Lungbarrow
while famous for its implications, isn’t really famous for its plot. That’s actually quite sad considering the
plot is one of the novel’s strongest aspects.
The story starts where The Room
with No Doors left off and like many stories, we don’t open with the TARDIS,
but a prologue. This prologue opens with
a pretty humorous previously on Doctor Who description of events leading up to
the novel and then a serious prologue chronicling the fall of the Pythia and
the Hand of Omega being almost attracted to the Other, as if he’s the true
master of the device. We get a flashback
to the idea of the Eighth Man Bound and the Doctor as a pupil disobeying a
teacher. The book then establishes that
Dorothee, nee Ace, is captured by a time storm and brought to Gallifrey after a
date with pointillist painter Georges Seurat.
Romana is the Lord President of Gallifrey, and Leela who is still
happily married to Andred is searching with K9 into the missing House of
Lungbarrow. These plotlines that start
here are actually subplots which all feed into the main plot of the story when
the TARDIS is dragged off course and lands in an enormous surreal Victorian
manor, where the furniture is enormous and a murder has taken place, but the
word murder has been outlawed. Quences,
the head of the House, and Arkhew have been killed apparently by the
Doctor. Yes this is a novel that takes
the form of an old fashioned murder mystery which actually allows the story to
breathe and explore the characters who are mostly the Doctor’s family. Now as this is a story dominated by
character’s that’s really the only way I can tackle reviewing this one.
Starting with previously
established characters we have K9 who makes a reappearance as both Mark I and
Mark II. They don’t get much in the way
of scenes in the novel, but the ones that they do receive Platt injects some
light relief from the drama and dark, creepy atmosphere of the rest of the
novel. Leela actually gets to go out on
her own as she researches Lungbarrow for the first half of the novel which is
rather apt as we get to see more of what she actually sees in Andred. Apparently there really was a relationship
going on off-screen in The Invasion of
Time. She’s still the noble savage
and actually has more wit and survival instincts when it comes to the people of
Gallifrey. The second half of the novel
has her teaming up with Romana and Ace who all have their roles to play in the
subplot involving discovering what exactly happened over 650 years previous
with the House of Lungbarrow and why nobody can remember that that’s where the
Doctor came from. Ace gets herself in
the story which allows Platt to go introspective on how Ace has developed over
the course of the Virgin New Adventures.
A doppelganger of Ace is created as a reflection of the character before
any of the manipulation from Season 26 happened. We get to see just how she has changed and
how she views herself, and to be honest she doesn’t like who she sees today,
but would never go back to the person seen before she met the Doctor. Leela also makes some interesting comments on
Ace in the second half of the novel which sees her as a warrior and they’re
different perspectives on what the Doctor is to them is interesting. Leela would have asked into the mystery but
she was smart enough when travelling with him to know that it is better to keep
her nose down and travel while Ace wanted the answers that never came. Romana is intentionally bringing them
together as a way to save the Doctor and to regain control of a rebelling
Celestial Intervention Agency. The novel
shows that Romana as the Lord President is just as crafty as the Seventh
Doctor. She’s breaking through glass
ceilings by being more open of establishing relationships outside of Gallifrey
which has caused the CIA to have their little revolt.
The main murder mystery
takes place with the denizens of the House of Lungbarrow who are all suspects
in the murder of Quences and Arkhew. Quences was the head Cousin for the House
of Lungbarrow in his day, and he only really appears in a few scenes for the
novel which allows Platt to work on indirect characterization. What we know is that as a leader he took his
time when making decisions, and actually would listen to the Doctor who was
ostracized because he was Loomed with a bellybutton, which only appears on
people born of natural birth. It makes
it all the more weird when the prime suspect is the murder case as the Doctor
had respect for Quences. Arkhew is also
a character for exposition, but for the introduction of the ideas of Lungbarrow
and how it works to Chris. Chris has to
play the detective in this novel and Arkhew, while also being reasonable, has
to keep him up to speed and what it allows Chris to do is also great for the
novel’s progress. The rest of the house
is on a spectrum of being against the Doctor in some way or another, with the
first of these being Innocent. Innocent
is the closest thing the Doctor has to a friend. She still was awful to him as a child,
calling him snail because that’s what his bellybutton looked like, but she’s
willing to give the Doctor a fair trial. This is because the rest of the House
has gone just a bit insane after the Doctor fled from them and she knows if she
doesn’t give the Doctor protection under Housepitality, he will be killed and
things will get a lot worse for them.
Next is the Housekeeper Satthralope, who didn’t want to face the reality
that Quences was killed by someone and convinced the House itself, not its
members but the architectural structure has been convinced that Quences is
dead. Sattralope reminds me of Maggie
Smith in her harshness for the rules.
She doesn’t know how to deal with anything that’s going on and is just a
fun character. Owis is the comic relief
character who was Loomed to replace the Doctor illegally and the House seems to
have made him this lovable idiot. He feels
like the dumber part of a Robert Holmes double act a la The Ribos Operation or The
Talons of Weng-Chiang. Glospin is
the other part of that double act and he is terrifying. He’s pretty much the First Doctor if he was
totally and completely evil. Now I just
love the character and a lot of the things that he does makes you just want him
dead because of what he does to everyone in the House.
To summarize, Lungbarrow is a novel that hits all the
right notes to have all the weird concepts present to make it a success. The Time Lord characters all feel alien,
Badger, whom is the android on the cover of the novel, is an excellent mentor
for the Doctor, the surreal imagery from Platt is great to put this world
together. There are scenes that take us
in an action movie like direction while others go to a horror or thriller
direction for the story and sees the end for the New Adventures leaving The Dying Days as an epilogue with the
Eighth Man Bound. 100/100
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