Corpse Marker by: Chris Boucher

The BBC Books range of Doctor Who novels started their Eighth Doctor Adventures with a run of six books that relied on returning faces to sell copies with mixed results.  The best of these first six were ones that used obscurer villains that wouldn’t be marketed heavily on the cover such as Vampire Science and Alien Bodies, while the more overt fanservice would bring the books down in quality, specifically with The Eight Doctors.  The Past Doctor Adventures, on the other hand, took four books before providing any fanservice with Business Unusual bringing back the Pale Man from the Virgin Missing Adventures range, and Illegal Alien bringing back the Cybermen.  The end of 1999 brought a trilogy of Past Doctor Adventures for the Fifth, Fourth, and Third Doctors, bringing back monsters from the past and serving as sequels to Classic stories.  Corpse Marker is the middle book in this trilogy, serving as a sequel to The Robots of Death, written once again by Chris Boucher.  Boucher is an interesting figure in Doctor Who history as he wrote three stories four the classic series, all of which are regarded as classics, creating the companion of Leela, and then writing four novels for the Past Doctor Adventures range.  Outside of Doctor Who, Croucher is most well-known for serving as the script editor for Blake’s 7, a four series science fiction show on the BBC which has the same status as Doctor Who in most fans’ eyes.  His first PDA, Last Man Running, could best be described as subpar, with plenty of good ideas, but not enough taken into the execution of the concepts and ideas for its length.

 

Corpse Marker is a book with similar problems to Last Man Running, partially being incredibly short read.  It’s a standard length of 280 pages, however, instead of the standard font, this book has a much larger typeface, meaning that I could read a majority of the book, sleep deprived, in an airport in about an hour and a half.  Boucher doesn’t require much attention for a story that is essentially fluff: the Doctor and Leela arrive in Kaldor City some time after the events of The Robots of Death where a cult has risen up around the death of Taren Capel and his anti-robot agenda.  The robots have expanded their abilities, including robots which mimic humans to be used for pleasure.  Poul suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, Toos has found herself back at the top of the food chain, and Uvanov has gone up in the world.  This trio of characters are the only interesting characters outside of the Doctor and Leela, but their plots are essentially repeats of The Robots of Death.  Repeating The Robots of Death really is a lot of what Corpse Marker does, from its structure of splitting the Doctor and Leela up and providing a mysterious figure (this time the same mysterious figure being Taren Capel), and not really giving much extra in the way of interest for the reader to follow.

 

Boucher succeeds in creating a few good ideas: the cult of Taren Capel is interesting and has the potential to reach heights as it delves into how religions form and operate, Leela accidentally being put on the wrong side could also be a very interesting yet very little is actually done with that plotline.  The Doctor is always characterized well and there is an attempt to go in depth with adult themes, but Boucher’s bland writing style simply is not able to make Corpse Marker anything above an average book that will quickly be forgotten as a nostalgia trip for The Robots of Death.  5/10.