Reading Classic Who: Evolution; A Device for Death; System Shock
Over the past year or so I've been given (or very occasionally bought second hand) a number of Classic Who novels, either novelisations of episodes or original novels. I've been steadily reading through my collection of late, so here are my thoughts on three of the Fourth Doctor original novels I've recently read.
Evolution - John Peel
Sarah Jane tells the Doctor that she wants to meet her fellow journalist Rudyard Kipling, so he sets the coordinates for the Victorian Age. But, as usual, the TARDIS materialises in not quite the right place, and the pair find themselves being pursued across the Devon moorland by an enormous feral hound.
Local children have been going missing and lights have been seen beneath the waters of the bay. Local fishermen have been pulled from their boats and mutilated, and graves have been robbed of their corpses. The townspeople know something strange is going on, and Arthur Conan Doyle, the ship's doctor from a recently berthed Arctic whaler, is determined to investigate. Meanwhile, the teenage Kipling is half-heartedly trying to find out where one of his fellow schoolboys has disappeared to.
The Doctor and Doyle join forces to uncover a macabre scheme to interfere with human evolution - and both Sarah Jane and Kipling find themselves unwilling participants in the evolutionary experiments.
The inclusion of a rather superior and annoying young Kipling seemed gratuitous and irritated me since the only purpose for his presence appeared to be to show SJS that Kipling wasn't all that wonderful (not least because he keeps leering at her and behaving like a stereotypical hormonal teenager.
In fact, most of the characterisation in this book annoyed me: the Doctor kept making comments about "taking great delight" in beating people up, and Sarah Jane threatened to scratch out a barmaid's eyes, both of which were quite out of character !
The inclusion of Arthur Conan Doyle also seemed fairly gratuitous - I got the impression he was only there so that the Doctor could be the role model for Sherlock Holmes (including wearing a dearstalker hat!)
The best thing I can say about reading this book is that it encouraged me to finally try reading some Holmes novels!
A Device of Death - Christopher Bulis
As the Doctor, Harry and Sarah depart from Skaro, the Time storm caused by their alteration of history disrupts the path of the Time Ring they are using to return to the TARDIS, and they find themselves scattered across the Adelphine Cluster just outside Earth's galaxy. Harry materialises in a war zone on the planet Jand where, despite suffering from amnesia about his origins, he immediately leaps into action to save lives during a battle, earning the respect of the goat-like Jand for his medical expertise and his willingness to save the lives of both friend and foe.
Meanwhile, Sarah materialises on a moon of the enemy planet Averon, where she's captured and put to work in a slave camp. She is also suffering from amnesia about her origins; escape is impossible and the dulling routine of the camp soon saps even her spirit, although she does make friends with a large robot soldier, known as Max, who develops morality and compassion as a result of the emergency repairs he's forced to do on his systems (don't ask !).
The duration of the war is having an effect on morale in the Landoran Alliance's secret weapons manufacturing facility, Deepcity. For security reasons nobody is allowed to leave Deepcity, and even top scientist Cara Tarron - whose brother Brin was killed when Landor was destroyed - is suffering from "Deep Syndrome" after having pushed herself very hard to complete the MICA project ahead of schedule.
Meanwhile, Alliance vessels investigating reports of an opulent golden ship which has been sighted on the outskirts of recent battles, find an escape pod in Deepcity's space. The pod and its occupant, the Doctor, are brought to Deepcity, where Director Kambril realises that he belongs to a technologically advanced, but unknown species, and asks for his assistance. He explains that the human colony on Landor was destroyed in the early years of the conflict with the Averonian Union, and the scattered survivors have been lending their help and expertise to their allies in the continuing battle. The Doctor, also suffering from partial amnesia, agrees to help develop a weapon that will put an end to the war.
Taking place between "Genesis Of The Daleks" and "Revenge Of The Cybermen" this story focuses on the secondary characters almost to the exclusion of the three "stars" - and yet none of the secondary characters are really interesting enough to justify that focus. Of the three main characters, only Harry is portrayed really well, and Sarah Jane seemed pretty superfluous to events throughout most of the book.
I confess I worked out the "secret" of Deepcity long before it was revealed - and given I'm usually hopeless at following clues in murder mysteries and whodunnits, that was a disappointment! This story could have been really interesting in different hands, but as it wasn't in other hands, it's not that good.
System Shock - Justin Richards
This story opens in London, 1998. Veronica Halliwell is the director of MI5; she calls in a mechanic to deal with a minor technical fault in her car, and then the next time she uses it, the car’s computers lock the doors and drive her directly into a brick wall.
Meanwhile COBRA teams successfully use the BattleNet system to end a hostage situation at Pullen Towers, and thus decide to use the system on all future operations.
