| CORPSE MARKER by Chris Boucher |
| Story ? Synopsis: The TARDIS lands in Kaldor City, where the Doctor and Leela soon separate. Leela rescues an anti-robot terrorist, and has to go with her for safety, whilst the Doctor meets a couple of hundred new clones. He is almost killed by security guards, but meets Uvanov, who believes there is a plot against him, and asks the Doctor to help. Leela and her new friend, Padil, walk through the Sewerpits where the underclass live, and narrowly avoid a deadly ambush. At the Docking Bays, the Doctor and a pilot find a massacre, and narrowly escape a robot killing them. On their way back, they find Poul aboard, but deranged. He causes them to crash, and the pilot dies. Poul recovers his wits to help the Doctor escape, where they meet Leela. The Doctor is alarmed that Padil's friends, the Tarenists, worship Taren Capel, not realising he was a madman. A new design of robots, Cyborgs, have gone haywire, killing people indiscriminately. They come for the Doctor, mistaking him for Taren Capel. He goes to their base, where he is taken to see a new robot, SASV1, who has come to the conclusion that it is Taren Capel. The Doctor uses a bomb to change its ideas. Uvanov traces the plot against him, by the Founding Families, who hired a psycho-strategist named Carnell to devise a plot that would discredit Uvanov and prevent any loss of their prestige. He had been feeding propaganda to the Tarenists, and using robots to kill people. Uvanov takes over in Kaldor, with Toos and Poul to help, and the Doctor and Leela leave them to it. |
| Review:- Writing sequels to much-loved (or even much-loathed) TV stories is a minefield. So, at least this follow-up to The Robots Of Death comes from the same writer, which is promising. In most respects, this is an excellent book. It builds on the former story, and the central plot, if rather elongated, is entirely rational. Boucher clearly makes Uvanov's distaste for the landed gentry into the heroic viewpoint, and the misuse of robots stems from this. There are of course, two variables, as Carnell would put it - the Doctor, and SASV1. Splitting up the Doctor and Leela so early almost feels like a joke, but it takes them both into the heart of the story. Leela's spell with the Tarenists is amusingly characterised when she wonders how they would react to the news that Leela helped kill their god. Her brutal tendency proves useful to life in the Sewerpits, a grim underclass area that depicts what happens to the have-nots. Meanwhile, the Doctor accidentally stumbles across a new class of robot, and his old acquaintance, Uvanov, still resentful of the system. He is soon off to the docks to start his investigation, but finds events out of control, with Poul framed for mass murder, and a cyborg on the scene. It's a bit convenient that Poul's madness should lead to the flier crashing, but with Toos forced toward the dreaded Sewerpits area, and Leela already there, it enables the good guys to all congregate and start piecing the clues together. And while they're doing that, Uvanov is winning the boardroom battle. The idea of Landerchild's planned revolt to frame the upstart Uvanov is all too plausible, even if the idea of using a killer robot to somehow frame Uvanov's friends is a little silly (how mad would Poul have had to be to kill so many?). And not only is Landerchild out-thought by Uvanov, but he is ignorant of the real danger in Kaldor. Augmenting the idea of Supervocs in the next generation is a logical step from the first story, and linking this robot with the madness of Taren Capel allows for a similar sense of an impervious killer behind the scenes manipulating the robots. SASV1 is more tragic, though, for at least Capel followed his own path, whereas SASV1 seems merely to have stumbled into it by chance. Carnell apparently came from Blake's 7. He doesn't really draw the attention here, as his portrayal as a smart-arse never convinces for there is so much he doesn't consider. My only real gripe with this book, is that as a sequel it fails to suggest that this book is a direct result of the earlier adventure. Sure, it revisits the same themes, and reunites the surviving characters, but it all seems to kick off by chance, and the arrival of the Doctor and Leela is not the rogue factor Carnell claims them to be at all. But apart from that, it's an engaging thriller, with long scenes that move the action forward, and keep the reader guessing to the end. |
| Disclaimer: I have read the book. |