Smoggy Who
Written: Jul 30 '02 (Updated Oct 23 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent characterization of the relationship between the Doctor and Sarah
Cons: Depressing, cliched characters, not very interesting
The Bottom Line: Avoid this book unless you like to be depressed. It doesn't even hold your interest to compensate for that. Please, somebody, give me a good story with these two characters?
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| hist's Full Review: David Bishop - Doctor Who Amorality Tale |
Amorality Tale offers a very rare combination for the Who fan: a pairing of the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. It's an intriguing combination and one I've been awaiting for quite awhile. The story, however, doesn't do them much justice. It suffers from a stock alien race, tired writing, and is damnably depressing to boot.
A Brief Description of Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a science fiction adventure series about the Doctor and one (or more) of his companions. They travel around in the TARDIS, which looks like an English police box, but is really a time travel machine. It's bigger on the inside then on the outside. The Doctor is a Time Lord, a race of beings who can regenerate when their current body is dying. So far, the Doctor has regenerated seven times, which means he's on his eighth incarnation.
The book series consists of two lines: a line about the Eighth Doctor and his companions, and a line that consists of "past Doctors" (Numbers 1-7). The past Doctors are from the TV series that ended in 1989, while the Eighth has only been seen on television in a movie on the Fox network in 1996.
The Story
This is a Dr. Who adventure starring the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.
In 1952, a killer smog covered London, killing thousands of people. Especially hard hit was the East End, where a majority of those people died. Sarah Jane Smith, intrepid reporter, is curious about it, and in her research discovers a picture of the Doctor shaking hands with Tommy Ramsey, the most notorious mobster in the East End! Bringing it to his attention, they decide to go back to 1952 (they are in the 1970?s) and investigate.
Tommy has just been released from prison, determined to regain control of the streets in his home area. A new evangelical minister at St. Luke's church is gathering a flock of followers praying for redemption. A new gang is muscling in on Tommy's turf. The Doctor sets up a watchmending business across from the church, and Sarah ingratiates herself with Tommy to keep an eye on him. When Tommy begins to fight back against all of this, an even greater evil is uncovered. Soon, the city's air has become nerve gas, the police are acting very strangely, and people start dying. What's going on? The Doctor must find out and stop it, before more people die then those who are destined to in the smog.
What did I think?
Don't start reading Amorality Tale if you're already down in the dumps. There is so much death, destruction, and evil atmosphere that it could bring down Kathie Lee Gifford. The book almost wallows in it at times. I see the intent behind it, which is to make the alien Xhinn a very vile race, worthy of what the Doctor has to do to stop them. However, it doesn't come off very well and just lies there like a lead balloon. Not only that, most of the people who die in this book are ciphers, so we don't really have anything invested in them. It's like reading death statistics in the newspaper. Sure, it's sad, but why should we care on an emotional level? Bishop tries to give humanity to some of them, but it's so superficial that it doesn't work.
The characters, for the most part, are a bunch of cliches. There's the couple who never really loved each other, but come together at the time of greatest crisis. The gangsters are mostly stock characters, speaking their gangster lines like in most movies of the type. Tommy's a mean bastard, but loves his mom and has a few noble qualities. There's the hard-done-by woman across the street with three kids and no husband, with no prospects in life but getting by. There's the thug with the heart of gold, who really doesn't want to be doing what he's doing, but keeps it up out of loyalty. We've seen all of this before.
The regular characters don't suffer quite as much, though I thought Sarah was slightly out of character. A bit of a relationship develops between her and Tommy that I don't see the "real" Sarah allowing to happen. Sarah is an activist and a feminist. She realizes that she has to adapt to the time period she's in, but that shouldn't change her actual attitude. I don't buy the grudging respect that she develops for Tommy, even as she hates his exterior. I can see the "necessary evil" aspect of allying with him against the Xhinn, but not the rest of the relationship.
The Doctor and Sarah do have some good scenes together, however, and Bishop does get their relationship almost exactly right. The Doctor knows that he can't change history and that he has to balance stopping the Xhinn with allowing the people who actually died in the smog to carry out their destiny. Sarah initially resists this, feeling that the Doctor is being heartless, but she begins to understand the position the Doctor is in. It's a bit heartwrenching. While it does add to the general depressing atmosphere that clouds the book, in this case I think it's effective. The Doctor's character does suffer a bit from Bishop using too many of his mannerisms from the TV series, however. While the character should be recognizable, he shouldn't be just a collection of Third Doctor cliches. He uses the Venusian martial arts just a little too much for my taste. It's become a stereotype and I wish Bishop would have avoided it a little bit.
Finally, we come to the Xhinn. I am getting tired of monolithic races who want to invade Earth just for the sake of invading Earth. Here we have another race that just colonizes planets for the hell of it, with no real motivation otherwise. Again, this is a Third Doctor cliche (though the rest of the TV series suffered from it a bit too). Again, it's one that I wish Bishop would have avoided. They're almost like a force of nature rather than a race of intelligent beings. It's a bit more understandable in the TV series, but in novels, the villains should be fleshed out more. As it is, they're just in the book to be evil.
Ultimately, this book fails on a couple of levels. It isn't very entertaining, and it's not very interesting, either. There are lots of scenes of death if that's your bag. Otherwise, though, I'd avoid it. The Third Doctor and Sarah deserve a better story.
*Note: I did appreciate the historical note about the real London killer smog. I was intrigued by the idea enough to go do a little research on it, but then saw the note and didn't have to.
Recommended:
No
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Member: David Roy
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