Richards does some of his
best work with Sarah Jane Smith as the performances of Elisabeth Sladen along
with her chemistry with the Fourth Doctor is written beautifully. It feels like the story is bridging the gap
between Seasons 13 and 14 as Sarah Jane has been travelling and cannot believe
she is seeing Harry who has grown old as time marched on. Richards also uses Sarah Jane as a journalist
for portions of the story as she cashes in some favors to get a job at the
company I2 which is the secret headquarters for the Voracians. Richards uses this to tell an espionage tale
which is great as it’s a genre Doctor Who excels at as there is usually the
idea there is a big bad to be defeated in espionage stories. This is similar to Doctor Who stories also
having a larger than life villain behind the ending plots. The Fourth Doctor is portrayed brilliantly by
Richards as well as Richards often uses the general character of the Doctor in
his writing which is pretty much just Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor. Richards has Tom Baker’s mannerisms down to a
tee even with the forgetful nature of the Doctor and the idea that he doesn’t
get human beings. He gets some great
moments where he has to talk a computer into seeing that humanity and organic
life isn’t illogical which is hilarious as people are wildly illogical. The Doctor knows this and he has no idea how
to actually convince the computer to spare humanity.
The novel also has a lot
of problems. First the writing style of
Justin Richards is really generic and kind of a slog to get through. He writes in a style of this happened and
then this happened which breaks up the flow of the story greatly and just makes
the pace seem pretty slow. This problem
does disappear about halfway through when writing the hostage situation at the
unveiling of the Hubway where Sarah Jane is kidnapped as hostage and has to
work with the Doctor to find a solution to the titular System Shock, which is
housed on a CD-ROM, without actually being able to communicate with the Doctor
or Harry. It is really good until the
eventual conclusion where Richards employs a Chekov’s gun with a throwaway
character being brought back into the novel just so we can get an easily
conclusion and move on with the novel.
The Voracians while an extremely interesting species with unusual speech
patterns, really don’t feel like much of a threat. They say they will kill the hostages, but
they don’t and while I’m not saying there should have been a bloodbath, at
least one of them could have died so the story could continue with some sense
of urgency.
To summarize, System Shock is a great example of a
story capturing the feel of a period, but not doing anything to stop any of the
flaws of said period. The characterization
is great for the regulars and the villains, but the supporting cast is
extremely boring. The plot is an
espionage thriller except it has such a general writing style it becomes boring
at times. Richards has made his story
better than Theatre of War, but it
isn’t very special. 75/100
No comments:
Post a Comment