Prime Time by: Mike Tucker

 

Prime Time is an incredibly weird book.  It’s the first solo book by one Mike Tucker, taking the form of a three part story, like the rest of his stories reflecting the McCoy television era.  The splits make sense, but unlike his work with Robert Perry, Prime Time is more of a meta commentary and analysis on Doctor Who as a whole.  The setting is the planet Blinni-Gaar which has become enthralled to television.  Every person on this planet is essentially glued to their set with over 400 channels and the economy has become completely based on television.  People appear on gameshows in an attempt to earn money and any work is done for television.  This premise is actually quite derivative of the Virgin Missing Adventure, Time of Your Life, which was an exploration of the Sixth Doctor in the immediate aftermath of The Trial of a Time Lord, and honestly that premise is explored better and far more thoroughly there.  The television stuff is really there so the Doctor’s involvement here can become the premise for a television show, with the producers of Channel 400 essentially manipulating things so the Doctor essentially has to appear on camera.  Tucker does an interesting trick in not having the Doctor have some plan, eventually leading to the end of this book where a tag scene is included implying that the events here start a chain reaction that leads to a destructive event.  It’s essentially setting up where the Seventh Doctor’s Past Doctor Adventures will be going in the future books.

 

This is a book with a twist villain, revealed near the end of “Part One”, which I sadly have to spoil here.  The villain behind everything is the Master which makes for a very interesting novel as for much of it the Master ends up being an ally of the Doctor, implying that after the events of Survival he has been captured by the people of Blinni-Gaar and the Fleshsmiths, the alien race secretly on the planet and harvesting bodies.  They both get trapped in an almost Star Trek like setting and have to fight their way out, and Tucker writes their interactions with relish, however, the Master is portrayed more like the over the top version Ainley played before Survival which is a shame as the Survival/Logopolis portrayal is where Ainley was best in the rolse.  The Master feels less like a threat while the Fleshsmiths provide more body horror with their quest to keep augmenting themselves through surgery, implementing other species’ best evolved traits into themselves.  Of course they promise the Master another body and that’s something where he is going to be betrayed in the end.  The Fleshsmiths have this homogenous identity which almost thrives in how utterly odd it is.  They are portrayed on the cover of the book in a designed costume looking very much like something Tucker would have worked with on the show, and modeled by editor Stephen Cole which also adds something quite interesting to the events.

 

Tucker is also excellent at portraying Ace at this point in her life, as this is kind of the first time there’s a reflection to what Ace has been doing post-Survival, ignoring the Virgin New Adventures as the Past Doctor Adventures have been known to do.  While this does contradict continuity which is something Tucker even lampshades here, Ace has a lot to do.  She has kind of a romance with the character Gatti and has some recent experiences, some in books, some in audios, makes for a place for her to have her moment.  Sadly by the end of the book Tucker seems to run out of steam in giving her things to do as the focus shifts onto the Doctor and the Master which is a great relationship, if a bit camp, but is detracting from Ace.  The best bits of the book for Ace are near the beginning where she is able to have her own motivations, being the explosives expert and reflecting on how she has grown up while travelling with the Doctor.  There’s also hints that she could be leaving soon, which makes for the tag scene work really well.  A lot of the interludes, labeled commercial breaks, Tucker includes to provide some interesting pieces of levity which works really well for the book and gives the reader some idea of where things are going, adding to a lot of the metatext.

 

Overall, Prime Time while definitely a solid book is a book which suffers from being derivative of another book which did the same premise but better.  It does have the plus of doing different enough things with the premise in the end, even if the first third or so is essentially Time of Your Life, but with the Seventh Doctor and Ace which is good. 7/10.