The Past Doctor Adventures as a book range have done
an interesting job of taking untraditional Doctor Who Doctor/companion
pairs and explored what they could be.
David A. McIntee pioneered this idea by pairing the Third Doctor’s UNIT
family and the Master with Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright in The Face of
the Enemy while Peter Darvill-Evans, taking the idea from McIntee, went one
step further and included Nyssa with the Fourth Doctor long before they would
actually meet in Asylum. Bullet
Time feels like David A. McIntee is almost writing in response to Darvil-Evans’
poor handling of Nyssa by taking the opportunity to pair Sarah Jane Smith with
the Seventh Doctor. McIntee uses this to
similarly compare the 1970s vision of Doctor Who to the late-1980s/1990s
vision of the show, much like The Face of the Enemy comparing the 1960s
to the 1970s while being a stealth sequel to First Frontier. As such the plot is straight out of a VNA,
with Sarah Jane investigating corruption in Hong Kong where the Seventh Doctor
has found himself at the head of a Chinese Tao, echoing his dealings with Al
Capone in Blood Harvest. There
are alien dealings while UNIT is continually investigating the situation which
becomes more and more dire as shadows from the past are revealed to be occurring.
The Doctor doesn’t actually appear until about the
halfway point of the novel, but like with some of the absolute best New Adventures
novels, his presence is felt. McIntee is
incredibly intelligent in executing the Doctor’s involvement, using it as a
mystery as to where the Doctor could be with the most obvious misdirect being where
he actually is. This is done incredibly
well since the book puts the reader in the mind of Sarah Jane who at this point
would be expecting the Fourth Doctor, or maybe the Fifth Doctor at a stretch. Having her meet the Seventh Doctor, implied
to be at a point very near the end of his life.
There is this horror when Sarah Jane finally realizes who the Doctor is,
as here he’s doing something morally ambiguous to say the least, only because
there are aliens that need to be fought.
It’s something that works for the Doctor, but Sarah Jane cannot really
approve, McIntee bringing into question just how deep the Doctor/companion friendships
of the classic series (and especially the mid to late 1970s) actually went.
The Doctor suggests that Sarah Jane never really knew
him, certainly not after he left her in Aberdeen, which is only exacerbated by
the fact that Bullet Time ends with the implication that Sarah Jane dies. As far as I am aware, this is one of multiple
companion deaths in the Past Doctor Adventures that gets an explanation in the
Eighth Doctor Adventures, but if that wasn’t the case it would be a genuinely interesting
version of Sarah Jane’s potential death. It recalls echoes of Eternity Weeps
where Liz Shaw dies trying to save the world from a plague, though here there
isn’t a plague. This is also a book that
being a sequel to First Frontier does everything but confirm that the
aliens being dealt with here are the Tzun who have developed their plans and
Confederacy since that novel. McIntee
makes it a shame that the Tzun haven’t really been utilized since as here they
are excellent.
Overall, Bullet Time is a book who’s cover implying
fractures in the world is something that thematically works for the idea. It’s a dark tale reflecting gangster films
and the grit of the 1990s imposed on a character from the 1970s. The big issues really only come in a lot of
the supporting cast not standing out outside of the two major characters, which
is an issue with the first half focusing so much on Sarah Jane without the
Doctor. Still, it’s a wonderful book
that shouldn’t be overlooked. 8/10.
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