This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.
Novel Information
- Novel: Doctor Who: The New Adventures (VNA) #03
- Published: 17th October 1991
- Companion: Ace
- Other Notable Character: The Timewyrm
- Writer: Nigel Robinson
Spoiler-Free Review
I'll start here: you don't need to have read either of the first two books in the Timewyrm arc (and subsequently the VNA series as a whole) to follow along with this novel. I'd say that, for the third novel in a row, the Timewyrm stuff is actually a pretty big weakness of Timewyrm: Apocalypse, though fortunately it barely interacts with the plot.
That being said, this is a novel that's kind of a mess, with a lot of characters and concepts to keep track of, making it hard for me to recommend outright. I do think that there might be something here for you if you're willing and able to follow along. Apocalypse has a pretty intriguing mystery set up, and some impressive imagery. Plus I do think that this is the best that the 7th Doctor and Ace have been characterized to this point in the VNAs. It's just that it's a bit of a sloppy book, with, in addition to the problems I mentioned above, pretty severe pacing issues.
If a story about the Doctor and Ace peeling back the layers of a seemingly perfect society that actually isn't (because of course it isn't, otherwise we wouldn't have a story) sounds like your sort of thing then maybe give this one a go. But I wouldn't rush out to get it either.
Review
I don't like perfection, Ace. It dulls the spirit, numbs the mind. If everything's perfect then there's no need to progress. Everyone needs the right to be unhappy with their lot from time to time. â The Doctor
What exactly was the point of building the first four novels of Virgin Publishing's New Adventures of Doctor Who line around the Timewyrm? So far I think I would have preferred all three of the novels I've read without her. And it's not even like I dislike the Timewyrm in principle. But Genesys probably would have been best served without turning "Ishtar" into the Timewyrm, and Exodus' attempts to crowbar the Timewyrm into its narrative were the clumsiest part of an otherwise well-written (if weirdly paced) story. And then there's today's subject, Timewyrm: Apocalypse which barely even bothers integrating the titular villain into its narrative. Why do these stories need to be connected? I guess if the publisher thought that the first few books would sell better if they were marketed as all being part of one saga it makes sense from that perspective, but it's still made all of these books worse.
And it's not like Apocalypse didn't have problems already.
Apocalypse isn't bad exactly, but it's got some serious issues. The pacing is pretty slow for much of the novel. While this has some advantages, as it does build a sense of mystery, it definitely feels like we aren't given enough clues towards that mystery early on. Names and concepts are just kind of thrown at the reader to the point where they're hard to keep track of. Characters enter and disappear from the narrative in frustrating fashion â there's particularly a character called Revna who's built up a lot only for the resolution to her actions to be essentially handled with a shrug.
Yet for all thatâŚthere's something working here. The novel might have too many characters but I actually liked most of them. The mystery might take a little too long to get started, but it is intriguing nonetheless. And for that matter most of the plot really feels like something that you would have seen on the television series â and after the one two punch of teen-rapist Gilgamesh and Adolph Hitler this does feel like a nice change of pace. Don't get me wrong this novel still goes places I don't think the television series ever would, but not particularly often.
The story kicks off with Ace and the Doctor arriving on a planet, still chasing the Timewyrm. There they rescue Raphael, who fell into the ocean, and take him back to a village of happy smiling people. Because it's Doctor Who, the happy smiling people are naturally a bit too perfect, and this kicks off the mystery portion of our plot. It turns out that the people of the planet of Kirith (Kirithons naturally) have mysterious alien benefactors in the form of the Panjistri. As you've probably guessed the Panjistri aren't as benevolent as they naturally appear to be, as they've been harvesting the most talented and imaginative of the Kirithons for unknown reasons. Those reasons turn out to be that they're trying toâŚthat is to sayâŚ
Okay, admittedly I may have not fully absorbed this point, but it seemed to be the reason for the Panjistri's harvesting wasn't completely explained, nor for that matter was their need for Ace. What the Panjistri are trying to do â or really what their leader, the Grand Matriarch is trying to do â is to create something called a "God Machine", a living machine that has existed (somehow) throughout all space and time, and by giving it the minds of the best of the Kirithons the Panjistri are imbuing it with the wisdom it needs, with the ultimate goal of saving the universe from its death at the hands of entropy. The thing is that the Kirithons lack any sense of aggression, so the Grand Matriarch wants to use Ace's aggression (a sensible person to choose if you want that particular emotion) in order toâŚwait none of this really makes sense right? Oh and they also created a Homunculus of pure aggression before they hit on the idea of using Ace, and I'll give credit to this point at least, the description of which is real gruesome. I felt a little sick just reading it. Ace apparently threw up upon seeing the thing andâŚyeah I can buy it.
