| RAGS by Mick Lewis |
| Story ? Synopsis: Working in his lab at UNIT, the Doctor locates a strange source of energy in the SouthWest of England, and heads down there with Jo. There, they witness a peculiar rock gig during which a couple of prison guards are killed. The effect on the crowd is hypnotic, and even Jo comes under the influence of the music. The Doctor tries to get close to the cattle truck in which the band travel, but is warned off. The next gig happens two days later. This time, a huntsman is beheaded. Two policeman kill their families in an insane rage. The cattle truck is now followed by a huge convoy of followers. Their next gig is in a graveyard near Bristol. Tramps go on a murderous rampage in a winebar. The Doctor leaves Jo to stay undercover, but she falls under the influence. He asks the Brigadier to send someone to watch her, but Mike is nearly killed by the crowd. The Doctor finds a connection to a gruesome history book that recounts a deadly reckoning between a couple in love and a band of musicians. He realises he is being diverted. He makes it back to the crowd, and gains entrance to the cattle truck. Inside, he realises, is a reality-wound, and the being behind the band, the Ragman, is trying to level society by inciting class hatred and death. The band move to their final gig, at Cirbury, whilst UNIT are tricked into guarding Stonehenge. The Ragman has drawn two people to his final gig, whom he claims to be the ancestor of. One, Kane Sawyer, has become a bitter alcoholic, The other, Charmagne Peters, was an orphaned journalist. The Doctor is tormented, unable to find a way out of his situation. Finally, he reaches the exit, and confronts the Ragman. A large stone is drawing the hate energy from the crowd, and through it, the Ragman will take over. The Doctor points out his hypocrisy in deluding the crowds, and Kane drags the Ragman into the stone, which sucks them both in. Deprived of the origin of the hate, the mood fades, the crowds disperse, and the tidying up begins. |
| Review:- One of the worst books I have ever read. That was my initial opinion of this book, which challenges the Dr Who format quite seriously, yet simultaneously seeming to use familiar styles to make its point. Having now given the book another read, I can compare my original view of it to how it seems now. And it's still one of the worst books I have ever read. To be fair, I could at least fathom the story this time, which is quite straightforward, but very slight. To fill up what is anyway one of the shorter PDAs, the reader is treated, or rather subjected, to a series of vignettes depicting various groups meeting with grisly fates. Coincidentally, those on the receiving ends are soft targets, such as prison warders, fox-hunters and city whizzkids. So, it can be read that there is a distinct political bias to this. Indeed, the Ragman's efforts are portrayed in terms of class struggle, so that the Royal family, inevitably, feature to quite detrimental degree. UNIT don't come out of this smelling of roses, either, with the bloodthirsty Corporal Robinson voicing a harsh, brutal side of army life, unlike Captain Yates, who remains strangely distant from the blood-lust and hate throughout. Jo falls swiftly under the spell of the Ragman's band, and it's rather daffy of the Doctor to just leave her with the convoy when he sees how susceptible she is. But then, this isn't a book for the Doctor to be heroic in. When he picks up a strange signal, he hops down in Bessie to check it out, but is a mere observer during the first deadly concert. When he tries to inspect the cattle-truck, he is warned off in no uncertain terms. Then he abandons Jo, pushing off back to UNIT to do some tests. This at least brings him to Cirbury to meet Kane Sawyer, though Kane is of more interest to the author, clearly. Then after a run-in along a dark road, he goes to the truck again, gets inside and wishes he hadn't. After he gets his spirit crushed, he eventually steps out of it in order to give the Ragman a talking to. At which point, Kane ends it all. The power of the Ragman brings a lot of incident to the book - he can seemingly resurrect the dead, spread a hypnotic glow across thousands, and prove invulnerable to usual methods of restraint. Sadly, this aura of invulnerability has to end for the book to conclude, and so the threat of the lodestone is dropped in with little subtlety a few pages before it comes to matter. Though Kane's revenge provides a fitting note for the end of the tune, the idea that all the preceding slaughter will just blow over is a strangely insulting interpretation of death. But then, this book isn't interested in the long-term, only the short. A real low point for this book range. |
| Disclaimer: I've read the book. |