Amorality Tale by: David Bishop

 

David Bishop’s debut Doctor Who novel, Who Killed Kennedy? was extensively an examination and deconstruction of the show between the years 1968 and 1973, the end of Patrick Troughton’s tenure and most of Jon Pertwee’s tenure in the title role from the use of the Master to the way companions were treated, to the general premise shifting to being based in present day Earth to ease the production.  Amorality Tale is his second novel and like his first Bishop uses it to analyze Doctor Who as a whole.  The title is the giveaway, this novel is a comment on the Doctor’s moral standing as a character, despite the help he does he is an amoral observer.  The inciting incident of the novel is the Doctor and Sarah Jane seeing a photograph of the Doctor with gangster Tommy Ramsey around the time of the Great Smog of London, something that we don’t actually see in the novel, Bishop structuring the novel over the course of the days delineating the chapters by the day specifically.  The Doctor as a character has never really shied away from name dropping controversial historical figures, Ramsey being a creation of Bishop’s but clearly represents one of these figures.  The Doctor throughout the novel positions himself as an outsider, only really here to discover exactly what Tommy Ramsey is up to and what will cause the man to have not aged in the nebulous ‘present’ that he and Sarah Jane have come from.  The eventual answer to that is fascinating, again Bishop adding a different layer to the amorality of the title by creating an alien race of conquerors whose own morality puts themselves above the rest of the universe.

 

Bishop’s great success with the novel is actually characterizing the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith’s relationship quite well.  Sarah Jane in particular is written to be almost entirely out of her element in the 1950s, she doesn’t fit into the idea of what a woman is supposed to be in this period but as a journalist she has enough intuition to engrain herself with the local politics.  Tommy Ramsey may be a gangster, but Bishop makes the effort to make him a very human character, much of the novel has him interacting with Sarah Jane and his own mother.  Adding this outlook towards women is another layer of morality of the period which is just icing on the cake.  The setting of the novel also largely contributes to Bishop’s point of being amoral: there are an estimated 12,000 who die in the Great Smog and the Doctor can do nothing to actually save them.  Amorality Tale is also a novel that easily could have been an examination of a pure historical which may have made it a bit too close in the end to The Aztecs with that serial’s importance on not changing history.  Be there one complaint it would be that when the alien threat is revealed, while the Xhinn are great with their larger sense of morality, Bishop almost stops the general commentary on the Doctor and the show’s relationship to history into writing a more standard Doctor Who alien invasion story albeit one still in the trappings of the 1950s setting and the gang warfare of the novel.

 

Overall, Amorality Tale is excellent, taking an era of Doctor Who that hadn’t really been explored in original prose and mastering what made Season 11 work: its Doctor/companion dynamic while overshadowed with the force of Tom Baker can bring out the best in the setting. David Bishop knows how to deconstruct Doctor Who as a concept, and this one just hones in on the history aspect by keeping the reader as an outsider with the Doctor making for a fascinating read.  9/10.