| TRAGEDY DAY by Gareth Roberts |
| Story 24 Synopsis: The TARDIS lands on Olleril, but Ace is soon shipped off with a group of refugees to a remote island where they are affected by poison gas. Ace is saved by a young man called Forgwyn. The Doctor and Bernice are shipped out from the centre of Empire City, and struggle to return there from the outskirts. The Doctor's bicardial system marks him down as alien, and the Supreme One, who runs the city from the shadows, allows him a free rein to keep watch on him. Ace and Forgwyn are picked up and allowed to check out a fair with Bernice, as the city gears up for its annual Tragedy Day festival. The Supreme One creates a duplicate of the Doctor, so he can be led by Ace and Bernice to the TARDIS. He also tricks the real Doctor into revealing a solution to a problem with his psychotronic generator. The Supreme One, really a teenager named Crispin, obtains the TARDIS, but Ace and Bernice are able to pursue to his secret base aboard a giant submarine, the Gargantuan. The Doctor tries to prevent the launch of Crispin's psychotronic signal, but is prevented at the last. With Olleril's citizens under its baleful influence, assassins hired by the alien Friars of Pangloss cause the Gargantuan to begin to destruct. The signal is knocked off, and the Doctor is able to rescue his friends, but he and the TARDIS are spirited away by the Friars, who seek vengeance for the theft of a piece of red glass. He tricks them into entering the TARDIS, and takes them to Olleril, landing on a dancefloor which periodically releases an anti-matter surge. With this, he zaps the Friars. Olleril must begin a new era without the secret organising control of Crispin. |
| Review:- After the kudos accrued by his first Dr Who book, The Highest Science, Roberts followed it up with this scathing satire of charity appeals and a celebrity-obsessed culture. Thinly-veiled parodies of Take That! and tiresome husband & wife interviewers Richard Madeley & Judy Finnegan give the book an added frisson of believability, even if the reasoning behind this colossal coincidence doesn't bear close examination. But Olleril is also a harsh world divided unfairly into haves & have-nots, and there is a secret force behind it running things. This is a hot topic for some people, but Roberts manages to handle it with a deft touch, focusing all the evil in Crispin, and his twittish henchmen like Shrubb. Consequently, the full extent of their villainy seems more straightforward than it is in something like The Truman Show. Against this also fit the Friars of Pangloss, who are mainly noises off for much of the book, presumably lest their fearsomeness make all else look pallid. Their hiring of Meredith and Ernest to kill the Doctor gives some extra sense of drama, though Meredith's apparent last-minute change of mind seems mere plot device, and Ernest is badly depicted as a Yorkshire spider, with all the Yorkshireness of, say, Ted Heath. Splitting Ace off from the Doctor and Bernice allows her to explore the horrors of the test island and the horrid Slaags (oh, funny name, tee hee - or not), and meet the likeable Forgwyn. Contrasting, the Doctor and Bernice get to have some bureaucratic parody, and meet Madam Guralza, who promptly meets a worthless end. Once inside the centre, things seem to move at a fuzzy speed, with Crispin allowing the Doctor some leeway, before deciding to hurry up and nab the TARDIS. The space is used for more padding showing Olleril in all its drudgery, and the all-round naffness of Tragedy Day, an ersatz telethon which allows middle-class people to feel they're helping a good cause. Arguably, Roberts pulls his punches on this, but then it's not really the main point of the book. Fresh from the rigours of the Alternate Universe cycle, the Doctor is kept occupied with a story with no shortage of bad guys and a fantastical situation bearing some resemblance to Earth. This book is perhaps a test run for Roberts' later Missing Adventures, or maybe this is his natural style? On the whole, whilst far from great, it's a jolly little read that keeps interest up by throwing ideas at the reader to prevent long-term distraction. The characters all have depth and motivation, even if some are idiotically written. Though under-rated, even by its own author, it's worth a look. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of this book. |