| ESCAPE VELOCITY by Colin Brake |
| Story 41 Synopsis: Fitz arrives in London, 2001, but is soon off to Brussels on a news report about a dead man with two hearts. Here, he meets Dave and Anji, a young British couple who helped the man that Fitz believes is an alien, but not the Doctor. Dave is kidnapped, so Fitz suggests the Doctor will help. Anji drives him back to London, where Fitz meets the Doctor in a bar. But the Doctor is not quite the man he was, and the TARDIS is not back to normal, either. Plus, Fitz finds his own memory starting to fail. They soon learn the aliens are the Kulan, and connected to rival private attempts to reach space, by Arthur Tyler III, and Pierre-Yves Dudoin. Whilst the Doctor and Anji pal up with Tyler, Fitz goes back to Brussels to check out Dudoin. He manages to find Dave, who is mutating, but is soon on the run with a friendly Kulan, Sa'Motta. They head back for England, but are delayed by mysterious agents, and decide to try and sabotage the launch of Dudoin's trip into space. This is done, Dudoin dying after his attempts to cheat Tyler are used against him. Tyler's own launch now takes priority, so he can get Sa'Motta back to his people, to prevent them deciding to invade Earth. But the Doctor, planning to go with them, is left stranded on the ground, whilst Tyler, Fitz and the others launch, Dave dying in the process. Desperate, he returns to the bar he had opened, and Anji is present as the TARDIS makes its final process of development. They use it to reach one of the Kulan ships. Tyler's rocket is intercepted, but the crew imprisoned. The Kulan are ready for invasion anyway, and take the slightest provocation to declare it. Anji accidentally uses some of the Kulan's own weaponry against their fleet, and the retaliation and subsequent battle wipes them out. Anji, Fitz and the Doctor head out into the unknown in the TARDIS... |
| Review:- So, at last, the Doctor is back! Or is he? The latest step in the BBC Books range was the culmination of a long plotline designed to refresh the character of the Time Lord by taking Gallifrey and excess continuity out of the equation. After spending 113 years on Earth, the Doctor finally gains (and earns) his freedom. But is he the man he was? Fitz arrives on the scene, but is soon hopping off to Brussels on the strength of a dodgy news report, and then luckily bumps into the very people he saw in it, Anji and Dave. Whilst Fitz tries to act bold, his actions lead to Dave's kidnapping, so the least he can do is bring Anji back with him to meet the Doctor. This brings the new companion, Anji, into the story quite well, although as she is not written to be too interesting or engaging, there is a problem for the reader which neither Brake, nor many of the later writers, ever successfully overcame. Her first actions are to moan, which doesn't bode well. Her attraction to the hapless Dave doesn't really work either, as her guilt over his fate barely obscures her earlier disregard for his wellbeing. If she hardly cared, why would we? The Doctor causes some problems too, as meeting Fitz does not complete his jigsaw after all, which for him and the readers, must have come as a big letdown. But whilst he just gets on with it, the reader is again left to wonder why they now have a stranger in their midst instead of the old, familiar friend they once knew. And again, the Doctor is intended to win people over by his actions, which is easier for him than Anji's situation, but still leaves a sense of unease. The twin efforts of Tyler and Dudoin prove to be of interest, though the soapy link between them doesn't convince, and Dudoin's first name of Pierre-Yves is (presumably deliberately) a reminder of P-Y Gerbeau, the ill-fated boss of the ill-fated Millennium Dome. It is also rather unsubtle that the European Dudoin is a scoundrel who will stop at nothing, even alien invasion, to get into space, whilst the American Tyler is more considered, even if just as conniving. The interlude with Control's agents is a nice touch if you like these characters, but not if you don't. Brussels makes for a novel location, though despite Brake's undoubted good intentions, it seems to be a waste of effort, and on the strength of this book, how many people would have been turned off rather than on? This leads us to the Kulan, who have a bit of depth, but sadly turn out to be another bunch of bloodthirsty scum who think they're the greatest and that the human race ain't all that. Despite the efforts of Sa'Motta to achieve peace, it all comes to naught and it seems he would have been ignored, even if he hadn't been killed. Oh well, such is life. The resolution, where Anji ends up wiping out the aliens by fluke, is perhaps apt for a book that seems to have good plans, but makes a mess of them. At the end, she tags along with the Doctor and Fitz as if fate expected her to. Thanks, fate. The cover's nice, mind, even if not apparently of an event depicted in the book. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |