Blue
Box does not refer
to the TARDIS in its title, instead it is Kate Orman’s return to an idea she initially
proposed to Virgin Publishing as The Pinocchio Virus, potentially tying
into her novel SLEEPY. It was
always meant to be a story involving the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and a computer
virus, based on the title eventually evolving into Blue Box’s Savant. The connection to SLEEPY feels
particularly strong in Blue Box, if only spiritually, with Savant being
very much in the same vein of the artificial intelligences that exist and
influence the living. Savant’s influence
is far more corrupting, it creates this extreme attachment to someone, driving
them into a madness where Savant is the only real thing in existence. Orman does present Savant as amoral rather
than immoral: it is a creature created by the people of Epsilon Eridani that
accidentally made its way to the Earth, this entire novel being an accidental
plot. The real villain of the novel is
Sarah Swan, a computer hacker slowly manipulated by Savant into an attempt to
take over the world in a series of increasingly manic episodes that in the end
leave her a husk of a person. It’s a
particularly cruel ending for someone but Blue Box is in many ways a particularly
cruel novel. Orman is examining identity
and humanity with Blue Box, using Doctor Who as the framework to
do this. Now, it’s important to note
that this was a novel written and published in 2003, 23 years ago from the time
this review is being written and that I am a cisgender man. There are aspects of Blue Box that while
I will not shy away from discussing them, I am not the final authority as to
what they represent.
This is a
novel that while undoubtedly a Doctor Who novel, takes a first-person approach
to the narrative. It’s presented like
David Bishop’s Who Killed Kennedy? as cowritten between Orman and
journalist Charles “Chick” Peters, who finds himself wrapped up in the Doctor
and Peri’s world through Savant. Chick
is a man who is confident in his own identity, an identity that is not questioned
by the narrative as this is his narrative.
This is different from Swan, or to a lesser extent Peri. Swan while an incredibly compelling villain,
really ticks because her identity is in question. Her name isn’t even Swan, Chick giving the
pretense of changing the names and certain relevant details even with the
mythological references in the text of people turned to swans and losing their
humanity. It is Chick’s confidence in
his identity as a man that solidifies the theme that identity is something
personal, something that only he can really define and damn if the rest of the world
does not accept it. There’s the snag,
this empowering message is presented in the twist that Chick is intersex,
something that is treated by both Swan and Peri as something disgusting. The disgust from Peri is explicitly because
of the thought of first Chick finding her potentially attractive and second at
the idea of sex that isn’t strictly heterosexual. It’s Peri’s disgust where Orman’s argument
becomes weak because the audience is primed to see Peri as good, she is the
Doctor’s companion after all. Presenting
the intersex condition as a twist is also generally problematic. While being intersex is not the same as a
transgender identity, this type of twist does fall into what was (and arguably
still is) a popular trope of the secret transgender person, usually for the basis
of a punchline. Chick is at the very
least still a person.
The twist
is also relegated to the last 30 pages of the novel, before that Blue Box
is a thriller built around discovering what Savant is. Orman however papers over ever so slightly
the twist with the way that she characterizes the Doctor. Now outside of the twist, it’s clear that Orman
loves Colin Baker’s portrayal of the Sixth Doctor: here he is just as brash but
always with intelligence and care. The Doctor
and Peri are fighting not in anger but as an old married couple, a relationship
built on love. Orman also puts the
Doctor in Colin Baker’s suggested outfit of blacks with pops of color on the
tie, almost as a treat. In relation to
the twist about Chick Peters, Orman indicates the Doctor does not so much fit within
the gender binary either, though this is sadly a brief mention. Chick’s identity as a man in the end is not
in the question, Orman even subverting the at the time general view that sex
with a non-cisgender person to be somehow wrong with a single line that Chick’s
girlfriends had no problem with it. To
add support to Orman’s message of identity is the fact that Savant is villainous
because it cannot have an identity.
Visually Savant almost represents a Y-chromosome, Orman using it to critique
an almost fragile masculinity that grabs onto people despite being developed by
a planet that in Lucifer Rising was the home planet of a multi-dimensional
being lacking in the concept of gender.
Overall,
for what would be Kate Orman’s last Doctor Who novel until 2023 with Big
Finish Productions’ Audio Novel range Blue Box is actually an
interesting if outdated look at identity through the lens of a
techno-thriller. There is love of the
Doctor and Peri, even if Peri is sadly made in the model of both the time of
publication and her time of the mid-1980s.
It’s real strength is the two villains, Orman excelling at creating that
spiral. Even with its problematic
presentation (and the very real openness for a regressive reading as much as my
own progressive read), Blue Box is still a Kate Orman novel and because
it draws on ideas that had been with Orman since the mid-1990s it really does
shine. 8/10.
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