The Enemy of the World

The TARDIS returns the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria to Australia on Earth in 2018 where the world is in the grip of a series of natural disasters. The only man able to save the world, though, is named Salamander, and through his benevolence and wisdom he has made crops grow again and can accurately predict where the next natural disaster will strike. He has saved thousands of lives, and through such deeds has gained massive power and influence. But Salamander has enemies, and they think he is not the benefactor he seems, and they seek to expose him as a murder, extortionist and a traitor, and with the Doctor's help they can do that... because the Doctor looks exactly like Salamander.

It's not the first time we've had this sort of a double-act in Doctor Who; there was the deliberate creation of a robot duplicate of the Doctor by the Daleks in The Chase and the coincidental likeness between the Doctor and the Abbot of Amboise in The Massacre, and here it's different again. Salamander does his hair differently of course (as opposed to the Doctor's didn't-do) and speaks with an accent to accentuate his Mexican heritage, but otherwise, they're dead ringers for each other. The Doctor is not keen to get involved with the plan but when he does impersonate Salamander he manages to convince everyone of Salamander's inner circle for a time.

The Doctor is hesitant to get involved in usurping what could well be a world leader, seeing as he has no evidence to encourage him to do so. All he has is the word of Giles Kent, a disgraced political opponent, and his attache Astrid Ferrier, and from the get go the only violence the Doctor sees comes from their people - and all directed at him. In a rare move of divide and conquer Victoria and Jamie are sent across the world to infiltrate Salamander's inner circle and look for proof while the Doctor probes for answers at Salamander's research centre in Australia where the Doctor witnesses firsthand the brutality of Salamander's regime. Victoria and Jamie uncover the evidence they need to convince the Doctor of Salamander's evil ways through witnessing his cruel political ambitions, but the connection to the natural disasters is the Doctor's to uncover.

This one is a six part story and doesn't ever feel like it is moving slowly; the narrative spans the globe even if some of the location footage like Jamie walking towards Victoria in a park or Astrid escaping through undergrowth is very obviously a studio. The beach scenes with the TARDIS, especially the evening shot in episode six, are effective despite the lighting being a bit too direct at night and the TARDIS doors assembled on the wrong sides for some reason. Small stuff - the rest is very engaging to watch and enjoy. Salamander himself makes for one of the nastiest villains in the series -  very cold, calculating, scheming and without conscience and he surrounds himself with toadies like his slimy second in command, Benik, or unwilling associates like his food taster, Faria.

Dig the little salamander in the O

My first enjoyment of the story came years and years ago with the publication of the novelization of the episode by Ian Marter; I don't exactly remember what my thoughts were on it at the time, but I do remember thinking at first that the people on the cover were the villains of the story but once I got to see it (or at least episode 3 - more on that soon) I realized they really were; it's Astrid and Giles but for some reason Giles has a murderous look on his face and has his finger poised over what is obviously "the button" with Astrid looking kinda crazed at his side. Years later, though, I got hold of a copy of the only existing episode at the time, episode 3, and got some better idea of who the players were, and eventually got the audio of the story to enjoy, and Target released the title again with a better cover. In 2013, though, just in time for the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, all the missing episodes of the story turned up and finally could be seen for the first time in decades. There was no end to the joy that brought, considering what crap the actual current TV series was serving up at the time for anniversary fare, and now there was another complete story from the classic era of the show to enjoy. I snared it off iTunes at the time but got a physical DVD copy eventually which oddly doesn't come with any extras or commentary to go with it. This turned out to be the only complete story found in what at the time was referred to as "the omnirumour" which had it that every lost episode was coming back, but proved to be a bit of a stretch; we got 9 episodes back in total, which is the single biggest haul of missing episodes so far. Their recovery sparked some new hope among fans and the search continues for more.

That said, though, there are still four more episodes to account for in that haul, and what a coincidence, they are from the next story...

NEXT EPISODE: THE WEB OF FEAR

Combat Rock

Touting their arrival on a tropical beach as a "welcome change" the Doctor leads Jamie and Victoria from the TARDIS into a colonial world where things are starting to get a bit out of hand. The ruling Indoni under the rule of President Sabit are clamping down on the insurrectionist group OPG on their home island of Papul, which is exactly where there have been  a sudden reversion to cannibalism by the indigenous tribes and reports of mummified creatures coming back to life and spitting death at the tourists. And the Doctor can't wait to find out what's going on.

