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All the world's a stage, Ah! After an extended hiatus, Doctor Who: The Legacy finally returns with the long awaited conclusion of The Soap of Fatal Death. The Soap of Fatal Death? Indeed yes, for this story, written by Simon Hart with Si Hunt, is centered around a soap opera and all the goings on and melodrama both on and off the set of the fictional soap “Clear Waters.” My first impressions when I read the title of this novella was that this would be great fun to read. I’ve been watching soap opera since I was eleven, and I have witnessed all kinds of outlandish and ridiculous plots, things that made no sense, i. e. a secret underground city, a person suddenly waking up in the 1880s, earth freezing machines and on and on. I have seen virtually everything, I think. So I looked forward to this story eagerly. If Simon could capture the spirit of fun and mystery and suspense that the title implies, The Legacy would have yet another quality story to be proud of. And it does. Soap begins with a little subterfuge by the Doctor. Ruby thinks they should be materializing on Earth in 1991, so she can attend a friend’s New Year’s party. But the Doctor wants to surprise her and instead they land on the set of Clear Waters. It only takes a few moments for Ruby to realize where they are, and she’s overwhelmed by the Doctor’s consideration. She’s a huge Clear Waters fan, and spending time with the people she’s watched on television and cares about is almost her idea of heaven. But soon she and the Doctor discover that all is not as it appears, and something evil is clouding those clear waters. In the opening episode Simon creates a wonderful milieu. The charm in the Clear Waters scenes is that Simon is poking fun at soap operas and perhaps the fans that follow and identify with them so closely. Everything and everyone associated with that soap opera is deliberately a stereotype. From the typically convoluted relationships like ‘Oh, Ethan, Steven’s not my brother at all as well you know. If Auntie Rosie suspected that we’re not related, who knows what she might do.’ to the actors who are portraying them. Simon has the temperamental diva, June River - who is a star, darling, and expects to be treated that way; the handsome talented leading man, Vinza DeJarnette, whom Ruby admires a great deal and who’s about to be killed off Clear Waters in dramatic fashion. The behind the scenes parts as well, with the jealousies over who will win the best actor/actress awards, and the carping, and worrying over the fate of their characters and the inane plots strikes me as wonderfully predictable. As one of the characters says, “It’s all ratings, ratings bloody ratings!” Even the production staff of Clear Waters are what you’d typically expect to find: Old Myrtle, the wise, long suffering cleaning woman who misses nothing, and the mysteriously absent director, Jonathan Crossland, who is talked about but who’s never seen. Simon manages with his easy, folksy writing style to make this familiarity entertaining reading. Something is awry on the set of Clear Waters; Ruby is convinced of it, and soon the Doctor is convinced too. The first real inkling of that isn’t the absentee director or the remote controlled operated cameras. One of the actors, Darryl French, is behaving oddly with glowing eyes and his coworkers are worried and concerned about him. The second chapter revolves around that, and the upcoming TV Gold Soap Awards. Simon writes smoothly, he reflects the underlying menace slowly, as there are hints throughout Soap that something sinister is going on beyond the normal in-fighting. I liked the scenes with Ruby and June, but even better is the relationship and interplay between Ruby and Vinza. June River may have disappointed and shocked Ruby with her shallow and prima donna behavior, but Vinza proves to be a worthy friend through the whole story. There are some typos and tiny errors sprinkled throughout Soap that a little tighter proofreading would have fixed. For instance, from part two, “Spying Ant playing a fruit machine” - I wasn’t sure if Ant was doing some kind of improvisational acting or playing with a fruit machine. Also, Darryl French is described with this oxymoron, “His eyes had taken on their normal trance-like look as he saw the two of them heading away.” Normal trance like look? To balance this out, there are some great touches that Simon Hart uses that I especially enjoyed. Those two references to Simon and Garfunkel songs demonstrate that although the Doctor is over eight hundred years old, he has excellent taste in music. The Doctor himself however takes a secondary presence in this novella. Because there are so many other vividly drawn characters, so much going on, he doesn’t take center stage in Soap. I’d say that goes to Ruby and Vinza and later on, even young Ant. They’re integral to the story’s climax and I was more interested in how they were going to save all of England’s citizens viewers from becoming zombies than I was in how the Doctor was going to do it. Although Simon has written the Doctor’s character skillfully, not overdoing his idiosyncrasies, in this excerpt from part four: ‘This is most fascinating, Ant!’ the Doctor said as if he had his head under nothing more innocent than a car bonnet. ‘Its sick if you ask me,’ Ant replied. ‘Yes, that too,’ the Doctor agreed, ‘but it is also most certainly an elegant fusing of organic and inorganic components. Quite monstrous.’ The Doctor’s a little too Mr. Spock-like in this scene. The Doctor should be horrified first, and only then comment on the evil ingeniousness of what he was looking at. This Anthony Stewart Head incarnation was supposed to show more empathy. Oops, not here. Ah, but just a paragraph or two further down, Simon redeems him and shows that he does have a good grasp of this Doctor, ‘Yes. Well I am not about to let the inhabitants of Great Britain be turned into zombies, Ant.” Hart then immediately adds this dig with that stereotypical and often lampooned phrase: “If I just reverse the polarity...” Nice! For a light, amusing tale, there are some gory elements. Darryl French’s suicide, poor Myrtle’s fate are all shocking and graphic. The specter of who was really on the top floor and why they want to draw the highest ratings for Clear Waters is subtly frightening. Maybe some of us are too addicted to soap opera and television for our own good. I think Ruby learns that lesson here, she learns soap operas aren’t real life thankfully. Conclusions:
Doctor Who and The Soap of Fatal Death is a satire and a spoof of soap operas and is a much better crafted story than the previous one written by the team of Simon Hart and Si Hunt. In true soap opera fashion, there are some memorable guest characters, creative plot twists, evil machinations and some great dialogue. It’s nice to see the Doctor’s friendship with Ruby grow and mature, and it’s just nice to have a female travelling companion who’s developing and not staying static or regressing. After that long hiatus, it’s a pleasure to finally read the exciting concluding episodes of The Soap of Fatal Death.
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