Dying in the Sun

It's 1947 and Hollywood is as glamorous and glitzy as ever. Star Light Pictures, an upstart production company, it taking the town by storm with rumours that its new feature - a film called Dying in the Sun - is a special effects tour de force the likes of which have never been seen before. The Doctor is in town with Ben and Polly, and his investigations into the death of an old friend eventually lead him back to Star Light Pictures. No-one can really be bothered though; the LAPD don't seem very interested in the Doctor's theories and would rather chase the son of one of their own as the culprit. And with a new movie being the talk of the town, all eyes are on the celebrities and stars around the project, because everyone is so beautiful and perfect. Too perfect.

Hum. The first thing I have to ask is when did the Doctor meet this Holly wood director old friend who is now dead? He's only just regenerated and has been with Polly and Ben the whole time and they don't remember him, so it must have been somewhere in his earlier incarnation. I don't really see the first Doctor as the hanging in Hollywood type, but seeing as Jon De Burgh Miller got a lot of things wrong with this book this is just one more to add to the list.

I think my biggest complaint to sum up the experience of reading Dying in the Sun is the vagueness of the whole thing. He's probably not been to Los Angeles ever, that much is certain from reading the narrative - this could be any city with streets. Granted the LA of 1947 was not the LA of today (I've not been there either so I am guessing and probably accurately) but a little research goes a long way. Oh he made sure to make it a crowded city as there are a lot of crowds in the book, but they're all lumped together as "shocked diners" or celebrities or stars or (my favourite) police or cops, and sometimes the latter example happens from line to line on the same page.

The people are not really made out well here. This De Sande guy who is running Star Light doesn't come across as dangerous or bad at all. Okay his motivation is clear to him as he is under the sway of aliens he and a lot of other people drank, but he never made me feel like he was a real threat. Same could be said of the rest of the people working with him. Except for a group of robed guys who are actually rotting corpses who aren't even that scary because they're possessed by the same aliens everyone else drank. Police Captain Wallis is a bit of a mystery but he's obviously in cahoots, so much that he is busy hunting his troublemaker adopted son, Chate, for the murder of the Doctor's friend. And Chate has a crush on a washed out movie starlet named Maria who is making a hell of a comeback thanks to the aliens.

The aliens, right. They're called Selyoids and you can drink them and they become part of you and somehow alter everyone's perception of you making you sexier and radiant. It's like real life airbrushing. In this sense they enter a symbiotic relationship with the host but they bliss the host out like drugs of a sort. They want to be a part of the human race, and they've started by infiltrating the film industry as a means to access the public. And in enough numbers you don't need to drink them to be influenced, and the best way to reach a wider audience is to do it through the movies.

Polly drinks from the Kool Aid and becomes one of the instant celebrities, with the voices of the aliens inside her telling her she's pretty and better than everyone else and deserves star treatment and she pulls a right stunt dissing the Doctor and Ben in front of everyone at a gala. Oh yes this is another novel telling us how pretty Polly is with yet more people falling over her and telling her she has star potential. No mention by her of her modelling moments back in London, even if they're about 18 years in the future. And all Ben seems to want to do for the first half of the book is sleep.

Here's an interesting one though - the TARDIS isn't in the story. It's not even mentioned. And it's not like it absolutely has to be, but it's just odd that it doesn't come up once so we have no idea how long the Doctor and company have been there, and where the TARDIS is. The Doctor mentions to someone that he "found himself in Los Angeles" which could mean either the TARDIS landed there, or it's somewhere else in America and they are travelling without it for a bit. I think that's really the only good thing I found out of this one: the potential for there to be more happening on either side of it, and hopefully it's better adventures than this one.

NEXT EPISODE: INVASION OF THE CAT PEOPLE