The Chimes of Midnight by: Robert Shearman

 

The Chimes of Midnight was written by Robert Shearman, based on his audio story of the same name.  It was the 196^th story to be novelized by BBC Books.

 

It’s honestly a surprise that it took over 25 years for Big Finish Productions to novelize any of their audio dramas, especially since The Chimes of Midnight and Jubilee are two novelizations published not by Big Finish, but by BBC Books as part of their Doctor Who line proper.  The choice for the pair makes plenty of sense, they are both releases labeled iconic and from one of their best writers (and a writer who had written for the television series).  The tricky part about novelizing any audio drama is actually going to be the medium shift, while prose isn’t a truly visual medium there is a general convention that setting and character needs to be established in text and there isn’t always going to be apparent in audio where everything is soundscape and vocal performance plus whatever is used on the cover to represent the story.  Robert Shearman’s prose actually shines in terms of the descriptions, The Chimes of Midnight is a story that has one primary setting of the downstairs of an Edwardian house.

 

It’s a basic setting, Shearman knows this.  Much of the humor in The Chimes of Midnight comes from the fact that it is a simple setting and that the characters are stock characters.  The murder mystery at the center is intentionally stock, it’s all of course a smokescreen for a story celebrating life and how the lower class is overlooked in society because of their position.  There is something more evocative of the line “I am nothing, I am nobody” when it is in prose, the repetition becomes more notable as well as Shearman adding slight variations on the phrase or other phrases to evoke that idea of being nobody.  This is especially apparent because Shearman is continually bringing up the fact that this is a time loop with perspectives periodically from the servants dying and coming back at the strike of the clock.

 

Reading The Chimes of Midnight there is also this layer that while present in the original audio drama, feels brought to the forefront being in prose.  It’s an Agatha Christie mystery where at every chance possible the opposite choice is made: the setting being with the downstairs staff squarely places the crime among the lower class in comparison to Christie squarely taking on the middle and upper classes, the Doctor as a detective is initially squarely placed as part of Scotland Yard making him an authority when compared to Christie detectives like Poirot or Miss Marple who are amateurs, and the murders themselves are senseless suicides.  It’s all inversions of the classic tropes so much so that there is the chance that the butler actually did it, a trope that despite being omnipresent isn’t actually common.  While the characters here are stock, something explored far more thoroughly in the novelization is how they are compilations of people who Edith Thompson knew throughout her short life.  This allows Shearman to go further into the horror that he did on audio.  Similarly, there are some extra scenes that clearly wouldn’t play in audio such as the cooked turkey coming to life and running around the chicken and Charley getting her eye stuck in a keyhole.  These work because of the visual component of the prose, something that cannot be done on audio effectively.

 

Overall, The Chimes of Midnight is both darker and deeply funnier.  Shearman writing prose this way means that the story somehow hits all the harder in this interpretation.  Shearman’s experience as a novelist also shines through especially well.  It’s still one of the best Doctor Who audio dramas from one of the very best writers. 10/10.

Who Watches the Watchers by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler and directed by: Robert Wiemer

 

“Who Watches the Watchers” is written by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler and is directed by: Robert Wiemer.  It was produced under production code 152, was the 4^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 52^nd episode overall, and was broadcast on October 16, 1989.

 

It’s very possible that when Star Trek: The Next Generation is all said and done, “Who Watches the Watchers” might just be the definitive Prime Directive focused episode.  Sure, it’s an episode that writers Richard Manning and Hans Beimler don’t exhaustively examine the idea, the premise of Starfleet having a hidden base observing a population and planet secretly feels like it goes against the idea of the Prime Directive because it could cause problems like this, but it also could be intentional in the script and I’m just misreading the setup of the episode.  It’s an idea just asking for trouble, and sure enough the inciting incident is the cloaking device shielding the base from the Mintakan’s malfunctions and a Mintakan sees it, approaches, and is shocked because of the malfunction.  Crusher has to save him, but that involves bringing him to the Enterprise and everything spirals from there: Picard is seen as a god overseeing the overseers because an attempted memory wipe doesn’t work and the religion essentially spirals.  Much of the conflict of the episode actually comes from the crew of the Enterprise struggling to undo the damage as it spirals further and further out of control: there is a fantastic moment where Crusher insists on healing Liko because it won’t actually make the situation worse and Starfleet is responsible for his injuries.  That responsibility aspect of Starfleet is what is really at the heart of the episode, Manning and Beimler are very clear that it is the crew’s duty to undo the damage that they have done to this society and not be the gods that the Prime Directive is partially in place to stop humanity becoming.

