Cold Fusion by: Lance Parkin: Stuck With Another Incarnation and Not Even One of the Good Ones

Multi Doctor Stories are a tradition and often include a very simple formula to make them work.  First something goes wrong with the universe on a massive scale, followed by the Doctors being called in to stop it from all going wrong, the multiple Doctors get a chance at bickering, they defeat the threat, and say their goodbyes.  Cold Fusion is a novel that deals with a threat that requires multiple Doctors to defeat the threat, but as it is from Virgin Books and features the Seventh Doctor, the story really focuses on the Fifth Doctor, while the Seventh Doctor stays in the background and manipulates his former self into defeating the Ferutu, alternate universe time travelers responsible for destroying Gallifrey.  Lance Parkin writes the story to feature both Doctors and of course to contrast their characterizations.  Now personally I think Peter Davison is the weakest of the Classic Who Doctors, not a bad Doctor by any means, but not a good portrayal.  He is too human for my liking and Parkin did a great thing contrasting him with the Seventh Doctor, one of the more inhuman Doctors.  They both bicker worse than any other Doctors have when meeting up for a crossover.  The back cover has the Seventh Doctor describing his fifth incarnation as “Not even one of the good ones”.  It is these scenes that are really the only scenes we get with the Seventh Doctor, but his presence is of course felt throughout the novel.  You know he is the one pulling the strings and the climax with him and the Fifth Doctor is brilliant.  The Fifth Doctor, himself is screen accurate to the early period of his era which was intentional on the part of Lance Parkin to keep the contrast going.  The portrayal in writing is really good and makes for a good story.

 

The Fifth Doctor has one real catch in this story as we dive deep into Gallifreyean history as the Doctor meets his, or possibly the Other’s wife, Patience.  Patience is an interesting character as she forces the exploration of The Brain of Morbius with the whole mind competition and positing that she was the wife of the Other as played by Douglas Camfield.  These scenes however are only left in ambiguity which is for the best.  The Cartmel Masterplan was only ever meant to be put more mystery back into the Doctor, which Parkin fulfills here by suggesting that Patience might be going a little bit loopy or the Doctor may be having false memories because of contact with Patience.  We do know two very specific things.  First, the Doctor and Patience are both Time Lords.  Second, the Doctor and Patience have different genetic makeup, with the Doctor having his altered roughly 750 to 800 years previous.  Now this may be the suggestion that he is a reincarnation of the Other, but nothing is really concrete about this entire plot thread which is something that Parkin pulls off remarkably.  It is something that could have divided fans completely, but it doesn’t because there is plausible deniability.  Patience could just have been altered differently as she was from the past and her memories are at fault as is suggested by the text.

 

There are too many characters to name so I’m going to keep everything simple by going over the basic highlights and main characters.  The highlights of the story are the setting, which is an ice planet that really feels like the cold is intruding on everything which allows for a very tense story to build up throughout the novels 300 pages.  Second is the villains of the Adjudicator Guild which really comes into play and helps set up the psi powers arc of New Adventures.  They are a definite threat for the story and keep everything moving nicely along at a good pace.  The experiments they are running are horrible of course and it makes them feel like a credible threat.  The other big highlight is that Lance Parkin actually manages to make Adric a likeable character in this novel.  This may be because Adric is written in the style of the character from Season 18 or the child like nature of the character is played up, but by pairing him off with Roz for most of the novel you get to have quite a lot of fun with a bad character.  Roz of course does a lot of good here as she plays the tough to get Adjudicator and Parkin is actually able to keep the mystery of where she’s hiding a good mystery for the novel as she doesn’t meet up with Adric until one third of the way through the story.  She and Adric are both really good at working together as Roz almost becomes a mentor figure for Adric which is really interesting.  Tegan, Nyssa, and Chris actually is how Parkin decides to group together these three characters in a story arc which really has a lot of interesting moments.  Early in the novel Nyssa and Tegan check into a hotel where Chris is staying under the name Bruce Jovanka with a false Australian accent.  He tries to romance Tegan and Nyssa individually, Nyssa sees him stark naked, and they’re all abducted by the Adjudicators.  It’s a series of sequences that really emphasizes humor and the three characters are all great together.  Chris has one of his best stories and Tegan doesn’t take any of his shit which really emphasizes their differences.  Nyssa’s also very naïve of a character which keeps everything working for the novel.

 

To summarize, Cold Fusion is a perfect Virgin Missing Adventure that does a multi Doctor story that breaks away from the formula of other multi Doctor stories.  The two Doctors are great together and everything allows us to go deep into their characters with some villains that pose a real threat from an alternate timeline which breaks new ground for Doctor Who while staying true to the Fifth Doctor’s era.  100/100