Detailed Review - Last of the Dodos
I'm out of my cotton-pickin' *mind* to do a non-episode Who post on episode night (sorry, Who_Daily!) But I just finished The Last Dodo and I have just got to do some serious squeeing. Besides, if I don't get the 17 bookmarks out of it, the spine may crack by morning.
First of all, Rayner has definately brought it on. I knew she could; her other books had excellent characterization and pretty solid plotting. Last Dodo has solidly made my top five favorite Who tie ins (below Raynor's Winner Takes All and Lyon's Stealers of Dreams, on a par with Tucker's The Nightmare of Black Island).
Three fourths of the way in, I was going to write that this book had a stunningly good plot - or I should say, plots, because the point of the novel keeps changing. Set in a museum of the Last Creatures, Plot A deals with disappearing exhibits. Plot B - and no, this is not a spoiler, not when it's printed on the back of the book! - deals with the museum's reaction to a certain Last Of His Kind running around loose and causing trouble. It's plots C and D which get crammed into the last quarter of the book that send it over the top, taking a quantum leap from serious plotting into seriously fromage factor. Since all of Doctor Who is a tribute to the Power of Cheese, this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker development, but I did think it was a bit unnecessary.
This is an Issue book, the issues being conservation and value, but it goes beyond Extinction Is Bad. It throws in some tough questions as well: Is preserving something in amber preservation enough? Is it kinder or crueller to keep the last rather than the last two? What does it say about values when only the last of something is seen as having worth? (That last is a particular dig, since it is phrased not as worth, but worthlessness.) Does the act of conservation only encourage the acts of poaching? Is it cruel to keep the last of anything aware that it is all alone?
The characterization, though, is fantastic. I was particularly interested to see how that was handled as Dodo was originally pitched (and I think partially written) as a Ten and Rose adventure, so how was it going to be changed into a Ten and Martha one? Particularly since Raynor's style is to switch between points of view, which means that large chunks were going to be told to the reader by Martha directly?
She hit the character fairly well; there were parts that I could really hear Freema's voice delivering. The Martha in this book is a little breathless and not quite as analytical as she's been in some scenes on screen, but the characterization isn't far from the gushing enthusiasm of the vaguely canonical Martha Jones Myspace, and frankly, Martha didn't win many Calm Science Lady points tonight either. But her parts have been changed enough so that they most definately do not come off as retread Rose, either.
For those keeping track of this sort of thing, there was no suggestion of romantic love between companion and Doctor, of either the unrequited or requited-but-He's Not That Kind of a Guy kind, with the exception of one line very late in the book that was, IMO, obviously not changed from when this was a Rose book - and one hell of a line it is; I wish he'd said it onscreen. I hope he still might say something similar onscreen.
It's the Doctor who gets some really gritty stuff in - this is a book about preserving the last of every species, but preserving it in suspended animation, and that's going to get the peripatetic Last of the Time Lords right in the hearts. Raynor is frankly magnificent handling his point of view. Up front she gives him a beautifully Doctorish speech when the frustrated Martha snaps she doesn't like people: "No, no no! Hate what some of them do, hate some individuals if you must, hate intolerance and injustice and slaughter and man's inhumanity to man, but never, never hate PEOPLE." He will have his moments of brilliance and self-sacrifice. But he's not just any Doctor, he is quite obviously the Tenth Doctor, with his specs and his "no last chances" and his childlike enthusiasm for experiences and words.
But this is also a Doctor who is facing his situation - not just how he might end up in a zoo, but that he is all alone. The Animated Superman Adventures had a similar plotline about someone trying to "conserve" the last son of Krypton, but you just know that at the end of the episode, Superman went flying back to Kansas to get his adopted mother to feed him apple pie and sympathy. The Doctor (and reader) are constantly reminded that for the Doctor, this is not an option past or present. He has no family anymore. He has no mate.
There are also some very nice old school nods as well. The Doctor refers to his exile on Earth. And he names the Dodo "Dorothea" without ever explaining it to Martha.