 

The universe of Star Trek is fascinating on the subject of gods, several episodes of the original series include aliens that are godlike, and yet Christian imagery at points is present in episodes like “Bread and Circuses” that suggest Christianity is correct and a faith that would recur throughout the galaxy independently.  Much of this is likely due to the conservative Christianity that dominated the culture in the United States during the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry was an atheist and more importantly a humanist but was raised a Southern Baptist, though there is also some evidence he believed a form of Deism at points in his life.  “Who Watches the Watchers” is perhaps the most explicitly atheistic the franchise has gotten in terms of examining the intersection between religion and science.  The episode is very much interested in keeping them separate, Picard being the biggest advocate of talking to the Mintakins and attempting to put their technology into language they would understand.  It leads to the best scene in the episode where Patrick Stewart delivers a monologue about how their people started in caves, graduated to huts.

 

This is a speech given opposite the Mintakan leader Nuria, played by Kathryn Leigh Scott, who has the perfect timing in not being able to accept that Picard isn’t a god.  Nuria wants Picard to bring back the dead, something that if he could he likely would do due to the dead being those killed by a flood months earlier.  Both major guest players are two excellent character actors: Scott as leader and Ray Wise as Liko, the injured Mintakin who starts the religious fervor.  It’s also built up because the initial attempt is to send Riker and Troi down to the planet to spread essentially heresy and blasphemy for this forming religion.  Gaslighting is the word of the day and there’s just something fantastic about how Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis both play off each other to try and get these people just to forget what Liko saw, the very much idea of seeing a hallucination in an injured state and shock causing the injuries to seem worse than what they are.

 

Overall, “Who Watches the Watchers” is an episode that works so well because it stays as humanist as Gene Roddenberry could at his very best be.  Yes, it has a setup that is particularly messy and the Prime Directive as an idea struggles in general to really work with what has been laid out at this point, but the character drama and humanity at the core of the entire casts performance and the fact that this is not an episode with a villain, everything is concluded peacefully and with understanding exemplifies a lot of what makes Star Trek work so well.  8/10.

Star Wars: The High Republic: The Eye of Darkness by: George Mann

 

Phase III of The High Republic begins with The Eye of Darkness and as a novel it has a lot to do.  Phase II being a flashback means that while the reader will be more knowledgeable and understanding of the Nihil and how they operate, they may not largely remember all of the plot points of the first phase.  George Mann doesn’t really do that, instead making the crux of the novel the one year later fallout of the destruction of Starlight Beacon.  This doesn’t mean things are streamlined, Mann is juggling several perspectives through the novel, several of which will not be covered nearly as in depth in the review though to be fair, he is incredibly successful at doing this.  What makes The Eye of Darkness work is just how well Mann is at making the temporal setting feel incredibly oppressive.  A year has passed, but a year shouldn’t feel like such a long time for the High Republic as a society.  The upended nature of society permeates every page of the book, the Nihil have set up their own dominion in an Occlusion Zone, there are Jedi and innocents trapped within the zone that are being persecuted and hunted in various ways, and the bureaucracy of the High Republic doesn’t actually know what to do with the threat.  Everything is scattered and practically every protagonist we follow from previous installments in The High Republic is emotionally devastated in some way, everyone has suffered some loss and are navigating how to pick up the pieces.

 

At the center of the novel is Marchion Ro, leader of the Nihil, the Eye of the Nihil if we are using their titles.  He is the one emblazoned on the cover with yellow lightsaber and title dedicated to him and that piece of artwork is a perfect encapsulation of who the character is.  There is this utter ruthlessness to who he is now that he and the Nihil have actually won and that Mann is giving time to getting inside his head.  In a lot of ways it feels as if Mann saw the criticisms given towards the villains of the sequel trilogy, and was insistent that we need to understand why Ro is so evil in the way that he is and where he has come from.  It’s also the logical acceleration of a lot of the ideas behind the founding of the Nihil during Phase II, something that helps justify the publishing decision to make that second phase a prequel while Phase III is the more traditional sequel.  That also might be what is adding to the feeling that more time has passed than a year, however, I feel that might actually be marginal because that passage of time is integral to the way that Mann constructs his prose.

 

The prose is most apparent with the multiple Jedi plotlines.  Both Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann plotlines in the novel.  They are separate, but they feed into each other quite well, but they are both incredibly damaged people in the aftermath of the destruction of Starlight Beacon.  Avar in particular through a lot of the first two thirds of the novel is skulking around, trying her best to be a hero within the Occlusion Zone in her own way.  It’s actually one of the few plot threads in the novel that feel close to levity, that is the more swashbuckling science fiction serial tone that Star Wars was largely founded upon (it’s also where Mann’s penchant for writing comic relief characters comes through in the best way to assist with the levity).  But don’t get me wrong, the oppressiveness of the novel’s tone is still there.  Both Kriss and Mann are dealing with essentially depression that only resolves itself at the end of a single chapter near the end of the novel in one line, and yet that one line is incredibly satisfying, reading like a thesis for the novel only further supported by the final chapter going into how there is still a lot of work to be done even if the “victory” of the novel is clearly a stopgap in a much larger story.  Mann is setting the tone and bringing hope back to the galaxy and the Republic, but this isn’t a permanent victory.  It’s just a point where some people got to a point where they can take an active role in resistance.  Mann is taking inspiration from the sequel trilogy, but he luckily isn’t taking directly from that trilogy or the structure of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

 

Overall, while it’s only the opening gambit of Phase III of The High Republic, in terms of novels The Eye of Darkness is actually the strongest.  Much of that is down to George Mann’s ability to bring together so many disparate threads that mean the novel feels like part of a bigger world and yet still having a satisfying arc for almost all of its characters (I didn’t even mention the rather minor arc for Bell Zettifar).  There’s a lot packed into its near 400 page count, but it’s utterly compelling and lays the groundwork for what hopefully will be a grand finale.  9/10.

The Survivors by: Michael Wagner and directed by: Les Landau

 

“The Survivors” is written by: Michael Wagner and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 151, was the 3^rd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 51^st episode overall, and was broadcast on October 9, 1989.

Samuel Beckett’s one-act tragicomedy Endgame is about the four residents of a dingy house at the end of the world.  It’s a piece of absurdism, squarely in postmodern theater and portrays this pair of people as in a contemptuous relationship that breaks down after seemingly years of strain.  It’s also a piece of theater that in many ways is completely incoherent, as with many a piece of art it asks the viewer to bring themselves to it and see it through their own lens.  There is a sense of monotony and repetition in the work, ending with one character determined to leave the relationship and face the outside world but silently staying while the other is determined to remain.  “The Survivors” is the third episode of the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and is about a beautifully maintained house at the end of a world inhabited by an impossibly kind elderly couple living their lives in the absurdity as warships could be back any day to finish the job.  In the meantime, they just live their lives as they had before the war began and as they had during the war, expecting to be killed no matter if they joined the resistance or kept their choice to stay neutral.

 

Samuel Beckett wrote mainly tragicomedies, joined the French Resistance as a courier during the Second World War, gave much of his life to his own community including as essentially a bus driver for schoolchildren including a young Andre the Giant, and died in late 1989 from emphysema.  Michael Wagner wrote “The Survivors”, the penultimate episode he oversaw as showrunner on Star Trek: The Next Generation, had already penned several episodes for television including one based on ideas by Isaac Asimov, and died approximately three years after this episode aired from brain cancer.  Michael Wagner was not a contributor to absurdism or postmodern literature, he wrote television drama.  Michael Wagner did not meet Samuel Beckett.  Michael Wagner’s life is documented briefly, often disregarded as a footnote in the history of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  And yet, here is “The Survivors”.  An episode reckoning, quietly with the ideas of what comes after war.  What happens to the survivors?  Or in the episode’s case, the survivor?  What happens when the survivor is the one forced not to be a footnote in the annals of history when that is all that he desires?  The episode posits that being left alone is perhaps for the best.

 

That is slightly horrific.  The footnote so to speak is also responsible for a genocide, casually placed as a third act twist to explain why the single house is left standing and why the distraction from the grief.  That is largely ignored in the end, it is a third act twist after all that makes sense.  The footnote also lashes out, implants music in others’ minds to avoid detection.  It’s a source of pain and mystery, the victim yet again being the poor ship’s counselor whom the writers do love to torture.  Here it is at least played properly.  The distraction is kind, nothing but kind.  She is a fighter, a revolutionary.  She is the one to take a stand when peace was destroyed.  In the end, the distraction can leave, it is offered, even if she isn’t real.  She’s not the one lashing out at the crew’s kindness after all.  She invites them in for tea.  She partakes in a waltz.  She lives.  He is tortured, in the end he remains tortured.  He does not live.  The captain consistently offered that chance.  He survives.

 

9/10.

The Ensigns of Command by: Melinda M. Snodgrass and directed by: Cliff Bole

 

“The Ensigns of Command” is written by: Melinda M. Snodgrass and is directed by: Cliff Bole.  It was produced under production code 149, was the 2^nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 50^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 2, 1989.

 

Sometimes you’re watching an episode of a television show and can’t help but think “My God that man cannot act.”  That is the experience watching “The Ensigns of Command”, the second episode of the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation because the main antagonistic force in the A-plot gave a performance that the producers were not looking for and was dubbed by an unknown actor.  That means that the performance of Gosheven is stilted, the voice clearly not matching the physical acting choices in the scene, most likely due to a short turnaround time in television and a production team clearly with very little experience in dubbing.  It would be a performance that is easy to overlook if it weren’t for the rest of the cast in the A-plot being nearly as stilted without being dubbed over, so there’s a real question of why the decision to dub over Grainger Hines was made.  It also leaves the A-plot riding entirely on the back of Brent Spiner’s performance as Data, which isn’t really a problem because Spiner is clearly up to the challenge of carrying the episode.  The entire premise is that a planet is owned by the Sheliak who have a treaty with the Federation, but there is a colony of humans on the planet that need to be evacuated in three days or be exterminated.  The colonists have been on the planet for about a century and don’t want to go, plus the planet has some form of radiation that makes transporters useless and that the rest of the crew of the Enterprise stuck on the ship in the B-plot (attempting negotiations with the Sheliak).  There is a sense the script was rewritten because the setup of the episode is convoluted, likely due to being adjusted in rewrites to accommodate whatever the show could afford to show as this was an episode that director Cliff Bole noted as having a budget cut during production.

 

The script comes from Melinda M. Snodgrass and thematically is a follow-up to “The Measure of a Man”.  Despite a convoluted setup, it’s quite a strong script.  Data is kept as the focus for much of the episode, it opens with the android playing in a string quartet and musing about how he is technically proficient but there is a lack of “soul” in the performance.  While it uses the term soul, I’d argue Snodgrass means that Data doesn’t understand the nuances of human performance.  While “The Measure of a Man” is an episode that firmly establishes Data as a person with autonomy, the way he experiences emotions is different.  There’s a reason that robotic characters are coded as autistic, and Data is perhaps the prime example of this reading, something “The Ensigns of Command” really does establish.  The episode is very much Data having to convince colonists to be logical, leave their settlement for people who are arguably the original inhabitants.  Now that allegory shouldn’t be looked too deep, if it is Snodgrass is accidentally portraying the indigenous Sheliak as savages whose course of action is to exterminate a colony of people who had been living there for an extended period of time and in the B-plot obstinate about giving the Enterprise crew more time to get the colonists off of the planet because they don’t have the technology to do so with the radiation.  “The Ensigns of Command” is more interested in negotiating to a peaceful resolution to give land back to rightful owners more than anything.  That and exploring the idea that people cannot really be moved from their convictions with logic, Data has to eventually use trickery and make the threat of death seem actually real to get them on side, and to have a very odd little romantic subplot that just doesn’t work because of a weak performance.

 

The B-plot is much less consequential, it’s Picard and company going through every possibility to get either the Enterprise modified to accommodate the colonists or fix the transporters to get them off the planet quickly or appease the Sheliak.  In terms of a B-plot, it’s honestly fine if a bit generic.  It doesn’t feel like so many scenes in Season 2 where it is just there to pad out space because a script was running short and it does at the very least push the plot forward while keeping the audience reminded that time is ticking down, these colonists will die if a solution isn’t reached.  What makes it memorable is actually its conclusion: Picard finds a loophole and Patrick Stewart eats up manipulating these aliens into agreeing to giving them the three weeks they would need to get the colonists away with the arrival of a better Federation ship.  It’s not a scene I can so much describe, it’s more down to just seeing how Stewart eats up the performance and looks like he is about to burst out laughing with this particularly long pause.  It might just be one of Picard’s best moments because it is diplomacy through absolute manipulation and underhanded dealings giving the character just that little bit of edge that was missing in a lot of the first two seasons.