Elsewhere, Kevin Sutcliffe, who's the public relations officer at the software company I2, steals a CD-ROM from work, but he's spotted and pursued by his co-worker Johanna Slake. Unaware of the fact that his company watch contains a tracking device, he runs into a pub to avoid her. He bumps into the Doctor and Sarah Jane, and slips the CD-ROM into the Doctor’s pocket together with a note with just one word on it: HUBWAY, then he flees, only to be caught and killed by Slake outside.
When the Doctor and Sarah leave the pub they find the police investigating Sutcliffe's murder, and the Doctor quickly realises that the dead man's neck bones were pulverised by someone with inhuman strength.
The Doctor and Sarah follow Slake back to I2, but before they can break in to investigate further, they're arrested by two MI5 agents who've been keeping the building under surveillance. The MI5 agents take them to their superior, Robert Gibson, for questioning and he accepts the credentials which identify them as UNIT agents. Any doubts he still has about them are very quickly cleared up when Gibson's associate Harry Sullivan arrives and identifies them.
Harry and Robert explain that I2's CEO, Lionel Stabfield, is suspected of using his company as a front for the terrorist organisation, the Little Brothers, and Sutcliffe had been working undercover to keep an eye on him. Harry identifies Hubway as the central European node of the information superhighway, which is due to come online in a few days, and Gibson wonders if there could be a connection to Sutcliffe's warning. However, the Doctor believes that Sutcliffe was simply directing them to Hubway so they could use its resources to analyse the files on the CD-ROM.
It turns out that there's rather more to Stabfield, Slake and the others in the "Little Brothers" group than meets the eye as they're partly organic, partly robotic snake creatures called Voracians. The Voracians are evil management consultants who call a hat a "cranial accessory", and their jargon-heavy conversations provide a thread of mild amusement throughout the book.
However, the best bit of the book for me was Unexpected!Harry - I had no idea he was in the book and I actually cheered when he was introduced! The story reunites Harry with the Doctor and Sarah Jane some twenty years after the events of "Terror Of The Zygons" for him, but only just over a month later for Sarah Jane and the Doctor. Sarah Jane wonders if there's an older version of herself somewhere about and considers trying to get in touch, but events escalate so that she never gets the chance to find out, which is a shame as I'd have found that quite interesting.
Some of the technology references made this book seem horribly dated, unsurprisingly since it was written in 1995, but I didn't mind them too much because it was actually a fairly gripping story. I've read very few techno-thrillers, but that's probably in the book's favour since I had little to compare it against and therefore I probably enjoyed it more than someone who's familiar with the genre would.
Evolution - John Peel
Sarah Jane tells the Doctor that she wants to meet her fellow journalist Rudyard Kipling, so he sets the coordinates for the Victorian Age. But, as usual, the TARDIS materialises in not quite the right place, and the pair find themselves being pursued across the Devon moorland by an enormous feral hound.
Local children have been going missing and lights have been seen beneath the waters of the bay. Local fishermen have been pulled from their boats and mutilated, and graves have been robbed of their corpses. The townspeople know something strange is going on, and Arthur Conan Doyle, the ship's doctor from a recently berthed Arctic whaler, is determined to investigate. Meanwhile, the teenage Kipling is half-heartedly trying to find out where one of his fellow schoolboys has disappeared to.
The Doctor and Doyle join forces to uncover a macabre scheme to interfere with human evolution - and both Sarah Jane and Kipling find themselves unwilling participants in the evolutionary experiments.
The inclusion of a rather superior and annoying young Kipling seemed gratuitous and irritated me since the only purpose for his presence appeared to be to show SJS that Kipling wasn't all that wonderful (not least because he keeps leering at her and behaving like a stereotypical hormonal teenager.
In fact, most of the characterisation in this book annoyed me: the Doctor kept making comments about "taking great delight" in beating people up, and Sarah Jane threatened to scratch out a barmaid's eyes, both of which were quite out of character !
The inclusion of Arthur Conan Doyle also seemed fairly gratuitous - I got the impression he was only there so that the Doctor could be the role model for Sherlock Holmes (including wearing a dearstalker hat!)
The best thing I can say about reading this book is that it encouraged me to finally try reading some Holmes novels!
A Device of Death - Christopher Bulis
As the Doctor, Harry and Sarah depart from Skaro, the Time storm caused by their alteration of history disrupts the path of the Time Ring they are using to return to the TARDIS, and they find themselves scattered across the Adelphine Cluster just outside Earth's galaxy. Harry materialises in a war zone on the planet Jand where, despite suffering from amnesia about his origins, he immediately leaps into action to save lives during a battle, earning the respect of the goat-like Jand for his medical expertise and his willingness to save the lives of both friend and foe.
