The Empire of Glass

Something odd has happened to the Doctor. Steven and Vicki discovered him missing from the TARDIS and then reappearing with no memory of where he had been, the only clue being a printed invitation in his hand. The TARDIS takes them to Venice in 1609 where a case of mistaken identity lands them as guests of the Doge, and Steven becomes a drinking buddy with Galileo Galilei who is there to show his new telescope to the Doge. But there is more going on in Venice, even more than usual. Strange creatures lurk in the dark streets and a man named Irving Braxiatel wonders where the Doctor has gotten to - for without his presence a galactic arms conference will surely fail.

This one took me a while to get through, mostly because my reading schedule was interrupted by guests and the cover of the book falling off when the humidity made the glue let go after 21 years on the shelf. But on the other side of things I took a while reading it because I wasn't as engaged in this one and didn't really make the time to read it through. I'm not saying it was a bad one, it was loaded with continuity angles but when it got right down to it the plot was just a bit... weak. I think my biggest beef was why it happened in Venice at all, aside from pure self indulgence on the author's part. With a gathering of alien delegates which could attract attention, why would Braxiatel choose Earth at all even if the risk of discovery was minimal, and then choose the one place on Earth where the only telescope in existence was located causing him to have to worry about sabotaging it lest his guests and their spacecraft be seen. Once I had that rattling around in my head it was a bit hard to buy into the rest of the flow of the plot, including the doubecrosses and the motivation of the other aliens present.

As far as the continuity goes Empire of Glass is set just before the second season began without and direct leads into the following broadcast episode, Galaxy Four, but it takes a cue from a 1973 televised episode where the Doctor was taken out of time and met his future selves. I guess Andy Lane wanted to give his own take on where that part of the Doctor's life was so the story opens with him returning, effectively, from the future but with his memories blanked as not to spoil his future for him. So there's the handy memory loss and with that comes the Doctor's uncertainty about the invitation and hilarity (I think this was supposed to read as a comedy actually) ensues. The next bit of continuity fun comes in the form of Braxiatel himself; he's another of the Doctor's people (which is a bit less grand given we only just met the Monk) and the character was being used extensively in appearances and references in the New Adventures range with the seventh Doctor, and these days is a mainstay in two of the Big Finish Productions spinoff series. Once the Doctor and Braxiatel actually meet their exchange is like old boys meeting after a long time (and perhaps it has been a long time) but there are some hints dropped about their manners and resemblance which were either to inply that a) they are family, or b) they are the same person. It is never really made clear which, but odds are there was only so much Andy Lane was allowed to imply here. And I am forced to ask, and not for the first time, why bother if it's not going to go anywhere? Braxiatel's actual origins are from a 1979 televised episode where the name is just dropped in conversation, never really intended for development, but such is the magic of Doctor Who where anything can happen.

There are some other minor references to popular alien species that have so far not been seen on the screen in this continuity (Cybermen and Sontarans to name just two... Ice Warriors to name one more...) but the one that really went clunk for me is the appearance of King James towards the end of the story. The Doctor and Vicki had already had encounters with the same monarch in The Plotters which was set some four years prior to Empire but alas published a year later, and he is not shown as the same sloth that he was in Gareth Roberts' book. More to the point, given how he had lusty desires for Vicki (although he thought she was a boy) it wouldn't be very clever to cross paths with him again. This in itself is not Andy Lane's fault as his book was published first, but just a little point that the editors of the range at the time should have spotted if they wanted to really put their mark on their "new" adventures and keep things tight. Problem is you get too much of this going on and what seemed really clever and cool dissolves into what's knows as a"fan wank".

Empire suffers a bit from an overload of guest stars too; in addition to Galileo the Doctor and company also cross paths with William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe who are both, it seems, acting as spies in the service of King James. I'm not sure how accurate that really is, but here's another wee continuity issue where Shakespeare asks the Doctor if he has a younger brother and describes the fourth Doctor and says he helped him with the writing of Hamlet (which is a reference from the very same episode where Braxiatel is first mentioned). Of course the new series also has the Doctor meeting Shakespeare some 10 years earlier in The Shakespeare Code and the fate of Love's Labour's Won gets a bit of a contradiction from here in Empire but you can't expect the authors to know absolutely everything over the years. And then there's Marlowe - the editors of this range had no problem making a big deal about a historical figure's sexuality as they did with King James, this time having Marlowe lusting after Steven. The question of Steven's sexuality started to come up after this one with fans wondering if Steven somewhere in between the lines got it on with Marlowe. Ah revisionists. What a mess they like to make.

So I resign Empire to the "oh... okay, whatever" file. It's one thing to try and tie a few continuity threads together here and there but to try and create this whole web and overload it with stuff is not really necessary unless Andy Lane knew damn well his plot wasn't enough to fill all the pages. And if that is indeed the case, how about fixing the plot rather than padding it out and burying it under redundant details? Poor show Mr Lane, and poor show whoever was editing at the time.

NEXT EPISODE: THE SUFFERING