 

Overall, “The Ensigns of Command” should be one of the all time greats.  Melinda M. Snodgrass, despite having her script rewritten, actually has her ideas continue into the production.  Brent Spiner is on top form once again and as Data is actually the central performance because it’s about how he sees himself and not how the Federation sees him.  But there are bad performances that single handedly bring things down quite a bit and the rewrites convolute the setup just a bit too much.  7/10.

Evolution by: Michael Piller from a story by: Michael Piller and Michael Wagner and directed by: Winrich Kolbe

 

“Evolution” is written by: Michael Piller, from a story by: Michael Piller and Michael Wagner, and is directed by: Winrich Kolbe.  It was produced under production code 150, was the 1^st episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 49^th episode overall, and was broadcast on September 25, 1989.

 

The beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third season saw several changes behind the scenes and in front of the camera.  Diana Muldaur as Dr. Pulaski was written out off-screen while Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher returned and would stay with the show until the end of its run.  Behind the scenes, Maurice Hurley, after a tumultuous year as showrunner, stepped down and in the interim Michael Wagner took over.  Wagner is yet another new writer to Star Trek as a franchise, something that has been a constant throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation.  At the very least Hurley had written for the series, but Wagner was an industry professional, already having a 14-year career as a television writer and work on a less successful science fiction series.  Wagner would only last four episodes in the role, however, passing the torch onto Michael Piller who would remain in that role through the fifth season (leaving to help establish Star Trek: Deep Space Nine).  Wagner and Piller both devised the story to “Evolution”, the second episode of the third season produced, but clearly written to be broadcast first.  Piller wrote the final script, the strength of which is what convinced Rick Berman and Gene Roddenberry to offer him the position, and while this isn’t an episode to be remembered as one of the absolute best but it is one that provides a baseline of quality for the series going forward.  This third season opener is one that didn’t have to start the show and wasn’t working against a strike or clock, it is just an opening episode.  It’s putting a foot forward to tell a story, one that adds quite a bit to remind the audience of the last season’s dangling threads (the Borg in particular are mentioned) and shift focus to an episode that is entirely character based.

 

The decision to open the season with a character focused episode on Wesley Crusher is honestly a risky one at least in terms of audience.  Now Wil Wheaton is an actor I like.  Likewise, Wesley is a character that I like despite the writing team generally not understanding how to write a child genius character.  “Evolution” is a script that actually addresses a lot of the issues with Wesley as a character.  McFadden’s first scene as Crusher before the plot actually begins is discussing her own fears as a mother with Picard: she’s been gone for a year and Wesley is far too clean cut as a teenager despite his own ambitions.  It’s reflected nicely in the conflict of the episode, Wesley has created nanites for a research project that have become sentient and escaped.  The rest of the episode is a race against the clock to not destroy them, but learn to communicate with them before they, in their ignorance, destroy the Enterprise.  Wheaton gets several scenes where he is alone and attempting to stop the nanites before he is caught because Wesley is still a child at heart.  There is this incredibly small scene opposite Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan which adds a lot to who Wesley is as a character, the caliber of actor that Goldberg is helps elevate Wheaton.  Wheaton and McFadden also get to properly play a mother and son for the first time in a very long time, there were probably less than a handful of episodes in the first season that really played off this as an idea.  McFadden’s return as Dr. Crusher is also in general slick, it’s clear that the new production team is allowing her the freedom to actually explore the role in depth.

