Customer Reviews

Doctor Who: The Final Sanction (Doctor Who (BBC Paperback))

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In 'The Murder Game', Steve Lyons introduced a new alien race to the Doctor Who universe - the Selachians. These delicate, dolphin-like water-breathers wear powered armour decorated to make them look like sharks, and have a code of honour that prevents them from any substantial friendly interaction with other races.

'The Final Sanction' depicts a war between humanity and the Selachians, into which the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe stumble. Recognising the period they are in, the Doctor tries to take his companions away from this time but the TARDIS has vanished.

When Zoe is captured by the Selachians, the Doctor is faced with a dilemma: to save her, he must risk disrupting the true course of history. Will the Doctor risk disruption of the timestream or will he leave Zoe to a gruesome fate?

By taking a new look at this fascinating race, especially what their lives are like when not engaged in battle, and bringing into doubt one of the strongest tenets of the series, Mr. Lyons gives us a novel that is well worth reading.

This was an excellent book I bought for the sheer liking of the teaming of the 2nd Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. When I began reading, I found the book enthralling, and I couldn't really put it down. But, as I approached the middle, it dipped and I didn't find the plot could keep me reading for more than half an hour. Then, as I got to the last six or seven chapters, I picked it up again and it made me want to read more and more. Having not read "The Murder Game", I didn't know who the Selatians were, but by the end of the book, I certainly did find out! The book follows the typical Steve Lyons writing mould, including some interesting characters with good characterisations and a good characterisation of the Doctor and his companions. Read it for the sheer fun of it - read it if you're bored. Just read it!

Again with the fish-people as villains? I'm starting to think that someone at BBC Publishing had a bit of a fetish.

This time the fish-people are actually recurring villains, with the Selachians having starred in the last Steven Lyons Who novel "The Murder Game". I vaguely remember them from that novel but don't quite remember what happened there, so either I read it a long time ago or it just wasn't that memorable. Anyway, we're not reviewing that book, we're reviewing this one, so let's stay relevant.

The Second Doctor and stalwart companions Jamie and Zoe are dropped into the middle of the final stages of a war between the humans and the Selachians, one that really isn't going to end well for anyone. As usual, everyone is separated from the TARDIS and then separated from each other, at which points things swiftly go downhill. To make matters worse, they're smack-dab in the center of a historical event where the planet is going to get a giant bomb dropped on it to end the war, an event the Doctor won't be able to stop . . . but if he doesn't, his friends may die.

Lyons gets credit for tackling a subject that the series rarely met head-on, which was historical events that didn't belong to Earth's past history . . . something the new series explores only occasionally, as evidenced by the recent TV special "The Waters of Mars", which also had the Doctor in the middle of something that had to end poorly for history to proceed properly. The Doctor knows the bomb has to go off and the fates of everyone involved, and does his level best to keep his friends out of the crossfire, but every attempt he makes only gets him closer to totally sending history off-track.

In this vein the book succeeds, where it seems to fall flat is when it delves into the tired trope of two enemies seeing the other from a different point of view. He shifts between making the Selachians seem like the oppressed and victims, and having them wantonly shooting people in the stomach and brutalizing prisoners. As gentle as they started out as, and as horrible as the things they did to themselves in the name of war were, they clearly have no desire to stop any of it. But we get moment after moment of the story telling us that the humans are just as bad in some ways, which I'd be more okay with if it said something new on the topic, instead of taking us through the same cliched scenes we've seen before.

But the scenes where the Doctor is attempting to handle a situation that is quickly spiralling out of control and steer it toward genocide are quite close to making it worth the price of admission. Even if the characters wind up being types more or less, the dilemma is interesting enough to keep the story moving and Lyons adds enough action to make up for some of the thinness. Zoe and Jamie do well enough, with Jamie relegated to junior soldier role and Zoe spending most of the story out of her element, to oddly good effect.

That said, the endless amounts of ways that the Selachians and humans come up with ways to kill each other are quite creative, and Lyons is able to convey enough of a sense of "What the heck did we get ourselves into?" into the proceedings to give it a certain amount of grit, with the Doctor showing actual regret that he even got involved in this mess. It's examination of pre-destination and the nature of time, while not deep, shows some level and thought and frankly, the last line in the story is not only one of the more perfect for the series, but one of the best for that Doctor. Not wonderful, but surprisingly better than it could have been.

'The Final Sanction' see the return of the vicious armoured shark-like aliens - the Selachians from a previous Lyons book 'The Murder Game'. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive during the end of the war between humans and Selachians. They are immediatly caught up with the fighting when Zoe is captured by the Selachians and taken back to their home planet, which is destined to be destroyed in the war. The Doctor must risk either saving Zoe and altering the history of Time or letting Time run its course.

Steve tries to convey the message that the Selachians aren't the violent creatures they make themselves out to be giving a detailed history of why they are like they are. But this feeling of pity is soon dropped as the Selachians shoot plasma rifles into the bellies of prisoners, rips their arms off, etc.

Characterisation of the Doctor and Jamie are pretty much spot on whereas Zoe tends to be a bit more 'gung-ho' as usual, which is a nice change as opposed to her usual cerebral damsel in distress mode.

The story is a gritty space-war story so dont expect much light-heartedness. Well worth a read!!!!

The problem is, I generally like Steve Lyons work. "The Witch Hunters" remains my all-time favorite PDA, and I also kind of liked "Salvation". But this one... I just found it boring, trite, and maddeningly cloy.

The book brings back the Selachians of Lyon's previous 2nd Doc PDA, "The Murder Game", and takes as its plot the final days of an Earth military campaign against them. This is used as a spring board for a story that is essentially an anti-war statement. Ok, fair enough, no problems there. But then it proceeds to truck out just about every anti-war cliche a century of far better writing has produced: the unbelievably incompetant commander, the helpless & peaceful civilians caught in the middle, the honorable soldier who just follows orders, the Big Weapon that people are afraid to use but will use anyway (even though it will kill billions of lives). I don't know, I've read it all before and I just couldn't stomach it one more time.

Lyons tries, but for the most part does not succeed, to make the Selachians nominally sympathetic, even though they are cast as pretty much the bad-guy race here. To me, this was probably the biggest problem with the book; by the end of it I not only felt very little sympathy for them, but in some ways thought they were getting exactly what they deserved -- the exact opposite of Lyon's intentions. So much for this morality play. As for the other bad guy, the incompetant commander of the Earth forces, I found his incompetance so far beyond the bounds of believability that I just couldn't take him seriously. Again, another strike against the book.

Lyon's 2nd Doctor is pretty much OK, not exciting but not too far from the mark. Companions Jamie and Zoe come off (uncharacteristically, for a Lyons novel!) as a little bland, especially Zoe; at one point I had the impression that this story had originally been conceived with Victoria in mind. This is a shame, as Jamie and Zoe are among my favorite companions, and I have yet to find a novel that has done either of them justice.

So, overall, skip this one unless you are a DW completist.

THE FINAL SANCTION isn't a perfect novel--but it, like so many of Steve Lyons's other books, is a strong, gutsy look at a difficult subject.

Focusing on the tail end of a war between the human race and the aquatic Selachians, Lyons asks the question, "How far will mankind go to end a war?" With the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe trapped in the middle of Earth's "solution" to the Selachian menace, we see firsthand just how desperate war can make people.

This is one of Lyons's more "violent" books, similar in intensity to KILLING GROUND and TIME OF YOUR LIFE. It has a strong plot, though, and an excellent (and rare) portrayal of Patrick Troughton's Doctor in print. This book isn't for the easily squeamish, and it's certainly not what one would ever call an upbeat book--but it's well worth reading.