Return of the Living Dad by: Kate Orman: They're Coming to Get You Bernice

It would be safe to say that Kate Orman is one of the most talented writers for the Virgin New Adventures.  Her mix of writing characters into intricate plotlines has failed only once and that novel only managed to be average.  So as a sort of follow up to Paul Cornell’s Human Nature Orman wrote Return of the Living Dad, a novel that sees Benny reunited with her long lost father who happened to land on Earth in the 1980s.  Spacefleet Admiral Isaac Summerfield and his crew of officers are now running a shuttle service for stranded aliens in an innocuous British town that nobody really would notice if weird things are going on in the area as there is an Air Force base nearby.  Orman being a character writer really doesn’t do much for the plot as its crux is a search and rescue shifting to a Navarino called Albinex, one of those purple cephalopods from Delta and the Bannermen, having gone rogue and wanting to return his people to warlike ways.  Really it’s the disparate elements of the plot that bring everything together in the climax which sees of course the Doctor get Isaac’s operation linked up with UNIT and a reformed C19 to help with stranded aliens instead of just blowing them up.

 

The success of Return of the Living Dad revolves around the characterization of Benny and her father.  Orman paints a portrait of Isaac as a man tired from war and violence, trying to do what is right.  He is misguided as there are plans to get first contact going so the Earth can be prepared for the Dalek invasion in the twenty-second century, but he is still a good man.  He cares about his own daughter and wished to see her ever since Ace ran into him on her own travels.  Orman is great at setting up the mystery of Isaac as the novel opens with the vague possibility that he is alive and doing well for himself.  Benny of course gets great characterization in the novel as she goes through the joy of finding her father and trying to catch up with him after all these years.  She has to admit to herself that she travelled with the Doctor as a way to have a father figure and her marriage to Jason, who is almost a nonentity in this novel, is reinvigorated with passion as her life is near complete again.  The way Benny and Isaac interact is great as Orman uses Benny’s immediate trust to throw the reader off when searching for the true villain of the novel.  Orman calls into question the story that Isaac Summerfield is a coward who ran from the battlefield which is what makes Benny get in contact with the Doctor, she wants to go back as she was given the exact coordinates of his disappearance.  The theme of not changing history comes up as it takes everything in Benny not to use the TARDIS to interfere with his father’s disappearance.  It takes a human approach to the characters which may have been Paul Cornell’s inspiration when writing Father’s Day.

 

Love is another theme that comes out in this novel.  It reflects the Doctor’s choice to become humans as a way to understand them better in Paul Cornell’s Human Nature, and now Return of the Living Dad explores the Doctor coming to terms with fatherly love as almost everyone in the main cast gets to fall in love.  Benny has her father and Jason, the Doctor almost falls for a paranormal investigator which of course ends badly, and Chris and Roz.  Well the novel explores Chris and Roz’s relationship as Chris professes his love for his superior Adjudicator after the frustration that he has gone through in previous novels.  Chris of course has been through a lot in his time with the Doctor, and Roz’s rejection of his advances are tragic to say the least as they really could work as a couple.  It brings Chris back into reality and provides closure.  That’s really wat the novel is about, closure for the main characters which is done brilliantly by Orman.

 

To summarize, Return of the Living Dad is another great novel by Kate Orman that manages to tie disparate plot threads together with stunning characters.  It is a novel steeped in the series’ lore which may be a turnoff for some and makes some things very difficult to follow, but the characters are solid.  Old fans will have fun playing spot the reference and guess the twist if you know anything about some of the creatures, while still enjoying how the characters are developing as a sense of foreboding is developed with this sense of closure to the relationships, but for now we have another happy ending to enjoy.  83/100