A Device of Death by: Christopher Bulis: A Device to Die of Boredom

Christopher Bulis has had some great books for the Virgin Missing Adventures, but A Device of Death is not one of those books.  Its lengthy page count conceals a story about the creation of a race of robots to be used as a way to destroy the Daleks.  This race seems to evolve into the Movellans of Destiny of the Daleks, but nothing of that sort is really confirmed in the novel itself.  It weirdly slips in between Genesis of the Daleks and Revenge of the Cybermen which has the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry are travelling without the TARDIS, but using the Time Ring. What doesn’t work, however, is the fact that there really isn’t a gap in between these two stories for this novel to fit in between.

 

The plot is a story of two warring factions on two planets where a doomsday weapon is being built.  Yes this is the titular device of death and I’m going to come out and say it, this story is almost a total rip off from Genesis of the Daleks, with the device meaning the total ending of two races.  It’s really a plotline that I cannot stand being ripped off as it doesn’t really add much to the already existing story except what may be considered a happier ending with the prospect that the Daleks will have an enemy that will wipe them off the face of the universe.  The prologue and epilogue are the most interesting sections of the novel.  They both feature the Time Lords reflecting on events and how the Doctor is handling his tasks of interference and are breezes to read through.  Bulis is masterful at writing the prose for these sections, it’s just a complete shame that the middle of the novel in between these five pages, is utter crap.  Bulis doesn’t tell an interesting story with the time he’s got and is reliant on quite a bit of subtle fan service as a way to get the plot across to the audience.

 

Bulis suffers the most when writing the main cast as he splits them up for a large portion of the novel, and when they are together in the same scene, the relationship feels far off from the relationships that we saw on television between these characters.  Harry Sullivan doesn’t suffer at all as a character as Bulis just quotes lines from Robot and The Ark in Space for half the time while the other half is relying on the fact that he is a doctor in the military and will do anything to save a life.  It’s honestly a good portrayal, but Justin Richards actually did it much better when writing System Shock.  Sarah Jane Smith, a character who was extremely developed in her television stories even in these early days of her travels, here is portrayed as a one dimensional stock character which I just cannot get past.  Elisabeth Sladen always portrayed the character perfectly on television would be ashamed to see the character changed like this in prose.  The Doctor doesn’t fare much better as he loses his memory as if he was the Eighth Doctor and doesn’t do a whole lot when it comes to advancing the plot for this story.  Now there are a few moments when Tom Baker’s style seeps through, but it isn’t enough to save the character.

 

To summarize, A Device of Death wants us to all die of boredom while it goes on for two hundred fifty pages about robots and doomsday weapons.  It is by far the absolute worst of the Virgin Missing Adventures at 5/100.