| MILLENNIAL RITES by Craig Hinton |
| Story ? Synopsis: Mel asks the Doctor to bring her back to London, 1999, to attend a student reunion. The Doctor uses the occasion to attend a birthday function for Dame Anne Travers, who is obsessively worried about the return of the Great Intelligence. Mel is asked to check out a computer program called Codex, which is the brainchild of Ashley Chapel, head of ACL. Anne thinks Travers plans to summon the Great Intelligence at Midnight on New Year's Eve. Mel debugs Codex, and Chapel completes the program. The Doctor goes to ACL's base in Canary Wharf to try and stop him, and is surprised to learn that Chapel has no intention of reviving the Intelligence. He plans to summon Saraquazel, a creature from the subsequent Universe. At the stroke of Midnight, he activates his plan, just as Anne devises a spell to ward off the Intelligence. The Universe changes into a domain where magic works, and London is divided and ruled by three factions: Thaumaturgy, led by the Hierophant; Abraxas, led by the Archimage; Technomancy, led by the Technomancer. In fact, these three are Anne, Chapel and Mel. The Doctor is now called the Evil One by everyone he meets. The more he uses spells to defend himself, the more he feels a change, until finally, he becomes the Evil One - the Valeyard. He allies with the Archimage, but on the point of killing an infant, he is shocked back to becoming the Doctor. He tries to avoid using spells, and manages to persuade the Technomancer, and the reluctant Hierophant, who thinks he should die, to help him. But he succumbs again to being the Valeyard, and leads the Archimage into the TARDIS, which helps stabilise himself. He devised a plan to help break the chain of power, and the Hierophant dies to achieve it. The Doctor subdues the Valeyard inside his mind. Mel is glad to see him, and they find that the change to London only lasted for 10 minutes in real time. Saraquazel takes Chapel away, back to his proper universe. The Intelligence is banished again. As London returns to normal, the Doctor vows never to descend to the Valeyard's level. |
| Review:- Hinton brings the 6th Doctor and Mel to Earth on the eve of the Millennium, where a misguided rich businessman is about to reach the culmination of a 20-year plan, and a misguided old woman is about to let her prejudice rule her head, with disastrous consequences. It's not a small scale story, even with the action confined to a few parts of London. There are powerful beings from two different universes, and a moral dilemma for the Doctor, interspersed with a tale of two friends who find they're closer than they expected. For a while, this seems like it will work, as a book. The setting's well done, the writing is fair, and the characters well-defined. Unfortunately, that harmony doesn't last. The return of Anne Travers provides a link to The Web Of Fear, and her fear of the Great Intelligence has turned her mind. The events of Downtime, where her father was destroyed by it, have deluded her into seeing the Intelligence as an active threat. She also misuses her dislike of Ashley Chapel, and her belief that he also ruined her father, to deduce that Chapel's plan involves the Intelligence. This mistake sets up the latter part of the book, and though it could be argued that without her intervention, Saraquazel might have taken over, nothing in the book emphasises that. Ashley Chapel, by contrast, is a rather bland villain, whose greatest achievements seem to be taking over IE after Tobias Vaughn's demise in The Invasion, and buying patents from I^2 after events in System Shock. There seems little remarkable about Saraquazel's choosing him as a way into this universe, and it's rather a relief to learn that Saraquazel is pretty annoyed with what Chapel has done. Even his later absorbing of Harker seems to reduce Chapel's status, as Harker's ruthlessness takes hold. Against these baddies, we spend a lot of time with Louise and Barry, work colleagues at ACL, whose redundancy leads them to become wrapped up in Chapel's machinations. I suppose this allows for a bit of the human touch, and show how the Doctor's battles impact on ordinary people's lives. They also add a bit of depth to Mel, who gets a pretty good showing from the book, both as a computer genius, and an organising leader. She also shows her human side when dealing with Louise's disabled daughter, Cassie. As for the Doctor? Well, he shows that he's an even greater computer whiz than Mel or Chapel, he tries to make Anne see sense and then has to pick up the pieces, and then has to fight off the encroaching presence of his nemesis, the Valeyard, whilst keeping everyone alive. That he succeeds is a matter of some relief, and he is one of the many well-written characters. So, did I like the book? No. The entire magical realm section bores me to tears, and is written with the conviction of someone who believes in it, and assumes the audience will automatically. For all the talk of magic, it boils down to a few simple spells to kill other creatures in defence, or a little transportation. What little description there is of the new landscape is inadequate, and it's hard enough to even picture it happening in the corridors of a studio, let alone as words on a page. The Great Intelligence is wasted, and we barely learn a thing about Saraquazel. The whole subplot of Barry and Louise is also pretty schmaltzy, and not in a good way, either. And it seems picky to ask why, in the final battle, Chapel sits in the TARDIS and does nothing. Nice try, but not for me. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |