The cover
of Reckless Engineering is one of the more effective from the BBC
Books. An alteration of an 1857
photograph of Isambard Kingdom Brunel in front of the launching chains of the
SS Great Eastern turned askew with head replaced by skull, the imagery evokes
death and altered history. The Eighth
Doctor Adventures’ alternate timeline arc is alluded to by the specific edits
made to the photograph while indicating an example of a celebrity pseudohistorical. Nick Walters does eventually include Brunel
as a character, though this is largely in the final act, as Reckless Engineering
is another alternate present story following The Domino Effect, Time Zero,
and to a lesser extent The Infinity Race. On its surface, it shares a premise with The
Domino Effect: the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji arrive on Earth where technological
development has been arrested and society plunged into dystopia. David Bishop puts this around the development
of the computer through Sabbath’s intervention while Walters is far less
specific, setting Reckless Engineering in a world where the initial alteration
was far less violent. The intervention
is seemingly additive, an effort to preserve humanity, implied to be due to the
end of The Domino Effect, causes a temporal acceleration. The population of Earth is forced to age 40
years in the span of a few minutes, causing babies to suddenly become adults, the
middle aged to suddenly die, and society to collapse. Walters presents this in retrospect, setting
the novel 150 years from the presumed divergence point. Technology has not progressed, England has
turned to religion for comfort, and there is a segment of humanity regressed to
animalistic desires that are often shot sight.
Where the
first half of Reckless Engineering succeeds is the exploration of
setting, Walters paces the chapter breaks whenever a mini cliffhanger seems
necessary. The Doctor, Fitz, and Anji integrate
themselves with the society from the perspective of it being an alternate 2003
and not the mid-1800s. Walters does fall
into the trap of bringing up Anji’s race almost as a lampshade while during
much of the story pushing her aside as lost in the time vortex when fixing the
alternate timeline becomes the focus on the plot, but she is great through the
first half of the novel. This is especially
great since the Doctor and Fitz are explicitly paralleled, each taking a strong
moral stance as the ‘reckless engineering’ of the title is not of Brunel, his
engineering is lauded throughout as making the modern world what it is, but of
the Doctor. The Doctor is determined to
correct the timeline as he would in every Doctor Who story with a
similar premise. The question becomes
what if this “alternate” timeline is not alternate, that the aberration is what
the reader and the Doctor would call the “proper” timeline. Fitz becomes an advocate for this, even when
Anji is thrown into the time vortex, with the evidence being that the
alteration was created by an evolved species of human called the Eternine. The alteration was simply trying to bring
them into existence sooner rather than later.
Fitz and the Doctor have one of their biggest rifts in quite a few books
over this, Fitz knowing that the Doctor is going to be condemning many of these
peoples into unexistence.
Walters
does falter, Malahyde, the poet possessed by the Eternine Watchlar, is in fact
lying and the Eternine come from their own pocket universe. This revelation does weaken the novel,
Walters not sticking to his guns and softening the actions of the Doctor who becomes
unraveled when his initial attempts to fix the timeline fail and Fitz begins to
integrate into the alternate universe even by bringing Brunel to this future
and Anji falling on the TARDIS in the time vortex. Brunel in the TARDIS is an incredibly
charming sequence, there’s something inherently charming of a historical
engineer coming to terms with time travel and the Jules Verne aesthetics of the
Eighth Doctor’s TARDIS. Even Malahyde does
an interesting switch from passionate poet to possessed villain. Fitz integrating, however, barely lasts a
chapter and these decisions are made in the final third of the novel. There is too much setup getting there, yet
the setup is not bad setup. Walters’
supporting characters are strong with Aboetta as the point of view character
allowing the reader to see the TARDIS team from the outside, often focusing on the
Doctor’s blue eyes as visual purity for a deeply disturbed mind, almost creating
this ghost of Sabbath hanging over the novel where he does not actually
appear. The Doctor since The
Adventuress of Henrietta Street and Camera Obscura has become a
darker figure despite his place as the protagonist and in the end as the
hero. His actions are controversial for
a reason, and not exploring them more thoroughly is what holds back Reckless
Engineering from greatness.
Overall, Reckless
Engineering despite almost single handedly justifying the alternate
universe arc after two particular duds, does fall flat by being limited into
the 280-page count of the BBC Books line.
Walters spends almost too much time on setup for a bigger story, falling
flat by not being able to explore all the ideas it proposes. There’s enough here to make it a good novel,
the Doctor’s arc being both what works best and leaves something to be desired
by giving him a slightly more heroic sense of morality in the end of the book. The historical aspects of the story do work
well, but despite the cover they are actually in the background for much of the
novel and it helps that Walters is doing something different with the alternate
history idea here. It helps get the
series out of a mediocre spell of Eighth Doctor Adventures. 7/10.