I’ll Explain Later

We’ve skipped The Pit, labeled as the absolute worst New Adventure ever published. Despite its general awfulness, it’s relatively on target in concepts. It’s tough to call it influential, given how wretched it was, but it does start to move the New Adventures down the road of treating Ancient Gallifrey in part as a source of almost Lovecraftian horror.

Deceit, by Peter Darvill-Evans, is one of the big turning points in the New Adventures line, reintroducing Ace some six months after her departure. This version of Ace, popularly dubbed “New Ace,” has spent three years fighting the Dalek Wars and is a much angrier and harder-edged character than the one that left in Love and War. The novel also includes Abslom Daak, the comics character created by Steve Moore in Doctor Who Magazine. Gary Russell, in his final reviews column for Doctor Who Magazine, declared said that “it is coherent, entertaining, pleasantly easy to follow, and, above all it has a darned good story to tell,” but then, he also praised it for “stabilizing the Whoniverse,” so let’s just stop there. I, Who is more in line with most reactions, saying it’s “hardly worth reading.” Shannon Sullivan’s rankings have it as the fifth worst New Adventure, giving it a 53.7% rating. DWRG summary. Whonivese Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s April of 1993. The Bluebells are at number one with “Young at Heart,” a rerelease of a song they previously recorded in 1984, itself a cover of a Bananarama song. It remains at number one all week. Shaggy, Madonna, David Bowie, and New Order also chart. Albums doing well around now include David Bowie’s Black Tie, White Noise (which means I’ve finally passed Pushing Ahead of the Dame in history!), R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, which meanders off to number one again, and Depeche Mode’s Songs of Faith and Devotion.

While in the news, March actually proved fairly uneventful, with the highlights being a brutal blizzard in the eastern United States, the release of Intel’s Pentium processors (the “can’t do math” variety, specifically), and South Africa’s official abandonment of its nuclear program. April is somewhat more exciting: the standoff at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas ends disastrously, with a fire that kills virtually all of the people inside. While in London a black teenager, Stephen Lawrence is murdered by five teenagers in a racist attack that takes until 2012 to result in a conviction.

While in television tie-in novels we have Deceit. As I explained later, this is not one of the most beloved of New Adventures. Indeed, it’s largely hated, and not without some reason. I said on Friday that as of The Highest Science the line had never put out something that could be described as a “generic” New Adventure. That record arguably broke last novel with The Pit, but that novel at least had some cool new ideas. This, on the other hand, has very little that doesn’t just feel like a standard recitation of Virgin tropes.…

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I’ll Explain Later

The Highest Science, the eleventh New Adventure, is the debut novel of Gareth Roberts, bringing the number of Virgin writers who went on to write for the series to three. (It will peak at either five or six, depending on what you do with “Continuity Errors.”) As is normal for Roberts’s style, it’s largely a lighter, funnier book than its predecessors, although in keeping with the New Adventures style it has an exceedingly dark finish. It introduces the Chelonians, a popular New Adventures alien species that not only got a shout-out in The Pandorica Opens but also were originally set to appear in Planet of the Dead, which was once upon a time kinda sorta an adaptation of this story. They’re basically military-obsessed cyborg turtles. At the time Gary Russell praised it in Doctor Who Magazine as “nothing short of marvelous,” while I, Who went with “a brilliant book” and “one of the best stand-alone novels.” Despite this high praise and a largely (though not universally) positive set of reviews at the Doctor Who Ratings guide, the book is only ranked #23 in Shannon Sullivan’s novel rankings with a rating of 72.7%. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s February of 1993. Whitney Houston will always be at number one with “I Will Always Love You.” That is actually a total lie – she has held the position since November, and still holds it at the start of February, but is finally unseated by 2 Unlimited’s “No Limit.” Take That, Duran Duran, Annie Lennox, Lenny Kravitz, Whitney Houston (now with “I’m Every Woman”), and Depeche Mode also chart, the latter with the utterly fantastic “I Feel You,” which also has a sublimely good cover by Placebo if you happen to care.

