It’s a setting that just
feels right for the Seventh Doctor. You
have a monastery that is a place for contemplation while the Seventh Doctor is
getting ready to die and he comes to the monastery to get ready for it. The titular room with no doors is something that
has been cropping up in Chris’s dreams and it represents where the Doctor’s
past lives go. The Seventh Doctor is
actually scared because he forced the Sixth Doctor into his own room with no
doors and is now scared that not only will it hurt and there is a chance that
the Eighth Doctor will renounce the Seventh.
Yes we see the Seventh Doctor afraid.
This is something that the Virgin New Adventures haven’t done before,
and it really gives you the feeling of dread as you know the end is nigh. The Doctor is as depressed as he was in Nightshade as he just wants to be done. And then he dies. Yes the Doctor dies and is brought back by
Death herself, who yeah she’s back.
Orman portrays McCoy’s incarnation at his finest as he is just getting
away and of course gets dragged into the story.
The story however is the novel’s weakest point. It deals with samurai fighting, but that
really isn’t very interesting which seems to be a complaint often with Kate
Orman. The biggest offender of this was
her novel, SLEEPY, but this novel
still suffers from having a plot that is too busy touting its characters before
telling a good story.
Orman however uses Chris brilliantly
in this plot as he is the main character.
This is really his story as he finally cracks. Liz’s death in Eternity Weeps not only brought back painful memories of So Vile a Sin, but also is a dagger
creating more grief for him to deal with.
One of his first actions in the novel is to write the Doctor a letter
opening as such:
“‘Dear
Doctor,’ wrote Chris, ‘I give up.’”
This is how we open the
story which is just chilling as you see where Chris is at the start and the
book is letting him grieve. There’s this
powerful section of the novel where Chris just realizes that he isn’t a
hero. He realizes that people really
aren’t heroes. He does go down into
becoming a coward, but that changes by the end when he comes to terms with who
he is as a person. The Virgin New
Adventure hints that this novel is going to start a new relationship, at least
in the original commissioning for The
Room with No Doors, but as that is cut short it actually feels much like
this ending was intentional. Chris feels
like he is ready to leave and actually go off saving the universe, which is a
good fate to have for the Adjudicator who has lost so much. I know he appears when Bernice Summerfield
takes over the New Adventures which will be very interesting to see just where
everything goes.
Two other characters that
show just how good the novels by Kate Orman are and indeed this novel is. First is Penelope Gate, who is a human being
and the first time traveler from Earth.
She is a very strong-willed character who has actually trapped herself
in Japan due to the use of an alien power source that she shouldn’t really
have. Orman does a lot of hinting when
it comes to Penelope Gate and she’s a character who will actually be explored
much later down the line, but to be honest in her first appearance she works
very much as a one-off side character with her own little story arc, completed
at the end of the novel. The other
character that Orman really relishes writing in the novel is Joel Mintz from
her previous standalone novel, Return of
the Living Dad. Bringing Joel back
into this novel is very interesting as we get to see a glimpse at how
successful Isaac Summerfield has been on Earth.
He has been successful and Joel was actually very jealous of Summerfield
and the Doctor. The idiot has decided
that he is going to go through time and space and changing history. He does have sparring with the Doctor, but
the impression is that well, he doesn’t actually know what he’s doing which is
really a great way of doing the character.
To summarize, The Room with No Doors is a novel about
the ending of the travels of the Seventh Doctor and Chris Cwej. It is a novel explaining regeneration that is
imminent and there isn’t anything that can be done. Orman does an excellent job making everything
very interesting filling the novel with even supporting characters who are
interesting, even if this review neglected to mention them, but fails on the
plot which is rather flimsy. It is still
a great book, much better than SLEEPY,
overall and is deserving of a rather high rating of 80/100.
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