Chapter One; Sunny Boy And so the second half of the season kicks off with a cross between "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Casablanca", but set in space. It’s clear from reading this Chapter that Richard Dinnick “is” a writer in the same way that some people are obviously not, and as soon as I saw the phrase “crash-materialisation”, I knew it. His prose reads as a professional’s, like he’s been doing this for years, which for all I know, he has. Easily giving some big-name Doctor Who authors a run for their money, he should be writing for Beeb Books’ official Doctor Who series, because he’s that good. Instantly usurping Niall Turner as the best writer 3a has produced, Andie Frankham continues to assemble a crack squad of fictionalists to improve the worlds he has created. Where Dinnick scores is in the painting of a new world. Every aspect of Yahanis is believable; every detail sculpted and considered to perfection. Either Dinnick is already familiar with a basic Arabic-cultured country of the planet Earth, or he is an expert researcher, but this society integrates character and environment exactly: the players feel as if they were born and bred in this part of the universe, and not just placed there for the purposes of the story. There’s also something nice brewing in the plot, too. Quite often in these things that boast excellent locations and characters, the story is reduced to two of the said characters arguing over a piece of land, or something equally shite. Dinnick, however, avoids this, with a story with a bit of depth added to compliment the location wonderfully – not an easy thing to pull off in one text, leading to a general feeling that the author knows what he is doing. The story suffers from a familiar problem of imparting too much gratuitous information, usually in the form of names. Everything in the story is given a name, and while this serves to paint a clearer and more convincing picture of the world in which the adventure takes place, the sheer number of alien names (and therefore unfamiliar words) makes recognition of certain people or things confusing. For example, if you write something with four people who have long, strange names, why mention three or four other long, strange names of people who don’t appear in the story? It takes some effort to recall the various spellings – indeed, “Tixliss” reminded me of a popular cough remedy, and the “Buliseye” led me to expect the presence of Jim “You can’t beat a bit of Bully” Bowen! One thing I love in the 3a series is the melding of fact and fiction perpetrated by Frankham and his posse. All of the references to members of the Millennium People’s Forum, who are all based on real people (you lot!) do this wonderfully, and here it is Outpost Gallifrey that gets the mentions. Every time I read something like this, it makes me smile with the weird knowledge that somewhere sometime, we’re all part of this massive universe and are involved in these events. However, it must be said, in Tiger’s Eye, it is the elements that are (quite rightly) forced upon the author from his editors that sit askew to the rest of the story, leading me to suggest that this should have been a stand-alone piece (something of course not possible in this series). The continual references to Nick not trusting the Doctor are merely tiring now, and his endless series of leg injuries make him come across worse than a Manchester United footballer. So despite the occasional obligatory quotes of dialogue from Doctor Who’s history for no apparent reason, which again only serve to highlight the fact that no-one is capable of writing an original piece that is entirely their own work, like Doctor Who used to be in the sixties (and quite frankly, these authors should be above pointless mentions of Cromer or whatever); and despite a quote that I’m sure is nicked from "Live and Let Die", this is the finest-crafted story this season (something that I find myself calling every successive story (hold on, who’s doing the last one?)!). This is how Doctor Who should be written. Watch out for this bloke… Oh, and was there something significant about the ebony walking cane? For some reason, I thought there was… Real. Chapter Two; Free World And suddenly it all falls into place… Another good ’un! Although at times it seems like the Richard Dinnick is becoming a bit tired with his writing, it still maintains the pace. I think my major gripe with this (still quite wonderful) episode is the rampant overuse of continuity. So far this season, we’ve had vampires (similar to the ones in State of Decay), an Eternal (similar to the ones in Enlightenment), a collection of many aliens (some of which mentioned have appeared in the television series), some Vogans (from Revenge of the Cybermen), Draconians and Ice Warriors (Frontier in Space, The Ice Warriors, et al.), and now you-know who (from you-know-what). Why? Why does nobody just write an original story, populated by its own characters, with its own largely self-contained plot (aside from essential developments to the lead characters, of course)? Adam Perks tried it with The Collector, which was not wholly a success, due largely to too many aliens with poor characterisations, but kudos for trying! If the end of the chapter didn’t have to be such a surprise, this story would undoubtedly be called Genesis of the *********. Old monsters should be a treat, not the norm. The anniversary’s next year! Still, the environment is as believable as ever. When reading, there’s a sense that Dinnick enjoys setting the, erm… setting, rather than focusing on the plot. Like much of this season, the plot consists largely of one of the main characters meeting some kind of person in charge, whilst another has a bit of a wander around town bumping into enemies (see Kuang-Shi, The Mirror and the Pomegranate, The Collector…). But