Heritage by: Dale Smith

 

The space western is something that is largely foreign to Doctor Who, the most obvious example being the mostly missing The Space Pirates as part of the genre, though there is also an argument of Colony in Space taking on ideas of the western genre.  This should not be surprising, because Doctor Who relies on time travel as part of the central premise it is far easier that if it is going to homage the western genre it would just do a western: from The Gunfighters to “A Town Called Mercy” and arguably certain sequences of “The Impossible Astronaut”.  You can add science fiction elements to the western genre, but that does not make it a space western.  Heritage is an outlier in that trend, Dale Smith committing his to date only Doctor Who novel to being a space western in every sense of the genre.  The biggest influence on the structure of Heritage is the 1952 film High Noon from its plot taking place in real time (translated into each chapter slowly progressing August 6, 6048) and having the Doctor and Ace returning to the town of Heritage after a long absence while the town slowly rallies against them.  That is the interesting trick, placing the Doctor and Ace as the villains of the story in the eyes of the townsfolk, flipping the High Noon formula on its head so our perspective is from the outsiders.  Smith excels at painting Heritage as a desolate wasteland: it is both the planet and one of two settlements on the planet, a planet full of dust, heat, and a population holding deep and dark secrets.  The technology is likely there to make it a better place to live, but most of that has gone into cleaner robots called Fussies that do nothing more than make it a nuisance.  The inhabitants of the town aren’t just human however, in addition to the classic western sheriff called Sheriff there is a dolphin called Bernard who feels like Smith is attempting a Douglas Adams style joke.  Matching this atmosphere, the Doctor is portrayed throughout Heritage as morose, only made worse by the events of the novel.  This is not a grand plan to set part of the universe to rights, he and Ace are essentially stuck here and stuck in what seems to be a divergent timeline where both his television companions have met terrible fates, or perhaps will meet terrible fate.

 

Heritage is structured as four episodes and this is one aspect where it feels as if Smith has not thought through the structure.  The big halfway point twist is not actually treated as a cliffhanger despite being what the novel actually hangs upon to work.  There is also the slight issue of the point of view, the narration occasionally feeling as if the novel was originally told entirely from Ace’s perspective with little narrated asides that feel out of place, especially in one scene in which Ace is absent.  While it would be a perfectly respectable way to present the novel there is a sense that it was abandoned because Smith wanted scenes without Ace and let certain instances of that previous version slip through the cracks.  The first twist of Heritage that does work is the reveal that Melanie Bush is dead, she married a farmer named Ben Heyworth and was murdered somehow.  This is only the first twist as there is a child called Sweetness, depicted oddly on the cover in front of a mouth in the sand that has absolutely nothing to do with the novel (there is a cave with jagged rocks that it might be trying to depict but the Black Sheep covers really do suffer).  Mel’s death breaks Ace down, making her believe that the Doctor is just going to forget her when it becomes convenient and leave her to a potentially similar fate while for the Doctor’s part he has to investigate exactly what is happening.  There are several other deaths and instances of insanity among the townsfolk of Heritage, some that seem far too nice to the Doctor and Ace as a front to strike when they least expect it, also killing their own loved ones.  Everybody on Heritage is out for blood and when you eventually get to the climax, revealing exactly who Sweetness’ parents are and her connection to the murder of Melanie Bush, there is this sense of sad exhaustion.  It’s a good feeling, this would very easily rank as one of the strongest novels in the range if it were edited ever so slightly tighter and was more consistent in its narrative voice.

 

Overall, Heritage is clearly only a continuing part of what Mike Tucker laid down in Prime Time and what the Seventh Doctor Past Doctor Adventures novels has really been doing.  The twists are incredibly effective and the novel sets out to test the relationship between the Doctor and Ace in a very interesting way.  The cover is deceptive in terms of the tone that Dale Smith is going for and he clearly needed one more rewrite to make it perfect, but we have a great space western that understands the type of story that westerns excel at.  8/10.