Doctor, Doctor: Gary Russell's DOCTOR WHO: DIVIDED LOYALTIES

From the very first episode, "An Unearthly Child", the Doctor (Who) has been an enigmatic figure, about whom very little backstory has dribbled out over 50+ years. We know he's a Time Lord, a being with two hearts, at least 13 lives, and a vastly alien and nearly omniscient perspective on time and space. We've met a few of his fellow Time Lords, both of the sort who stayed behind on their home planet of Gallifrey to mind the shop and the handful of "renegades" who chose to come out and play in the rest of the universe. Of this latter group, of course, all but the Doctor are villains, and they are all generally as enigmatic in terms of back-story as he is.

Now there are some fans who hanker after every scrap of "knowledge" about the Doctor's history and upbringing and life on Gallifrey as a Time Tot and whatnot, and they would probably just love a once-and-for-all prequel/origin story all about this someday.

There are also those fans who hope this never, ever happens, who prefer the mystery, the room for speculation, the sense of sheer alien incomprehensibility that a character like the Doctor and a species like the Time Lords inherently have. I am one of this latter sort.

For those of the other sort, well, have I found the novel for you. And I wish you joy of it. For me, though... Eh.

Divided Loyalties brings the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan face to face with one of the more enigmatic and unknowable -- and under-utilized -- Doctor Who villains: The Celestial Toymaker. It should surprise no one that he is one of my favorite Doctor Who villains (which is odd, because on the whole I don't like near-omnipotent heroes OR villains, but hey). For those not familiar with him, he is a being from a whole 'nother universe, who exercises near limitless power in this one -- he is supposed to be of a kind with the Black and White Guardians of Key to Time fame*** -- but who uses it chiefly to put lesser beings through a series of cruel and almost-but-not-quite unwinnable games in his Toyroom. Losers of his games he either enslaves or turns into doll-statues and imprisons forever as decor for said Toyroom. He dresses like a Chinese Mandarin (or at least like a British stage magician pretending to be an inscrutable Chinese Master dresses, minus the Fu Manchu facial hair and badly done stage makeup that's meant to suggest epicanthic folds to an audience who has never seen an actual Asian) and really, really hates the Doctor, who has beaten and will beat him at every encounter.

So this sounds promising as hell, right? Even if one isn't a huge fan of the Fifth Doctor, the poutingest pretty boy Doctor EVAR, I used to think, but then the Tenth Doctor came along and knocked his pouty prettiness into a cocked hat. He's still the Doctor, and so I at least like him, and here he is matching wits with the best villain, but... but...

Well, the Toymaker, aka the Guardian of Dreams, is messing with people via their dreams, dreams that play on their regrets and fears from the darkest moments of their past, on their guilty consciences, and when it's finally the Doctor's turn OH MY GOD IT GOES ON FOREEEEEEEEEEEEEVER. The middle third-or-more of this novel is just one giant (somewhat distorted, because the Toymaker is messing with things, so yeah, not all of it matches canon but get over it, nerds, the Toymaker is messing with things) dream sequence flashback to the Doctor's student days at Hogwarts the Prydon Academy and his youthful hijinks with his youthful pals in Gryffindor the Deca and remember how much I really don't like Harry Potter you guys? I don't like Harry Potter. Except for Neville Longbottom.*

Anyway, yes, it's all about the Deca, and this part is only sort of interesting in that we get glimpses of the young Master (except he's going by the name of Koschei, which name he doesn't canonically come up with until much later in his lives, but hey, Toymaker) and a young version of another fantastic but underutilized Time Lord villain, the Rani (whose real name is Ushas, which fits because that's the Vedic goddess of the dawn and "Rani" is a term for "Queeen" in Hindi)** along with young versions of pretty much other named Time Lord we've met in the TV series but it's really just interesting to see Lil' Master and Lil' Rani except no, we don't even get much of that, because it's all about the precocity of the Doctor (dur) and two other Time Cadets, Millennia and Rallon, who are destined to take on the Toymaker in their own little story and lose and...

Yawn.

But as I said, some of you fans who want everything explained and mapped out and whatnot are going to just love that bit.

What I wanted, though, was the Doctor and the Toymaker. Which I only kind of got.

But hey, the book does have other kind of cool things to offer. For everything except the Eternal Flashback, our point of view character is basically Tegan, a character who was never really a fan favorite but gets a bit of love here, because Russell portrays her as usually immediately regretting the rude and impatient things she's always saying, and always on the verge of apologizing and trying to make amends right before Trouble Strikes, and that makes her a lot more bearable, perhaps even likeable.

Adric, though, is still a cock. As for Nyssa, she's barely there, except when she has her own experience with the Toymaker and his torments.

But really, this is kind of Tegan's book, Eternal Flashback plot aside. For the planet the Toymaker has fashioned into his latest Doctor Trap is a populated one, and its population have a prophecy about a Chosen One who will come, and said Chosen One is Tegan. It's a nice chance for her to have a bit of her own story that, for once, doesn't involve her being possessed by the Mara (or at least it doesn't involve that very much) and does a nice job of exploring what an Earthling Companion's inner life might have been like before the modern TV series conveniently sonic'd everybody's cell phones so they could phone home from any point in time and space. I would have liked this story to have had a bit more prominence in the book, or at least get as much attention as the Eternal Flashback did. But, no.

As for my Arbitrary and Mercurial lists, here is the author list as of this book:

Alastair Reynolds
Mark Gatiss
Terrance Dicks
Jonathan Morris
Justin Richards
Gary Russell
Keith Topping

And the Doctors:

Ninth

Twelfth

Sixth

Third

Eleventh

Second

War

Fourth

Eighth

Fifth 

Seventh

First

Tenth

Yes! Five moved up a space, largely because he was kind of nice to Tegan in this novel. I got the impression that he was fully aware that she was trying not to be such a bitch, anyway, and that counted for something.

And yes, I wound up liking Tegan a bit more than usual this time around. She's still in the low middle of the horde, but were I tracking it more precisely, she'd probably move up a spot or two as well. Adric, though, Adric is way down there with Peri and Mel and Ian. Nyssa... I dunno how I feel about Nyssa. Big Finish has been good to her, though, so I like her a lot more than I did during her TV tenure, but she was pretty much just there because she was supposed to be there in this book.

On to a Sixth Doctor novel, now. Sixie gets all the best Big Finish stories, so my hopes are a bit high, in that I hope the prose authors are as good to him as the audio drama authors are. There is lots of overlap in these, so I feel justified in my hope. Plus, I'm that rare bird, someone who liked him in his TV run. I may even have had a bit of a crush on Colin Baker. Yes, even the coat. Dude got to have no ducks to give to rock a coat like that, and I respect that.

*Which, there is totally a Neville Longbottom figure here, Runcible the Hall Monitor, but they're way meaner to him than the Hogwarts crew ever were to Neville so there, I've found one tiny thing in the HP universe that is better than something in Doctor Who. Popqueenie is punching the air.

**Some extra fan service is to be had here, by the way, for this book has tied the Whoniverse rather explicitly to the Cthulhu mythos, via these beings. And there's a connection to Gene Wolfe, too (and I promise, I'm going to finish Suns, Suns, Suns, oh yes I am), in that Ushas is the name by which Urth comes to be known at the end of his Solar Cycle. Oh, and the chapter titles are all the names of OMD songs. Shrug.

***So really they should have gotten an Indian actress to portray her, but you know, Kate O'Mara pwned it, so that's okay.

Chuck Wendig's STAR WARS: AFTERMATH

However one may feel about the Disney purchase of the Star Wars franchise and the corporate decision to chuck out the hundreds of books and comics that make up the Star Wars Expanded Universe and start a brand new continuity, said new continuity is off to a remarkable start, and not just because The Force Awakens let us all breathe a sigh of relief that J.J. Abrams wasn't going to ruin everything.*

Star Wars: Aftermath, published to both acclaim and controversy (which controversy I'm not going to address here because I don't really understand it) a few months before The Movie was, is further proof that just because there has been some retcon doesn't mean there can't emerge some great stories from the new effort. The galaxy far, far away is pretty big, and there is room for a lot in it, and a lot of it is awesome.