this is such a perfect location, and it’s completely untried in Doctor Who fiction. The use of real Arabic terms (“effendi”) sometimes jars, but if nothing else, they serve to emphasise the style of the setting. Only a couple of things spoil this: the use of a quote from Star Wars by Nick, which we can at least assume was intended, and the odd bit of dodgy (yet strangely pleasing (and wholly intended!)) prose; the author continuing the grand 3a traditions of taking the piss. Look: “It had taken him much longer than Orsah had said it would, but then she probably didn't time the journey with a buggered foot. Still, he had stopped off momentarily to buy a couple of baps. This only made him think of Alf and the danger she could be in.” … i.e. the single funniest thing I have read this week. He deserves praise purely for the line: “Two children were busy trying to bash each other's heads in with sticks.” I hate using quotes from the story in my reviews, because it smacks of unthinking, but one more must follow, to show how great the writing is in individual chunks: “He had an urge to grab the urchin and demand where the sheath had been found, but he reined it in.” This conjures up some truly hideous images. Right, so what are we left with? Scanning my notes, one moment leaps out at me. During the bit where, in a perfectly normal alien environment, one of the characters slides back a wall to enter a secret room, revealing him to be a baddie, the magic pencil has scrawled only one phrase: “that’s Doctor Who!!!” And that’s what it feels like! Capturing the spirit of televised Doctor Who in one scene is no mean task, and the fact that it is in a progressive, intelligent story aimed at adults (i.e. completely unlike the children’s television series) shows how far we have come, yet with the Doctor Who format still allowing this comfortably. As such, the final revelation is handled excellently – for what seems like a curious coincidence throughout the story eventually comes to mean exactly what we thought it didn’t, because no-one would be so obvious as to call a major character that if they were involved. Immediately bringing to mind Big Finish’s Dust Breeding play, Dinnick deserves a medal for one of the few truly shocking and unforeseen moments of my entire time reading 3a. It’s just a shame he gets the cliffhanger wrong. Like many 3a authors, Dinnick seems to think that the end of an episode has to feature someone in immediate mortal danger, engineering their plot to ensure this happens periodically. But why not make the cliffhanger a natural part of the plot? It doesn’t always have to feature a man walking in with a gun, despite what Malcolm Hulke says; it didn’t always on telly. How much more satisfying would it have been if the Chapter ended with Nick’s discovery of the statue in the square? OK, he might not have known what it meant, be we certainly would. Even better if it was the Doctor who discovered it, and was immediately horrified as he realised where he was (obviously remembering his previous incarnation’s experiences with them with Jamie). This would result in a greater anticipation as we leave the story for a week, with the revelation playing on our minds. A less direct cliffhanger to be sure, but one just as deadly: and ten times scarier. One of the most difficult reviews I’ve written, because it felt good, yet I can’t pin down why. Alien. Chapter Three; Brilliant Mistake One of the main aspects of this story that jumps out at you when you read it is how little the Sontaran plot has to do with the Doctor or his companions’ adventures. Take them out completely and you have one of the best “genesis” stories ever done – entirely believable, and a wonderfully fitting and highly original take on what the Sontaran culture might have been like pre-cloning. The Sontaran element of the plot is pretty much perfect, defining the joint-fourth most popular enemy in the television series in a way that no-one’s ever bothered to before; giving them an entirely new character and using them in a way that stops them being “just another old enemy”. It also offers a timely reminder of the possible dangers of cloning, when put in the wrong three-fingered hands. The only point that could be improved is the fact that the Sontarans lack a clearly characterised leader. Sontaris could be anybody really, a standard war general type character with nothing to make him unique, in the way, say, Wellarzlee was in Ruins of Self. In fact, the only character that does make any real impact is Rollis, purely through the detail about him seeing his parents as people always wanting to wash his face. The writing is again up to par, although I’m not too sure of the inclusion of too many of the more “postmodern” aspects of the text – the “he knew he was about to meet a bad guy”, and “a face that looked like a badly made plastic mask” and such like – they don’t add anything to the prose, and lead to a feeling that the author isn’t taking it all a seriously as he might. Plus, we get another one of those god-awful attempts at writing an alien consciousness that Adam Perks tried in The Collector, and that never, EVER work: “Dark. Safe. Sound! Danger? Fear. Fear. Sound. Close. Danger! No. Moving food. Two. Here. Now. Flight? Hunger. Danger. Hunger. Danger. Hunger. Danger. Hunger. Hunger. Feed. Small. Two. Feed. Now.” What? Despite a strange and misplaced jibe at Thatcherism with the lactic bit (although I agree with him!), the description is uniformly wonderful. The descriptions of various palaces seem grand and inspiring, and are easy to visualise. Unfortunately, continuity is again in the increase, giving an impression of occasionally lazy writing. With Space / Time Visualisers, Raston Warrior Robots, Kontron crystals and replayed scenes from Ruins of Self and Jamie and Dastari from The Two Doctors, in addition to the Sontarans, I was nearly crying. Why do authors ruin stories by sticking all these pointless elements in? What’s wrong with inventing your own type of crystals, or just mentioning that the Doctor has met Sontarans before? It reaches its height with the inclusion of the one continuity piece that annoys me more than any other – the CIA. Just mentioned, with no explanation of who they are; easily confusable with the American CIA to the uninitiated; and completely redundant. The term was only used in televised Doctor Who once, for Christ’s sake, and even that was just for the purposes of a one-line joke from Bob Holmes in 1976. Why does everything to do with Time Lords have to include them these days? Did the author even think about whether or not to use it, or did he just write it automatically, because it’s part of the lazy Doctor Who shorthand? I only expected Seth to turn out to be the Master to complete the set. Still, at last Nick gets a revelation that maybe he has treated the Doctor badly; and we are treated to some truly horrific scenes as his DNA unwinds – although it’s a bit of a shame Alf is detached from this plot line, as the sight of her crying over spilt Nick might’ve added a nice touch of emotion. But the Sontaran plot is still fantastic. I really love it, and I’m dying to find out what happens next, in a way that I wasn’t during Genesis of the Daleks or something like that. I love the construction of the culture that the Sontarans have evolved from, just because it seems so right for them, and yet I never would’ve thought of it. Oh, and the potential war between the Time Lords and the Millennium People is intriguing… Debatable. Chapter Four; Bittersweet Symphony Erm… hello. You might remember me: I used to do reviews… Right, due to a combination of Christmas, illness and absinthe, this review is being written rather later than it should be. Rather later indeed. Still, I’ll give it me best shot… First of all: Yay! The Doctor’s back! The Doctor! He’s here, talking a gun out of a trained guard’s hand, and walking into the middle of the enemy’s headquarters pretending to be in charge!! Yay! One of the first real memorable hints of our hero we’ve had this season, and it’s great. The whole story’s full of flashes like this, where you realise you’re reading something that has decent characterisation of the regulars. Nick’s on top form, calling Alf a silly cow, and saying he’ll kill her because he thought she was dead but found out she was alive. It’s a difficult thing to describe, bit this story just feels great, like there’s some real talent behind the scenes. It is still written by a Doctor Who fan, though. Remember how, for the first seventeen years of Doctor Who (until "Full Circle"), not one story was written by a fan of the programme? Each author came in, wrote their piece, which, good or bad, was their work, then disappeared, perhaps popping in to do another the next year. That’s what’s missing from The Legacy. I know I keep banging on about this, but pointless continuity seriously ruins excellent work when used wrong. That said… The Chapter features some wonderful moments throughout – the voice in Seth’s head made me jump at first, and was used so sparingly as to make you wonder if you’d imagined it: which only made it seem more real. The sequence with the two Sontaris’ was a triumph, and like almost all of the best moments of this story, was completely unexpected. A wonderful (and entirely Hammer Horror creepy) image of the clone Sontaris grasping the sides of the vat and pulling himself away from the bubbling liquid, had me really on the edge of my seat (well, I’m actually sitting on the floor, but it would have done); and the denouement where the two incarnations of the same Sontaran meet was astounding, if rather short. There was slightly more value in this scene to be capitalised upon, but the conflict with Generals, especially the clone’s (again completely unexpected) heartless shooting of his alternate self in the head, was fantastic. Nothing else showed the horror of what this race had become better than that, and gave us a view of the Sontarans fitting exactly how they were on telly. The clone’s words, “The Sontaran race is now absolute” were chilling. And just when you think it can’t get any better – oh no, Time Lord mind games nicked from "The Brain of Morbius" (or as Alf thinks, “a painful staring match”!). Give Dinnick his credit, mind, the sweet-jar defence was marvellous, and had me grinning like a loon for about a week when I read the humbugs line. I want an impenetrable shield of humbugs! But what Tiger’s Eye gives us most of all is the Doctor. He’s defined perfectly with the phrase, “You think like a warrior but you do not act like one; it's most perplexing...” Giving us one of the best portrayals of the Doctor we’ve had, I still think Dinnick should be writing for the Beeb or someone. An amazing end to an amazing story, things just don’t get better than this. Eleven out of ten. Overall Make no mistake, "Genesis of the Sontarans" (as I like to call it) is the best origin story Doctor Who has ever attempted in any medium ever; made even better that it was completely unexpected. Perfectly weaving together the change from the entirely fitting society that the author wanted to write about (and you should always write about what you know) to the nature of the Sontarans we see on-screen, Dinnick portrays the tragic descent of a people excellently. Take out the gratuitous and immature continuity references that pervade his work, unfortunately doing him no favours by signalling him as a sad fan-boy in action (which he by no means deserves!), and you’ve got one of the most original and enjoyable Doctor Who stories I’ve ever read. And yes, I keep saying it, I know, but references to Raston Robots and the CIA honestly don’t help your own unique writing, mate. Amazing.