Combat Rock by: Mick Lewis

 

Combat Rock is a book with a reputation.  That is for good reason.  The experience reading this novel can be described as unpleasant.  Author Mick Lewis had already contributed a similarly unpleasant Past Doctor Adventures novel in Rags, and Combat Rock seems to wish to outdo that.  That’s the point at the center of the novel, to be as unpleasant as one possibly can be while maintaining some sort of narrative.  Or author Mick Lewis simply watched Cannibal Holocaust and thought that would be a good basis for a Doctor Who story, at least in terms of how it gained cult status and the cruelty it put on-screen, both real and fictional.  That and other Italian horror films.  Lewis as a person is unhinged, claiming to have spent time among a cannibal tribe, having a girlfriend descended from cannibals, and other wild claims just short of partaking in cannibalism himself.  Talking about this novel is generally an odd thing to do.  It lacks narrative cohesion, Lewis using a generic plot of once again space marines fighting against native inhabitants, but this time there are zombies.  The jungle planet of Jenggel (get it?) was a post-colonial holiday planet, but the indigenous natives have begun to fight back after literally raising the dead and causing a series of gruesome murders.  To give Lewis the benefit of the doubt, there is potential for a story with an incredibly strong anti-colonialist message throughout, the team of space marines in the OPG are portrayed largely as bad people, but the natives are presented equally as gruesome.  This comes across as Lewis thinking he’s being complex about how different cultures interact, but then just making the natives literal savages who are doing things that are unnatural.

 

The native characters are hardly characters, Lewis taking inspiration from several horror films for their portrayal at the best of times.  This sadly isn’t a novel with many a best of times, as Combat Rock’s indigenous characters more often are presented as part of Mick Lewis’ general fetish for strong, black women.  Practically every female character in this novel, and there are many, is reduced to being a sex object, has some form of sexual assault perpetrated against them, or is at the very least threatened with it.  The treatment of Victoria Waterfield in particular is horrendous, in terms of contributions to the plot she is damseled and forced to watch horrific acts of torture and murder while also being threatened with sexual violence.  Outside of what happens to her Lewis makes a point to go into how conservative she is which you think is going to be a comment on what a character like Victoria would be in reality and not in universe, but he also has characters go on about how pure her white skin is coming dangerously close to white supremacist talking points that go completely unexamined.  While I want to give Lewis the benefit of the doubt, already there was so much racism and sexism in Combat Rock that you can only give so much before it becomes a problem.

 

Having any sort of focus is the biggest structural problem with Combat Rock, Lewis clearly going for shock value.  The title is taken from an album by The Clash, a band I am honestly not at all familiar with nor an album I have listened to.  Lewis alludes to it in the text by referring to combat rock as a type of music once or twice, but that’s about it.  Especially odd since Rags, his other Doctor Who novel, at least had a connection to music because this one really doesn’t.  The actual plot is paper thin, despite running the full 280 pages the BBC Books allow, there isn’t a whole lot that actually happens narratively.  There’s a lot of supporting characters that are almost entirely one-note and fitting into some bigoted stereotype.  The racism and sexism is clearly coming from a fetishistic place, but there’s also a character called Pretty Boy whose introduction quite literally reads “bisexual, deadly, always wore black lace over his shining black leather; eyes underscored with just a little touch of liner.  But call him effeminate and it would be the last thing you ever did.  And yes, he was pretty.  Dyed black hair thick and wavy, cheekbones raw but sleek, a sensuous mouth, and not a scar on him.” (43-44) The novel treats its one confirmed queer character as a complete freak and implied predator, though he is among a group of explicit predators.  Even Jamie McCrimmon is given the treatment, portrayed as impossibly horny for about the first 100 pages, right up until the moment Victoria is kidnapped and then he becomes violent and determined to find her.

 

Somehow, the Second Doctor makes it through the novel unscathed, Mick Lewis unironically capturing the character better than most other authors who have attempted to do so in prose.  Don’t ask me how.

 

When I reviewed Rags three years ago, I implied Mick Lewis didn’t put effort in, yet for Combat Rock there is effort.  It’s effort into almost entirely the wrong things except the Doctor’s characterization to make the novel a truly unpleasant reading experience that doesn’t have anything to say outside of violence.  Any commentary is undercut by just how uncomfortable everything about the novel is and how much it’s clear Lewis is enjoying what he’s writing here.  Yet, it’s also no worse than Rags which already was quite bad.  2/10.