| LONGEST DAY by Mike Collier |
| Story 9 Synopsis: The Doctor detects time disturbance on Hirath, and lands on its moon to check it out. Sam is soon sent down to the planet, whilst the Doctor detects a ship coming closer. When the monstrous Kusks arrive, he heads down to Hirath himself. Sam is found by a group of desperate prisoners who plan to escape the planet. The Doctor is concerned that the planet's time is running out. Sam is persuaded to impersonate the leader of the prisoners when a new spaceship lands, but the deception fails. In the melee, many are shot. The Kusks follow the Doctor down to the surface. He continues to investigate assorted time disturbances, and connects it to an experimental lunatic asylum. The Kusks claim that the central processor is theirs, and he tricks them into thinking he's handed it over. Using the transmat to return to the moon base, he finds the Kusks in charge there. They stole the technology, and it's now failing. He manages to stop them getting it, but at the cost of destroying it and them. Sam makes it back to the base, shortly before the planet blows, but thinks him dead. She is put on the Kusk ship and sent out to find help. The Doctor recovers from the final blast, finds Sam gone. He sets off in the TARDIS... |
| Review:- Trouble with time leads the Doctor and Sam into a bigger crisis than they expect... Desperate bases under siege are little new, but the overall plot of Hirath is slightly more complex than usual. To illustrate a planet ravaged by time, Collier uses an unpleasant race of avaricious aliens, and a desperate band of criminals. Nice. It's hard to judge whether the Kusks are more horrid than Felbaac's men, or later Sangton's force, because they're all pretty unpleasant. Since the reader is stuck with them for pages on end, this makes for a hard experience. Though the humans are understandable enough, the Kusks are pretty forgettable monsters. Nor is there much respite from the plot, which the Doctor mainly deals with. As I understand it, the Kusks stole technology from races who happened to land on their planet, built the base, which the humans then took advantage of, and without proper understanding, it all falls apart. Often, in stories where technology is failing and threatening everyone, the Doctor is able to put things right at the end - but this is a task too great, when all he can do is stay alive (and that's tough going). Whilst he's busy failing to make sense of things, though meeting the jolly Nashaad, Sam is stuck with the crims, and is lucky not to get crippled, or to have to batter other prisoners to death. Her efforts to avoid death take on a desperate air, as she finds the odds just too great. The brief and sudden reappearance of the Time Trees (cf Genocide) jars because it makes as little difference as anything else, albeit providing temporary escape. The title comes from the position of the sun fixing in Hirath's sky, instead of moving on as normal, and is another indication of time running out. Sadly, as with so much else in the book, the explanations are opaque at best. The book's main contribution is to split the Doctor and Sam up - something usually done in the mistaken belief that this will intrigue or affect the audience. But the only difference in their separation from other books is that they don't meet up again at the end (or rather, they nearly do). This leads into the next few books, whilst the Doctor looks for Sam, she tries to cope on her own, and they try and unravel events on Hirath. As a hook to encourage readers, it needs a stronger book to start with. This, unfortunately, is too much of a struggle to bear. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of the book. |