Alien Bodies is
often cited as one of the absolute best Doctor Who novels ever written. Going in to this one I had already read
Lawrence Miles’ previous work Christmas
on a Rational Planet which introduced the time travelling voodoo cult
Faction Paradox and laid a little groundwork for the story arc he begins here,
yet as a novel it is a great first effort and is totally surpassed by its
successor. This review will contain
quite a few spoilers for the novel so if you have not read it yet, it’s over
twenty years old by this point and copies aren’t too difficult to track down. The premise of Alien Bodies is quite simple: it’s Earth in the late 21st
century and UNISYC, a successor to UNIT, are holding an auction for the Relic. The Relic is the corpse of a Time Lord and
contains important biodata several parties wish to get their hands on, it’s the
corpse of the Doctor, but not the one you are expecting. Yes Doctor Who hinges on the fact that the Doctor
always gets out alive, but everything has its time and everything ends so this
is his final incarnation in the casket. Miles
explores the idea of biodata and what exactly it is used for: every living thing
has it and the Doctor, having traveled so much through time and space, has a
biodata which is crucial for defeating ‘the enemy’. ‘The enemy’ is something that is largely
off-screen as it were due to the fact that at some point in Gallifrey’s future
there is going to be a war which destroys the planet, a war against ‘the enemy’. The Doctor refuses to fight in this war and his
corpse holds the key to defeating them.
The war is this plot device that intrigues the reader and the threads
are left hanging, which isn’t an issue considering there are over sixty novels
left which it can be resolved.
One of the parties
looking to bid for the Doctor’s biodata is the Faction Paradox, which in this
novel is more fully formed than in Christmas
on a Rational Planet. They perform
voodoo rituals and have a religious view on using biodata to control people and
the universe. Time Lords to them are liars
and cheats, not without merit of course, but throughout the novel we see them controlling
soldiers and attempting to complete their own plan. Their plans are also left hanging by Miles to
be picked up in future books, but the information gleaned in this novel is
enough to tell a complete story. It’s
not actually the plot which is interesting in the novel, but it’s almost all
the setup and worldbuilding Miles sets up for the Eighth Doctor Adventures as a
range. The treasure hunt so to speak of taking
control of the casket and the Doctor eventually destroying it is an excellent
plot and the ending is quite poignant, so the worldbuilding is just icing on
the cake for the book. The actual
villain is Shift, an incredibly interesting incorporeal creature who
communicates through psychic influences.
It is something that infiltrates the minds of its victims and intends to
create times of great paranoia to gain control of the biodata.
Miles includes the
Krotons as one party wanting to take the biodata of the Doctor which actually are
quite threatening in this appearance. Time is taken to describe the biology of the
Kroton race as silicon base and individuals are able to commit suicide and
rebuild themselves to make them stronger.
There’s also a Time Lord, Hommunculette, as a bidder who’s more
interesting involvement is the relationship with his TARDIS, Marie. Marie, being a Type 103 TARDIS, has an almost
human sentience and form and her death about 1/3 into the novel is incredibly effective. It sends her owner into a fit of rage as Miles
implies a deep romantic and psychic relationship between ship and operator.
Finally, there is the inclusion
of Sam Jones to consider when looking at Alien
Bodies. There have been complaints
about Sam being a non-character in the previous five novels which only Paul
Leonard attempted to rectify in Genocide. Alien
Bodies is a book where Sam’s non-character nature is revealed as setup for
future novels again. The idea is that
Sam Jones has two biodatas. The first is
the one the previous five novels have given us: Sam is a young blonde woman,
preoccupied with activism and a goody two shoes to boot who met the Doctor when
running away from drug dealers in Totters’ Lane. The other is a bit more interesting and a bit
deeper than that: Samantha Jones is a dark haired young woman who has fallen into
a heroin addiction and is friends with drug dealers. This is the first glimpse of what Miles calls
‘Dark Sam’ and something that the Doctor decides to keep from his companion. Yet outside of that Miles also makes Sam
quite the likable character through the first half of the book, comforting a
UNISYC soldier and honestly just acting like she wants to help out. It makes a big change from the previous
novels where she has been more of a whiny child. Overall Alien
Bodies is a novel full of atmosphere that takes a slow burn approach to
storytelling. It clocks in at 313 pages
and is the first Eighth Doctor Adventure to really hit it out of the park and
set up the storyline for the range. 10/10.
