allowed to evolve on its own.  The goal of the instillation is for the inhabitants to climb out of the instillation to meet their maker, genetic artist Garg Ardoniquist.  Honestly, the idea here is great, the underlying satire of a society that uses people as spectacle, only giving them delusions of grandeur that they might rise above their station is one of those things that screams Cornell and perfectly in line with what Doctor Who was doing on television at this time, this being the first story of the wilderness years.  Doctor Who is gone from television and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip is making a story read as explicitly anti-capitalist.

 

Or at least it would be if it wasn’t for the sense that Cornell, or possibly Freeman, fell into the trap of portraying contemporary art as inherently highbrow and representative of capitalism.  Ardoniquist as a character is lauded by society, even in his death he is praised for getting involved in his own art.  It’s this weird, almost out of touch segment of the story.  “Stairway to Heaven” does at least characterize the Seventh Doctor’s anger quite well, even if this is still on his solo travels wandering into these situations.  Cornell is a writer who has so many ideas that like Grant Morrison’s “Culture Shock!” before it does not have enough time to really explore the ideas.  The ending of the strip is still quite effective at conveying the cycles of history, Cornell clearly wishing to play with the idea that even as technology advances society may not catch up, there just isn’t enough time to really get to the bottom of the ideas.  This is also the only strip drawn by Gerry Dolan and Rex Ward which is a shame because their work is quite good at feeling like a sophisticated piece of science fiction.  They’re particularly good at adapting Sylvester McCoy’s face into the strip, it’s very expressive but not enough to be a complete clown.

 

Overall, “Stairway to Heaven” struggles because there is not enough time to tell the story it wants to tell.  At the very least it does have something to say even if the deeper implications are actively contradictory to the surface satire being done with yet another short comic strip.  6/10.