Jubilee was written by: Robert Shearman,
based on his audio story of the same name.
It was the 195th story to be novelized by: BBC Books.
Jubilee more than The Chimes of
Midnight, is Robert Shearman’s real tribute to the Target novelizations of
his childhood. Despite being published in
a hardcover format and boasting a more standard 200-page count, Jubilee
is short. Publish this as a paperback
and it would be the length of the standard Target novelization. That doesn’t mean Shearman is a slouch with
writing, far from it, but it does mean that he is distilling his story down to not
so much the base components, that was essentially what Dalek was, but
down to the emotions and the rage at the world that has gotten worse since
2003. It is palpable on practically
every page that Shearman is writing this in a world that has freely, through
election given up so much of its own control over its government. Nigel Rochester hasn’t changed in the 22
years since Big Finish Productions released Jubilee on CD, he is still
the madman who believes he is the hero in his own story: he is only pretending to
be evil, you see, he would much rather be off on his own selling apples. Miriam Rochester wishes to overthrow the
regime only to install a Dalek so she doesn’t have to make any of her own choices. Evelyn Smythe is given an almost negative light
at the beginning of the novel, she really does believe by the end that her
history is the better one than this fascist 2003 regime. The Doctor is the passive observer, slowly bleeding
into his other self that has gone insane and to see the mocking, sexy parody of
the dozens of incarnations on-screen.
The lack
of choices being the source of humanity’s problems is central to Shearman’s
thesis of Jubilee. There is a
moment when describing the elections that instilled this fascist dynasty was a
simple yes/no referendum in a reference not so subtly pointing towards the
United Kingdom’s referendum to leave the European Union. Much of the story is framed through this lens
of complete inaction and lack of identity: the names given to many of the
supporting characters in the original audio are stripped away, this society
doesn’t have need for names, names must be earned after service to the
state. The citizens of Britain are
bodies to be led to the slaughter, crowds to jeer, workers to control the best
of all possible worlds. In removing the
names, it is certain that some of the cruelties from the original audio are
removed, but in their place is that smoothing over of identity that feels somehow
more cruel. It certainly makes the Dalek
more pitiable when Shearman explores what the Dalek life is, this Dalek is one
of the oldest as it has been kept alive.
The average Dalek lifespan is six months of hate followed by a swift
death continuing to poison the universe.
This means in the adaptation of the fourth episode, when the Dalek
invasion reasserts itself, Shearman has the Dalek slowly feel a sense of
superiority to the Supreme leading the invasion.
Overall, Jubilee
again feels somehow more powerful in the format of prose because Shearman is making
the reader sit with the ideas at play.
It’s somehow more harrowing with that writing style that while full of
wit, lacks much of the comedy. 10/10.
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