Craig Hinton is the author most often credited with
originating the term ‘fanwank,’ and while there are reviews of his three
published novels in the VNAs and VMAs as well as the unpublished Time’s
Champion from me, it is The Quantum Archangel which defines the term
in the most negative of sense. It is one
of those Doctor Who novels which on every page puts multiple references
to television stories, novels, and even some of the early Big Finish audio dramas
which would have been released at the time and Hinton’s prose becomes dense because
of the references. A good reference
should be something that the reader can quickly move over and not something
that bogs down the story in the minutia of details, and the later is what The
Quantum Archangel exemplifies. The
first half is Craig Hinton writing a sequel to The Time Monster, a Jon Pertwee
story which in the eyes of the fandom is one of the weakest of an otherwise
brilliant run (though an opinion I do not entirely share). The idea of a sequel to The Time Monster
is intriguing and is almost setup well with Stuart Hyde, the younger scientist
from that story, now in his fifties has been continuing the experiments into
interstitial time without the oversight of UNIT or even the Master. Stuart is a bit fun when he reappears, but there
is the weird tendency to keep having him and the Doctor eat together, like a
lot.
The problem comes in that Hinton doesn’t actually do
anything with the fact that this is a sequel to The Time Monster for the
first half of the story except to repeat events from The Time Monster. Most of the moments of that story is
remembered for are done word for word here with little twist, from the first appearance
of a Chronovore, to the Doctor making up a piece of advanced technology to slow
the Master down out of bits of kitchenware, to the Master pretending to be a
European professor whose name means Master (this time it’s Serbian), and even some
of the dialogue is just taken directly from The Time Monster. The only difference would be putting the Sixth
Doctor and Mel in the middle of that story, but Hinton who characterized them
brilliantly in Millennial Rites, massively drops the ball. Mel is no longer the plucky, optimistic, computer
programmer, but a woman jaded from travel and the Doctor acting like both a
child and a mass murderer. The book
opens with the Doctor finishing a genocide against a race of aliens that the
audience never gets to see.
There eventually is an explanation as to why this is,
but it’s meant to be our inciting incident for why Mel wants to go home and has
become fed up with travel, but the only other story with Mel in the Past Doctor
Adventures range to this point was Business Unusual which is her first
story chronologically. Hinton doesn’t really
justify this, and even lampshades the fact that this isn’t the first genocide
the Doctor has committed with Mel present, and to add insult to injury,
explicitly states that this is post-The Ultimate Foe for the both of
them. Hinton attempts to make the Doctor
seem to be spiraling into becoming the Valeyard, but he already explored that
perfectly in Millennial Rites.
Here it feels like something put in because that’s what the editors
wanted. The second half involves the Quantum
Archangel, basically God in the form of a human woman whom Mel went to college
with. Anjeliqua is a perfect example of
where Hinton goes wrong with characterization, mainly that there isn’t any. As the Archangel reality is almost immediately
warped and the eventual climax revolves around a false prophecy a la The
Armageddon Factor where a genocide has been implanted in the Doctor’s head
for something that never actually happened.
The entire plot is just an excuse for Hinton to rehash Millennial
Rites which worked because it was set up so well through the first half and
had incredibly likable characters to follow in the warped world. And it only focused on a single alternate reality
while The Quantum Archangel focuses on like six at the same time. It means that there isn’t anything that gets enough
focus to develop in the second half of the book.
Overall, there are a few things to enjoy about The
Quantum Archangel, the Master is characterized nicely and the stuff that
comes from The Time Monster is at least something that you might get
something out of if you really like The Time Monster, but the book on
the whole is one which hangs two flimsy plots in an outline of a novel which feels
more preoccupied with shoving in as many references as possible into a novel. 3/10.
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