I think I have mentioned already how every so often a Doctor Who novel comes along which goes against the grain of the rest of the series; sometimes it does so by notching up the narrative to something more complicated than the usual TV scripts (The Time Travellers) or it might just paint a far more vivid picture of history (Byzantium!) but in this case, Combat Rock is a standout for its sheer level of violence and graphic gore. And bad language. Very bad language. One might argue that this is not a Doctor Who novel at all, just some disturbing tale where the Doctor and company are guest starring in someone else's nightmare, but no, this is, to me, very much Doctor Who just to an extreme not usually reached.

It's no secret that this is Mick Lewis' own parable take on colonial subjugation, specifically in Indonesia, so what more likely companions to throw into this than Jamie and Victoria. Jamie's entire life has been under the threat of the Redcoats and their attacks of the people of the Highlands, the theft of property and the executions of his fellow clansmen who would stand up against the oppressors. Jamie knows a bad regime when he sees it, but he also knows when things are out of hand and wishes the Doctor could just, for once, steer clear. Jamie has his own knack for danger, though, and finds it right away at a local bar where he flirts with local girls out to make a buck and almost has to tangle with a hired mercenary with his own agenda in the tale. On the other hand there's Victoria, who has been pretty sheltered from the world in her upbringing, that is until the Doctor and Jamie came along and she was thrown to the not so tender mercies of Cybermen, Yeti and Ice Warriors. But Victoria's upbringing was on the other side of Imperialism, with her upper class background allowing her to benefit from the British Empire doing exactly what the Indoni are doing, but her eyes are well and truly opened to the horrific cost of maintaining an Empire when she falls in with the Indoni Army itself and witnesses its brutality firsthand.

The other players here are a crack troop of mercenaries under the direct command of the President; they are known only as "the Dogs" (read: Dogs of War) and they have their own directives in all of this. Their leader, Pan, is arguable one of the most dangerous thugs that has ever been realized in Doctor Who across any media. The man is a big. He swears a lot (and yes the swear words are real) and he has some barbaric notions about a woman's place in the world leading him to consider them all to be whores and treat them as such; beating them, bullying them and even casually murdering them once he has had his way with them. The rest of his group are all given characteristic handles and their own psychoses to make them just as dangerous, although I find that giving military mercenaries these extreme names and characteristics gets a bit too comic book for me; there's nicknaming and then there's lapsing into 2D, and this is the only place where Combat Rock slips down into the caricature tawdriness of elite military forces like those in Predator or even GI Joe cartoons.

Lewis is particularly good at evoking the wild scary rainforests of Papul, probably from his own personal adventures in such places here on our own Earth. Under his pen the jungle seethes with dangerous life. And it's hot. And the insects are plentiful and maddening. The cannibal tribes leave their markings here and there to warn trespassers off, and despite their differences the OPG operate on almost the same levels, leaving the decapitated heads of their enemies on stakes at the entrance to their jungle fortress. The OPG are ruled by a mysterious creature called the Krallick from whom all the directives to kill and flay are sent. The Krallick rules his own people through fear, easily murdering anyone who is not in line with what needs to be done to liberate the Papul people from the Indoni. The level of violence never really dips at all across all of the factions, which is something else Lewis is particularly good at, and yes, the violence is quite disturbing if you're not open to Doctor Who going somewhere new with the narrative. There has been blood before, but this... well, I'll not mince words, it gets particularly gross but in my mind never gratuitously so. We're dealing with cannibals here at points; they don't stop to floss after a meal.

Through all of this horror and blood, the Doctor is still absolutely Troughton. He has all the physical comedy trapping as on screen and they translate better to page here than they did in the previous novel Dreams of Empire, probably because Mick Lewis never once plays this one for laughs. The Doctor does what the Doctor does, and he's not exactly phased by what he sees going on around him which touches on that darker side of Troughton's portrayal that only gets hinted at on screen. The first Doctor was often dispassionate about death, still holding himself above lesser races, and here the second Doctor still accepts the violence of other cultures very matter of factly while still looking out for Jamie and Victoria. He's not prone to outbursts, though, when he sees unnecessary cruelty being inflicted by people who should, in his estimation, know better, including the Krallick itself when he finally confronts it. The faint hearted who prefer some goofball shit Matt Smith version of the Doctor would not be able to handle this type of tale and would cry that it is not Doctor Who at all - but when you get the Doctor right (as Smith never EVER did), it is undeniable Doctor Who.

Bravo, Mick Lewis. Bravo.

NEXT EPISODE: THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD

Dreams of Empire

The TARDIS takes the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria into the far future in a distant galaxy where a vast Republic teeters on the edge of civil war. The results of a power struggle in the upper ruling ranks have resulted in widespread unease and the imprisonment of a charismatic leader on an isolated asteroid prison far from the centre of power, the future of the Republic hanging in the balance. But political prisoners are never without their followers, and as the TARDIS crew arrive it becomes obvious that something is going on in the prison which could result in the death or freeing of the prisoner, and either result could plunge the Republic of Haddron into bloody chaos.

Despite the grimness of what is going on in the story, I think this was supposed to be taken as a comedy. I think. From the moment the Doctor and company enter the narrative it's slapstick humour all around, be it in the TARDIS with antics about uneaten sandwiches or once they emerge into danger and are running away from things and guards. Most of the physical humour employed on page is about the Doctor and his bumbling stumbling ways, and his frequent physical collisions with Jamie, but I couldn't help but feel author Justin Richards spent a bit too much time on trying to describe what we often see on screen with Patrick Troughton's more frantic moments, and the result on page is actually a slower delivery of the action rather than a burst of it.

On the other side of this is a pretty grim tale about former friends who ran the Republic and who ended up on either side of their first bloody civil war. Now the victor, Trayx, holds his former best friend, Kesar, in prison; he can never let him go because it would all start over again, and to execute him would allow Kesar to ascend to martyrdom, which would also reignite the flames of war back home. It's a matter of opinion if Trayx is actually holding his own unfaithful wife, Helena, prisoner as well by keeping her there with him, and since she once had a sneaky on the side thing with Kesar it must be a sort of form of punishment for her to be confined with them both. Kesar was the victim of  an assassination attempt which left him in a metal mask - it's all very Alexandre Dumas in that sense. The asteroid prison where Kesar is kept is oddly under-maintained; not exactly falling apart but certainly not as up to date as it could be considering who they are keeping there. I actually question the wisdom of a remote prison environment like that; sure they're far away from everyone who might want to attempt a prison break, but they're far from help should anyone try. It's hard to get a read on the technological angles of this society; they have space travel but have a thing for Medieval style castles in space, and their biggest weapon is a legion of robot troops called VETACs who come off as animated suits of armour perfectly adept to hanging out in castles. The base is staffed with soldiers loyal to both sides of the conflict in an effort to show that there is acceptance of the arrangement, but it's not to be a lasting peace as the murders start once the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria get there.

So while we have the Doctor being comical all over the place, there's Jamie being... brave and headstrong as usual. And Victoria being ... scared yet a little snooty at times. Nothing really changes there, then. Pretty accurate for the companions, then, but not really anything new for them to do. Aside from their duties as companions to bounce off the Doctor's antics, they don't really go anywhere else. Or maybe I just think they should and they're doing the best they can. I did read that Jamie is described as having a "powerful body" on one page, which is interesting because he's not really a gym fit type, just strong from his upbringing, and not exactly a large man either. Hmm.

Continuity wise Dreams of Empire fits where it should right after The Ice Warriors and even contains a reference to that adventure to assure its accurate placement. Dreams is another of the earlier BBC Books novels so new ground is not necessarily being broken yet and all the authors, including Justin Richards, are playing it safe at the time. The novel somehow warranted a reprint with a new cover during the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who but no book on tape treatment as with some of the others re-released with it (I think it could have befitted from Fraser Hines doing the read on this one). There's still another BBC Books novel to read before going back to the televised series though, and it comes along a bit later in the publishing run when a few more risks were being taken and the writing became a bit edgier... let's see.

NEXT EPISODE: COMBAT ROCK