The Fall of Yquatine by: Nick Walters

 

Anyone who has to follow up Paul Cornell was invariably going to have a difficult time, doubly so when it’s a book like The Shadows of Avalon which changes the trajectory of a range and knocks it out of the park with its imagery and characters.  The difficult task came down to Nick Walters, whose first novel Dominion was perfectly serviceable a story with the Doctor, Fitz, and Sam, a style of EDA that seems to have been going by the wayside with the change in Compassion.  The Fall of Yquatine is a novel with a less than stellar cover, not really setting itself apart from several other BBC Books covers which sport a spaceship (The King of Terror, Imperial Moon, and Warmonger all come to mind).  Its description is less encouraging, sporting a general the Doctor and companions try to save a doomed world plotline which other stories have done before.  Yet Nick Walters manages to provide a Doctor Who novel that while not boasting a completely stand-out in terms of plot, is enough to attract readers throughout the book to grab onto what Walters is attempting here.  Yquatine is a planet which is fated to fall in a war which occurs right as a treaty is meant to be signed achieving peace.  The Doctor has only come to Yquatine to visit an old friend, Lou Lombardo, who runs a scalping business for various space and timeship parts, in the intent to acquire a randomizer for Compassion.  The Time Lords are clearly on Compassion’s trail and the Doctor, without telling anyone, realizes that if a randomizer worked for the Black Guardian then it will work this time around.

 

The Doctor’s attitude towards Compassion here is a fascinating one: while he is motivated by keeping her, Fitz, and himself safe, he does not give her any real choice in implementing the randomizer in her circuitry.  This sends Compassion into a rage, leaving the Doctor and taking Fitz with her.  The randomizer clearly hurts her, and the Doctor never actually apologizes for taking advantage of his friend’s vulnerability.  While Walters in the middle of the novel only includes Compassion in two interludes where she is wandering the time vortex, no longer in control of herself, even these interludes give us something new to the character.  While before The Shadows of Avalon, Compassion was a very distant person, letting her emotions stay beneath the surface, but becoming a human TARDIS has made her actually able to see the wonder and joy in the universe, as well as the terror and horror.  Her relationship with the Doctor is something that cuts deep, but is still rocky.  She actually has more of a relationship with Fitz: taking him with her and trying to get him to take the randomizer out of her while it slowly integrates itself into her systems.  Fitz is the one she trusts because he is so simple.  Fitz, despite his now extensive travels with the Doctor, is still human and still that scruffy man from the 1960s.

 

Fitz spends much of the middle of the book trying to survive and figure out a way to save Yquatine, as the tragedy around him unfolds.  He ends up in a relationship with the mistress of the President of the Minerva System, Arielle, and like many relationships it’s one that gives Fitz a chance to shine just who he is.  Fitz’s relationship is one where he actually finds some sort of purpose in the time he spends away from the Doctor and Compassion.  Arielle is kind and inquisitive, learning xenobiology and actually gives Fitz a reason to live and stay on Yquatine.  He eventually makes that decision to stay right around the time that the fall is set to happen, though as this is an Eighth Doctor Adventure, the tragedy is actually averted by the Doctor.  The Doctor here is actually where a lot of the book falls a bit flat.  The Doctor is characterized well enough, as he infiltrates politics and is essentially running for his life, however, the actual point of changing history makes both Fitz and Compassion having to come to terms with a civilization dying feel a little flat.  The civilization doesn’t actually die, even when Walters attempts to pull sequences of the book where it’s stated that history cannot be changed.  The emotional impact of the previous 200 pages are essentially undone.  There’s also a supporting character who is hinted at representing or possibly being a reincarnation of Samantha Jones, but she is never actually explained.  Walters implies that Fitz is just seeing Sam and missing Sam, but it is never really clear what that means.

 

Overall, The Fall of Yquatine is at least a good follow up to The Shadows of Avalon, continuing Compassion’s development excellently and putting her and the Doctor in a more rocky relationship as to what she has become.  It’s a book that slightly falls apart in the end as the book insists on including a happy ending instead of letting death have any lasting consequences in this range. 7/10.