 

The B-plot of the episode is also very much a reflection of who Wesley might become: Dr. Paul Stubbs, played by Ken Jenkins, has an appointment with a stellar explosion to complete research that he has dedicated his entire life to.  He is the lonely scientist that Wesley can become, a boy genius that has nothing besides that research to actually use.  The way Wheaton plays off Jenkins is particularly interesting, there is a palpable fear that Wesley might lose himself to a lot off his research.  Now, the episode does end with Stubbs completing his research at the last possible moment, but not after destroying some of the nanites creating further conflict before the resolution.  The resolution of the episode itself is also clearly more confident in using its characters.  Data as an android is able to actually do the communicating with the nanites and Picard is able to be an actual diplomat, both Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart not taking too much away from Wil Wheaton as Wesley for the episode.  The clear step up is also that the other characters aren’t forced into the plot to pad things out, there is actually little here done by Riker, Troi, La Forge, or Worf, each maybe having a scene or two where they are important and clearly characterized as themselves, but not taking up the spotlight.  Add that to the direction of Winrich Kolbe, directing his fourth episode, and you have something quite confident.  Kolbe’s direction is dynamic, the camera is continually moving with the characters to punctuate the emotion and there are costume changes that read as the cast becoming more comfortable in performing these roles.  It’s genuinely great.

 

Overall, “Evolution” is good.  It is the definition of a solid episode that has character drama at the heart of it.  If anything it serves as a great baseline for the third season (and future seasons) of Star Trek: The Next Generation to meet and continue to build upon with a brand new team that will essentially be making the show for the next three seasons.  It struggles slightly with leaving things a little too unresolved for Wesley, but it also just excels at the character beats.  7/10.

The Long Walk by: Stephen King as Richard Bachman

 

When I read Rage I came away with the idea that Stephen King didn’t actually have much to say about the teenage experience, violence, or the reasons mass shootings happen.  The Long Walk is perhaps the complete opposite of that.  Like Rage, it was written when King was young, apparently while he was a freshman in college and is the first novel he actually completed (I guess Rage was one of the first he started writing).  You can tell it is an earlier work, not because it lacks substance, but because the clear eye of the anger from King is the United States government and its actions in the Vietnam War towards specifically the American public.  It was published in 1979, four years after the end of the Vietnam War, but King was writing the novel first in the mid-1960s.  The Vietnam War was just under a decade from ending and the opinion of the American public towards the war was beginning to shift in America because it was after the escalation of American troops but the campus protest movement wouldn’t peak until 1970.  He was writing as a young man, righteously angry at what is dominating politics in an America in the grips of conservatism.  It’s almost fitting to be published just one year before Ronald Reagan would be elected president and further push the country to the right, though it does mean The Long Walk is a novel that feels retrospective.

 

It's certainly a novel that leaves the reader quite raw.  It chronicles the deaths of 99 young men on the annual long walk, a state sponsored competition where boys must walk at four miles per hour along a path for the chance of a wish and untold wishes.  Going below that speed for 30 seconds leads to a warning, three warnings and the walker is shot dead.  The premise is clearly a metaphor for the draft, so much is built on the “honor” of the draft into the United States Army.  It is something to be dodged, something essentially unavoidable (there is a recounting of one boy signing up for the walk on a whim because the recruiters were there and it was something to do).  King is excellent on the stark horror of a child being gunned down by the United States military.  This is something repeated throughout the book, other deaths coming in other horrific ways as the walk goes on, each deviation being arguable a bigger point against the war and the United States government.  There are attempted uprising, suicide, and a boy who just sits down to die against the system.

 

The Long Walk, however, doesn’t change the system.  The novel ends with an ending that isn’t so much literal.  Sure, this instance of the walk is over, but King is intent on neglecting catharsis, the protagonist Ray Garraty just keeps walking towards a figure in the distance: “And when the hand touched his shoulder again, he somehow found the strength to run” (King, 322).  That is the line with which King closes the novel, Garraty doesn’t get his wish, he doesn’t get to see any justice done towards the system.  The Major, the representation of the state personified and the man responsible for disappearing Garraty’s father, is not a villain defeated by our heroes.  He is the monolith of a state that is still in power, a state that by the end of The Long Walk has killed 99 boys after putting them through their own version of hell, brought out their insecurities and lives (some of the walkers are awful people in it for the cruelty, others are implied to be gay and living in the closet in a state where they must deny themselves).  That’s why it’s such a strong read.  It’s a far louder scream of rage with that rage directed.  Sure it does not ever come to a conclusion as to what might beat the system, the ending is broken pessimism.  It is also clearly written by a college student at the beginning of his career, some of the walkers are reduced to shallow traits despite King clearly playing with the humanity of each of the 100, and it’s also clear that King is not someone who has walked at four miles per hour, that is more of a jog.  8/10.

 

King, Stephen.  “The Long Walk.” The Bachman Books.  New American Library, 1985, pp. 133-322.