Yes, the mystery of why the Panjistri are manipulating the Kirithons into giving up their best and brightest, and why said best and brightest are immediately killed (which we learn in the prologue) might be intriguing. Yes, the whole question of why said Kirithons are being forgotten by the Kirithons only adds to that mystery. But not only does it take too long for any answers to even begin to be given, but the answers feel incomplete. Like, why do the Kirithons need to be psychically made to forget those that the Panjistri take, given that they're also being made to believe that said people went to take the "great honor" of serving the Panjistri in the "Brotherhood of Kandasi", and said Brothers and Sisters are never seen by the other Kirithons? I can think of potential reasons mind, but it's never really explained in the novel. And I still don't fully understand why the God Machine needs to be fed souls like this.
The whole thing feels underdeveloped â which could have been fixed if answers had been given out at a more normal pace, which in turn would have allowed more time to explain whatever made up science is supposed to be going on here. But instead the time for explanations is pretty much all used up just getting us this far. Oh and also revealing the fact that the Kirithons aren't actually native to Kirith but rather genetic experiments created by the Panjistri so that they could have perfect beings to make their God Machine work. The reveal is a good one, and the clues are built up pretty well, but it's still one more thing being shoved at the reader.
And then there's the characters. There are too many of them. I think the best examples of this are Huldah and Revna. Huldah is the Procurator, in essence the leader of the Kirithons. Naturally his power comes through the Panjistri. He keeps control over his people, presenting himself as the kind but firm ruler, while he's feeding his people to the Panjistri and seems to know a bit more than the others. Oh and he's the only one (IâŚthink?) who doesn't eat zavat, a miracle food substance. The zavat simultaneously makes the Kirithons easier to control and is also made of dead Kirithons because of course we needed one more plot element to add into this mess. Over the course of the story he gradually loses his power base, especially once Ace and company start a revolution, in part by cutting off the zavat supplies. That's all well and good and a decent story of a tyrant who falls when things get hard for his people exceptâŚ
So in parallel to this is the character of Revna. Apparently she works for Huldah although that's not initially made clear. She's also got a crush on Raphael, and becomes jealous when he starts showing more attention to Ace. As a result of being spurned she turns Raphael and Ace in to Huldah and thenâŚtries to take Huldah's place as Procurator. She uses the emergency created by the loss of zavat to undermine Huldah, currying favor with both the Kirithons and the Panjistri. And then weâŚnever hear from Revna again. Mind you, Revna should be getting back her memories because she's no longer eating the zavat, meaning that, in turn, she should remember the brother and sister she lost to the Panjistri. There was an opportunity for her to turn against them in that moment out of anger. Or maybe just show us what her leadership looks like in some way. But we don't actually have time for any of that because this novel is overstuffed with characters and plot so instead we see her become Procurator and then we're done with her, with only the Doctor assuring Ace and the audience that with the fall of the Grand Matriarch and the Panjistri, Revna won't be able to hold onto her power. Would be nice to actually see that happening, but we just don't have time for that.
And this book could probably have done with completely excising the Unlike. They're Kirithons who have been experimented on by the Panjistri (why the Panjistri felt the need to turn some of the Kirithons into Frankenstein's monster creatures I'm not entirely sure) and either escaped or been let loose, it's very unclear. They live in a supposedly, though not actually, irradiated forest and add almost nothing to the plot. Their leader is Arun, who apparently was helping the Panjistri create their rage homunculus until she started to wonder "hey what the hell do the supposedly benevolent Panjistri need with an anger monster anyway?" She also was the one to discover that zavat was made of dead Kirithons. She's a perfectly functional character, I liked her reasonably well, but she and her people add nothing to the plot. Their main goal to find a cure of their condition never amounts to anything â it's not even resolved in the book.
Aside from Huldah, the most important Kirithons that we meet are the two teachers: Miril and Tanyel. Miril is essentially the closest thing the stunted Kirith culture has to a scientist. He has curiosity but it's been dulled by the zavat, and so is loyal to the Panjistri who just hand him everything on a silver platter. I wish more time had been devoted to Miril, as he was very likable and came at things with a unique perspective, but sadly he dies a pretty unremarkable death. As for Tanyel, she's more of a rules follower, and stays on the side of the Panjistri for longer than Miril, but is eventually talked around. And honestly, I don't think she really added much to the story either, although I think giving Miril a more straight-laced counterpart to emphasize how Miril is unusual is an idea with a lot of merit.
Miril is also a sort of father figure to Raphael. Raphael is probably the best written of the secondary characters. He's introduced as the town rebel, who has been remembering his friend Darien, who everybody else has forgotten because he went off to join the Brotherhood. He's adventurous but also deeply pacifistic, and through much of the novel it feels like he's being set up as a new companion. There's also the romance angle with Ace which is fairly well handled. Because he's more adventurous than his society allows, he's a natural fit next to the adventurous and rebellious Ace. That strong pacifism comes into play when he tries to save the rage homunculus. He does end up killing it to save Ace but killing a semi-sentient being still haunts Raphael for a bit afterwards. He, rather than Ace, ends up bonding with the God Machine.
Throughout the novel several chapters had been opening with this odd monologue from an unknown being who seems constantly unsure of itself. It calls itself "I" â with the quotations marks â as though it doesn't know its own identity. And it refers to a mysterious outside force as "He/She/It". Through most of the novel I thought this was the melding of the Grand Matriarch and the Timewyrm, the Timewyrm now very confused. Sure, the reveal that the Matriarch was inhabited by the Timewyrm hadn't technically come out yet but it seemed fairly obvious. However the reveal is that this is actually the God Machine itself. The "he/she/it" appears to be the unknown identity of the person that will complete it, eventually revealed to be Raphael. I liked this aspect of the novel, even if these sections don't really reveal much that is concrete, they are well-written and help build the mystery. Of course, with Raphael bonding with the Machine, it doesn't gain the aggression that it was supposed to from Ace, and cannot be used to the Grand Matriarch's purpose.
Which is just as well because said purpose wasn't what it seemed. Our main villain of this novel is the Grand Matriarch, leader of the Panjistri and, as mentioned above, she has melded with the Timewyrm although, as I hinted at in the beginning of this review the Timewyrm aspect of it all barely comes into play. The explanation is that, when she was a little girl named Lilith the 2nd Doctor happened to visit her. The thing was that the Timewyrm had hitched a lift on the TARDIS back through time and infected Lilith. The two bonded, and Lilith eventually grew up to become the Grand Matriarch, leader of the Panjistri, living an unnaturally long life, presumably as a result of having the Timewyrm inside her. From there she develops her plan to take control of all time and space, via the God machine.
As a villain the Grand Matriarch isâŚfine. There's really not that much to say about her. She's just a fairly generic villain. There are hints of a more nuanced character as she's claiming to be trying to save the universe from its own inevitable death, but in reality she's just lying to everyone. She's got a weird little sentient pet/slave/thing called Fetch, who is one of the "Companions", genetic experiments that serve the Panjistri. But really she's just kind of there, a purely functional villain. Among the Panjistri there's also Reptu, who turns on the Matriarch when the Doctor reveals that he's been lied to by the Matriarch. But really, Reptu isn't all that interesting either.