All this power is underserved by, of all things, the printer. There's a running joke throughout the whole book that the Doctor has given Martha an "I-Spyder" thing that records points for all the Earth life forms she sees (if she gets a certain number of points, she gets a certificate). Between each chapter is a blurb on an extinct animal and her running tally on facing pages - but to get the pages to face, several times that means a blank right page. And leaving the right-side page blank is a mistake that zine editors cranking out their 20-copy mimeograph-and-staple opuses knew better than to make, so I'm staggered BBC Books does it at all, much less more than once. Compounding the problem later is that we get the slightly sanctimonious listings, but they drop the number tally page, so now we're only left with the lecturing part.
The list is interesting - I actually googled "Indefatigable Galapagos Mouse" and got hits, but since you can also get hits for the Northern Pacific Tree Octopus, I'm not sure how much credence to put into that. Since my day job is editing, I noticed that the I-Spyder (or the Beeb's copyeditor) was defective; listing a certain point value for something on one page and then giving less than half that value in the facing tally page. (However, this also means that I caught one of the best jokes of the book, which is literally buried in the small print at the bottom of the very last page.)
But these are nitpicky. Good plot, good characterization, and some seriously hard questions brought up - The Last Dodo is unquestionably one of the most solid tie-in novels and well worth having.
There were two things that particularly impressed me for their sheer kick-in-the-gut value. One was a very subtle, but something worth the thinking about... one of the missing specimins (dubbed "Mervin the missing link") is being held by a professor who hopes to breed it - to either a goldfish and a hamster, not knowing which way it's going to want to go on the evolutionary chain. Although the Doctor doesn't *say* anything, it's a powerful moment when you basically realize that it's hammered home to him that he is in the same bind.
The other one is the line that I so want to see: "Being apart from your own kind forever - that's quite a burden to bear, you know. However much you're loved." Since he hardly acknowledges Martha's vague interest (and she's not showing more than a vague one here) this is the line I assume was originally aimed at Rose. And it's just stunningly powerful in its indictment of the "You're not alone, you have me" line that his companions are giving him. Yes, he has them. They are company. They keep him from being literally alone. But he is still the last Gallifreyan left in the universe, and it's as if he's being offered his choice of the goldfish or the hamster, because there is no other match for him. No matter how much the goldfish or the hamster may want to work it out.
First of all, Rayner has definately brought it on. I knew she could; her other books had excellent characterization and pretty solid plotting. Last Dodo has solidly made my top five favorite Who tie ins (below Raynor's Winner Takes All and Lyon's Stealers of Dreams, on a par with Tucker's The Nightmare of Black Island).
Three fourths of the way in, I was going to write that this book had a stunningly good plot - or I should say, plots, because the point of the novel keeps changing. Set in a museum of the Last Creatures, Plot A deals with disappearing exhibits. Plot B - and no, this is not a spoiler, not when it's printed on the back of the book! - deals with the museum's reaction to a certain Last Of His Kind running around loose and causing trouble. It's plots C and D which get crammed into the last quarter of the book that send it over the top, taking a quantum leap from serious plotting into seriously fromage factor. Since all of Doctor Who is a tribute to the Power of Cheese, this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker development, but I did think it was a bit unnecessary.
This is an Issue book, the issues being conservation and value, but it goes beyond Extinction Is Bad. It throws in some tough questions as well: Is preserving something in amber preservation enough? Is it kinder or crueller to keep the last rather than the last two? What does it say about values when only the last of something is seen as having worth? (That last is a particular dig, since it is phrased not as worth, but worthlessness.) Does the act of conservation only encourage the acts of poaching? Is it cruel to keep the last of anything aware that it is all alone?
The characterization, though, is fantastic. I was particularly interested to see how that was handled as Dodo was originally pitched (and I think partially written) as a Ten and Rose adventure, so how was it going to be changed into a Ten and Martha one? Particularly since Raynor's style is to switch between points of view, which means that large chunks were going to be told to the reader by Martha directly?
She hit the character fairly well; there were parts that I could really hear Freema's voice delivering. The Martha in this book is a little breathless and not quite as analytical as she's been in some scenes on screen, but the characterization isn't far from the gushing enthusiasm of the vaguely canonical Martha Jones Myspace, and frankly, Martha didn't win many Calm Science Lady points tonight either. But her parts have been changed enough so that they most definately do not come off as retread Rose, either.
