Sunday, October 16, 2016

The Scales of Injustice by: Gary Russell: The Blonde Man With the Scar Was Evil, Pure Evil

 Inferno is a brilliant story in almost every respect except when Doctor Who came back for Season 8 with Terror of the Autons, Liz Shaw was gone, returned to Cambridge because the Doctor only needs someone to hand him test tubes and say how brilliant he is.  That is an extreme disappointment to see as Liz was such a good character.  The Virgin Missing Adventures of course wishing to fill in a few of the gaps in the Doctor Who mythology decided to give Liz Shaw an ending story which was of course a good idea.  Who did they get to write this exiting story anyway?  Paul Cornell?  Kate Orman? Andy Lane? Oh wait they got Gary Russell, who wrote two other novels both of them getting a 50/100.

 

Ok so are we in for another snore fest of a novel that works off standard Doctor Who tropes without giving us anything new?  Well actually The Scales of Injustice while acting as a sequel to Doctor Who and the Silurians doesn’t become a The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood style rehash of that story.  Instead it takes the standard Doctor and companion try to negotiate with the Earth Reptiles, but they also have to deal with C19 and of course the Glasshouse.  It’s actually closer to a Craig Hinton novel than a Gary Russell novel as it does quite a lot of referencing Season Seven, but without Hinton’s intrusive habit of shoving every little detail into a story.  Instead he introduces the UNIT Vault, where through the Glasshouse experiments are going on using technology from previous stories and creating hybrids on willing and not so willing participants.  There’s also the third plot of the novel exploring of course Liz Shaw deciding to exit UNIT and return to Cambridge.  This is the plot that Russell writes extremely well as for the majority of the novel he focuses on Liz Shaw who is the one investigating the Glasshouse and getting herself into danger while the Doctor is stuck in the Silurian shelter, after finding them abducting a teenager and experimenting on him.

 


The plotline with Liz is the main plot of the story as the Silurian plotline actually doesn’t end in tragedy this time so really there’s no reason to go back down into the Silurian plotline and we focus on Liz.  A quote from the Doctor at the end of the novel states:

 “At last. At last, I'm seeing the real Elizabeth Shaw. It's taken until now, but she's there…You, Liz. Not the detached scientist. Not the calm, collected and efficient UNIT Doctor Shaw. You referred to Marc as a "teenaged male". You talked in professional terms. Upset you may have been, but you were still holding back. Then you finally called him a kid. You even swore. I've not heard that before.”

This is a story that forces Liz to think about herself and who she is as a person and it is great having most of the book be from her perspective gives us that sense that it is her that has changed.  It is subtle on screen, but in the written word it is there and it is done brilliantly by Gary Russell.  It’s interesting as the villain of the story is a man who worked for International Electromatics and is almost a foil for the always professional Liz Shaw.  He has had his personality put into a cybernetic body and doesn’t care if people die and is just brutal.  He has created human-Auton hybrids and has people cryogenically frozen which is just terrifying for the novel.  This is the engaging part of the story while the Silurian stuff really is in the background with a Myrka thrown in for no reason.

 


The other plotline is giving some characterization to the rest of UNIT as the Brigadier is trying to pick out who he wants for his new captain.  Corporal Bell appears in this novel and not only gets to help the Brigadier throw ideas on how to proceed, but also gets to carry a gun and shoot down attacking Silurians.  She and Corporal Masie Hawke get to do stuff in this novel except just be telephone girls which really makes them feel like fully fleshed out characters.  Mike Yates gets some stuff to do in the novel as he is promoted to captain by the end, but it’s actually Brigadier Lethebridge-Stewart who gets to have the most character development in this novel.  Several scenes detail the fall of his marriage to his wife Fiona and separation from his daughter Kate as he kept his UNIT job a secret from his wife and daughter, who think he works at an office with John Benton and Mike Yates, being the cofounders of his business.  It’s the secrecy which causes his downfall with his wife as after being interrupted at a dinner out with his wife and having to go back to UNIT to deal with the Silurians.  Outside of the situation with his family the Brigadier also gets redeemed for his actions in Doctor Who and the Silurians, by making the Doctor and the Brigadier work to keep the peace.  It explains just what he was thinking when he blew up the Silurian base and explains just how scared he was at the virus getting out again and the antidote not able to stop it this time around.  It’s great and gives the Doctor something to do in the novel.

 

To summarize, The Scales of Injustice shows just how good Gary Russell can be at writing Doctor Who.  It knows just what sort of fanservice to insert into the novel without being too intrusive and uses its length to tell a good story and not be worried with anything but telling just that good story.  The character are engaging and the plot moves along at a great pace while not getting to dragged down by the three storylines.  The only problem is how much is lifted from Doctor Who and the Silurians and as a prequel to Warriors of the Deep.  90/100

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