Meanwhile, Sarah materialises on a moon of the enemy planet Averon, where she's captured and put to work in a slave camp. She is also suffering from amnesia about her origins; escape is impossible and the dulling routine of the camp soon saps even her spirit, although she does make friends with a large robot soldier, known as Max, who develops morality and compassion as a result of the emergency repairs he's forced to do on his systems (don't ask !).
The duration of the war is having an effect on morale in the Landoran Alliance's secret weapons manufacturing facility, Deepcity. For security reasons nobody is allowed to leave Deepcity, and even top scientist Cara Tarron - whose brother Brin was killed when Landor was destroyed - is suffering from "Deep Syndrome" after having pushed herself very hard to complete the MICA project ahead of schedule.
Meanwhile, Alliance vessels investigating reports of an opulent golden ship which has been sighted on the outskirts of recent battles, find an escape pod in Deepcity's space. The pod and its occupant, the Doctor, are brought to Deepcity, where Director Kambril realises that he belongs to a technologically advanced, but unknown species, and asks for his assistance. He explains that the human colony on Landor was destroyed in the early years of the conflict with the Averonian Union, and the scattered survivors have been lending their help and expertise to their allies in the continuing battle. The Doctor, also suffering from partial amnesia, agrees to help develop a weapon that will put an end to the war.
Taking place between "Genesis Of The Daleks" and "Revenge Of The Cybermen" this story focuses on the secondary characters almost to the exclusion of the three "stars" - and yet none of the secondary characters are really interesting enough to justify that focus. Of the three main characters, only Harry is portrayed really well, and Sarah Jane seemed pretty superfluous to events throughout most of the book.
I confess I worked out the "secret" of Deepcity long before it was revealed - and given I'm usually hopeless at following clues in murder mysteries and whodunnits, that was a disappointment! This story could have been really interesting in different hands, but as it wasn't in other hands, it's not that good.
System Shock - Justin Richards
This story opens in London, 1998. Veronica Halliwell is the director of MI5; she calls in a mechanic to deal with a minor technical fault in her car, and then the next time she uses it, the car’s computers lock the doors and drive her directly into a brick wall.
Meanwhile COBRA teams successfully use the BattleNet system to end a hostage situation at Pullen Towers, and thus decide to use the system on all future operations.
Elsewhere, Kevin Sutcliffe, who's the public relations officer at the software company I2, steals a CD-ROM from work, but he's spotted and pursued by his co-worker Johanna Slake. Unaware of the fact that his company watch contains a tracking device, he runs into a pub to avoid her. He bumps into the Doctor and Sarah Jane, and slips the CD-ROM into the Doctor’s pocket together with a note with just one word on it: HUBWAY, then he flees, only to be caught and killed by Slake outside.
When the Doctor and Sarah leave the pub they find the police investigating Sutcliffe's murder, and the Doctor quickly realises that the dead man's neck bones were pulverised by someone with inhuman strength.
The Doctor and Sarah follow Slake back to I2, but before they can break in to investigate further, they're arrested by two MI5 agents who've been keeping the building under surveillance. The MI5 agents take them to their superior, Robert Gibson, for questioning and he accepts the credentials which identify them as UNIT agents. Any doubts he still has about them are very quickly cleared up when Gibson's associate Harry Sullivan arrives and identifies them.
Harry and Robert explain that I2's CEO, Lionel Stabfield, is suspected of using his company as a front for the terrorist organisation, the Little Brothers, and Sutcliffe had been working undercover to keep an eye on him. Harry identifies Hubway as the central European node of the information superhighway, which is due to come online in a few days, and Gibson wonders if there could be a connection to Sutcliffe's warning. However, the Doctor believes that Sutcliffe was simply directing them to Hubway so they could use its resources to analyse the files on the CD-ROM.
It turns out that there's rather more to Stabfield, Slake and the others in the "Little Brothers" group than meets the eye as they're partly organic, partly robotic snake creatures called Voracians. The Voracians are evil management consultants who call a hat a "cranial accessory", and their jargon-heavy conversations provide a thread of mild amusement throughout the book.
However, the best bit of the book for me was Unexpected!Harry - I had no idea he was in the book and I actually cheered when he was introduced! The story reunites Harry with the Doctor and Sarah Jane some twenty years after the events of "Terror Of The Zygons" for him, but only just over a month later for Sarah Jane and the Doctor. Sarah Jane wonders if there's an older version of herself somewhere about and considers trying to get in touch, but events escalate so that she never gets the chance to find out, which is a shame as I'd have found that quite interesting.
Some of the technology references made this book seem horribly dated, unsurprisingly since it was written in 1995, but I didn't mind them too much because it was actually a fairly gripping story. I've read very few techno-thrillers, but that's probably in the book's favour since I had little to compare it against and therefore I probably enjoyed it more than someone who's familiar with the genre would.