Vanishing Point by: Stephen Cole

 

There has been something interesting about the last grouping of BBC Books 1990s/2000s Doctor Who novels that I have been reading.  Bunker Soldiers was the standout, brimming with great ideas and characters plus an interesting style of narration injecting something great into it.  Outside of that Escape Velocity was a fairly average end to the Earth arc, but was promising in the way that it ended reflecting the end of An Unearthly Child and EarthWorld just focused on telling a solid Doctor Who story.  But Rags took out quite a lot of my enthusiasm for the range and consuming Doctor Who things in general, resulting in a rage filled review, which while popular, is not the type of review I wish to write nor do I enjoy it.  This meant that Vanishing Point, the next book published and the third Eighth Doctor Adventure to feature Anji as a companion, may have had an uphill battle to get the book to come together, especially as it becomes clear that the editing situation at BBC Books was not conducive to actual editing.  Vanishing Point is perhaps a book that desperately needed the hand of an editor in focusing what it wanted to do.  The book is all over the place, starting in media res from the perspective of a supporting character which is not a bad way to start a novel although author Stephen Cole doesn’t give enough time to the character to explore who she is or really even establish much of the setting before the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji are introduced and the plot attempts to move forward.

 

The ideas at their heart should work and be an introspective science fiction tale.  It’s a tale all about the mixing of science and religion, with the religion all about this society where genetic engineering is heading towards a mythical “vanishing point” and the society’s God is a literal person.  There are also undercurrents of eugenics within the novel, something that reads as almost cynical fears about the burgeoning genetics research of the early 2000s which hasn’t exactly aged well and is just one of the many ideas.  Nathaniel Dark is one of Cole’s more interesting characters throughout the novel, though he isn’t actually the villain of the piece, but honestly he should be.  The character’s name is already one that fits a villain and there are implications that possibly the Daleks might be behind this somehow with “the Creator” being an expy for Davros which doesn’t work.  The Doctor, Fitz, and Anji are fine, Stephen Cole was the editor of the range before this point after all (even though editor doesn’t really edit and more gets all the Doctor Who releases from the BBC: books, VHS, audiobook, and DVD in order) and he clearly understands the Doctor and Fitz, though Anji might need more work and consistency as her only trait is dealing with the grief of losing Dave in Escape Velocity…despite EarthWorld doing such a good job of working the character through her grief in a clever way that managed to show it happening over the course of the book and not just saying it.  Now that doesn’t mean it can’t be mentioned, but her being in grief seems to be the one character trait Cole can pin down which is a shame.

 

Overall, Vanishing Point is a book with a lot of problems, possibly from the fact that Cole was writing another book at the same time.  There are moments that are really good and the ideas are solid behind the book, but it lacks a sense of identity and falls flat in opening with a good hook to bring readers in so there is a lack of a hold to keep going.  5/10.