For those keeping track of this sort of thing, there was no suggestion of romantic love between companion and Doctor, of either the unrequited or requited-but-He's Not That Kind of a Guy kind, with the exception of one line very late in the book that was, IMO, obviously not changed from when this was a Rose book - and one hell of a line it is; I wish he'd said it onscreen. I hope he still might say something similar onscreen.
It's the Doctor who gets some really gritty stuff in - this is a book about preserving the last of every species, but preserving it in suspended animation, and that's going to get the peripatetic Last of the Time Lords right in the hearts. Raynor is frankly magnificent handling his point of view. Up front she gives him a beautifully Doctorish speech when the frustrated Martha snaps she doesn't like people: "No, no no! Hate what some of them do, hate some individuals if you must, hate intolerance and injustice and slaughter and man's inhumanity to man, but never, never hate PEOPLE." He will have his moments of brilliance and self-sacrifice. But he's not just any Doctor, he is quite obviously the Tenth Doctor, with his specs and his "no last chances" and his childlike enthusiasm for experiences and words.
But this is also a Doctor who is facing his situation - not just how he might end up in a zoo, but that he is all alone. The Animated Superman Adventures had a similar plotline about someone trying to "conserve" the last son of Krypton, but you just know that at the end of the episode, Superman went flying back to Kansas to get his adopted mother to feed him apple pie and sympathy. The Doctor (and reader) are constantly reminded that for the Doctor, this is not an option past or present. He has no family anymore. He has no mate.
There are also some very nice old school nods as well. The Doctor refers to his exile on Earth. And he names the Dodo "Dorothea" without ever explaining it to Martha.
All this power is underserved by, of all things, the printer. There's a running joke throughout the whole book that the Doctor has given Martha an "I-Spyder" thing that records points for all the Earth life forms she sees (if she gets a certain number of points, she gets a certificate). Between each chapter is a blurb on an extinct animal and her running tally on facing pages - but to get the pages to face, several times that means a blank right page. And leaving the right-side page blank is a mistake that zine editors cranking out their 20-copy mimeograph-and-staple opuses knew better than to make, so I'm staggered BBC Books does it at all, much less more than once. Compounding the problem later is that we get the slightly sanctimonious listings, but they drop the number tally page, so now we're only left with the lecturing part.
The list is interesting - I actually googled "Indefatigable Galapagos Mouse" and got hits, but since you can also get hits for the Northern Pacific Tree Octopus, I'm not sure how much credence to put into that. Since my day job is editing, I noticed that the I-Spyder (or the Beeb's copyeditor) was defective; listing a certain point value for something on one page and then giving less than half that value in the facing tally page. (However, this also means that I caught one of the best jokes of the book, which is literally buried in the small print at the bottom of the very last page.)
But these are nitpicky. Good plot, good characterization, and some seriously hard questions brought up - The Last Dodo is unquestionably one of the most solid tie-in novels and well worth having.
There were two things that particularly impressed me for their sheer kick-in-the-gut value. One was a very subtle, but something worth the thinking about... one of the missing specimins (dubbed "Mervin the missing link") is being held by a professor who hopes to breed it - to either a goldfish and a hamster, not knowing which way it's going to want to go on the evolutionary chain. Although the Doctor doesn't *say* anything, it's a powerful moment when you basically realize that it's hammered home to him that he is in the same bind.
The other one is the line that I so want to see: "Being apart from your own kind forever - that's quite a burden to bear, you know. However much you're loved." Since he hardly acknowledges Martha's vague interest (and she's not showing more than a vague one here) this is the line I assume was originally aimed at Rose. And it's just stunningly powerful in its indictment of the "You're not alone, you have me" line that his companions are giving him. Yes, he has them. They are company. They keep him from being literally alone. But he is still the last Gallifreyan left in the universe, and it's as if he's being offered his choice of the goldfish or the hamster, because there is no other match for him. No matter how much the goldfish or the hamster may want to work it out.