Millennial Rites by: Craig Hinton: A Yeti Sitting in a Loo in Tooting Bec

If it weren’t for the fact that Craig Hinton tragically passed away in 2006 I would be cursing up a storm for one little bit of fanwank that had me rolling on the floor laughing for a good ten minutes.  Now the thing to Hinton’s second novel Millennial Rites is that half of it takes place in an alternate Earth that works as if it is under the skin of this world so if there are two entrances and you enter one and go to the other you will come out the other.  This and the villain of this story being the Great Intelligence, well the obvious joke is made.  The Yeti are defeated while sitting in a loo in Tooting Bec.  Yes the famous line said by Jon Pertwee about why Doctor Who is scary in More than Thirty Years in the TARDIS has literally happened in a Doctor Who story which is just glorious.  Other than that however Hinton is actually pretty light on the fanwank used in this novel with a few major exceptions, but before we can get to that let’s look at the plot.

 

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