As a noted fan of the
Virgin New Adventures, it actually didn’t bother me that when BBC Books wrote
books featuring the Seventh Doctor they ignored the continuity of that book series
and released the first Seventh Doctor novel, Illegal Alien, as a story taking place after “Survival” yet not far
enough into the post-television series to have the Virgin New Adventures to have
taken effect. This is actually quite refreshing
to explore some essentially unseen adventures with the Doctor and Ace free from
the baggage of the earlier range. Ace in
particular here feels like she came fresh from the end of “Survival” which is
at least in part due to the fact that Mike Tucker and Robert Perry’s story was
a submission for Season 27 of the television series. Putting Ace at the center of the London Blitz
at a point in her life post “The Curse of Fenric” is a stroke of genius from
Tucker and Perry. She cannot stand Nazi
ideology and some of the torture she endures near the end of the novel are just
as brutal as some of the Virgin New Adventures, Timewyrm: Exodus and Just War
immediately spring to mind. Characterizing
Ace as the teenager she was also gives the novel an edge as while there still
is the growth of the television series, she is still a character who acts rashly
when confronted with injustices of World War II.
Yet Tucker and Perry don’t
attempt to have Illegal Alien be a
part of some cosmic plan of the Seventh Doctor to save the universe, sure the
Doctor spends much of the novel scheming, but the implication here is that this
is just a story that they have stumbled upon.
The Doctor of this novel displays a side to his personality that is not
always seen in this incarnation: his ability to think on his feet and change
his plans at a moment’s notice. The
authors also include quite a bit from the point of view of the Doctor, really allowing
the reader to sympathize with his emotions.
The Doctor is a man who cares deeply about Ace and exploring her room in
the TARDIS while she is kidnapped by Nazis is a touching little scene where the
Doctor actually is allowed to show some deeper emotions. The main human villain of the novel is George
Limb, a man who works with the Nazis under the mantra the road to hell is paved
with good intentions. He and the Doctor have
interesting parallels: they are both schemers and chess masters, working for
the greater good and not afraid to push the boundaries of morality to their
ends. There is a minor issue in that
Limb is more obviously evil, due to his stance as essentially a Nazi officer
which kind of drags portions of their chess match in the back fourth of the
novel just not work as well as it could.
Tucker and Perry split
the novel into four equally length parts echoing the idea that this is just a
television story in novel form. They share
a descriptive style of prose fully immersing the reader in the empty streets of
London during the Blitz, the novel truly feels like it’s a noir film with muted
colors and a jazzy soundtrack filling out the scenes of the novel. Cody McBride acts as a second companion to
the Doctor here and he’s almost your stereotypical American detective straight
out of a noir film who narrates the opening of the four parts of the book. There’s also this sense of brutality about
the book as Tucker and Perry bring the Cybermen to the BBC Books range with
scenes that rival Iceberg and Killing Ground in terms of body
horror. The Cybermen here are the models
seen in The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Wheel in Space and are biding their
time. There are initially three Cybermen
present, yet they use the citizens hiding in the underground from the Blitz as
stock to convert more to the Cyber race.
Tucker and Perry even include the image of a baby converted into a
grotesque mix between a Cyberman and a Cybermat. While there are no in depth descriptions of
the Cyberman conversion process a la Killing
Ground, but Tucker and Perry are masters at crafting horror off-screen so to
speak. They let the screams and
following silence to really let the horror sink in. As a first novel, there’s some real talent in
Illegal Alien, giving the Seventh
Doctor and Ace an excellent introduction to the Past Doctor Adventures
range. Both of their characters are perfectly
characterized and Tucker and Perry include memorable side characters with an
engaging plot that works incredibly well.
It is only let down by a human villain that doesn’t quite work and
weakens the climax because of this.
9/10.
War of the Daleks
is one of those novels with a divisive reputation amongst Doctor Who fans. Half of the fanbase seems to hate it as a
continuity fest, determined to retcon nearly every Dalek story into one
timeline as well as the climax of “Remembrance of the Daleks”. The other half seem to think it’s a brilliant
piece of Doctor Who fiction, finishing the 1980s arc of Doctor Who Dalek
stories with aplomb. With a reputation such
as this, perhaps it is not a surprise that my personal opinion on War of the Daleks is very middle of the
road: John Peel does a lot of things right, and a lot of things wrong when it
comes to this novel. Looking at his past
work, there is no surprise that Peel was chosen for the first ever Dalek novel:
he adapted “The Chase”, “Mission to the Unknown”, “The Daleks’ Master Plan”, “The
Power of the Daleks”, and “The Evil of the Daleks” into Target novels and was
friends with Dalek creator Terry Nation.
Yes, his work for Virgin Publishing is a 50/50 split between good and
bad, he only wrote two original novels so third time could be the charm to mix
a metaphor.
The highlight of the
novel is how Peel uses the Daleks to full effect: they have a formed caste
system that makes an extreme sense and recontextualizes the grey Daleks of the
classic series the easiest to defeat adding a level of tension to the novel. Daleks don’t just shout exterminate without actually
doing anything in this novel, killing characters on sight. The plot concerning the Quetzal and the Thals are also highlights of the novel. Peel does an excellent job in touching on the
idea of the Thals wishing to enhance themselves to be more like the Daleks in a
bid to ending the fighting against the Daleks.
Peel makes them have become a desperate race, sick of the war and plague
the Daleks have caused throughout the cosmos.
It’s an excellent plotline which creates an engaging moral dilemma for the
first half of the novel. Sadly it gets
wrapped up around the halfway point. This
novel overall is structured quite like a television serial, in four parts with
three chapters per part. The simple
answer for why Peel did this is that he was adapting a script originally meant
for television, with a few alterations to expand the scope and scale of the
conflict. The second half of the novel
shifts into what feels like a completely different story, one which I would
call “The Trial of the Daleks”. It’s a
plot like all the post “Genesis of the Daleks” stories bar “Remembrance of the
Daleks” that gets overshadowed by the inclusion of the Daleks’ creator Davros. Davros is put on trial, unbeknownst to him, as
defendant of the Dalek race which for some reason has decided that if found
guilty they should undergo self-destruction.
Some of the logic used by the Daleks and explanations given for the
trial does not make sense, but that does not matter.
Yet, outside of these
instances, there is quite a bit of War of
the Daleks that just doesn’t work.
First, the characterization of the Doctor and Sam Jones falls incredibly
flat outside of the first chapter. The first
chapter has the Doctor tearing apart portions of the TARDIS for repairs and in
this scene we really get the sense on the aloofness and romantic nature of this
incarnation of the Doctor, which disappears once they arrive on the Quetzal.
They both revert into generic Doctor and companion characterizations,
which is a massive step down from the portrayal in the previous novel. Peel attempts to give Sam a blasé attitude
towards the Daleks, and pulls the joke that they don’t actually look
threatening, but this really doesn’t work well because outside of this joke
there isn’t any character to Sam. She
also sees the destruction the Daleks cause firsthand and honestly she almost
seems cocky when facing them. In the
second half of the novel she also has absolutely nothing to do, with the Doctor
taking center stage for the remainder of the book. Which doesn’t work because even when taking center
stage, the Doctor doesn’t do much. There
really isn’t any satisfactory resolution to this novel as the Daleks just sort
of blow each other up really quickly. The
final nail in the coffin for this novel so to speak is the retcon: the idea
goes that in “Remembrance of the Daleks” the Daleks saw that the Doctor would
use the Hand of Omega to blow up Skaro so they replaced it with a similar
planet, Antalin, which in turn changes at least some of the motivation of every
classic Doctor Who Dalek story. Now it’s
nice to get an explanation for why Skaro exists, but the retcon is just too
confusing and the plot almost stops for twenty pages or so to stop it. The opinions on this novel are incredibly
conflicting, some of it’s great, some isn’t.
