| TURLOUGH AND THE EARTHLINK DILEMMA by Tony Attwood |
| Story ? Synopsis: Turlough has returned to Trion, but appears to be undertaking a carefree mission to visit historical sites. In fact, he has built a prototype time machine, and its maiden flight is joined by a stowaway, his old flame, Juras Maateh. They travel to the planet Regal, but find a desolate place inhabited by strange and fearsome creatures, and an enigmatic man. They then head for Earth, where they explore and Turlough finds his old log. The strange man appears again, changing their ship. He is a Time Lord, known as the Magician, and commends them for creating an ARTEMIS. They head out into space, but are met and boarded by a craft of strange spheres, the Gardsormr. When they awaken, they are on New Trion, where many people from Trion are trying to start a new life. But Turlough and Juras are tasked with building a nuclear bomb. Instead, they create a spacecraft, the Mobile Castle, which sends them all back through to Trion. By questioning the Gardsormr, Turlough makes powerful enemies, but he manages to get off-planet and back to the Castle, with Juras and the Magician. They convert a smaller craft into a new ARTEMIS, whilst the Castle crashes into Trion, unleashing a radioactive wave that will devastate life there. Distraught, Turlough takes them into the future, where they see New Trion also devastated, and Earth the same. Landing on Earth, they find small communities eking out a pastoral existence, whilst large slugs are grown in huge domes. The slugs get killed and put into the ground, thus accelerating new life on the surface. Turlough is even more stunned when visited by Gardsormr ships who seem to be led by a future version of himself. Realising that the acceleration caused by the slugs is evidence, Turlough learns that there is a gravity-controlling machine buried on Earth. He also realises that Juras' occasional instability is because she has been taken over by Rehctaht, the fearsome former Trion dictator, believed dead. He kills her, and then takes ARTEMIS back in time to when Rehctaht was still in command on Trion. He intrigues her with his claims of having solved the gravity problem he now knows she was working on, and expects her to take over his mind. Instead, he finds himself trapped in an unreal maze. Eventually, he finds a way out, but whilst recovering in hospital, Rehctaht visits and enters his mind. The Magician uses his TARDIS to spirit the possessed Turlough away, leaving him at the bottom of a vast chasm, trapped and alone. Believing herself doomed, Rehctaht dies, and the Magician returns to take the freed Turlough away. |
| Review:- One of Target's sidelines in the 1980's was the "Companions of Doctor Who" range, although only 3 books were ever included in it. This one features an introduction from Mark Strickson himself, and then plunges the reader into a tale of Trion, of Earth, and of time travel... The impressive part of this book is how it makes Turlough a credible leading character and develops Trion life, with some weedy satire about Earth thrown in. Rehctaht is merely Thatcher backwards, and the criticisms made of the mad dictator in the book can easily be read (as intended, presumably) as commentary on the PM at the time of publication (1986). This is about as sound as making a villain called Hsub or Rialb would be 20 years later. Quite why anyone approved this is mystifying - political bias aside, would it really be an effective move? Anyway, Turlough is soon shacked up with a new/old friend, Juras Maateh. Oddly, whilst he is always referred to by what is presumably his surname, she is only referred to by her first name. Maybe this is a gender thing, and we never learn if Rehctaht has a 2nd name. They soon build a working time machine, and meet - yes! - a rogue Time Lord called the Magician, who seems not to be an old friend/enemy of the Doctor, but is still a walking plot contrivance. He goads Turlough into making the right moves by winding him up with riddles, as you would. The Gardsormr balls brought to mind the Toclafane from The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords, though this is of course coincidence. Their whole plot element seems to be a huge red herring anyway, with Rehctaht actually being behind the New Trion operation. Even the later appearance with the aged Turlough makes them merely background figures. The Slots, indigenous underclass of Trion, turn out to be hugely important, though, yet appear only to also baffle Turlough towards his destiny. Quite what point they were supposed to be making, leaving aside the obvious be-nice-to-the-environment one is puzzling. Then, out of the blue, having triggered the devastation of his home planet, Turlough finally realises that Juras has been deceiving him, as he half-thought she was doing. Which leads to the even more out-of-the-blue denouement, where Turlough goes back in time to save Juras by sacrificing himself instead. Luckily, the Magician helps him along properly for once, driving the possessive dictator to her death. Whilst scenes such as this are exciting, they also come with a feeling of abstraction, when one weirdness follows another with very little link between. I'm not convinced by much of the scientific arguments about the value of gravity, but whilst mostly perplexing, the story is at least pretty graspable, albeit beset by sudden revelations of little sense. With books like these, it's not hard to see why the Companions range never took off. |
| Disclaimer: I have a copy. |