EarthWorld by: Jacqueline Rayner

 

The first Eighth Doctor Adventure I ever read was EarthWorld, it was chosen to represent the Eighth Doctor in the 2013 50^th Anniversary reprint collection and you can see why.  This is the Eighth Doctor’s first trip in the TARDIS after being trapped on Earth with no memory for a century, Fitz is back but he still isn’t the original Fitz, and new companion Anji Kapoor isn’t adjusting to the death of her boyfriend well.  While there is quite a lot of continuity in this one, Jacqueline Rayner never really gets bogged down in letting it overwhelm the reader while someone who has been reading along will feel more enhanced, for the most part.  There are a few mentions of Compassion and her story arc which feel necessary to continuing Fitz and the Doctor’s stories but not enough to make the range continue it’s jumping on point.  When I first read this book I thought Rayner was using some abstract idea about a sentient TARDIS character and not a literal sentient TARDIS.  Now, this is Rayner’s first novel, and you can kind of tell.  The book has quite a few diversions and doesn’t really have that focused of a plot, but there is a genuinely fascinating idea especially as she was asked to follow up the ending of Escape Velocity which homages the ending of “An Unearthly Child” with the TARDIS materializing in a desert where the silhouette of a man looks on.

 

The actual plot of EarthWorld is a science fiction style one and not the historical runaround that is An Unearthly Child.  EarthWorld is an amusement park on the planet New Jupiter in the far future.  The human race has long since abandoned the planet Earth while a confused version of Earth culture has become the culture of the day with a President who is more like a king with the divine right that comes along with it.  EarthWorld is a tribute to the Earth with several of the details twisted due to poor records, the cultural warping of tales, and deliberate misinterpretation with Elvis literally being the king of the 1960s, phrases being written wrong, and the three daughters of the president (and their several android duplicates) taking up an almost fascistic rule of the amusement park.  Now, Rayner almost does something interesting in paralleling the warping of late 20^th century culture as a statement about how ancient cultures find themselves represented in the public consciousness due to the biases of the archeologists, but that isn’t explored nearly as much as it could have been.  There are also three young terrorists of ANJI which is how Anji gets involved in the story in a way that just feels like several cliches, though the character writing of Anji is great.  Rayner uses emails never sent to Dave as a representation of her grief which is where the novel really succeeds.  The way she works through the grief is beautifully portrayed though the King Arthur plot that takes up the climax of the book goes on way too long.

 

The three daughters, Asia, Africa, and Antarctica are fascinating but they end up making up most of the supporting characters through their several android duplicates who are immediately smitten with Fitz.  So of course, they try to kill him and he only gets through it by pretending to be a pop star greater than Elvis himself which is a fun plot, especially when Fitz goes through a breakdown as it’s revealed there was a duplicate made that also struggles with its identity.  Fitz’s plot is one where there are other characters who just kind of drop out of the narrative after a certain point.  The curator of EarthWorld in particular just disappears after Fitz runs away from her and it doesn’t actually feel like anything is resolved.  These dangling plot threads are the points of EarthWorld that don’t really work and bring the book down as well as the pace.  There is some great musing about Fitz and the fact that he still remembers becoming Father Kreiner, something that is surprising since the range at this point seemed to be cutting ties from its past.  The Doctor is also characterized really well, with his added aloofness permeating the page, but he’s sadly not in the book as much as he should be, especially since this is immediately after his second exile on Earth.  He’s back in the TARDIS, he’s free to have adventures, and his memory is kind of restored, but there’s this sadness there that needs to be explored.

 

Overall, EarthWorld is one of the few Eighth Doctor Adventures that you can read from a legendary Doctor Who author in their creative infancy.  It’s a book with a lot of flaws that Rayner acknowledges in her introduction to the reprint, but manages still to be a fun time even if there’s a bit too much meandering in it with some threads getting dropped.  7/10.