Customer Reviews

Father Time (Doctor Who)

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

 

 

Lance Parkin's latest "Who" outing starts out promising, but quickly blows all its potential and then spends 200 pages making us wish the book had taken a smarter turn somewhere.

Each of the three section of the book shows promise, but then quickly manages to fizzle, and none of the sections is resolved in a manner that feels satisfying. Parkin also fills "Father Time" with small plot asides that quickly deflate suspension of disbelief, like a character from the Doctor's past showing up but failing to make any difference in the Doctor's understanding of his identity, or the bit about the Doctor becoming a significant figure in the 80's.

Many of the plot points, like the division between the Doctor and Miranda, feel forced and hollow, but the biggest problem with the book is that in all its sections, it opts to take a stupid action approach in order to resolve everything. The primary feeling a reader will take away from this book is disappointment. The cover and the back-cover blurb suggest something introspective and perhaps something insightful into human -- and more-than-human -- nature. What we get, however, is a creeping feeling that "Father Time" was a great opportunity sadly missed.

I've avoided reviewing Doctor Who novels, despite having strong opinions about many of them, because, as an object of cultic veneration, the Doctor Who franchise tends to get plenty of review as is -- mostly highly polarized, fandom being as naturally argumentative as it is. But good things need to be said about this book (and the handful that have preceded it in this story arc), and only one person has, to date. Since the last several seasons of the television program itself, writers of Doctor Who in its every form have had to cope with the paradox of maintaining the sense of mystery that is central to the character and his universe, while still doling out the hints and glimpses (and occasional but compulsory outright Revelations) that fans demand. An unfilmed last-season episode (later published as the novel Lungbarrow) would have finally revealed who the Doctor had been in the far distant past -- and then left us wondering just who *that* person had been. Clever. A more recent "take" on the series, this time in the novels, maintained that the Doctor's timestream had either become or had always been (or both) mutable. Some days his story was one thing, some days it was another. Some days it wasn't mutable. Paradox. Nifty. The current story arc (ending with the next book in the series, one senses) takes a different approach: *we* know who and what the Doctor is, for certain values of "know," but *he* doesn't. The flavor and mood of mystery, and the ability to reveal or refer to as much of the character's history as we want. Brilliant. An amnesiac Doctor, reduced to something resembling normal humanity, lives his elongated life one day at a time. Trapped. Lost. Powerless. Sad. The Eighth Doctor -- who began his life a supposed half-human -- has finally found his niche, after five years (in real time) of not *quite* fitting. And this book, Father Time, completes the picture by giving this Doctor the last bit he needed: a daughter. A savvy, brilliant, late-blooming, serious, alien daughter -- like and unlike the First Doctor's granddaughter Susan, like and unlike the Eighth Doctor. She's wonderful. He makes sense now. This is good Doctor Who.

The amnesiac Doctor has been on Earth for over a century now, and is living as a recluse in Derbyshire. The snow is falling, and all seems quiet. But the peace isn't going to last. There is a threat from the future menacing a girl with two hearts. A girl who calls the Doctor "Dad"...

Normally, when I get my Doctor Who books for the month, I start with the Past Doctor book - mostly out of comfort. This time, though, the magic name "Lance Parkin" made me start with the Eighth Doctor book. As I've said elsewhere, if you see Lance Parkin's name on the cover, get it.

This book is set in the 1980s, and Mr. Parkin is reveling in it. There are regular references to songs of the period (and the book takes place over the decade, so there is a variety of music, too), and he takes then effort to remind you of what we now take for granted that people in the 80s did not.

After 'The Infinity Doctors', you just know that Lance Parkin is the right man to write a book in the current story arc. In that book, we had a Doctor who was both familiar and strange - and so too do we have another familiar and strange Doctor in this book. And given how largely non-Canonical 'The Infinity Doctors' was, surprise surprise - there are some links between that book and this.

Mr. Parkin also writes with a moderate sense of mischief, strewing the book with many references to the history of Doctor Who. I won't spoil them for you, other than mentioning that two of the chapters are entitled 'Escape Velocity' (the title of the next Eighth Doctor book) and 'Death Comes to Time' (the new Doctor Who radio serial, currently in production).

And the Doctor's daughter? She's mentioned in the blurb, so I feel no guilt in mentioning her here. But you'll need to read the book to see exactly who she is - maybe. Like many good authors, there is just enough uncertainty about the character that you want another book to make it clearer.

