Monday, October 31, 2016

Twilight of the Gods by: Christopher Bulis: We're Back On Vortis!

The production values of Doctor Who in the 1960s made experimental stories extremely difficult to pull off.  The Web Planet is one of these stories that try to be experimental, but was let down by the production values of the era.  It features only four humanoid characters, being the main cast, but the rest of the cast were races of insectoid characters based off ants and butterflies.  The costumes and hammy acting let down the story, but in novel form that doesn’t have to be the case.  Christopher Bulis decided to write a sequel to The Web Planet in Twilight of the Gods, a story that sees the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria arriving on Vortis where a third race, called the Rhumon have been waging war against the Menoptera.  The Animus reveals itself as behind the plot and a part of the Great Old Ones of the mythology of H.P. Lovecraft.

 

First, the novel at three hundred pages is an extremely slow burner.  It takes fifty pages for the Zarbi and Menoptera to show up in the novel and there is extensive backstory and interludes between chapters.  Bulis does build some atmosphere with these sections of the novel, but the pace is what does turn many off.  My advice is to go through these sections and let them soak in as they are pretty good overall.  Bulis is relishing the attempt to get a good reveal of the Zarbi and the way he describes them makes them terrifying.  It is through Victoria’s perspective and that makes them extremely intimidating:

It was a gigantic ant standing as tall as she was. The soft light gleamed off its glossy black carapace. Powerful mandibles extended from its bulbous triangular head, above which two huge lidless eyes seemed to glow in the dimness. Two of its six legs had hypertrophied, bearing its whole weight and allowing its remaining limbs to be held forward clear of the ground.

It’s a good characterization of Victoria that really makes the novel work better than it was.  This is difficult considering how odd the characterization it was during that era of television.  Victoria is fearful of the alien environment and Bulis makes her confront her fear by being separated from the Doctor and Jamie.  She has to take Barbara Wright’s role in the story as she leads the Menoptera for a portion of the novel.  She actually has to be a strong character and she pulls it off.  Bulis also captures the alienness of Menoptera by using Victoria’s perspective:

Folded across their backs were large translucent wings. A cowl of fur with tiger-stripe markings covered their heads and necks and ran down over their shoulders. They had no visible ears, but two long trembling antennae rose from the sides of their heads. Beneath their compound eyes was a severe downturned slit of a mouth. Bands of pale fur ran about their wrists and ankles and around their trunks and leg joints. Between them was dark carapace material that seemed more pliant than that of the giant ant. She realized their hands had no fingers, only thumbs and long flexible tapering palms

The Menoptera are also portrayed much more like a force in the novel as they want to be a mediator between the two forces of the Rhumon who really don’t make an interesting race.  The Zarbi also don’t make much of an impression in the novel as they have their role as slaves to the Menoptera which sound like there’s supposed to be a plotline there, but nothing comes out of it.

 

Bulis has a knack for characterizing the Second Doctor who has the persona of a child.  He loves being back on Vortis after all these years and is glad that many things have been going well.  The vegetation has returned and everything seems to be back to normal, but the Doctor’s reaction to the Animus making a return is priceless as everything has fallen apart for the previous story.  Bulis however does fail in two respects.  First the ending is awful as everything is resolved with a deus ex machina that doesn’t really work and second is Jamie.  Jamie is portrayed in places as almost a violent idiot, but in other places as the character that we know from television.  It’s this inconsistency that really causes a lot of the problems for the novel.

 

To summarize, Twilight of the Gods is an underrated gem of a novel that takes an underrated story and gives it at least an interesting sequel.  The prose is really what draws you into the story while the characters and some great action make you want to stay.  There are things that aren’t good however as an ending lets it down and the interludes can be very distracting to a reader.  60/100

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