Matrix by: Robert Perry and Mike Tucker

There’s something amazing about getting to a throwback to the days of the Virgin New Adventures in the midst of Past Doctor Adventures.  Robert Perry and Mike Tucker’s Matrix, the second novel from this specific pair and works out the specific kinks of their first novel Illegal Alien to form a perfect standout for the Past Doctor Adventures range.  The plot of Matrix, like many of the Virgin New Adventures, forces the Doctor off-screen for much of the runtime as a malignant force takes hold and forces the Doctor to assume the role of Jack the Ripper about a third of the way through and lose his memory, leaving Ace alone on the streets of an alternate Victorian London, one where the Ripper rules.  Perry and Tucker craft a novel whose tone can only be described as dark and twisted, as each setting is in a sort of alternate history where the Doctor’s actions have changed everything forever.  Like many of the Virgin New Adventures, Ace is put through another crucible as she is unwittingly put on her own and the Doctor once again has to realize what it means to be the Doctor.  As a novel, some of the events perhaps breach territory even the darkest of the Virgin New Adventures rarely reached.



Perry and Tucker open the novel in an alternate 1963, one where Jack the Ripper became an immortal overlord and the Doctor and Susan never came to London 1963.  This first segment of the novel, running the first two parts of the book’s six part structure, is set in a typical dystopian alternate history setting, but Perry and Tucker use it importantly as a way to raise the stakes.  This is not in the sense that the entire world is in danger, the UK itself is still there, but is the fifty-first state of the United States of America due to the Ripper’s influence and while its citizens are in turmoil, the actual world is all and all stable.  No, the stakes here are raised because the Doctor and Ace meet alternate versions of Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.  Of course, in this timeline they never met the Doctor and both became poverty stricken in an underpaid Coal Hill School.  They are still recognizably the same characters the Doctor and fans already know, but what Perry and Tucker do here is give the audience the emotional connection for the stakes.  The reader knows these characters and know how the story is supposed to go for them and getting them back on track is put in the back of the reader’s mind adding to the tension for the novel.



Once the plot moves to the alternate Victorian London, much of the novel follows Ace as she attempts to survive the harrowing East End.  Ace spends much of the novel undergoing various levels of assault and humiliation going from a boarding house, to an estate as a servant, to a freak show, and finally to prison to be tried to be hanged.  This is also the novel which turns Ace into a murderer, killing the elderly woman whom she works for in self defense on the second day triggering a return of the Cheetah Virus from Survival.  Ace for the rest of the novel then has to fight off animal instincts to keep her humanity intact.  This is what attracts Jacques Malacroix, owner of a travelling freakshow with an entire international mafia underneath his reign.  Malacroix is a character who uses manipulation, physical and emotional abuse, and just plain torture to get his freaks to become codependent on him.  Reading the sections of the novel in which he appears is like reading a story of domestic abuse.  All of the so-called freaks in his circus shadow all too real examples of what these types of circuses and sideshows were of the era, emulating Tod Browning’s often banned horror film Freaks.  Ace being allowed to reunite with the Doctor is also one of the most heartwarming sections of the novel as it makes it feel like everything is going to be alright in the world.  It is one of those sections where you feel like maybe this will be solved.



The Doctor for the most part of the novel is off-page and in his place is an amnesiac, Johnny.  Johnny is a character with the desire for intelligence of the Doctor, but none of the cunning and none of the stone defenses.  The character becomes one of vulnerability, being attacked by several Londoners for his apparent unintelligence and vagrant demeanor.  Even the name Johnny, feels somehow more childish and more of an unintelligent wanderer adding to the themes Perry and Tucker work on.  He is spit on for being different, a major theme of these segments of the novel.  He is taken in by rich Jew Joseph Liebermann, an intelligent young man attempting to overcome the prejudice of the age.  Liebermann has an extremely long life, living well into the 1960s and eventually working at Coal Hill School.  Liebermann is a fascinating character in that he’s someone the Doctor eventually comes back to visit at different points in his life.  Liebermann is the only character in the novel who shows some sense of humanity on the darkened streets of London, and somehow manages to keep morale up throughout his entire life being torn to pieces in front of him.  Finally, and this is a major spoiler, the actual villain of the piece is the Valeyard, who has become Jack the Ripper and is intent on making the Doctor become him.  Perry and Tucker work up the Valeyard as an insane murderer, yet somehow he is able to come with these incredible plans.  His presence is felt throughout the novel, yet is still a large twist reveal near the end which is perfectly foreshadowed.  Overall, Robert Perry and Mike Tucker’s Matrix deserves a place in your top 10 Past Doctor Adventures and perhaps as one of th absolute best Doctor Who novels. 10/10.