The Caught On Earth arc allowed us to see the Doctor in a new light. At least, that's what I had been hoping for. Temporarily freed from the shackles of past continuity and trapped for one century on an insignificant planet known well to his many readers, would the Doctor's adventures be much different from what had gone on before? Although the first four books of this particular series were fairly good adventure stories, one somehow got the impression that many of these escapades could have taken place without the arc in place. Some advantage was made of the arc's basic premise, but with the notable exception of THE TURING TEST, one suspected that somehow the books hadn't quite gone as far as they could have. The format of many of them had remained the same as always; the Doctor arrives from nowhere, meets people, has adventures and solves problems, and then finally leaves at the end of the day. THE TURING TEST managed to set the action over a longer amount of time, allowing the Doctor to build up some slightly-lengthier-than-we're-used-to relationships. The next logical step would bring us to the point where he starts to build real long-term relationships, hopefully to see him care about someone in ways that we had never seem him caring before.

This is what makes much of FATHER TIME work so well. Here, after being trapped on Earth for over 80 years, the Doctor finally starts to have a family of his own. This shouldn't be a surprise really, after all, the Doctor was rarely seen as a loner; he had chosen to share his adventures and his travels with an extremely large group of people over the years. Being stuck in one location finally gives him time to develop a real relationship. Adopting a young girl at the very start of the 1980's, we see the two of them at three points of that decade - the beginning, the middle and the end. We see his daughter, Miranda, growing up and becoming a woman, and the changes that puts on their relationship. It's very well done.

Outside of the wonderful character stuff, the story itself is relatively straightforward. Advanced aliens from the distant future have traveled back in time to find the child they call the Last One. The Doctor has already found himself drawn to this child and is the only person on Earth who can save her from these killers. What follows is a classic, fairly traditional tale of Doctor Who, but cleverly changed enough to give the events much more emotional impact than they would have otherwise had. The scene at the end of the first part where the Doctor hugs Miranda and vows to protect her and to keep her safe feels so amazingly right, that it seems almost strange we've never seen anything quite like this before.

I do have a few minor quibbles though, mostly related to the fact that we don't see enough of the Doctor and his daughter interacting. They share a fair amount of time together, but for almost the entire final third of the book, their face-to-face time is missing in action. In the story, of course, this is done to increase the tension; this is someone that the Doctor cares a great deal about (perhaps more than he's ever cared about someone before), and we see how desperate he is to be reunited with her. I understand why it was done, and I did enjoy the heightened anxiety. But I think the only real solution it would have been to keep Miranda around for a few books to see how the Doctor reacts to danger when his own daughter is involved.

The story ends a little too easily, which isn't really a problem, but it does feel like a let down after the previously excellent sections. The resolution just comes too neatly. But that said, there are some beautiful set-pieces in this novel that I'm not going to spoil here. There are a lot of clever little touches running through the book too; notice how the narrative subtly changes as Miranda gets older, going from a fairy-tale story to a grown-up adventure. The slight problems with the story are more than made up for in the details. The Doctor has always had a family of sorts; it's nice to see a book about a real one.

With "Doctor Who" books entering their second decade, there's been a call for a rise in the quality of the way those books are written. I've sensed recently a need for books that aren't just action run-arounds, set on alien planets with silly names, books where the Doctor himself has almost nothing to contribute. I sense a greater need for the "novel", for a book that spends more time on character and prose, for something with a little more thought behind the words.

"Father Time" is a big step in the right direction. Lance Parkin can usually be relied upon for a better-than-average read, although I've yet to find one of his novels that works on every level. "Father Time" is divided up into three almost self-contained novellas that stretch out through a gently exaggerated version of the 1980s.

The first section is set in the "Early 1980s", as a still amnesiac Doctor has settled into a happy sort of inconsequential life in a snowy part of England. Gradually he becomes involved in the life of Miranda, a grammar-school girl with a keen intellect.. and two hearts. Two honor-bound alien warriors (and a Go-Bot) are pursuing the girl, attempting to answer the oldest unanswered question in "Who" history ("If you knew that child would grow up to be evil... could you then kill that child?"). The writing throughout this section is nearly superb.

The middle section is the "Mid" 1980s, although a Phil Collins song released in 1988 is heard playing on a stereo (I suspect Parkin kept the dates deliberately vague to add a fairy-tale mystique to the book). We follow Miranda, now the Doctor's daughter, into her teenage years. The plotting is 90% soap opera (Parkin is a former British soap writer), although the prose is far better than a "Sweet Valley High" novel.

The book's final section resolves Miranda's flight from the alien forces still out to destroy her. The plot is pure "Moonraker" and the closing political monologue is baffingly awful. The rest of the book is of such a high standard that the ending is, bizarrely, more disappointing then the bad ending of a book that was bad throughout.

