| INDEPENDENCE DAY by Peter Darvill-Evans |
| Story ? Synopsis: Ace tidies her room, and the Doctor is startled to see a communications device there. He traces it to the Mendeb system, where he once landed briefly. There are two planets in the system, and an orbiting space station. Ace asks to be dropped there, whilst he pops down to sort things out. She meets Kedin Ashar and his aide Madok, who are running the station, but trying to overthrow a dictator, Vethran, on Mendeb Three. Vethran holds Kedin's mate, Tevana, hostage. Meanwhile, the Doctor arrives in a ruined village and befriends Bep-Wor, and they head north to find what's going on. The Doctor persuades some guards to take him to the space station, where he thinks Ace is in danger. But she has already been sent down to Mendeb Three. The Doctor realises that the people from Three are capturing the people from Two in great numbers and giving them a drug which destroys their willpower. He saves the shipment he travels in, and they are marched away. Left unattended, they are able to revolt. Bep-Wor acts as their leader, as he is trying to find his mate Kia-Ga, who was previously kidnapped. They track her down, but she has already been enslaved by the drug. Ace, meanwhile, has been given a different drug, and sold to a wealthy landowner. She is soon given to the reviled Vethran, where her memory finally returns. Madok is sent to rescue Tevana, but is too late, as she is taken into Vethran's custody, as the King wants to marry her. Thinking she will be kept in Grake Castle, Madok makes an attempt to spring her from there, but she is in the King's castle at Gonfallon. Bep-Wor is reunited with Kia-Ga, but realises she has been given the deadly drug. The Doctor marches on to meet Vethran, learning of Kedin's plans on the way. Kedin makes a final assault, and with help from Ace, and Bep-Wor's army, is able to usurp Vethran, who is given his own drug. But Kedin finds Tevana has also been given the drug, and despite his attempts to find an antidote, the Doctor says it's impossible. Ace plans to stay with Kedin, but he tells her that she should go with the Doctor. |
| Review:- Peter Darvill-Evans had been the commissioning editor of the New Adventures at one stage, writing Deceit during that time. But it was 7 and a half years before he wrote this, his 2nd Dr Who book, albeit using the same team of the 7th Doctor and Ace. Here, they land in a solid sci-fi setting and become embroiled in the last stages of a desperate power struggle... The opening gives a brief insight into the Mendeb society, and the fateful theft of a communications device, that prompts the Doctor to make his follow-up visit. But leaving Ace on a space station, the Doctor finds out he is much too late. This becomes one of the recurring motifs of the book: the Doctor returns to the space station just missing Ace who has already left. Madok arrives too late to rescue Tevana. Tevana is freed too late as she has already been given the drug. And so on. There is a sense of melancholy about the book, too, with Kedin having shirked the chance to deal with Vethran for too long, and Tevana's grim realisation that had she married Kedin, she would have stood a better chance of evading Vethran's advances (though he'd have found another way). The Doctor torments himself that the grim state of Mendeb Two is his fault, although it's a fault of the book that the errant communication system is never addressed - how did its loss cause the people of Three to become so hostile? Or maybe I missed that explanation. {after a little research, the idea is that the lost communications meant that the two planets could not grow together - instead they grew apart. Still seems a bit thin to me} Ace doesn't really shine in the book. Her attempt at self-reliance falls apart when she falls for Kedin, and is then in a drugged stupor for much of the book before she cunningly comes to and frees Bep-Wor, as well as providing the explosion that allows Madok into the castle. She apparently wants to stay with Kedin, despite her earlier misgivings, and believes she did well on her own, when actually she was just very lucky. More loose ends that nag. Madok's doomed heroism makes for fairly broad reading, but it's not so surprising when he finds that he hasn't been too clever for Vethran. Indeed, given the drug problem, leaving Tevana alone for so long was a pretty obvious flaw in Kedin's plans. Are we meant to feel sympathy for him? Or frustration at his incompetence? On the other hand, the Doctor's teaming with Bep-Wor gives the book a great momentum and enjoyable reading. With his handy supply of broth, and his unwitting leadership, the Doctor gives Bep-Wor hope, and is able to bring freedom to the Twos, and an unwitting leadership. It is when they reach Three and find that Kia-Ga is already lost, and the overall problem of the grim SS10 may be insuperable, that the gloom takes hold. The final tragic decision of Bep-Wor is a memorable end to a quest that deserved more. Perhaps it is this that makes Ace's fling with Kedin seem so lacklustre? Comparatively, he suffers as much as Bep-Wor, yet is less upset about Tevana, and half-happy to go along with Ace's plan. Her rejection seems less meaningful than inevitable. The title is a bold one, given its use in a major movie of the late 1990's. But it fits well to a story where freedom can be achieved in one day - but freedom can go a lot deeper than people realise. Overall, it's an engrossing book that rewards the reader with a thought-provoking thriller. |
| Disclaimer: I've read the book. |