Placebo Effect by: Gary Russell

Gary Russell is one of the Doctor Who authors for whom inserting continuity references is a favorite past time.  His only contribution to the Eighth Doctor Adventures, much like his contribution to the Virgin New Adventures, is a tribute to one of his and many fans’ favorite stories.  Placebo Effect proudly bears the striking silhouette of a Wirrn (Or as Russell puts it in great tribute to Ian Marter, Wirrrn) over a coin bearing the logo of the 3999 Olympic Games.  The plot of the novel is a commentary on the very real controversy of drug abuse and doping in high level sports events, having the Wirrn Queen spread her seed through red and blue acetaminophen pills distributed throughout the games.  This is a bid for the Wirrn to take over the galaxy and then the universe.  Russell’s prose style works incredibly well when switching to several points of view of characters assimilating into the Wirrn.  The style becomes conflicted, emulating the thought process of someone whose control is slowly being coaxed away from them and into a massive hive mind.  Russell captures the fear, yet excitement of coming to the cusp of knowledge while still losing freedom.  The issue of using the Wirrn mainly comes from the reveal of their presence, which comes halfway through the novel, being squandered by the cover and introduction.  The first half of the novel is a standard mystery Doctor Who plot with the Foamasi from The Leisure Hive.  The Foamasi were never fleshed out within the context of The Leisure Hive and Russell creates a mafia style society, but manages to make the reptilian characters more interesting than Fisher’s script.



The Doctor and Sam Jones only get involved in the events of the novel due to an acknowledgement of the Radio Times comic strip starring the Eighth Doctor, Stacy Townsend, and Ssard.  Russell uses Stacy and Ssard’s wedding to wrap up any remaining plotlines from that comic strip as at this point the strip had stop running.  The first third of Placebo Effect explores the nature of the Eighth Doctor and his wanderings.   During the year-long gap in between The Eight Doctors and Vampire Science, the Doctor travelled with Stacy and Ssard and has been avoiding going to their wedding.  The Eighth Doctor is the perfect example of a wanderer, forgetting several points that there is a wedding to be getting to, even when getting people to the wedding.  Sam reflects early on in the novel that everything has returned to normal since her exit, really underselling the impact that Seeing I should have had on the range.  There’s something deeper to the Doctor that Russell only vaguely explores: he genuinely cares for his companions and is attempting to make their lives better.  Yes he doesn’t always get around to things when he should, but he will eventually.  Stacy and Ssard as characters disappear once their wedding is over, which really makes the pacing of the book feel like there is meant to be two stories here.  The first story would have Sam, Stacy, and Ssard as companions helping the Doctor foil a murder mystery while the second would have been the Wirrn plot of the back 2/3 of the novel.  Stacy and Ssard come across with the chemistry a couple would have, however, Russell for once does not rely on the continuity to introduce the characters, expecting the reader to have already experienced their comic strips.  There are plenty of emotional moments as the wedding is of course interrupted and the Doctor brings Stacy’s parents into the future as a present making their portion of the story enjoyable, but it is not necessary.



The glue that attempts to bring together the two plots is one with the Church of the Way Forward, an extreme religious sect who disapprove of interspecies marriage.  Russell uses this sect to provide commentary on the form of American Evangelicalism which demands evolution to be just a theory and that the only way to live a good life is to follow the faith.  There’s even an insane reverend who ends up converted to the Wirrn cause by the end of the novel.  Perhaps the weakest aspect of the novel is Russell’s subplot of Sam questioning atheism through poor arguments.  Sam starts to believe there may be something out there due to an argument that can be boiled down to there aren’t enough missing links and evolution is just a theory.  Russell implies that this has been building up and it is the influence of Kyle Dale, her love interest of the adventure, has brought this on.  There really is no resolution to this budding character development, and by the end it is at a point where she’s simply questioning her perspective of being an extreme activist.  The Doctor of course has no faith, but had at one point what might have been called a “family” and it is that which gives Sam some hope.  Sam is actually characterized quite well by the end of the novel after spending much of it closer to the blank slate character.  At least she is less insufferable than she has been since Seeing I developed the character.  Overall, Placebo Effect is a book which suffers the most from having too many ideas and too many pacing issues to bring it to a truly great novel.  It’s not nearly as bad as some would have you think, in fact it’s pretty good. 7/10.