5/10.
The BBC Books line of
Doctor Who novels began with a definite attempt to separate themselves from the
line of Virgin New Adventures and Virgin Missing Adventures before them. They began a line with the Eighth Doctor and
when starting Seventh Doctor novels, only used the companion of Ace instead of
picking up at the end of Lungbarrow. Yet, the fourth Past Doctor Adventure is the
first novel to be a direct sequel to a Virgin Missing Adventure. The most interesting aspect of Business Unusual is that it follows up
the hanging C19 plot threads of Who
Killed Kennedy and The Scales of Injustice. The Pale Man is now referred to as the
managing director and Business Unusual
does not include the Silurian plot, but the elements are there for a sequel. The plot of Business Unusual also attempts to tie together one of the hanging
threads from the television series: this is the story where Melanie Bush meets
the Doctor and begins her travels meaning it’s the beginning of the end for the
Sixth Doctor. Gary Russell writes the
Doctor throughout the novel closer to the version of the character seen in
Season 22. The Doctor is arrogant and quite
put off throughout proceedings as he attempts to avoid the inevitable. He tries his hardest to make Mel put off by
the idea of travel, wishing her to stay home in her town of Pease Pottage. Yet, by the end of the novel, he’s accepted
the fact that she’s going to come with him and has become closer to the
character Colin has played in recent years.
In characterizing Mel, Russell
takes his time with her, starting her out with a deeper characterization than
the optimist we got on the television series.
Here she sees herself as needing to get away from an overbearing family,
almost becoming cynical as a result, yet the novel ends with Mel reconciling with
her family before going off with the Doctor.
Of course they get off on the wrong foot, again the Doctor is
characterized as his more arrogant persona and we get the fact that Mel is a
vegetarian really coming into conflict with the Doctor. By the time the Doctor and Mel are having
breakfast together, any kink in the characterization of the two is worked out
by Russell. Staying with Mel is American
Trey Korte, a transfer student who has awakened psychic powers due to proximity
to either the Doctor or the TARDIS, both are hypothesized to be the reason, yet
that remains unanswered. Trey honestly
has a lot of potential as a possible companion to the Doctor, he has a good
personality and gets along with Mel and the Doctor. There’s this really nice dynamic between the
three and seeing a series of adventures would have been a treat.
Ciara and Ciellan, the
Irish Twins from The Scales of Injustice also
reappear here and Russell takes some time to delve into their backstories. They were young nurses in the 1960s who stole
drugs from the pharmacy at the hospital they trained at for parties, were
caught and essentially bought by the Pale Man.
In giving them both dialogue throughout the novel, Russell gives both
characters a decent character arc with a resolution to become better people, in
spite of the Auton technology making them totally inhuman. The novel ends with them driving off into the
sunset. The Stalker also returns as a
threat to Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, investigating SeneNet
on the orders of Sir John Sudbury. The
Brigadier spends most of the novel in a cell as he is captured and only really
gets to meet the Doctor in the final 50 pages or so. This allows Russell not to actually include
an introduction between the two characters, while really getting inside the mind
of the Brigadier. His deteriorating relationship
and eventual divorce from Fiona is expanded upon here: he hasn’t seen his
daughter Kate in years and has realized that he’s probably going to be a bachelor
for the rest of his life (if he only knew).
He remembers the names of every officer killed in the line of duty, and
is aghast when someone with a full life ahead of him is sent to his rescue. He also has met several versions of the
Doctor by now and they never actually appear in the right order. The book is as much his story as it is of the
Doctor and Mel. Business Unusual is a book of many highs and maybe one or two lows,
but is an incredibly enjoyable experience giving Mel a fitting introduction, and
wrapping up some loose ends from the Virgin books. 9/10
