Chapter Four; The Perfect Couple Back to the future. And so we return to the twenty-sixth century, for more politics and war in the throne rooms of power. It is becoming increasingly clear throughout this series of stories how much of history is made by so few people: one person decides there will be a war, and a war begins; someone determines to invade a non-threatening territory, and the warriors arrive there without delay. This time the invasion begins when one man, President Bush - sorry, Emperor Izlyr - chooses to invade Iraq - sorry, Peladon - just as his people, the Americans - sorry, the Martians - did many years before. It is odd, then, that the Martians are painted as the baddies, with only a few said to have retained their honour: especially given that one of the authors of this piece is American. But I know what you’re thinking: is it any good? I’ll be honest with you, I personally don’t like these stories set in the twenty-fourth and a half century or whatever. The Doctor being entrenched in one time period felt last season like the UNIT stories of the seventies, returning after each adventure to the nice cosy surroundings of home - and is one of the reasons I much preferred Season One over Season Two. Since the appeal of Doctor Who is its diversity, the ability to go anywhere EVER, it seems much of a shame to keep returning to the same time and place for more of these endless political struggles. Anchoring the Doctor into one time and style of writing may thus seem like a good idea, especially with regard to running yearlong plots, but if a reader doesn’t like that setting, then they’re stuck with it. For instance, I wouldn’t even contemplate watching "Peak Practice", because it’s set in a doctor’s surgery in Yorkshire or wherever; yet if Doctor Who moved there, would I obliged to watch it? Then again, this is probably just me - I work in local government, and I’ve just started studying politics. Perhaps I’m too aware that it’s not the most rapturous of subjects. As such, this story seems to continue much more from Season Two’s ideas and themes, and less from Season Three’s (or indeed, the-first-three-chapters-of-this-story’s!). There’s a sense that we are going back to old events, that we haven’t moved on, and it creates a hurdle for Frankham and Medeiros to clear before they can even start to focus on the story. I realise it is difficult to run overarching plotlines when you’re not confined to one place, but Frankham has shown he is quite capable of doing it on a character level, so why not a plot level? Still, it is the first adventure of this season to deal with twenty-sixth century life, and it does try to rise above the sub-Star Trek rubbish that mired much of last year. The Doctor’s missing again, of course, but I won’t complain about that again. His presence is definitely felt; particularly good is the irony of the Federation wanting the Doctor to sue for peace, when he can’t even keep his friends on his own side. It’s nice to know that a reviewer has some influence though, with earlier complaints of mine seeming to be rested in the lines, “The diary he had bought in Paris had been replaced on his first return visit to Alpha Centauri with an electronic one,” and, “It made for much more fluid prose than Nick could otherwise manage.” That’s pretty much what I said! Hee hee! My egotism was in fact beginning to suggest that the story was written entirely for me, as the line about alcohol, “Obviously a load of old tosh, since it hasn’t done me any good. Just made things seem worse,” is immediately resonant with someone like myself, defining precisely just why I stopped drinking. You can almost hear the narratives of the two authors switching back and forth wonderfully throughout the text. They both bring something different of their excellent writing to the piece, and I think they interact perfectly. I suspect the basic plot to be Frankham’s (as is that stuff above about the diary!); whilst one section that stood out looks more like Medeiros’ work: “The sound of the wind rushing across the landscape was relentless, the constant roar making the planet of Peladon appear forbidding and inhospitable. Looking down at the stark panorama from the citadel at the apex of Mount Megeshra, King Garet was locked deep within his own thoughts.” Now the magic pencil could be wrong in summarising this passage with one word (“Betty?”), but that just goes to show how the authors dovetail beautifully. At the same time, the line that made me laugh out loud must be Frankham’s: “As the green phallic shaped alien drifted further away from him, the more Nick’s feeling of isolation increased”. It’s just the juxtaposition of the two spectacularly exact concepts that made me giggle. Oh, and the wonderful use of the word “hir” deserves a special mention, drawing to attention one of my own long-held annoyances of absence from the English language. Just what do you call someone of indeterminate gender? Other aspects are also interesting - the identity of the Federation President came completely out of the blue (since I’ve forgotten much of last season), and is actually quite scary, when you consider the consequences. Is he evil? Is he to blame for the Martian Invasion? Is he George W Bush? Would the leader of a dozen planets really step about town on his tod? So, whilst I’m not sure of the logic of calling it Chapter Four, this is easily the story I could write more about than any other this Season (well, maybe not Kuang-Shi). It is worth noting that I can usually only write more when I enjoy the story more (presumably ‘cos I care about how good it is?). It is a credit to the authors that I did enjoy it so despite my initial dread of its premise. And I didn’t even mention Nick punching the TARDIS, his only remaining symbol of the Doctor. How subtle is that? Is nice. Chapter Five; Cloudy Martians defeated by cold? You fool, Wells, they’re called Ice Warriors! I’m writing this review around two hours after my deadline for it being in. I’ve been stuck in traffic jams for about three hours, after a journey to the Metrocentre, so forgive me if I’m not in the most joyous of moods. Still, I’ll try to give a fair review of Chapter Two (for it is Chapter Two), because I enjoyed seeing "Red Dragon" (although it wasn’t as good as "Manhunter"). Medeiros and Frankham introduce us to a new Doctor here. Or do they? I’m not entirely certain on whom this new incarnation is meant to be based, but the clues are there, and they suggest Anthony Stewart Head. An inspired choice to be sure, and not an entirely surprising one given Frankham’s apparent love of American teen-drama "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". The use of an actor to base a Doctor on is wonderful, allowing so much more detail into the character - everything down to the slight lisp in his voice is noticed and recorded. Would you have put that in if you were inventing a character from scratch? It serves to give a heightened sense of realism to the new incarnation, as he seems to have his own foibles and idiosyncrasies, as well as the standard Doctorly tics and grimaces. I quite like the slightly smug Doctor pleased at himself for unlocking a door, as long as authors are careful with that aspect in future, because it could get very annoying. However, one would suspect that the introduction of a new Doctor would be a rather more overt affair, not him being named off-handedly half a Chapter into his first appearance. I’m not altogether sure, then, of the authors’ motivations here. If this is meant to be a new Doctor, then why not have a big trauma and regeneration sequence? The lack of one suggests that he may at some point be revealed as an imposter. But if this is so, why is he continually (and annoyingly!) referred to as the “Doctor”, in quotation marks? This only serves to make conspicuous the uncertainty over his identity, spoiling any dramatic potential the scenes with him might have had. Why not just call him the Doctor and let us think it was him, then if he is revealed not to be, it will be a shock announcement (something Doctor Who Magazine did perfectly well with its “Ninth Doctor” arc a few years back)? At the moment, we won’t be surprised if he is the Doctor, because that’s what he is being called, and we won’t be surprised if he isn’t, because it is made noticeable with the speech marks. Either way, it feels like an opportunity missed through lack of thought. Still, I haven’t read the rest of the story yet, so I could be completely wrong. The authors elsewhere have suggested that the two Ruins stories are designed to explore the feelings of the Doctor and his companions. This objective for the story is summed up by the line, “For him it was his loss, and for her it was dealing once and for all with her destructive nature.” However, despite the continued statement of this, there’s precious little evidence of this going on yet. Only Nick’s moping around has manifested itself so far, although his search for peace taking the form of meditation is a nice touch. It’s still a shame that the supposed crux of the story has hardly been covered in the first two Chapters of Ruins of Self, Part the Second. Frankham deals out his usual list of lovely images, further convincing me that he’d be a wonderful film director, along the lines of Ridley Scott or someone. The apparent death of the Doctor’s friends on a spaceship is great, as just for a moment you really think they’re gone - the visual of four warships surrounding a small craft and blasting it out of existence convincing. In fact the ship itself got the greatest plaudits from me - why has nobody ever done a stone spaceship before? Come to think of it, I’ve a feeling Mark Gatiss did a stone TARDIS in his novel "Nightshade", but this is just as good - a space-faring temple. Also, the image of the King of Peladon, the proud symbol of his people kneeling at the feet of the Martian Invaders is truly scary (or rather amusing if you’re a non-royalist). Do you think our Queen Bess’d ever do that? No, I’d like to think she’d argue and get killed. One thing I will point out is the very odd description in the last line of the chapter. Nick is said to be dead, and his “ruined body” is placed on a Martian stone slab, ready for a post-mortem experiment apparently to discover how the body works. However, the prose description says the body “looked very much like a corpse in a mortuary awaiting an autopsy.” Hang on a minute, only “very much like”? Surely that’s exactly what it is? I’ve been focusing on the details again, as I always do, but let me just say that the two authors still interact beautifully, to such an extent that I can’t tell where one starts and the other ends. And yes, it was a good episode - although again, nothing really special. I like. You like? Chapter Six; Here, There and Everywhere Stoorxz, Garet, Vlaash, Sshaarp, Xzalnyr, Izlyr, Wellarzlee, Xylat, and Bob. Guess which one isn’t a character in this story? So what does Chapter Six of Ruins give us then? Well… more of the same, really. A bit more running around, a bit more political intrigue, and a bit less fun. After reading it, I’ve a funny feeling that I didn’t have when I was actually reading it. It seems like in the Chapter I’ve just read there were a great deal of really important things going on in the background that I didn’t notice at all at the time. I can’t even pin down what they might have been, but there’s this tangible feeling that I’ve just read something that is going to be very important in the future - but I don’t know why, because nothing really seems to happen. After a bit of thought (although not much), it’s probably something to do with the “Doctor” (as I now call him, with the quotation marks). It’s still not clear whether he is the Doctor or not, but he seems a lot more Doctorly than the Brian Blessed incarnation. His leading of the King of Peladon around the underground passages of Mount Megeshra is a tremendously arrogant thing to do, even if it is to save his life: he seems more like the Doctor than ever. And there’s a nice bit of punnery by having the Doctor show his stethoscope. Then again, it could be something to do with Nick. Now I’ve never met the geezer that Nick is based on, I’ve never spoken to him on the internet, but I get the feeling that most of the authors have, as more than any other character in these tales, he seems the one that most authors tend to want to write about (or at least the one that’s easiest to write for!). In this Chapter we find out that the events of The Collector have taken their toll, and he is no longer the person he once was. Far be it for me to say that didn’t exactly the same plotline happen to the Doctor recently? (he’s not what we think he is), but it’s a nice development. One of the most successful aspects of the entire Legacy sequence is the way the long-running threads intertwine, and Nick seems to have been through more changes than most. I’m still waiting for a resolution to his meeting in Kuang-Shi way back at the start of the season, but if one thing is certain in this series, it’s that the events will be covered at some point. Of course, now we have the lovely situation where Nick has been complaining that the Doctor is not who we thought he was, and now Nick isn’t who we think he is. I just hope Alf begins to question Nick in the same way that Nick questioned the clone, so Nick is aware of how the Doctor has been feeling. This will bring a lovely resolution to that plot, keeping a perfect resonance with what went before. There do, however, seem to be some structural problems with this Chapter. The final chapter ended with the apparent death of Nick, and this one features both Alf mourning Nick and Nick revealed as being alive. But they’re the wrong way round. Alf mourns Nick after we know he is awake. How much more effective would it have been to have her mourn him whilst we too still thought he was dead? We’d see how much she loved him, and last week’s cliffhanger would have kept us going for that little bit longer. Since anything can happen in this series, if we’d seen Alf crying over Nick, we might’ve actually thought he was dead, making his survival that much more of a shock. The physical writing of the piece is on par again. From the little details, such as the beautiful notion that the Martians have a special tool for euthanasia so the old and infirm can die with honour (perfectly summing up the warrior culture of the race), everything seems just right. I sometimes find it difficult to distinguish the Martians and the Draconians (and indeed, the Klingons!), especially given the similarity of the names (Sshaarp is a Martian, Vlaash is a Draconian), but that’s easily sorted. A couple of Frankham’s familiar touches return, specifically the person tied and bound to a chair still somehow managing to escape, but they are counterbalanced by one moment which oddly reminded me more of Doctor Who than anything else so far this season, and for no real reason - when the Doctor and the Pels cut through the wall behind an Ice Warrior without him noticing, I felt so at home - and I don’t know why. It just felt like the type of thing they used to do all the time in the seventies. Yes, I know I’m odd. The entire text is full of little one-liners though, such as “Her face was still wet from the tears that she refused to cry,” and “He shut his eyes tight, and tried to stop the waves of agony tearing at his heart,” which I’m convinced is a Medeiros line. Reading one line at a time, it’s so much more rich and quotable than many other stories. Oh and Wellarzlee is a true villain, from his disappointment that he can’t fight side-by-side with Xzalnyr, to his little turns of phrase, like “feeble resistance” and “the time for action was now!” I can just see him strutting around his little lair somewhere shouting “why am I surrounded by idiots?!”, whilst his minions run around doing all the work, and fetching him bits of paper with important war details on them. Cut from the same cloth as Professor Zaroff or Christopher Robbie’s Cyberleader, quite frankly he’s as camp as Christmas, and one of the best characters The Legacy has produced. And anything with black cats in gets my vote. Doctorly. Chapter Seven; Here's Where The Story Ends In which one of the lead characters dies… Right, we get the conclusion to the four-part Ruins of Self II story here, and with two lots of throne-room shenanigans going on, I hope you’re paying attention. As the splendidly camp Ice Warrior leader, Wellarzlee, attempts to take over the Martian throne there’s a bit of a battle. Fortunately Alf and Nick survive this so they can travel to Pel to finish off the fight against Commander Sshaarp in the Peladon throne room. Now I think it’s a shame to see Wellarzlee go - I said in my review last week that he was great, and although I don’t know whether he was written as being Zaroff-esque (I certainly hope so!), he definitely comes across like that. For once in The Legacy we have a villain who you feel is a villain just because he likes being a bit nasty - oh yes, he has a motive to take Mars to its former glory or whatever, but quite the reason why seems to be just because he’s a bit old-fashioned. Isn’t that marvellous? I can remember when I first saw "The Curse of Peladon" in the early nineties: wonderful story, but I thought it was such a shame that they made the Ice Warriors goodies; I was dead chuffed when they went a bit evil again in time for "The Monster of Peladon". Now as an all growed-up adult, I can see that intelligent aliens have an advantage in the written medium - they are necessary for character development and plot advancement. Yet up until now I had been thinking that in the age of the novella everyone must have a persona, a clearly defined set of ideologies for doing what they do; I rather missed the monsters who killed people because they were monsters. As a bit I cut out of previous review said: where are the mindless zombies attacking the small village church? It’s nice that for once we get telly-style evil for evil’s sake. Characterisation is a strength of these writers though - even the planet Earth has a character, for despite its single scene, it is implied that the planet is forcing life to renew itself after the Cyber-factories have been abandoned: “It was as if Earth had used the fifty years to reclaim itself”. Another example of this is intertwined perfectly with one of Frankham’s glorious visuals - King Garet kneeling in front of his own throne as Sshaarp sits wearing Garet’s crown at a lop-sided angle. I don’t have words to explain how amazing that was when I read it - the detail of the askew coronet still has me laughing now, and it shows the character of what could have been “just another Ice Warrior” perfectly (even though I’ve just been complaining about Ice Warriors with souls!). Incidentally, I had another laugh at the line “Garet stood up and gave Sshaarp a big shove”. It sounds like something said by Dougal from "Father Ted"! So then, the TARDIS crew. The Doctor’s friend (the mentally unstable one, not the “I don’t trust you” one) realises she has to stop killing people brutally. Whilst I find it difficult to believe the Doctor could travel with a violent murderer, it’s nice that we get a bit of closure to this storyline, which, entertaining though it is, has been explored surely as much as it can be. Of course, one by-product of this renaissance of Alf is that she gets to say things like, “‘Something in here,’ she pointed at her heart, ‘says it was’” which is twee in the extreme: poor soap opera melodrama rather than real emotion. And the new “Doctor”. We don’t see a great deal of him admittedly, but I’m rather enjoying his appearances so far. He’s easily much more believable than the Blessed incarnation ever was, down to his certainty that a Martian will retain his honour by conceding to him - just as the Martian grabs the Doctor by the neck. This Doctor is slightly arrogant, but not dislikeable as, say, the sixth Doctor was. And he says, “Trust me, I’m the Doctor”!! Fantastic. The device of allowing (a presumably future) Doctor to make his first appearance in a story that should feature his predecessor is so simple yet marvellous it’s a wonder nobody has thought of it before. It is reminiscent of the best ever episode of the best ever television programme of the nineteen eighties, "Robin of Sherwood’s" second season finale "The Greatest Enemy" (in which the future Robin appears to save the dying Robin’s friends), and I’m glad the decision was made to remove “our” Doctor from the story to prevent the two meeting (“Blessed be” as Robin might have said!). This technique is a beautiful way of whetting our appetites for the future, and leads this reviewer to hope a regeneration is forthcoming - with this to look forward too, it can be purely for the purposes of a pointless shock cliffhanger for all I care - something I have lamented in these reviews in the past. One thing is certain, Frankham and his team are definitely coming up with new and original ways to tell Doctor Who stories, and some of them are mind-blowingly amazing. They’d give Big Finish a run for their money, I can tell you (and what I of course mean is that I’d’ve never have thought of half the things they’ve done). Then again, just as I’m thinking they’ve done really well, they go and include the single most annoying premise in the history of science-fiction - the one about leaving something permanently a second in the future making it invisible. I don’t care what anybody says: if you move something forward one second, then you will see it in one second’s time. Aaarrghh! Oh, and although I suspect Medeiros will be looking through this review for mention of the wonderful coda, she’s in for a disappointment. There’s nothing I can possibly say to describe the beauty of its perfection, so if you want to find out what could possibly be written that could make me keep my opinions to myself, I suggest you go and read it yourself. You should. Overall Well, Ruins of Self is a game of two parts, Part I and, er... Part II. Except it’s not. Despite what the promotion and design insist, Ruins… is/are two separate stories. The title proclaims them to be about the characters as much as the plot, which is certainly true of the first part, but not at all about the second part - notwithstanding some moping by Nick, only the final chapter delivers what the Ruins I promised. Neither do the plots continue; in all respects these are two discrete adventures. And they’re both enjoyable. I liked the first half on a purely character-based revelatory level, the second on an intriguing experiment into swapping Doctors level. Reading the two together is no more necessary than any other two stories of the season, it just happens that they both conclude or develop some major plotlines. But the writing is fine - whilst the neither is the best story of the season, the first chapter of Ruins I is in the running for best individual episode. I’ve suggested that the two authors of the second part intertwine perfectly: I’m starting to revise that viewpoint based on the fact that I can usually tell their writing apart, and I’m not completely sure that’s a good thing all the time. They’re both great, of course: Frankham’s eye for visual detail continually astounds; Medeiros’ gorgeous technique of writing makes me want to write with her. But I’m glad they’ll be doing stories apart or with other people next year. Revelatory.