That being said, I can see where some fans might have been a leetle disappointed to pick this book up, because it is mostly lacking in what people have been hankering for ever since the prequel movies stank up the theaters: Han, Leia, Luke, Chewie, Lando, Jedis and the Force... But by now we've all seen that the The Force Awakens took care of them just fine, so let's focus on what Aftermath does not lack, which is quality.

The title here is key. The events of Return of the Jedi are still very, very recent as this new story unfolds. The ewoks may well still be partying down on Endor's forest moon. Thank goodness we don't have to see that, but it might well be. But one victory, however spectacular, doth not a regime change make, and while the Empire was pretty well decapitated, that doesn't mean everything in the galaxy is immediately hunky dory. As we've seen in our lifetimes in the Middle East, taking out the evil dictator and his cronies causes as many problems as it solves: power vacuums, chaos, opportunism, economic collapse, weapons of mass destruction in unknown hands, troubled war veterans, disruptions in commerce and shipping... the list is long and grim.

And it's this stuff that Wendig has chosen to imagine, to tackle for this new trilogy of novels. Which means he is unassailably writing Star Wars for grown-ups, making the long, long ago feel more real and challenging and gritty than any amount of practical special effects and exposition dumping opening crawls could ever do. He takes full advantage of the opportunities the novel form offers to really explore and fill out a world, with fascinating, if at times disheartening, results.

But that's not to say it's any less fun than the movies, etc. we've loved all these years. Just because the real problems of regime change and consolidation are the focus doesn't mean there isn't plenty of action, character drama, and, yes, humor as an ex-Imperial official, a kickass bounty hunter, a hot-shot pilot, her crafty and gifted son, and a host of other new characters struggle to figure out their roles and places in this new world in the brief bit of breathing room everybody is sort-of enjoying while the New Republic tries to form and begin to heal the galaxy -- and while the Empire struggles to regroup and plan to reconquer.

Of particular note is a droid that stole my heart even more completely than BB8 did in the latest film: Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones is an old Imperial battle droid, of risible memory from the prequel films. You know rolling around, committing acts of incredible ineptitude and saying "Roger Roger" every few seconds. But Mr. Bones, Mr. Bones is badass, because young Temmin Wexley (the hot-shot pilot's son) rebuilt it (partly out of animal bones, hence its name) and reprogrammed it with a lot of weird software modules that have made of the thing a seriously formidable bodyguard that has a bizarre tendency to laugh psychotically and break out into mondo crazy song and dance routines while it kills and maims. I would watch a spin-off series of this droid's adventures, yes I would.

Also notable is an Imperial admiral, Sloane, who is stuck balancing competing interests as she tries to pull together what's left of the Empire's military to take stock and figure out new strategies. Notice again the female pronoun: Aftermath, like the film that has followed it, is an artifact of a much more inclusive universe that may well be one without sexism, or at least without very much of it. Just as the film gives us the fabulously competent, fierce and sensible Rey, this novel gives us a gifted and dedicated female pilot, Norra Wexley (who is dealing not only with her military role in the rebellion but also with the effect her career has had on her relationship with the son she left behind in his aunts' care). The bounty hunter character is also female, and never once is anybody's gender an issue; never once is there any suggestion that they are exceptions to any rules, no "great pilot for being a woman" backhanded compliments, none of it. Even Sloane, who is on the receiving end of a lot of contempt as her side falls into in-fighting, doesn't get it for being a woman; she gets it for making a plan and sticking to it in the face of bullying opposition and dirty dealing.

It's all just so damned refreshing! Too bad it's just science fantasy. But it's pointing the way, and doing so without giving up any of the pew-pew-pews we go to science fantasy for.

But so, I'm pretty psyched to read the other two books in this trilogy when they're available. But then, I hope Wendig goes back to writing his very own stuff. His very own stuff is really, really good. Better than this, even. I mean, come on, this is the guy who brought us Miriam Black. I don't begrudge him his payday, but... cough. Thunderbird. Cough.

*I had to be physically escorted from the theater when I made the mistake of going to see Star Trek: Into Darkness, and got a scorching migraine for my troubles My concerns were real! To say nothing of all of the other ways that film sucked.

Doctor, Doctor: Jonathan Morris' DOCTOR WHO: FESTIVAL OF DEATH

First and foremost, let us contemplate the glorious awesomeness of the title: Festival of Death. Is that not the pulpiest pulp that ever pulped a pulp? Even before we throw in the goofiest of Doctors, Number Four, and his robot dog, K-9, and his best straight-man-cum-Time-Lady, Romana?

Then the reader quickly realizes that author Jonathan Morris was rather more ambitious about this project than these pulp promises portend (heh), because this is a proper time travel story of the kind that modern fans like to refer to as "timey-wimey"; even as the TARDIS crew arrives at the setting for this story (about which more anon) they come upon the aftermath of a terrible disaster -- and crowds of people clamoring to express their gratitude to the Doctor, Romana and K9 for saving them.

But so, look at the cover art, here. Look at the expression on Tom Baker's face. Isn't that exactly how a person reacts when he's congratulated for deeds of derring do he hasn't performed yet? Um, whut. And yes, you could say that he should maybe be used to this, being a time traveling hero and all, but generally he and his friends are locked into the progress of a linear narrative as soon as the TARDIS lands because they thus become "part of a chain of events," so I say he is legit stunned, here.

Festival of Death really, really wants to be the perfect Fourth Doctor novel, and really could have been except for how hard its author tried to make it so. There is so much plot crammed into this novel that there's really not room for anything else, but Jonathan Morris had to cram in as much as he could of what he understands the Fourth Doctor to be all about -- namely the oeuvre of one Douglas Adams -- so that the reader is constantly being distracted by all the rib-digging cleverness of recycled Adamsiana (there is even a character named Hoopy, for Bob's sake), to the detriment of her being able to enjoy the plot. This is a terrible shame because it's quite a good and clever plot, one that sends the TARDIS crew back into their own time stream many times over, so that they are having constantly to avoid meeting themselves and destroying the Web of Time. Which is awesome.

Equally awesome is the setting: a hundred-plus spaceship pile-up crash, trapped in a hyperspace bypass (sigh) and turned into a tourist attraction called G-Lock (short for "gridlock"). Which tourist attraction has become a bit old hat and is seeing a decline in visitors until a mad scientist shows up to put his demented life's work in motion to revitalize the G-Lock's reputation and economy. Which demented life's work allows tourists to lie down in a coffin and have, not merely a near-death experience, but an actual death experience, and then come back forever awed and changed by it.

So this should be a great Doctor Who novel, but it winds up merely being a good one. My assessment of this one might change on subsequent re-readings, which this intricate and crazy plot kind of cries out for, but that might not ever happen because to re-experience the plot I'll have to re-experience all the eye-rolling, and who wants to do that when so much other fun fiction yet beckons?

And yes, some of it by Jonathan Morris, who is going to be impossible to avoid because he's written a great deal of Doctor Who for every medium but television, including quite a lot of Big Finish audio plays, some of which I have already heard and enjoyed so... Hmm. But for now, my Arbitrary and Mercurial Author Ranking after Festival of Death is:

Alastair Reynolds
Mark Gatiss
Terrance Dicks
Jonathan Morris
Justin Richards
Keith Topping

But my A&MDR is unchanged:

Ninth

Twelfth

Sixth

Third

Eleventh

Second

War

Fourth

Eighth

Seventh

Fifth

First

Tenth

As for companions, I'd forgotten just how much I like Romana II. She's right there after Evelyn with Donna and Jo.

Now, onward to a Fifth Doctor novel, which I've already chosen, and about which I am super excited. Stay tuned!