| VANISHING POINT by Stephen Cole |
| Story 43 Synopsis: The TARDIS lands on a windswept plain, and Fitz slips off a cliff. The Doctor and Anji rescue a homesteader called Etty. Fitz is found and almost brainwashed, but he is able to help Anji and Etty. The Doctor joins forces with a Diviner called Dark, investigating Etty's family. This world is watched over by a Creator, but increasing numbers of deaths seem to have no reason for them. Etty is being targeted by her sister's ex-husband, Derran Sherat, who is really a criminal whose real identity is Cauchemar. He arrived on the planet a long time before, and has tried to buck the system because the Creator doesn't acknowledge him. Now he is dying, and believes Etty is the reincarnation of his former love, Jasmine, and he wants to use her in a plot that will cause mass murder. The Doctor confronts Cauchemar, whilst Anji, Fitz and Dark find Cauchemar's ally, Hox, who would relay the order to detonate. Cauchemar disintegrates in the water, nearly killing the Doctor in the process. But he returns after a few days. Dark finds the path he seeks by moving in with Etty. The Doctor, Anji and Fitz leave in the TARDIS. |
| Review:- Religious questions to the fore, in a society where faith has an end result... The strength of this book is to encapsulate big ideas through the use of a small cast. Nathaniel Dark, for example, tells all that needs to be told about the Diviners, and that side of the religious divide. Against this is Etty Grace, unwittingly pawn of a greater game, caring only for her mooncalf children, and quite right too. The Doctor soon sees what's right and wrong, leaving Anji to consider the deeper theological angle, and Fitz is left to befriend Etty's daughter Vettul, and is lucky to escape brainwashing. The snake in this metaphorical garden is the repugnant Cauchemar, dying but still determined to finish off his grand plan of revenge against the Creator. Aided by the loyal but otherwise irredeemable Hox, Cauchemar's plan involves the unfortunate Etty, a pawn in a longstanding game that has consumed Cauchemar's life and his sanity. Her children became so as a result of Cauchemar's nature, but with her guardianship they have grown up far better than they perhaps otherwise would have done. It becomes Dark's journey of discovery to realise there is more to life than the divinations of the Creator's message, and Etty fills the moral gap in his life. Though he also finds another friend along the way, it is Etty whom he needs to feel complete. Quite a pleasant love story along the way. The Doctor and his friends are more spanners in the works than agents of change. They disrupt Cauchemar's attempts to square with Etty, they bring Dark into her life, they help Vettul and some of the other children along the way, and they apply the morality they understand to iron out the kink in this planet's set-up. It is quite cunning that not only is the planet not named, neither is the city where much of the action takes place, and even the streets have functional machine-code names, perhaps a subtle exploration of the theme of divine design over individual achievement. So, it comes down to a duel to the death between Cauchemar and the Doctor, one in which the Doctor is mistakenly believed dead. This seems an odd inclusion, more for the need to have Anji and Fitz wrap the plot up than to suggest that the Doctor really is dead. It's a gimmick that has been used before and would be again, but not to any real merit. On the whole, it asks some interesting questions about belief systems, but is more interesting when dealing with simpler themes of love and trust. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |