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.

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