Last of the Gaderene by: Mark Gatiss

In his introduction to the 2013 edition of Last of the Gaderene author Mark Gatiss spends some time on the Target novels and what they meant to him.  He spent several days as a child when sick reading through his Jon Pertwee novelizations including Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks.  It is these periods of his life which largely inspired the writing of Last of the Gaderene and as such much of its style and plot harkens back to those small novelizations, just in the format of a full-length Doctor Who novel.  And as stated above, it was one of the Past Doctor Adventures given a reprint in 2013 to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Doctor Who.  Of these books, I have already written reviews for Dreams of Empire and Players, but it is Last of the Gaderene which best represents the style of the Doctor’s era it was used to represent.  Gatiss’ prose is simple: actions are performed succinctly moving the plot along quickly in the book’s 300 page count and sentences are short, flowing rapidly through the chapters.  There are several nods to the Target novelization range such as one chapter being aptly titled ‘Escape to Danger’ and several textual callbacks are included as well, namechecking Metabelis Three, the fact that the Doctor has recently had his TARDIS restored, and that the Doctor is now free to travel as a Time Lord.  While other Doctor Who novels try to push the envelope in storytelling, Last of the Gaderene is content to tell a traditional Third Doctor and UNIT story, trapping itself firmly in the era and striving to be a novelization of an unseen adventure.  This is not a bad thing, by any means, but it is something that a potential reader should be aware of if they were to pick this book up.

 

The plot invokes several previous UNIT stories, most obviously The Daemons and The Green Death, by sending the Doctor, Jo, and UNIT to the village of Culverton where an old friend of the Brigadier’s has called for help and Legion International has taken up the space of an RAF aerodrome in the city.  People are disappearing and reappearing as if they never left, and of course everything is really a front for an alien invasion orchestrated by the Master.  The Gaderene are a parasitic species which take over the minds of their hosts as embryos, leaving them as happy husks of themselves which is where Mark Gatiss uses his style to inject some pulpy horror into the novel.  Their plan is a simple “invade the Earth so they can survive” affair, and the Doctor, as he would, wishes to help them, but as they are only interested in taking over from humanity, there is nothing else he can do.  The Master’s involvement, post-Frontier in Space, is largely confined to the final third of the novel which helps to evoke the atmosphere of a Season 10 story (apparently Gatiss took some inspiration from the unmade The Final Game for this book) where an ill advised alliance does not end well for the Master.  Where the Master’s character is lacking here, however, is that the interactions with the Doctor, which is what made the Delgado incarnation especially brilliant, are lacking with really only one final confrontation at the end.  That confrontation is fine and good, the Doctor and the Master being characterized well, and the final line of the book summarizing their relationship really well as just old friends from school, but it does leave the reader really wanting more from Gatiss and the book itself.

 

The actual villain of the book when the Master isn’t there (so the first two-thirds) is the aptly named Bliss, whom Gatiss characterizes as a woman stuck in this haze.  Bliss is essentially a human agent who has been taken over first by the Gaderene who can’t really keep her story straight and is teetering on the edge of a fit of laughter.  It’s one of two places where the Gaderene parasites are really characterized well and the horror implicit in the parasite is actually there.  The other place is the moments where a woman’s husband is taken over and she goes nearly catatonic as her world has been raptured.  The Doctor’s first meeting with Bliss is excellent as UNIT watches on and Bliss is caught in a lie about geography which reveals much more about what Legion International is doing.  The Gaderene themselves pull from Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm for their form and the only living adult lives in the marsh, attacking people and Jo Grant, who is just as spunky and proactive as ever in this novel.  It becomes the standard Doctor Who monster in these scenes, think like the Primords from Inferno.

 

While Jo Grant is excellent here, reflecting on how her relationship with the Doctor has changed now that The Three Doctors has happened and some foreshadowing of her departure in The Green Death is included, the rest of the UNIT family doesn’t fair as well.  Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is fine, but is relegated to the role of standard UNIT commander and without the performance from Nicholas Courtney, he feels more like a character for the Doctor and Jo to simply explain things to.  Sergeant Benton and Mike Yates are both served even less well, being pushed to the background where they really don’t get a lot of characterization.  This is at least in keeping with Season 10 and the style of story that Letts and Dicks were telling at that point, though is disappointing when compared to the other books to feature UNIT in much more depth.  The supporting cast are also stock characters from stories like The Daemons and The Green Death with a priest, the evil corporate overlord, the dottering old woman who helps everyone out, and several children.  Because of this they are all more memorable than they have any real right to be.

 

Overall, Last of the Gaderene reads like a love letter to Mark Gatiss’ childhood reading Target novels, and as that is what the book was meant to do it is a success.  The book falls slightly by not doing much outside of providing a standard Season 10 Doctor Who story, making it fall below some other Third Doctor novels which are just leaps and bounds better.  It still makes an enjoyable read and is worth a look, but you shouldn’t go in expecting something absolutely groundbreaking and brilliant.  8/10.