In real news, since Transit came out Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, splitting into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Bill Clinton actually became President of the United States. And, to quote one of my favorite sentences in Wikipedia, “the Bombay Riots take place in the city now known as Mumbai.”

While this month a bunch of Italian politicians are forced to resign in the wake of a large scale corruption investigation. James Bulger is murdered by a pair of ten-year-old boys around Liverpool, which sets off exactly as big a moral panic and controversy as you’d expect. Brian Mulroney resigns as Prime Minister of Canada. And the World Trade Center bombing takes place, killing six, injuring a thousand, and prefiguring more markedly tragic events.

While on bookshelves we have The Highest Science. To say that the Sylvester McCoy era is not the era most conducive to Roberts’s style and approach is one of those bits of droll understatement I typically favor. Roberts is, by his own open admission, most at home in the Graham Williams era. It’s a mistake to pigeon-hole him as a light and funny writer – he’s good at comedy, but it’s the base he works from, not his exclusive focus. But there is an extent to which Roberts is vocally not a fan of what might be broadly described as “darker” approaches to Doctor Who.…

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Ben Aaronovitch’s Transit is the New Adventures’ great piece of Marmite, with reviews either being outright raves or vicious pans. A piece of outright cyberpunk about alien intelligences and vast transportation systems, the book features no shortage of sex and swearing. It also introduces Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier’s genetically engineered descendent, a recurring character in the New Adventures. It was absolutely savaged at the time, with Gary Russell saying outright that it “has nothing whatsoever to recommend it.” Shannon Sullivan’s rankings are only slightly nicer, putting it at fifty-third, with eight books below it, and giving it a 56.5% rating. I, Who is one of the few things to equivocate, saying that “parts of it seem damn clever – but only after back-breaking analysis.” DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s December of 1992. Whitney Houston has just moved into number one with “I Will Always Love You,” and settles in for a massively long run there. Madonna, Take That, The Prodigy, Michael Jackson, Gloria Estefan, and Rod Stewart are among those who fail to unseat her.

In news, since we last looked at the world Bill Cinton won the US Presidential Election, and women won the “can we become priests in the Church of England” election. A fire broke out in Windsor Castle, one of several things leading Queen Elizabeth II to declare that the year has just sucked. She then became subject to taxation. This month, the US begins military action in Somalia. Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially announce their separation. And riots break out over the destruction of a 16th century mosque in Ayodha, India, killing 1500 people.

While in books, as mentioned, it is the New Adventures’ very own piece of complete Marmite. I’m fairly easy to predict on Marmite stories. Generally speaking, they’re ones with a very clear-cut reason to love them, but one that is not like the reason to love a lot of other Doctor Who, and thus that fails to appeal to a substantial core of Doctor Who fans. In this case, though, I admit to being a bit puzzled by picking either love or hate for this book.

Let’s take care of the objections, and then see what we have left. We’ll start with the smaller ones. First, this book gets a lot of flack for its marginal use of Benny. This, at least, is preposterous. Yes, Benny spends the majority of the book possessed by the villain. The reason for this is straightforward enough – realistically, Aaronovitch wouldn’t have had the manuscript for Love and War for very long. Putting the new companion in the background is a venerable tradition stretching back at least to Steven getting a bunch of Barbara’s dialogue in Galaxy Four. Nobody faults Kinda for the fact that Bailey couldn’t make Nyssa work in the story and so wrote her out of it.

And in this situation the circumstances are actually even more complex. There’s an interview with Paul Cornell in which it’s suggested that several of the novels in this period were being considered as the book that would introduce a new companion, with Benny being in competition with Aaronovitch’s Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart and, of all things, Neil Penswick’s take on William Blake in The Pit.…

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We have skipped both Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark and Nightshade. The former wraps up the Cat’s Cradle trilogy by having the Doctor acquire some needed “organic material” from a story that is otherwise about getting fairies and unicorns into Doctor Who. The latter is Mark Gatiss’s debut novel, and is quite well-regarded, but the consensus was that I could skip it and so I did. For those keeping track at home, we are now at two writers who made writing debuts in the New Adventures range and who then went on to write for the television series. Next Friday Gareth Roberts will make it three.

Love and War is the ninth New Adventure, and the first by a returning author, namely Paul Cornell. It features the temporary departure of Ace, as she storms out of the TARDIS, enraged at the Doctor for deliberately sacrificing the life of her lover to stop the bad guys (the Hoothi, a race of manipulative fungus). It also features the debut of Bernice “Benny” Summerfield, the New Adventures’ signature companion. It is phenomenally well-regarded, coming in as the ninth-best New Adventure on Shannon Sullivan’s rankings, with a rating of 79.4%. I, Who calls it “a paradigm shift” that is “another triumph for author Paul Cornell.” Reviews at the time were similarly enthusiastic, with Garry Russell proclaiming  it “probably the most mature and intelligent o the run so far.” It is sufficiently beloved that Big Finish are adapting it into an audio play in October, the first time that a novel has been adapted to audio without also being changed to remove the Doctor. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s October of 1992. The Shamen are at number one with “Ebeneezer Goode,” lasting two weeks before Tasmin Archer unseats them with “Sleeping Satellite.” Two weeks later Boyz II Men take number one with “End of the Road.” Lionel Richie, Prince, and Bob Marley and the Wailers also chart, along with Madonna’s “Erotica.” In albums, R.E.M. do quite well for themselves with Automatic for the People, and rightly so. A fun fact – the two highest-charting R.E.M. singles in the UK are the utterly uninteresting “The Great Beyond” and the brilliant but unheralded “E-Bow the Letter,” both from well after their commercial peak in the US.

Since Warhead, Lindy Chamberlain is finally acquitted for murder on the grounds that dingoes did, in fact, eat her baby. This is actually mildly relevant to Doctor Who, as four years earlier a film of this case, Evil Angels, was produced by Verity Lambert’s film company Cinema Verity. Yitzhak Rabin became Prime Minister of Israel. Hurricane Andrew thrashed Florida, and Black Wednesday took place as the UK was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which is about it for the Tory government, which had the fortune of having just won an election and thus getting to hang on for five years despite nobody liking them anymore.

While in October… erm… you’ve got the Sinéad O’Connor pope photo ripping thing.…

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Andrew Cartmel’s Cat’s Cradle: Warhead is the second part of the loose Cat’s Cradle trilogy, and the first part of the tighter but non-consecutive trilogy by Andrew Cartmel, which continues in Warlock and Warchild. Cartmel’s contributions are straight-up near future thrillers, typically referred to as cyberpunk, but in practice somewhat more diffuse than that. This one is about an evil corporation and massive pollution that threatens to destroy the world, and introduces the two characters who link the three books together, Vincent and Justine. Vincent has psychic powers and can channel strong emotion into physical forces, whereas Justine is impulsive and pissed off. Gary Russell was at the time in awe of the story, but only as “a one-off journey through the ultimate dark-side of Doctor Who,” a viewpoint that stands in stark contrast to I, Who’s adoration of it as “brilliant, but only as the first part of a trilogy encompassing Warlock and Warchild.” (Pearson views it as “a drawn-out, snarled mess” that is difficult to follow.) Sullivan’s novel rankings have it as the best of the Cat’s Cradle trilogy at 42nd out of 61, with a 62.7% rating. DWRG Summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s April of 1992. Shakespear’s Sister are still at the top of the charts, but are unseated after two weeks by Right Said Fred’s “Deeply Dippy,” because they’re not a one-hit wonder in the UK. They remain at number one for the rest of the month. Eric Clapton, Annie Lennox, Erasure, Def Leppard, Vanessa Williams, Iron Maiden, and ZZ Top also chart. Clearly we are firmly lost in the 90s now.

In real news, since Time’s Crucible we’ve had the Bosnian War get worse as Bosnia and Herzegovina declares independence from Yugoslavia, leading to lots of people shooting each other. Euro Disney, now called Disneyland Paris, opens in, shockingly enough, Paris. Manuel Noriega, former head of state of Panama, is found guilty of drug crimes in Florida. And the Los Angeles riots break out. But the big news for the UK is another general election, in which Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party puts a solid dent into the Tory majority, but is still defeated by John Major. Rupert Murdoch’s Sun claims credit for the victory, because he’s charming like that – an event that will lead to Tony Blair repeatedly selling what fragments of his soul actually still exist to win the paper’s endorsement in 1997. But more about that next year – for now, books, and specifically Andrew Cartmel’s Cat’s Cradle: Warhead.

If Time’s Crucible explores the idea of sidelining the Doctor from the action a la The Christmas Invasion or Turn Left, Warhead seems like the first real antecedent of stories like Love and Monsters or Blink, in which a Doctor Who story plays out with the camera primarily focused on someone other than the Doctor. There’s an accusation against the New Adventures in general, and often Cartmel in particular that they are prone to leaving the Doctor out of too much of the story.…

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Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible is the fifth New Adventure, and the kickoff to the Cat’s Cradle trilogy. Unlike the Timewyrm series, the Cat’s Cradle trilogy is somewhat more loosely connected. Basically, in this book, the TARDIS gets Time Rammed by an ancient Gallifreyan timecraft after being attacked by a largely unexplained alien. This results in it exploding into a city, lots of what we now call timey-wimey stuff about juxtaposed timelines within the city, and a missing and then amnesiac Doctor, leaving Ace to do most of the actual heroing in this story. The book lets Marc Platt indulge in his pet theories of ancient Gallifrey. The big ones are the idea that the Time Lords are sterile and reproduce asexually via what are called “looms”; that there was an ancient conflict between magic, championed by a woman called the Pythia, and reason, championed by Rassilon, on Gallifrey, and that reason won; and that in addition to Rassilon and Omega there was a more mysterious third figure known as the Other involved in the early days of the Time Lords (a concept borrowed from the novelization of Remembrance of the Daleks). The TARDIS is incompletely repaired at the end of the book, and a silver cat that serves as the avatar of the TARDIS’s repair circuits persists through the next two books, with the TARDIS being repaired at the end of the third one. I, Who describes Time’s Crucible as “a complete and bloody train wreck,” and Shannon Sullivan’s rankings puts it at 50th of sixty-one with a 58.7% rating. Gary Russell was kinder at the time in Doctor Who Magazine, politely noting that it was not “the best thing Marc has written, nor is it the best of The New Adventures,” and expressing “a growing sense of alarm” at the marginalizing of the Doctor and the similarities with Timewyrm: Revelation. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

It’s February of 1992. Wet Wet Wet are at number one with “Goodnight Girl,” remaining there for three weeks before being bounced by Shakespear’s Sister with “Stay,”which does just that for the rest of the month. Prodigy, Kiss, Genesis, Kylie Minogue, and Michael Jackson also chart.

Meanwhile, since last we checked in, George Bush has vomited in the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister. Absolutely nobody has ever claimed that this was one of the causes for Japan’s apology to South Korea five days later for forcing women into sexual slavery during the Second World War.  Boris Yeltsin and George Bush reach a largely symbolic (but potently so) agreement to stop having nuclear missiles pre-targeted at one another. And John Major calls a general election for April, more about which next entry.

While during the month this book came out, the Winter Olympics happen in Albertville, France. The UN approves the deployment of a peacekeeping force in Yugoslavia. And 613 civilians are massacred in Khojaly in Azerbaijan.  And the Maastricht Treaty, which establishes the European Union and begins the process of establishing the Euro, is signed.…

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