| THE FINAL SANCTION by Steve Lyons |
| Story ? Synopsis: The TARDIS lands near a beach, and the Doctor realises they are in a warzone. Zoe is captured by Selachians, and taken back to their homeworld, Ockora. The Doctor and Jamie meet the Terran Security Force, led by Commander Wayne Redfern. The Doctor knows the year is 2204, and Redfern will soon explode a G-bomb onto Ockora, ending the war with the Selachians, at the cost of thousands of lives of hostages. He tries to persuade Redfern to change his mind, and is able to get to the surface of Ockora. But objecting to the human attack, the Doctor ends up a prisoner of the Selachians, where he is able to find Zoe. Jamie tries to prevent the bomb's launch, and is seen as a traitor. Redfern decides the talk of hostages was a trick, and prepares to launch the bomb. But the Doctor has told the Selachians about it, and they have released Redfern to lead them to his ship, via T-Mat. They take over the ship, but are too late to prevent the bomb's launch. The Doctor and Zoe make it back to the ship before Ockora is destroyed. The vengeful Selachians plan to use the ship's other bomb to destroy Earth, but one of the surviving human crew, spurred on by the Doctor's guilt trips, explodes the bomb early, finishing the Selachians off. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe make it to the TARDIS before the explosion. |
| Review:- After a brief mention of one of their ships in Killing Ground, and their involvement in The Murder Game, Lyons brings back his aliens, the Selachians, for a real look at their background and motivation, tied in with a polemic after the use of bombs as the final answer to warfare. The basic premise is rather a welcome one - taking the idea of fixed events in history, but showing them occurring in our relative future. Ockora in 2204 is as vital as Hastings in 1066, adding an edge to the Doctor's foreknowledge. Splitting Zoe away from her friends near the start allows the story to progress from two angles - inside the Selachian camp, and inside the human base. There is thus an effort to show that the humans are not really the out & out good guys, nor are the Selachians irredeemably evil. Both are doing what they consider to be right, and it's just a shame that their aims conflict. That the humans should be winning the war means sympathies inevitably side with them, but their blundering use of a bomb that will kill thousands of innocent hostages means that the price of total victory will be higher than they expect. Three main human characters stand out - Commander Wayne Redfern, vilified for his decision to use the bomb (although in fact he doesn't), Professor Laura Mulholland, who helped create the bomb, and who sacrifices emotional concern for scientific detachment, but who finds peace in the end, and Lieutenant Kent Michaels, who forms an attachment to Jamie that then seems to be wasted, and who takes the fateful decision to wipe out Ockora. Each is given depth and space to show how and why they have come to the stage they have, and each is the richer for it. Whilst Zoe is resourceful in trying to escape from the Selachians, despite each attempt leading to more trouble, Jamie tries to show courage by fighting alongside the humans. He's out of his depth (as are a lot of the humans), and when he tries to help a Selachian prisoner to achieve peace, he causes more harm than he realises. As for the Doctor, who tries to prevent the bombing of Ockora and rescue Zoe, finds time hemming him in, and his decision to lead Redfern down to the planet's surface instead pushes the Commander to make his historic judgement. And then he is lucky that his slip of information to the Selachians doesn't cause an even greater tragedy than that of Ockora. But his efforts do at least affect Mulholland, so perhaps he could feel he had achieved something good. Overall, whilst a noble attempt to portray a familiar argument about the use of bombs to end wars, and also create a proper three-dimensional alien race, Lyons sadly makes the book rather boring to get through. Particularly Zoe's repeatedly attempts at escape, in an environment that is hard to ascertain, lead to dull passages. Sadly, the Selachians come out most boring, which can hardly have been the intention. So, a weighty book, but also an unsatisfying one. |
| Disclaimer: I've read it. |