The Devil Goblins From Neptune

It's all go for UNIT right now. A mysterious object breaks up as it enters Earth's atmosphere and is immediately followed by a rash of sudden deaths. The Doctor is targeted for abduction by not one but two forces outside of UNIT. Bolstered by the relative success of the Mars Probe missions the British Rocket Group is sending probes to Neptune. The Brigadier suspects infiltration at the highest levels of UNIT command in Geneva. And there are winged devil goblins flying in the skies overhead.

I'll admit I really had a hard time with the title of this one. It's not like Doctor Who hasn't had its fair share of boner titles like The Happiness Patrol and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy but this one just sounded a bit of a joke when it was announced. To put it into perspective, this was the very first novel to feature a past Doctor published in the BBC Books range in 1997, and those of us who had been reading the Virgin Publishing ranges up to this point were a bit worried that the BBC taking the line back in-house might mean a drop in quality. So when the first title of the new range was announced to be The Devil Goblins From Neptune there was a collective "Oh crap!" as if our worst fears were coming true.

But it's not really bad. It's an interesting place for the range to start, joining the Doctor in the early day of his Earth exile and adding a third story to the season "7b" that followed Inferno. The problem with doing that is there are already two previous entries which were planned to work together - Eye of the Giant and The Scales of Injustice - to commit the most serious offence there is in Doctor Who; the sin that is retcon. As I have said before there is a certain arrogance that comes with this practice, and with the previous two tales under the Virgin banner there was the minor league deal of Yates being introduced before his televised debut, and then the bigger one of writing Liz Shaw out as she never got a farewell scene. I've ranted enough about that already, but here we are with Devil Goblins and Mike Yates has been promoted to Captain now, and Liz is still around after all. The BBC Books editors were under no obligation to honour whatever continuity Virgin created but seeing as a lot of the authors were writing for both lines or were at the very least aware of them they might have worked with what was already there instead of ignoring it. Because lo, Keith Topping and Martin Day pretty much decided they were going to write Liz out too. Here's where one's adherence to continuity requires a little bit of flexibility, and if one really wanted to push it, one would be required to believe that the entire story here in Devil Goblins takes place before Liz's exit scene in Scales. As do some of the next entries to come in the form of Big Finish audios. And not to be satisfied with this folly, the author duo also toss in a couple more continuity carrots: a reference to Professor Rachel Jansen from 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks and a mention of Ian Chesterton which kind of shorts out some of an upcoming novel titled The Face of the Enemy, although the blame for the latter would fall more on the writer of that novel as it was published later.

Devil Goblins does a fair share of globe-trotting with the Doctor and Liz taking up with the UNIT USSR and going to Siberia while the Brigadier goes to Geneva, and everyone ends of at Area 51 itself in Nevada, USA where there's a second batch of aliens being held since the 1950s. It's an established notion that in any drama you can tell a story effectively by splitting the action between several characters, but by the time they were done here Topping and Day had their main cast scattered across the planet trying to solve the mystery of winged aliens called the Waro, who somehow had convinced people in authority to undermine UNIT to ensure a successful invasion. But there's a group of Americans at work here as well - there's UNIT USA and there's also the CIA itself which doesn't like to give any authority away especially to foreigners. The Americans are by and large just put across as blustering arrogant types who look down on everyone else around them, while the Russians are painted as haughty and saddled with a superiority complex like no other. Given that the era this is set in was not exactly one of peace and trust these are not too far off the mark for the opposing superpowers at the time, but even still it gets a bit tedious to read without hoping that someone is going to slap one of the offending parties in the face.

I wouldn't say this was a confusing read but a lot of it just seemed like a bit too much at times, especially when the main aliens, the Waro, are not really developed beyond being beasts and then suddenly there is an entire new species - one which is a natural enemy to them - thrown into the mix for the writers to play with. I found myself wondering when it was going to end more than once.

So Liz has been given departure material twice now and her stay at UNIT still seems short. Big Finish is here to the rescue with a few more Liz tales to enjoy and add to the extended season 7 (or 7b as the case may be) material...

NEXT: THE LIZ SHAW CHRONICLES