| THE ART OF DESTRUCTION by Stephen Cole |
| Story 11 Synopsis: The TARDIS detects alien emissions, landing in Chad in the year 2118, near Mount Tarsus. An agricultural scheme is trying to grow mushrooms in difficult environments, but instead find a strange gold material that subsumes what it touches. The Doctor realises the gold matter is some kind of defence, and an examenation of the chambers of the volcano reveals hoards of art treasures, the last remnants of the Valnaxi. He also meets Faltato, an alien scout who summons his sponsors, the Wurms, who fought and defeated the Valnaxi, and have plundered all their art. Now, they have come for the last bits left. The Wurms plunder, as the Doctor tries to work out the mystery of the golden defenders. He allows himself to succumb in part to their attack, and finds himself teleported beneath the volcano, where the Valnaxi still survive, in gaseous form. They set a trap so that they could adopt physical forms resembling the Wurms. But one of the locals found their trap first. The Wurms are slowly thwarted. Faltato leaves in the Wurm ship, and the Valnaxi craft is launched from beneath the volcano. The Wurm-affected soil turns out to be nutrient-rich and excellent for growing - and will allow the intention to grow more food to become a reality. |
| Review:- A journey into Africa's future, where tribal concerns are still a tricky problem, especially if the warring tribes are aliens... The series makes a rare stop-off in the dark continent, where a scientific quest is trying to generate a new solution to the old chestnut of food shortage, by growing mushrooms inside a volcano. As you do. Sadly, the chosen volcano already has more than enough deadly things inside it, and soon workers are turning to gold statues. Then things start getting very odd. The TARDIS arrives just in time, but there are secrets underground, and some artful dodges too. From a hesitant start, Cole builds a story that seems to be about scientific progress, with a subplot about local resentment, but slowly accelerates into concerning an alien trap for other aliens, which goes wrong. Probably the crucial moment in the book for me was just when I was beginning to wonder why art was chosen for the title, that this aspect suddenly came to the fore, with the Valnaxi expertise being a pointer to their last hiding place, after the end of their conflict with the deadly Wurms. The mischievous Faltato makes a useful way to bring in the bad guys, and provides a charming mouthpiece for malevolence. The same cannot be said for the Wurms, whose bombastic arrival rather nullifies a lot of what goes before, and leads into a more bland runaround. The whole art angle begins to degenerate at that point, and the revelation that the Valnaxi are not dead is less than shocking, there being no other way for the story to go. Though the Wurms are written as formidable, their impact is diminished by their name. Almost anything would have been better than a mis-spelling of worms, especially when they are giant versions of worms. The effect simply insults the intelligence of the reader, whatever their age range. The Valnaxi are at least interesting because of their lack of a corporeal existence, and the tragic error that leaves two of them in humanoid form brings a poignancy to their otherwise dumb plan for revenge. On the plus side, Cole makes it clear that though the losers of their war, the Valnaxi aren't automatically much nicer, and the Doctor has no qualms about putting the humans ahead of them in his estimation. The Doctor gets a lot of deduction to make, and his willing sacrifice to try and understand the Valnaxi gold-like creation is a great moment. Rose, similarly, comes across well as a considered character, trying to keep positive when things look bad. It's certainly a dramatic and engaging book, marred by one or two lapses in intelligence. But it maintains the good standard of the book range. |
| Disclaimer: I've read the book. |