Timeless by: Stephen Cole

 

Stephen Cole is responsible for ending this grouping of Eighth Doctor Adventures surrounding the collapse of the multiverse and further plans of Sabbath.  Timeless is not a novel lacking in ideas or interesting imagery.  Cole brings the TARDIS team back to Earth and Trix MacMillan closer to the forefront, she even gets upgraded to proper companion status by the end of the book, with Anji Kapoor after multiple books foreshadowing that her time in the TARDIS is coming to an end finally gets to go back to her ordinary life.  There is something quite odd about this book being the first time a companion of South Asian descent leaves the TARDIS with a child in tow that they don’t necessarily want, but at least in this case the justification is there and Anji isn’t deprived of her agency in this story.  Timeless is a novel with some incredibly odd parallels to “The Reality War” and with Russell T. Davies use of the Wilderness Years ideas, I wouldn’t be surprised if the influence in the rewrites of that episode were intentional. This is because at the core of Timeless there is the destruction of Gallifrey that is hanging over the Doctor’s head as a failure, while the book’s stakes are the already collapsing multiverse.  The child, Chloe, is heavily implied to be a Time Lord along with Erasmus, both being stand ins for the Doctor and a companion.  Erasmus is missing a heart and Chloe still retains that sense of childlike wonder that fits a generic Doctor Who companion.  Between them they also have a dog, which feels like a comment on the extreme popularity of K9 in the public consciousness.  Cole is actually quite good at making Timeless work with the rather large stakes it is playing around with.

 

Where Timeless falls flat and never quite reaches its full potential is its pace, the first half of the novel is incredible.  It’s where most of the commentary is included and the mystery on exactly what Chloe and Erasmus are is fascinating.  Sabbath working with something that is seemingly bigger than himself, ultimately to be betrayed, is emblematic of where the back half of the novel falls apart.  Mainly because the conclusion plays too close into typical Doctor Who when Cole had been going so far into pushing the story away from Doctor Who.  There is a sense that the status quo has not been restored which keeps this as quite a good novel all things considered, but it is also so clearly meant to be the reset that was coming.  There is also a strong possibility that, as this novel was released a month before the revival of Doctor Who was commissioned and the BBC had already been making moves to bring the show back, the editorial staff were desperate to move things towards something more standard in case the book range was concluded unceremoniously.  In terms of publishing the release schedule had diminished to one novel a month after Time Zero and would remain that way until the end of both the Eighth Doctor Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures at the end of 2005, with a five-month break in the first half of 2005 to allow the revival to air.

 

Trix MacMillan as a character is quite fascinating.  Yes, she had a major part to play in the previous novel, The Last Resort, but under the pen of Stephen Cole she immediately becomes a fascinating pairing with Fitz.  As a pair, they are both larger than life, Trix throwing herself into the disguises and performing roles to save the multiverse with Fitz.  Anji as a part of the companion trio in Timeless finishes her run once again as the rational, serious companion who is set up to be more concerned with getting the job done than having a good time while saving the world.  Fitz and Trix clearly mask their inner lives while Anji has her serious influence on the Doctor.  The Doctor does begin the novel very much against Fitz’s weird scheme to make films remembering each universe they have been through, Fitz coming from the perspective of everybody deserving to be remembered.  Having the TARDIS team entirely in states of emotional distress in Timeless is what makes the first half of the novel work so well, everything is falling apart and while each character is on the same page in saving the multiverse.  There is this moment where the Doctor finally softens, seeing how rude he is being, and it might just be one of the best moments for the Eighth Doctor in this book range.

 

Overall, it’s the first half that makes Timeless worth reading, even if this is a book that Stephen Cole is using to hang on a wire.  The Eighth Doctor Adventures are entering their last leg with a brand new TARDIS team, but it’s telling a story that will be told again far worse in two decades time on television.  Sabbath, while characterized quite well, does become a bit too close to the Master in what Cole is doing and the restoration of the Earth is walking a very fine line between moving the story forward and retconning a lot of the ideas the Eighth Doctor Adventures have been playing with.  It is the ides present in the subtext about the universe lacking the Time Lords and the War both looming and already happening that makes the novel interesting to talk about when Cole wraps it up in standard Doctor Who.  6/10.