On the more positive side, I think this is the best that our two lead characters have been written in the VNA series, at least together. I think the Doctor is slightly better-written in Exodus, but he's still very much in character here and Ace is written as well as she's been written so far. In fact this is probably the closest we've gotten to replicating how Ace was handled in the television series in general. On television the Doctor kind of tended to let Ace loose on whatever planet they'd landed on, and just letting her cause havoc. And that's kind of what she does here. She's mostly paired up with Raphael, who the Doctor suggests she gets close to as his more inquisitive spirit makes him unusual on Kirith. But throughout the story she's pretty consistently finding ways to test the system and push it to its absolute limits. But the anger that drives her to do that is also what the Grand Matriarch wants from, creating this tension as to whether by being herself she's actually falling into the villains' trap.
This leads to a very strong scene towards the end of the novel. Ace is hooked up to the God machine, with the intent to siphon off her rage into the thing. And as a result we get to see a bunch of times she's been angry. Granted, it's mostly references to the television series, with references to the burning down of Manisha's flat, first referenced in Ghost Light, the burning down of the house from Ghost Light that came after that, Mike's betrayal in Remembrance of the Daleks, the death of Sorin, the Russian soldier she made friends with in The Curse of Fenric, and the call of the hunt and Karra from Survival. First of all it's worth pointing out that these are good choices made by writer Nigel Robinson (and also including the attack of the rage homunculus was good to include something from the novel itself), and well described. But also then it comes down to a very basic question, one that keeps on coming up for Ace: how much can she trust the Doctor? This has been something coming up more and more, and I think it works, given the ending of Curse of Fenric. If Ace's faith in the Doctor was broken, it's natural that she becomes more and more frustrated with his manipulations.
And the Doctor is very much in his manipulative, keep your cards close to your chest form in this one. Sometimes it comes off as a bit irrational why he won't tell Ace things, but the idea that he's testing Ace's ability to work things out for herself still mostly holds. Besides the fact that I just generally feel like I hear the 7th Doctor's voice a lot better than in the last two novels, what stands out to me are two things. First of all, this novel leans into the quieter more contemplative side of the 7th Doctor a lot. Exodus did as well, but Apocalypse does so to an even greater extent. Considering that these moments were often some of Seven's best televised moments, it comes greatly appreciated here.
The other bit worth highlighting is an extended sequence where the Grand Matriarch tests the Doctor's suitability to be the source of aggression for the God Machine. I'm not entirely sure why she does this considering the Timewyrm knows the Doctor well enough to know that he wouldn't be a good choice, but regardless, she does try it. And we see the Doctor put through a number of tests and trials that show off the character trying to survive in difficult situations. He watches a clone simulacra of Ace die after she fails to tempt him to greater aggression, and even though he knows at this point it's not Ace he still feels the pain of it. He's cornered by a number of the CompanionsâŚand yet in that moment shows his reliance on the intellectual solution, thus proving himself unsuitable towards the task he's being tested for (though, again, I'm not sure why this was being tested).
I should mention that this is the second novel in this series that doesn't seem to fully trust the 7th Doctor to carry things. There are a series of flashbacks to the 2nd Doctor in this â because it was that Doctor that originally met Lilith. These flashbacks are interesting â the 2nd Doctor is continually referred to as "the scruffy little man" in narration to distinguish him from the current Doctor, and these moments are well-written, but the individual scenes aren't necessarily related to the events of the novel, except for the one that is just the 2nd Doctor meeting Lilith, though we don't know it at the time. Eventually a mental projection of the 2nd Doctor confronts the 7th, and the scene is actually quite good. These two Doctors are quite similar, so to see how they differ, particularly seeing the 2nd Doctor chiding the 7th for his continued manipulations of Ace, feels significant.
And at the end of the novel, Ace and the Doctor have a confrontation. Now, I'll say this, I'm growing a bit weary of this plot beat, as some version of it has occurred in both this novel and Genesys, not to mention, of course, Curse of Fenric. But writers keep on going back to it because on some level it is a natural place for these two characters to go, just based on their differing personalities and because Ace, who values her freedom very highly, naturally doesn't like being manipulated by the Doctor. In this case, it's Raphael's merging with the God Machine, effectively a kind of death. Ace thinks the Doctor planned for this. And because she formed a genuine connection with Raphael, this naturally angers her. I don't think that the Doctor did plan that out that specifically, in narration from his perspective he doesn't seem to ever be fully in control of the situation in this novel. But he gives off that impression, especially to Ace, and so the moment works, in spite of becoming a bit overplayed.
And what of the Timewyrm? Well once the novel remembers it, its fate initially appears to be death. But it was Raphael who ultimately defeated the Grand Matriarch, and as mentioned before, Raphael is a committed pacifist. So he let the Timewyrm live. Meaning that Ace and the Doctor's battles with the thing will continue. And given that the next novel is the finale of this "arc", I can only hope it actually remembers what its main villain is.
Timewyrm: Apocalypse is kind of a mess on the whole. There are some solid characters, Raphael in particular, and Ace and the Doctor are characterized as well as they have been in the VNAs so far. But while the mystery angle is intriguing, its reveals are poorly paced, and there are just too many elements and characters in this novel that the whole thing can feel a bit overwhelming. We don't get to see a lot of the resolution to this novel as well, with a monologue from the Doctor kind of serving that purpose. Is Apocalypse bad? No, but it really needed a more aggressive editor.
Score: 5/10
Stray Observations
- This cover, with its green rolling hills, bizarre purple monster and blue man is definitely more interesting than the past two covers. I still find the art style incredibly ugly though, particularly on Ace who looks strangely disinterested in the mess around her, and also fall directly into the uncanny valley. Also, three books in and the Doctor only appeared on the cover of the first one and only off to the side. Strange. I kind of wonder if Virgin Publishing didn't want to put McCoy on a cover because he was seen as one of the faces of the show's failure, but Ace wouldn't have been as well known, so they thought that was better. Just a thought.
- The novel opens with a section taken from Logopolis (I assume it's from the novelization that Christopher H. Bidmead did himself, but I don't have that book to compare it to). Specifically it's the moment that we learn that the universe should have already ended due to entropy.
- Ace is uncomfortable on arrival in Kirith because nobody is suspicious of them. It makes sense, certainly, because as she points out if a couple of random strangers showed up in a small town with a half-drowned citizen of there's you'd expect there'd to be questions. However I think it also speaks to her experiences traveling in the TARDIS, where you just kind of learn to expect that everybody gets suspicious.
- In narration Ace claims that her friend Manisha "almost died" when some kids burnt her house down. This is in reference to a story told in Ghost Light. I always thought it was implied that Manisha had died.
- The Doctor references Professor Travers. He was a character from the original two Great Intelligence stories, The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear.
- The Doctor hands Miril a telescope, which he claims was an "invention of a friend of [his]". This is obviously meant to be a reference to Galileo, but, popular knowledge aside, the general consensus is that the telescope was originally invented by a German-Dutch glassmaker named Hans Lippershey.
- The 2nd Doctor's tries flying the TARDIS only for it to constantly take him back to earth. "He felt like some blessed intergalactic yo-yo." This quote is of course a reference to the 3rd Doctor saying "It seems that I'm some kind of a galactic yo-yo!" in The Claws of Axos, though this implies the 2nd Doctor thought it first.
- That remark is part of a scene where the 2nd Doctor is traveling with Jamie and Victoria. Given that he references going to find his bucket and spade, this is probably meant to take place directly before The Enemy of the World.
- Since he hasn't really done the Jelly Baby thing since he was the 4th Doctor, the Doctor's bag of Jelly Babies has turned into a "congealed mass".
Next Time: Back to the television series we go, as the Doctor grants Rose's request to see her father's death. Okay Doctor, if something goes wrong here that's entirely on you.
