Fear of the Dark by: Trevor Baxendale

 

It’s a standard setup at its core.  A moon tucked away in a corner of space, an expedition of archeologists with ulterior motives, and the Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa finding themselves there.  The moon of Akoshemon is desolate and quiet.  A madman in suspended animation, rich deposits of lexium, and something waiting in the dark.  This type of prose is the effect Trevor Baxendale has in writing Fear of the Dark, a novel that is lauded among Doctor Who fans for good reason, Baxendale provides the setup for a gripping horror novel.  Fear of the Dark works because Baxendale presents a type of Doctor Who story that we have said before, it roots itself directly in the Fifth Doctor’s television era by having a supporting cast of almost entirely soldiers.  At its core it’s in the same line as Kinda and Snakedance, though not taking cues from Buddhism, instead going into a more American style of horror.  To bring up the works of H.P. Lovecraft in relation to Fear of the Dark feels almost too obvious, but Baxendale excels at making the reader’s skin crawl because the Dark is just that, it’s a concept and not exactly something with a consistent physical form.  There is this implication in the end that while it is defeated, and defeated through quite simple means, it is really only one aspect of something bigger that is still out there.

 

Baxendale connects the Dark as a creature of void to Nyssa over Tegan which is particularly important, connecting Tegan to it would be obvious.  The Dark would feel like just another aspect of the Mara and this novel a midquel between Kinda and Snakedance.  But making it Nyssa adds quite a lot to the narrative and her character, as the television show essentially forgot the tragedy of her character after Castrovalva.  She was a companion who wasn’t supposed to stick around, but the few moments Baxendale spends here connects the Dark to her father.  The Master is not in Fear of the Dark, but the Dark as seen from one angle represents the inhuman acts the Master has done to Nyssa and her father.  Tegan, for her part, is equally portrayed as human.  Baxendale follows the trick of Paul Cornell and Justin Richards in their Missing Adventures novels by having Tegan as point of view.  She is both a scared woman, terrified that her mind might be next but she also can’t just leave.  Baxendale sets Fear of the Dark quite close to Arc of Infinity, Tegan has just rejoined the TARDIS and desperately wants to prove that she has improved with her time away.  She’s also the one to see half the crew of miners masquerading as archeologists as people.  She is the audience surrogate character, a role Baxendale uses well without ever sacrificing her characterization.

 

Where Fear of the Dark excels as well is subverting science fiction tropes.  The supporting cast are space marines and one madman who has stared into the cosmic horror of the Dark and come out addicted.  The madman is one who slowly unravels after being awoken from suspended animation and his addictive personality is subverted as being a problem before he sees the Dark.  The miners are all given their own little backstories and needs for the money, they are acting out of greed but it is a greed from the standpoint of a society in the late stages of capitalism.  The biggest, toughest man on the team is just desperate to get home to the six year old daughter that saved his life in the end.  He is named Bunny because he really would just be a big softie at heart.  But everybody in Fear of the Dark falls victim to their own greed in the end as the horror unfolds.  The actual plot of the novel is a careful unraveling, opening in media res but not during the height of the horror.  It only starts where the tension is just starting to form, the prose is already priming the reader not to be relaxed.  There is a cave in that is one of the inciting incidents, mainly to keep the Doctor and company on the moon, and Baxendale integrating flashbacks to get to that point is a stroke of genius, even if they are flashbacks that don’t have too much to tell.  It’s also important where Baxendale decides to end the novel, he keeps it abrupt in the particular style so that the tension and the horror is released but not released enough to let it sink in.  Everybody aboard the TARDIS sleeps with the lights on because despite everything there is still something in the dark.

 

Overall, Fear of the Dark is the best thing Trevor Baxendale ever wrote.  It’s some of the best cosmic horror Doctor Who has done, bringing characters to the forefront.  It reads far closer to a Missing Adventure, putting our characters at as much of their limit with a supporting cast that are all subversions of well worn tropes at this point.  It’s one of the few Fifth Doctor Past Doctor Adventures to really succeed at capturing the era while maintaining a depth of storytelling.  10/10.