| SEEING I by Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman |
| Story 12 Synopsis: Sam lands on Ha'olam, where she helps out at a soup kitchen because she has no employment records. She eventually gets a job with INC, a big company, but quits when she realises she will need years to get anywhere there. She instead makes contact with peaceable organisations, helping out with new town projects in the desert. The Doctor traces her to INC at Ha'olam, but in the process of breaking in, realises their eye recognition technology is part-Gallifreyan, and thus dangerous. But he is caught and imprisoned. Despite several attempts to escape, he fails repeatedly, but eventually realises he has something in an eye that is giving him away. Eventually, Sam finds the TARDIS, and uses it to rescue him. INC have created a computer AI, called DOCTOR, to guess his movements. The Doctor, Sam and her friends head to INC's top secret base, where he finds that they've used found alien technology to give them a competitive edge. But the tech was placed deliberately by the I, who come to harvest INC's finds. He manages to put the mockers on INC, with help from Sam and DOCTOR. She decides to leave her new life on Ha'olam, and rejoin him in the TARDIS. |
| Review:- The mini-series begun back in Longest Day comes to a conclusion here, as Sam grows up and the Doctor is ground down. The opening year of adventures in the EDA range had to manage the twin tasks of establishing the new Doctor's character, and also that of Sam. This brief run of books allowed for some development of both in a different style than before (though less radically than Ace's brief exit in the early NA's). This development is best shown in this book, which shows Sam's strength in starting from nothing, and building herself up until she is at the point where she can rescue her old friend. She forms relationships, she gets jobs, she finds her own path to follow. As near as can be done whilst still covering the Doctor, the first half is almost a solo tale for Sam. Whether she seems changed by her experiences is neither here nor there. She gets older and perhaps more confident (though what difference that makes is again questionable). As for the Doctor, his incarceration frustrates him when he cannot deduce why he is unable to escape. It eventually costs a life of a fellow prisoner before he realises the problem - the mote in his eye. Eye technology is one of the keystones of the book, and the appallingly named aliens, the I, allow for many punning chapter titles, as if a computer had dreamed them up. Quite how amazing this tech actually is, and how believable is not really addressed, just accepted. As a nod to Gallifrey, it's both needless and dreary - books like this show how using the show's past and baggage can be a bad thing. Once freed, the Doctor puts himself back together, and assumes Sam will be the same as she ever was, which is unsurprising as that's what the reader would feel, too. Their efforts to scuttle INC are thankfully enlivened when the I turn up. Before, there was a worry that the book was just going to return to its drudge-like opening. The character who strops that Sam cost her money is a demonstration of the day-to-day boredom which is not often shown in Dr Who, and for good reason - who needs escapism which just mirrors the life you're trying to escape from? Perhaps this character is there to prod Sam into rejoining the Doctor, since she seems too rootless to remain on Ha'olam. The twin-track plotting in the first half does help the book fly by, and though the final section is pretty stodgy at times, it does at least resolve itself to some degree. So perhaps readers should be grateful for small mercies. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of the book. |