| TIMEWYRM : APOCALYPSE by Nigel Robinson |
| Story 3 Synopsis: The TARDIS lands on Kirith, soon before the end of the Universe. Ace doesn't care for the local Kirithons, and the Doctor is drawn to the mysterious Panjistri, who live in seclusion on their own island, Kandasi, and rule over the Kirithons - he knows their claims to be lies. He and Ace are soon considered trouble, and he is carted over to Kandasi to meet the Panjistri leader, the Grand Matriarch. Ace also makes it to the island, but they are transmatted from there to the real Kandasi, which is one of Kirith's moons. Ace is required because the Panjistri have spent a long time in a grand genetic experiment to create the perfect lifeform, but it lacks aggression - which Ace can provide. The Doctor realises that the Grand Matriarch was once a little girl named Lilith, who was influenced by the Timewyrm, and has been kept alive for five thousand years to complete the experiment and reach the Omega Point. But the Doctor puts a spanner in the works, and the plan fails, the Matriarch finally dying. Leaving the Panjistri to help the Kirithons properly at last, the Doctor assumes the Timewyrm also died, but Ace tells him he's probably mistaken. |
| Review:- It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for (again)... Having shown fairly early days for human civilisation, and the relatively-modern day, the Timewyrm saga moves right into the very far future, to a desolate and remote planet which seems idyllic at first glance, but isn't really. In keeping with the rest of the saga, the book features a cameo from a previous incarnation of the Doctor, but in a twist, it turns out that a little girl whom the 2nd Doctor met briefly was then used by the Timewyrm in a grand millennia-spanning plan to cause trouble. It's arguable how effective this is, certainly since it leaves her in a passive role in the story. That the Doctor thinks at the end that he's finished her off seems all the odder as a result. The concept of an apparently paradisical race who are really being kept under the cosh by others has been used time and again (The Krotons, for example). The notion that the subservience is related to amnesia caused by contamination in the food chain is also understandable for a reader. It's when the plot necessitates explanations of the Panjistri's genetic experiments, such as the horrid Homunculus beast that Ace and Raphael find by chance, and later of the quest for the Omega Point, tht the book struggles. Frankly, whilst I am willing to believe that the science is properly researched and 100% sound, it's never quite sufficiently explained, so it might as well be magic. The ending, with disappearing walls, and Raphael's convenient self-sacrifice, is both too rapid to take in, and too flimsy to follow. The fact that Ace turns out to be so very crucial to the execution of the plan seems like a ghastly contrivance, and the Doctor is almost a bystander to the Grand Matriarch's plan. This seems the reverse emphasis of what is desirable in terms of riveting characters. On the plus side, at 201 pages (the shortest New Adventure of all), the story's a doddle to read, and wouldn't trouble an audience for very long. Which is perhaps the nicest comment to make on it. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |