Who at the end of time
Written: Jul 03 '02 (Updated Oct 23 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great characterization of the regulars
Cons: The rest of the characters (bar Silver) and a boring plot
The Bottom Line: A nice first attempt, but still extremely flawed. Buy it if you're a completist, but otherwise I'd pass.
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| hist's Full Review: Mark Clapham - Hope |
Mark Clapham's first solo novel is a slightly intriguing, though extremely flawed effort. He shows that he has a wonderful handle on the main characters of the series (the Doctor and his companions), but he doesn't bring us anybody interesting to have them deal with, with the exception of Silver. It says something when there are very few characters in a book, and yet you still can't really tell them apart except by remembering their names and their job descriptions.
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
Hope is an adventure starring the Eighth Doctor, Anji, and Fitz.
The Doctor and crew arrive on the planet Endpoint after having taxed the TARDIS to its limits. The city of Hope is a twisted mass of steel situated on a vast, acidic sea. Upon landing, the TARDIS quickly falls into this sea and sinks to the bottom, leaving our heroes trapped. Silver, the most powerful man in Hope, offers to retrieve it for the Doctor, for a price. Thus, begins a whodunnit, and the Doctor must solve a series of murders in order to restore his freedom. While he does that, one of his companions is doing something else that could make this mystery academic.
What did I think?
The plot of this book is divided into two parts, with a fairly boring joining of the two. The book starts out very well, with an interesting concept and a good introduction to Silver. You really find yourself wondering what is happening, who is committing these murders. The idea of Hope is good, and Clapham sets the scene wonderfully. You can feel the desolation of Hope, a city with a toxic atmosphere resting in a toxic sea on a poisonous planet.
However, the book quickly devolves. Silver, while being a well-rounded character, is described in almost comic book terms, even given an origin story. I could see the panels of the comic as his past was being described. A whole chapter is devoted to this (and even given the name "Secret Origins!") and it brings the book to a grinding halt that it never recovers from. While he does have an interesting origin, the way this origin is told is simply tedious. It's a shame, too, because Silver is ultimately the most interesting character in the book.
The rest of the characters aren't nearly as good. Clapham only creates three or four other characters, and they're still not memorable. One of them doesn't seem to have any purpose. He's only in two brief scenes, and while his first scene hints that he'll be more important to the plot, he ultimately just disappears. One could say that he's there to represent the typical citizen of Hope, but if so, it's not done very effectively. Miraso is a bit more interesting, but she's still very one-note. Powlin is a cliched tired cop. There are a couple of characters introduced later who are also pretty basic.
The Doctor and his companions, however, are extremely well done, and they save the book from being a boring morass. Anji finally gets a meaty role, as she has to make some decisions that could very well affect the bond that has formed between her and her friends. Watching her agonize with her decision is very interesting, and Clapham writes her well. A follower of the Doctor Who series could wonder why it's taken her so long to deal with some of these issues, but that's not a problem in the book itself. The Doctor is also very good, with his curiosity and drive to help people very prominent. The only one who suffers a bit is Fitz, as he's not given a lot of any consequence to do, but what is there is good. He goes off on a brief diversion that ultimately doesn't have much to do with anything but keep him busy.
I haven't spoken much about the plot, and there's a reason for that. There isn't really much of one. The book is very short for a Who book (249 pages) and yet it still feels padded. There are 10 pages of Silver's origin, there's Fitz's side plot, and then the rather lengthy link between the two parts of the story. Silver's origin isn't the only thing that feels like a comic book, as he is introduced in a hail of bullets, with everybody looking on him in awe as he presents himself. It just didn't work for me. The initial story is kind of interesting, but the second part of the book sinks into cliche and becomes very boring. Anji is the only thing that keeps the reader's interest at all.
Ultimately, it's a good thing that the book is fairly short. Even as short as it is, it still took me awhile to get through it. Once I got past the really intriguing set up, I was fairly bored. Thankfully, every time I got near the breaking point, Clapham would do something really neat with one of the regulars, or have some little character scene that was all too rare, and the book would pick up again momentarily. It was enough to keep me going, and enough to earn it three stars (probably 2.5 if half-stars could be given). There are signs that Clapham has a good book in him, but unfortunately this isn't it.
Recommended:
No
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Member: David Roy
Location: Vancouver, BC
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