| LAST MAN RUNNING by Chris Boucher |
| Story ? Synopsis: The TARDIS lands in a jungle, and the Doctor goes out, leaving Leela in the TARDIS. He soon spots a giant louse hunting him. He climbs a tree to evade it. Leela gets out of the TARDIS, finds the Doctor and kills the louse. They catch up with Rinandor and Pertanor, two members of a team who are on the planet looking for an elusive "runner". They have become separated from the rest of their team. Trying to retrace their way back, they come across a lake that wasn't there before. The Doctor decides it's a trap, but Pertanor is sucked into the water. Leela dives in to pull him out, but the creature tries to pull him back. It is very strong and wraps a tongue around the Doctor's leg. Leela manages to get in close to the creature and kill it. The Doctor and Leela find the rest of Pertanor & Rinandor's team. Leela finds a hatch in the ground guarded by three warriors with spears. The Doctor investigates the hatch, but the search team come in to attack. The warriors prove more effective fighters, and it takes a big struggle to defeat them. The Doctor advises no further action, but they're attacked anyway. Brought underground, the Doctor is threatened, then released. He is paired up with facsimiles of some of those he has met, but he sees through them when they query the TARDIS. Leela is released, and paired with a copy of the Doctor, but the real one helps her see through it. At length, the Doctor realises that another of the search team, Sozerdor, is a weapons technologist who has been using the strange equipment beneath the planet in the course of weapons research. The Doctor identifies it as belonging to the now-extinct Lentic Empire. The Doctor and Leela find the rest of the team, but don't believe that Sozerdor is the person they came to find. They watch the surface, where clones of themselves are waiting to be picked up by rescue ships. The Doctor manages to get them all to the surface, and persuades them they need to get onto the ships, get off the planet, and blast it down. The clones cause trouble, but in the fighting, the search team make it away. The Doctor and Leela head back to find the TARDIS. Sozerdor refuses to believe his plans have been thwarted, and plans to join them in the TARDIS. As the systems fail, a loss of lighting allows Leela to lead the Doctor into the TARDIS, and Sozerdor is buried alive when the planet is blasted by the ships. |
| Review:- When the BBC took over control of the output of DW fiction in 1997, they managed to entice new books from people who had actually contributed to the original series. Chris Boucher had written three adventures for the 4th Doctor and Leela, including her first two adventures. Here, he follows on from The Robots Of Death, with another tale of a mysterious planet and a team on a mission which goes badly wrong... Boucher has created a solid set-up, with a culture of class envy amongst the search team, and the dangers of meddling with unknown alien technology. The basis of the story is the search for a new weapon that will tip the balance and put a new force into power. Though the Lentic would seem to be superior to both the firsters and toodies, all that remains is their technology - a story rather akin to two warring jungle tribes suddenly stumbling on a machine gun, say, or a tank. Here, the weaponry is far more sophisticated, and possibly far more deadly. The story works well with this Doctor and companion, indeed, it would probably not work with any other companion - maybe Jamie, but Leela is the best choice. Her clear fighting instincts save everyone repeatedly, and causes the weapons development to accelerate. The search team seem baffling characters at first, but it soon becomes clear that they're pretty understandable stereotypes. Occasionally, there are useful clues such as their views on the merits of being fat, which colour in a background. The burden of command, the errors of their mission, dissent, greed, all these things sustain interest in their plight. The deaths of Monly and Sozerdor illustrate how vulnerable they are. With no clear villains for the first half of the book, there are set piece attacks and chances for Leela to show her skill, each building in drama. Then when things move underground, the answers begin to come. Once the Doctor realises the missing TARDIS has upset the elusive runner's plans, he begins to fight back intellectually. He rescues Leela, and looks for the others in the team. He also finds the true identity of the runner - Sozerdor, and the originators of the weapons tech, the Lentic. Then, the struggle becomes whether Sozerdor will make it off world, or if the rest of the search team can get free instead? It becomes clear that the Lentic weaponry is too dangerous to handle, except by the madman, Sozerdor. The conclusion is quite stark, as the search team merely make it away before blasting the planet, leaving the Doctor and Leela to return to the TARDIS, and leave Sozerdor to his fate. It works, though. Boucher's habit of giving the Doctor long sections of first person narrative stand out, and it's fun to realise his cover for the Doctor as a fighter's agent comes back to prominence in his later book, Match Of The Day. Overall, it's a complicated book, but gripping, and fulfils the remit of being a proper SF book, rather than a mock-up of a telly show. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |