| THE ANCESTOR CELL by Peter Anghelides & Stephen Cole |
| Story 34 Synopsis: The Doctor is cornered by warTARDISes and aghast when Compassion destroys two of them. She lands on a mysterious structure, and appears to lose her mind. Fitz finds himself amongst a sort of coven of young Time Lords, on Gallifrey. The Doctor is confronted by an agent of Faction Paradox, who say he is nearly one of them. He then goes to Gallifrey where he is appalled at Lady President Romana's warmaking stance. Romana just wants the new Type 102 TARDIS. A huge bone structure has appeared above Gallifrey, dubbed the Edifice. The Doctor and a small party of Time Lords board it. The Doctor realises it is his lost TARDIS, and that FP have changed his past. Compassion recovers her wits slightly. Fitz is disturbed when the coven summon up a former President, Greyjan, and his own future, Faction agent Father Kreiner. They use Greyjan to usurp Romana. Fitz escapes but is unable to warn anyone, and is then locked up with Romana. Greyjan explains his theory of the ancestor cell. The Enemy, whom the Time Lords are so worried about, are actually some sort of inimical life form. FP are convinced the Doctor is joining them, and their mythical leader, Grandfather Paradox, seems to be a future form of the Doctor. But they don't realise the truth of the Edifice. Father Kreiner wants revenge on the Doctor for abandoning him, but when it comes to the crunch, decides he'd prefer to just be put out of his misery. The Doctor confronts the Grandfather, as the Eleven-Day Empire begin to overwrite the High Council of Gallifrey. By fashioning a lever to put history back on track and prevent the disaster on Dust, the Doctor manages to stop FP for ever. Compassion retrieves the Doctor from Gallifrey before it is destroyed, leaving him on Earth with a century or so before a new TARDIS will be created, and Fitz waiting for him in 2001, whilst she sets out on adventures of her own. Amnesiac, the Doctor finds himself a stranger on a train... |
| Review:- Years of planning all boil down to this: the pivotal EDA that put a stop to the first half of the range, and set the scene for the second half. To some, it's an embarrassing travesty of original and imaginative ideas. To others, it's the best of a bad job. The setting is pretty obvious. Gallifrey has been long established as the home of the Time Lords, so makes a rational setting for the final showdown between them and Faction Paradox. It soon becomes clear that whilst Romana has led the High Council to prepare for battle with their Enemy, the younger Gallifreyans are not so steadfast, and this provides an opening for the Faction. The inclusion of the mysterious Edifice adds spice to the plot, as well as providing a wacky but memorable cover. When it eventually turns out to be the Doctor's missing TARDIS, it closes the circle with the conclusion of Interference, as the events of Dust become crucial to what has followed. The sub-plot from that book where Fitz got abandoned and ends up in the Remote, and then later the Faction, comes back here also. Whilst the Doctor had a rock solid excuse for not saving Fitz in time (being tortured in Saudi Arabia), neither that book nor this is interested in it. Instead, the Doctor is portrayed as a selfish git who allowed Fitz to become Father Kreiner because he couldn't be bothered with it. This is so idiotic as to be ludicrous. Though Kreiner does make some degree of peace with the Doctor, it's a rotten resolution to a rotten and ill-conceived set-up. And that may be the nub. Lawrence Miles set up a lot of ideas in his books, but they seem to have been deemed too far out for the editors, and so this book has to shut the door on whatever Miles planned. It does so with the literal reset switch, which the Doctor pulls/throws to prevent his own apparent fate as the head of Faction Paradox. This has the silly side effect of both destroying Gallifrey, and wiping the Doctor's memory. Amnesia is a complex and painful condition to go through, but the EDAs seem to think it's a convenient plot device. In fact, all it did was to leave a large percentage of the readers waiting desperately for the Doctor to pull himself together - but he never does. Not only that, but quite how kyboshing an entire planet will do anything but create an even bigger paradox than that the Faction were planning is a matter best left unsaid. The downfall of Romana and the brief reappearance of Greyjan (ho ho, which Queen of England was he named after, eh?) do little to inspire love for the Time Lords, and remorse over their loss. Since the Time Lords act completely rigidly, and Romana is obsessed with the wrong target, the implication seems to be that they deserve what they get. Well, what a message. On the plus side, Compassion gets a fairly reasonable departure, as she finds someone she can be reasonable with, and travels off on her own way, free from her fate as a Time Lord plaything/convenience. That just leaves Fitz, guardian of the Doctor's past, waiting for his friend to turn up. But that's another story... Overall, I'm in the "best of a bad job" camp, to be honest. It's quite a decently-written book that moves with an efficient pace, and if it has trouble dealing with the Faction, then maybe that's the fault of their creator and his infamous ideas. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |