Tomb of Valdemar by: Simon Messingham

 

There is an interesting gimmick in Tomb of Valdemar, something that makes it stand out from a lot of the other Doctor Who books.  There is a frame story from a character telling this story to a village of people after the fact.  Having a frame story is nothing new for books or even Doctor Who books, but this frame story from Simon Messingham puts Tomb of Valdemar in the present tense instead of the traditional past tense prose of practically every other book.  This gives the book a very odd tone.  It does feel like you’re sitting around a fire, being told a tale which is sort of what Messingham is going for, but it is also interrupted by the frame story, especially early on and this breaks up the pace of being told a story.  These breaks especially become an issue when they do not occur at a chapter break which Messingham could have used as a natural break in the narrative, instead often occurring right in the middle of a page meaning it comes across as choppy and not easy to read instead of a natural interruption which is what Messingham is clearly going for.  This is a shame because there is a mystery in what the frame story means, the narrator’s identity is revealed at the very end of the book in a very clever review and the whole idea of the story is called into question.  From the first page this is a book where you question if the story is really what happened to the Doctor and Romana after The Ribos Operation, and the final reveal makes you wonder about a lot of things, tying back into Season 16 and into the current arc in the Eighth Doctor Adventures range.

 

The entire premise involves this entity of the Old Ones, Lovecraftian beings which were in the universe before and are essentially forces of nature, Valdemar.  Valdemar was entombed, or so the legends say, and like The Tomb of the Cybermen a team is coming to unearth this tomb to prove the existence of a legend.  The Doctor, Romana, and K9 are dragged off their search for the Key to Time by the TARDIS malfunctioning and the Tracer being damaged.  Romana knows Valdemar is a myth, an impossibility.  This is a story all about a fictional story becoming real and adding that extra lens of the frame story allows Messingham to add some depth to the proceedings.  Valdemar is not ever actually seen as a character, but its shadow is felt throughout the book as the party gets ever closer to its release.  Tomb of Valdemar becomes a story that has a cosmic entity right off-page looming while human villains play their own machinations: insanity sets in at several points and this is the adventure that almost gets Romana killed.  Messingham is very clever in creating a cast that are all stereotypes from the strong female leader to the insane, power hungry villain, and the poor lackey who gets broken at the first opportunity.

 

K9 is basically a nonentity in this story, being written off pretty early on as Messingham clearly knows that including him would cause problems.  The Doctor is captured fairly well for the season that this is supposed to be placed in, but part of that is mired by the fact that the Season 16 Doctor has kind of become a generic Doctor.  There are definitely scenes where you can hear Tom Baker in the book, especially in the beginning and the end of the book, but really this is Romana’s book.  That’s actually an interesting thing for this one as Tomb of Valdemar is a book which was reprinted in a limited edition Fourth Doctor Time Capsule along with a beautiful statuette, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, and several other goodies for fans.  This is Romana’s book: she’s the one who gets to reflect on her current situation of helping to find the Key to Time.  This is the book where she decides to stay with the Doctor throughout the quest, even though that’s a diversion.  Mary Tamm’s portrayal shines through Messingham’s prose, and there is a real sense of bridging the first two Key to Time stories and the final revelation about how this story changes Romana is beautiful.

 

Overall, Tomb of Valdemar may not be the best representation of the Fourth Doctor and Romana era of the show, it does tell an interesting story through an unreliable narrator.  A very different approach to metatext occurs than say The Well-Mannered War, but there is a lot here to like which makes it worth the read.  7/10.