The Doctor has taken Mel
to 1999 where Dame Anne Travers is receiving an award for her control of and
hand in the creation of UNIT after the events of The Web of Fear. Not all is
well as Ashley Chapel from System Shock
has risen out of the ashes of I2 and International Electromatics to
become the leading man in electronics but as in System Shock all is not well.
Chapel has bought out the Library of St. John the Beheaded and has been
using it to research Yog-Sothoth aka the Great Intelligence and he wants to
bring it back into our world. The plot
of this story on the outset looks very much like a loving sendup to The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear, but it exceeds that
simple premise of Yeti invading the world as Hinton takes it upon himself to
tie the novel into Head Games and
shows the origins of the Valeyard. This
occurs when we actually get to the different universe where the alternate
version of the Doctor is the Valeyard, which he is slowly turning into. This section of the book is extremely tense as
you know that the Doctor has to become the Valeyard but there is that
uncertainty that it will even come to pass or be a permanent change. Hinton’s characterization of the Doctor is
done really well as he is sympathizing with the aging Anne Travers as he knows
that his regeneration is coming up quite soon and wants to find a way to avoid
it from happening. He acts more
manipulative in this story and it scares him as he thinks he is becoming closer
to the Time’s Champion character of prophecy.
Mel gets to have two very
distinct personalities in the novel.
While on Earth Hinton does the girl out of her own time routine in a
great way which is entertaining enough, but still nothing new. While in the alternate universe Mel is one of
the leaders in a very Bride of Frankenstein way which is honestly a lot more
interesting of a concept to deal with. She
has an almost iron fist over her people as she fears the Dark One and has
actually made a slight deal with the villain for scientific progress. There are some interesting parallels between
the two Mel’s as our Mel turned down a job at I2 or with Ashley
Chapel while the other Mel actually works with Chapel and the analogue of his
organization. Ashley Chapel is a
character who is a weakness in the story.
He is the human villain because there has to be a human villain and
while yes he is already powerful he is power hungry like most Doctor Who
villains. He really has nothing
interesting to do except to scare Anne Travers half to death which of course
really doesn’t go anywhere fast. The
much more interesting villain is the Great Intelligence as we get some
backstory that it is a creature from the universe before ours that broke
through and became a laughing stock. It
doesn’t make Yog Sathoth any more sympathetic of a villain but it does add a
bit of depth that there wasn’t in The
Abominable Snowmen and The Web of
Fear.
The star of the show is
Anne Travers who after her appearance in The
Web of Fear has aged and become very melancholy. Neither she nor her father had forgiven
themselves for the Doctor’s plan to destroy the intelligence fail and Anne has
started to look more into the history of the Intelligence to find a way to
destroy it. Sadly this leads to the
Intelligence escaping into our universe which she cannot forgive herself
for. She is ready to retire and give
UNIT on to younger people but doesn’t want a large corporation in charge as
they have caused a lot of problems recently.
Her relationship with the Doctor is great as they are both empathizing
with each other with some things that they know they can’t avoid in Anne’s case
giving up her life’s work and the ever present threat of death. Hinton must be commended for adding this into
the novel which is greatly well done even among a few problems making her a
little bit unrelatable.
To summarize, Millennial Rites is a much better effort
than Hinton’s original novel The Crystal
Bucephalus in almost every way. It
serves as a great character study of the later Sixth Doctor and what is going
to happen when he is forced to regenerate which ties into Head Games brilliantly.
Hinton gets almost everything right in the novel which makes it
extremely noticeable when something goes wrong which in this case is the main
idea of switching between two universes.
It’s a good idea that gets muddled in the execution with some of the
more lifeless portions of the novel.
90/100
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