| THE SHADOWS OF AVALON by Paul Cornell |
| Story 30 Synopsis: The Doctor leaves Compassion on Earth for a week to try and appreciate humanity. Whilst waiting to be picked up, she meets the Brigadier, and then witnesses the TARDIS destroyed. The Brigadier recovers in Avalon with the Doctor, whilst Fitz and Compassion find themselves elsewhere. The Doctor meets Queen Regent Mab, who learns he is a Time Lord. Two Gallifreyan Interventionist agents are loose, trying to cause trouble. A gateway opens up between Avalon and Earth, and the Brigadier negotiates a treaty between England and Avalon. When the Unseelie Court steal a nuclear warhead and appear to launch a missile attack, the Brigadier plans for war. Disgusted, the Doctor heads north to investigate for himself. Fitz and Compassion are taken to the Unseelie Court, who are innocent, and given a mission of their own. The Doctor finds the Interventionists who are behind all the trouble, and escapes into a primitive vortex. He struggles to find a way out. The Interventionists give Fitz and Compassion a mission that involves sending them back to London to find King Constantine's other self. When they do, he nearly attacks them, but backs off. The Doctor arrives, and they realise they were set up. They rush back to the gateway to Avalon. The Interventionists make one last stand, trying to awaken the sleeping Constantine, to attack Compassion. The Doctor saves her again. One of the Interventionists is beheaded. The other survives long enough to shoot Compassion. As she plummets to Earth, she goes through a change, reappearing as a TARDIS. This is what the Interventionists were trying to cause all along. Romana arrives to take hold of the new Type 102, but when Mab restores Avalon and cuts off the link to Earth, the Doctor is able to use the confusion of the Time Lords so he and Fitz can escape in Compassion. |
| Review:- One door slams shut forever, but another door creaks open... The return of Paul Cornell for his 1st book since 1996's Happy Endings coincides with a big sea change in the EDA range. Having been set off in a new direction by his brush with Faction Paradox in Interference, the Doctor suffers the loss of his TARDIS in part of a needlessly complicated plot by some nasty Time Lord agents. Inbetween times, his old friend the Brigadier is suffering a crisis of confidence caused by the death of his wife. Since he was rejuvenated last time out, this age gap was only going to end one way anyway, and Cornell makes great use of this, as the Brigadier hasn't dealt properly with the grief, and wishes to die too. This clouds his judgement and his actions, until he ultimately comes to the realisation that life is for living. He eventually realises he has found another love in Avalon, no less than the Queen Regent, Mab. This union is Cornell's smuggest snook cocked at the establishment, although I find I wish them well all the same. Fitz and Compassion struggle as a team, sent hither and yon by the cruel Interventionists, and sent to meet Rex in a trap. The final stages of her change still come as a surprise, with the seeds planted in previous books leading to a bizarre resolution which poses more questions than it answers. Were all the Remote so genetically malleable? Or was this just plot contrivance? Hmm... As for the Doctor, he as usual, has his mettle and his motives tested, as he witnesses a war he disagrees with, and chooses to follow his own path to solve things. His codename of Zachary comes in conveniently useful, but it adds to his mystique rather than reducing it. The loss of the TARDIS, however, is a colossally stupid move, teeing the audience up for the even greater loss in a few books' time, and the eventual change of direction in The Burning. Whilst readers might have assumed this book would settle the questions poses in Interference, instead it marks a halfway stage, as the use of Compassion, and the rage of the Time Lords doubling the danger (which is itself largely ignored until The Banquo Legacy). The folk of Avalon are largely a bland bunch, with only Mab and the foolhardy Margwyn getting any semblance of depth. This compares well with UNIT, who seem to worship the Brigadier as a kind of lucky talisman. Subtle commentary on worship there, I don't think. The Interventionists are easily seen as the bad guys, and Cavis & Gandar are certainly well written to be so. It does show that when the Time Lords choose to be pro-active, they're a dirtier, viler bunch than any Daleks could ever be. Not one iota of sympathy heads their way, and the death of Cavis is only just reward for their actions. Gandar's survival is presumably a nod to the liberal lie that no evil can be totally unredeemed, but it seems incredulous. Overall, then, whilst it seeks to use a wider pallette than usual, it still turns out to be typical Cornell fare, smug and self-satisfying, comparing Compassion's final attempts to become human, and emotional, with the Doctor's own experience in Human Nature, a blatant example of a writer regurgitating past glory. Whilst solid enough, there's too much water-treading for it to really move an audience. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |