Byzantium!

With the TARDIS crash landed in a gully, the crew have taken some time to relax from the stresses of time travel. They have arrived in AD 64 and have found themselves a temporary home in the city of Byzantium, posing as a travelling family. Trouble is never far behind, though, and eventually all four travellers are separated and must do what they can to survive in this turbulent time where life is cheap and death is lurking around every corner.

Byzantium is a very ambitious novel for the range, starting right from the beginning. At the end of The Rescue the TARDIS is seen toppling off what appears to be a cliff, sending everyone within sprawling to the floor (some less convincingly than others), and the following week the travellers would be seen alive and well and unharmed in the next serial, The Romans. Byzantium takes place within that gap, telling a story of at least two weeks' time. It's not an easy task to do something like this, but author Keith Topping was obviously bound and determined to tell this story with this particular crew, and rather than toss it in somewhere else down the line (there's a very handy gap between The Web Planet and The Crusades where a few other stories both written and audio will be placed) he worked it in to serve as an extension of the whole Roman era visit, creating a short story arc for the TARDIS crew. And this isn't just some tossed-in prelude story printed in large font which tells a vague tale, it is absolutely packed with stuff - 280 pages in the BBC Books smaller print which made this the first novel I needed my glasses for. The separation of the TARDIS crew is not a new ploy as it allows for stories to be told from a few different angles, but it is usually with the characters split into small groups; in Dalek Invasion of Earth the Doctor and Susan stayed together for most of the story while Ian and Barbara had to make their own way to the story's climax. But with Byzantium the crew are completely split up, each thinking that the others are dead, and they are left to try and make their own way in this world. History tells us that the city, and the time itself, was rife with religious divisions complete with heretics and traitors being crucified as a lesson for others, and what better way to illustrate this than by having each member of the crew fall in with a different facet of this diversity; the Doctor is rescued by the struggling Christians, Vicki by a Greek family, Barbara by the Jews and Ian falls in with the Romans themselves.

For Barbara this is another journey into her element as a history teacher, although she is seeming to be getting a bit tired of it after seeing all the nastiest parts of it; everywhere they go in history people keep dying around her. The Doctor, too, seems to be enjoying parts of his time in the city, despite having lost his companions and the TARDIS he is finding some academic joy in realizing that he is witnessing the first draft of the Bible being written. Vicki has only just joined the crew so imagine her confusion at being an orphan again but in a distant and primitive time. Her lack of tact gets her into trouble right off the hop with her adoptive Greek family, and her mouth keeps digging her in deeper every time she opens it. It's a bit of a departure from the Vicki seen on screen, and she's even given a surname here - Pallister - although it's never actually used in any canon material (although given that this is a BBC Book one would think that it would be more readily accepted). Ian, too, is a bit off from how he is played on screen, coming off as a lot more sarcastic than he was written in the early days of the series - and he is played up as an exotic sex symbol in the novel with the Roman women seeking to seduce him, even entering his bedchambers and catching him in the buff.

Oh yes, the sex. There's a lot of it in this one. Ian being hounded by horny Roman sluts is just the tip of the iceberg. Topping was probably watching Spartacus (the TV series) for some of his reference material, describing several graphic sweaty sex scenes among the supporting cast of characters. And the violence is really amped up as well with throats slashed here and there and people being nailed to crosses and left to die. The new series of Doctor Who has been criticized by some as having far too much sexual innuendo and violence to it, but it's just a bit of cheeky fun compared to this. I'm not complaining, though; it's not gratuitous and it's what went on, as far as we know.

Topping was pretty careful about continuity with this book, keeping in mind at all times not to over-write the opening of The Romans. Despite all the blood and grit though it reads like a comedy in some spots, which is how The Romans was scripted, so tone is maintained. The Doctor makes a few private oblique references to himself and his own circumstances here and there but nothing that could really spoil anything that is to come in the rest of the series. Curiously, though, he does mention that Vicki has a destiny, but refuses to elaborate on it when Barbara asks. The other bit of continuity is a bit of a spoiler, maybe, but I don't think so. The story actually starts with a prologue set in 1973 where Barbara, under her married name of Chesterton, is at the museum with her son John Alydon Ganatus Chesterton looking at Roman exhibits. I don't necessarily think that letting on that Barbara and Ian get out alive and have a future together is a bad thing; if anything it adds to the ongoing story of life after the Doctor for the companions. The same happened in a part of The Time Travellers and again, it paints a picture of things to come, for these companions at the very least. For most fans, reading Byzantium was something done a long time after having already seen it on TV or VHS or DVD as it was published in 2001, but if someone new to the series was going to pick this up and add it to the continuity I am following would it necessarily ruin anything to come? I don't think so; in fact it would only serve as an appetite-whetter for when Ian and Barbara actually do get to leave the Doctor and go home, to see how their journey with him ends, and to perhaps wonder how he carries on without them.

But that's later, we'll get there.

NEXT EPISODE: THE ROMANS