| THE DYING DAYS by Lance Parkin |
| Story 61 Synopsis: Bernice is waiting for the Doctor at his house in Allen Road. She is surprised when the man who steps out of the TARDIS is a changed man. Soon after, a helicopter crashes, and escaped psychopath Alex Christian escapes. The Doctor manages to purloin a phial of soil samples before some people pretending to be police arrive to cordon off the scene. The soil comes from Mars, and the Doctor and Bernice learn of the imminent arrival of a mission landing on Mars. They see a huge stone archway, and are then bungled out of the National Space Centre. They correctly theorise that the Earth mission violated Martian territory, and the Martians will come for revenge. But the Martian craft arrives quicker than expected - because they were already on their way before the violation. The Martians, Ice Warriors, claim to have come to settle their dispute with the people of the U.K. Their allies, Lord Greyhaven, and the Home Secretary, David Staines, assume provisional control of the government, the P.M. having been assassinated. They have an alliance with the Ice Warriors, but Christian and the Doctor are threats to their plans. The Doctor is tracked to his house in Allen Road, and the Martian warship travels there to attack. Two Ice Warriors land, but are killed, so their enraged leader, Xsnaal, sends the Red Death out, an intelligent, deadly gas, to kill the Doctor. This done, they return to London. Xsnaal is crowned King, but Greyhaven is enraged to learn the Ice Warriors have been taking humans for tests, and he retaliates, sending a nuclear attack to Xsnaal's home on Mars. The Brigadier organises UNIT into an attack on the new King's base, at the Tower of London. Bernice tries to interfere with the production of the gas, but fails. Xsnaal prepares to behead her, when the Doctor materialises. He is aboard the warship, and goads Xsnaal up into facing him there. The RAF attack the warship, and the Doctor tricks Xsnaal into admitting his plan to destroy all life on Earth. Xsnaal pushes the Doctor through a hole in the floor, to plummet to Earth, where he watches as the warship is atomised, saving the planet. Using a helium canister, bin bags and curtain rings, the Doctor is able to fashion a makeshift parachute, and lands safely. He then takes Bernice to her new life as a professor on Dellah. The Queen is restored to the throne, and the Brigadier is finally promoted to General. |
| Review:- So this is the way the New Adventures ended... not with a bang, but a whinger. If ever there was a better example of "pulling out all the stops", this is it. The result is rather like the ending of the soap, Brookside, with festering bitterness not tempered by any sense of control. As for the story, it's not all that bad, in essence. Parkin in a good writer, and the Ice Warriors make a grand enemy for this last showdown. But oh dear... indulgence city, Arizona. The loss of Virgin's licence produced a frantic effort to compensate by winding down the New Adventures from the all-adventure Doctor Who aspect into a new frontier with a new lead character. But the opportunity existed to do a book with the then-new 8th Doctor, and this was taken, giving one last hurrah to the previous 6 years of stories. Hmm. Of course, none of that is particularly relevant to the story, which is a pretty scurrilous load of guff about an attack on Britain. The sense of snide, smug self-satisfaction drips from nearly every page. A Prime Minister is murdered, the Queen is kicked off her throne (marginally better than what happens in Head Games, of course), the rest of the world doesn't give a damn, except for the warlike US President. You almost couldn't make this all up. Or you could, but you wouldn't expect a sane publisher to foist it on the public. Not with a straight face. But then, in this book, that very publishing company becomes a part of the story, and a reader is left to ask where and whether a line should be drawn. On the other hand, the book is well written, and the characterisation of the fresh Doctor seems fine. Bernice and the Brigadier prove as capable and likeable as they should, and there are credible extrapolations in the initial Space Centre party, where Patrick Moore, Jeremy Paxman and Richard Dawkins are all name-checked. That sort of touch is often missing in these books, but works well here. It's only in the political power games that the book nosedives. Lord Greyhaven's scheming manipulation comes off well, though his subsequent rage when his Martian partners show their lack of concern in his new fling, and are shown to be working behind his back, is less successful for seeming to make him end the book dead but forgiven. The Home Secretary, David Staines, shows his true colours when he ingratiates himself with Xsnaal and thus against Greyhaven, who is only using the Ice Warriors to achieve his short-term goal. The change of heart of Greyhaven and Staines could be compared to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, though I don't suppose it was original when Shakespeare did it either. We might ask which political party Staines is a representative of, but that's one of those rhetorical questions, and one more example of this book's skewed attitude. To pass the time, the Doctor, in his final appearance in the range, pushes off for 3 chapters, believed dead, allowing the other heroes to get their act together, as they will shortly have to do in Bernice's own range. Oh, the foreshadowing. Either side of his exit, he gets to indulge in pointless eulogising over himself, which is out of character for him, but then it's more a reference to the book range than the character. So, at last, the Doctor saves the day, as he usually does, and manages one last stunt as he evades certain death by use of luck and intelligence, whilst managing yet another eulogy to himself. Yes, that's a way to sign a character off, isn't it? Endless "wasn't I great?" bits. Lovely. And Parkin came back to write for the Eighth Doctor Adventures. So, it wasn't really the end, either. I summed this book up as snide and nasty, and I stick by that. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of this book. |