Peri Brown is a Doctor Who companion who has
always drawn the short straw in terms of her stories. Her entire arc on television should be about
wanting something more from life but then producer John Nathan-Turner and
script editor Eric Saward decided the direction of the show needed to be a
darker one and Peri as a character would be one for the dads. The character was often dressed in a sexually
revealing way, directors especially male directors would shoot episodes to
emphasize this, and the characterization would suffer. With the Wilderness Years there is a chance
to largely attempt to correct this, but that isn’t always the case. Christopher Bulis as an author wrote multiple
novels featuring Peri across both Doctor Who past doctor ranges: State
of Change was his first for the Missing Adventures range and that saw a
return of Peri transforming into a bird a la Vengeance on Varos while The
Ultimate Treasure for the Past Doctor Adventures under BBC Books but Palace
of the Red Sun is perhaps the weakest in terms of what it puts Peri
through. This is a book that largely
starts well for Peri, having her examine why she stays with the Doctor and how
her antagonistic relationship with him is something that she is actually
getting some good from.
The opening chapters of the novel actually have the Doctor
and Peri on a tranquil vacation which Bulis clearly demonstrates an ability for
fun banter before the novel then shifts into the plot. The plot of Palace of the Red Sun is what
you would come to expect from a Christopher Bulis novel, there is a subjugated
class on a planet where one half is in light and one half is in dark, the
Doctor and Peri are separated and have to find the dictator and overthrow
him. The underclass are basically savage
humans saddled with Peri for much of the novel and this is where the just plain
uncomfortable elements of the novel really come into play. This is a book where once again Peri’s plot is
just there so she is sexualized, Bulis believing that to temper that is to continually
have Peri quip and try to resist, but this is a book which builds to a point
where Peri is going to be married off by integrating with a tribe of natives.
The Doctor’s plot is inciting an uprising amongst the
service robots of the palace’s large and well kept gardens. This could be interesting if there was really
anything to say about the different structures of an empire and expansion, the empire
is essentially one palace encompassing half the planet, but Bulis doesn’t make
much of it. The closest the novel gets
is an attempt at debate on the nature of life and the ability for robots to
overcome their programming and gain their own sense of life, however the
characterization of the robots is incredibly one note. Bulis doesn’t really make enough distinction even
between the three classes of robots in the novel and by characterizing the
Sixth Doctor as blustering he is the one that largely takes over. Palace of the Red Sun is also a novel
that largely suffers from having very little plot to sustain itself, there is a
reason this review started with a discussion of Peri because she’s the
character that gets the most devotion and time, even if that is spent poorly
instead of examining who Peri is as a character. The villain is essentially a stock character
and one of the characters from The Ultimate Treasure makes a
reappearance here, taking up his own plotline that honestly feels more akin to
something Dave Stone would write on an off-day than anything Bulis had done.
Overall, Palace of the Red Sun is a novel with
the glint of potential had this been with a more skilled novelist. Christopher Bulis excels when sticking to
traditional Doctor Who and even then he can be incredibly hit or miss
when it comes to that. This is a book
that just cannot sustain its standard Past Doctor Adventures page count full of
characters I do not care about and a plot that had already been done better
before in prose and on television. 3/10.
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