On the whole, however, reading "Father Time" can be an exhilirating experience. The characters and the action are crisper than that of most previous "Who" novels, and there are moments of great humor and great pathos. A worthy near-miss.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, much more than some of the others in the story arc. Even without a memory of who he really is, the Doctor is still the unpredictable and ever resourceful person we have always known and loved. At each cliffhanger I found myself wondering "How is he going to get out of this one?" and was pleasently surprised when it was in the Doctor's usual, unconventional style. My only disappointment was the actual ending. Only this prevents my giving it 5 stars--it's total predictability. I had deducted this impending outcome by the end of the first "book" and was hoping against hope that I was completely wrong. All in all, a good read and wonderful, romping adventure(s)

And here we are still in the amnesia portion of our program. Next up: the eighties!

It would have been interesting if the book had decided to mimic the eighties themselves and drown itself in neon-drenched cultural excess, with a fixation on making more money and consuming vast quantities of drugs, all the while indulging in a wall to wall soundtrack of cheap synthesizer music and odes to empty lifestyles. Instead, we get spaceships and vengeance. I'm not sure which would have been the better deal.

Parkin has a pretty good track record as a "Who" writer. His "Cold Fusion" was a nifty way to feature two Doctors with some nice twists, "Dying Days" closed out Virgin with a bang and his BBC "Infinity Doctors" was a pretty classy imagining of an alternate Gallifrey if the Doctor had never left. So having him tackle the concept of the Doctor as father along with the whole "I've forgotten everything except for useful things" angle seems like a sure bet to be if not a classic, but at least a good time.

And it is a good time, but not for the reasons that I wanted or even the ideal reasons. The conceit of the book is thus: in yet another happy stumbling upon danger, the Doctor winds up being a caretaker for an infant who also has two hearts. She happens to be the last of an alien race of tyrants, and the folks who overthrew them are trying very hard to find her so they can ensure she never breeds again. This eventually escalates into a giant battle in space with guns and stuff so things can get wrapped up properly but you can be forgiven hoping that it would go somewhere different.

The inherent idea of intriguing. The Doctor, having little idea who he is still, is now forced to raise an infant throughout the eighties, trying to make sure she's kept safe (since he knows people are after her) and also keep a low profile. To have the Doctor take the long haul with a girl growing up to be a teenager would have been a fairly interesting angle, a nice low-key examination of his values and what it means to be human. Not quite as emotionally traumatizing as Paul Cornell's previous masterpiece "Human Nature" but it would have been nice to see something different. Instead, we get aliens with guns.

The book is divided into three parts, each of which is roughly similar. We have fairly generic aliens who come down swearing vengeance, eventually find Miranda and are defeated, each time (except for the last) vowing to come back stronger. We jump forward in time with each section, showing how Miranda is progressing but the core of it remains the same: aliens want to kill her and she has very little what is going on while the Doctor tries to protect her. What would have been more interesting to me would have been to forgo the jump between infant to teenager and depict the Doctor and Miranda getting to know each other over the years, as she comes to treat this man as her father and the Doctor learns to connect better with other beings. Two people living in the background of a constantly shifting decade and trying to get on with their lives without causing too many ripples, as they're out of step with everyone but each other. Until they're ultimately forced to confront what they've been hiding from all these years. The relationship between the Doctor and Miranda could have formed the core of this as we watched it unfold and develop.

Instead, we get shorthand. By the time we see Miranda again, she's a daughter and later a victim of plot contrivance. The bits with her as a teenager actually work fairly well and make me wish more of the book was like that. But there's no real sense of how we arrived there, we're told instead of shown. And much of the book is like that, falling into black and white holes with little grey area. People change their minds on a dime and make decisions that seem to go against the opposite of what they believed five pages ago, with very little mental fallout. The side plots that should serve as our emotional anchors (like Debbie Castle and her husband) often feel like going through the motions, or playing on us via cliches. There's very little shade or nuance (the opening of the book does hold some promise, but it doesn't last). When one character who has been with us most of the book dies, it's almost tossed off and what should be a great tragedy and an emotional sucker punch to the gut just feels perfunctory, the book cleaning house on its way out. There's a level of detachment in the midst of all the simplicity that won't allow the book to connect and thus makes it feel very Point A to Point B, with hardly any twists to make it feel like the outcomes were earned. It goes the way it does because it has to, because the plot requires it . Which, considering what we could have gotten, is disappointing. There didn't really need to be any SF in here whatsoever, and what could have been elegiac and contemplative only winds up being another reason for the Doctor to make a bunch of aliens look like dolts.

There are some clever ideas in here (a rather bold theft, the sonic suitcase) and seeing the Doctor making lots of money (even as we don't really see how) and living like a rich guy so his babygirl can have whatever she wants offers some amusement. But we could have had something different. Parkin has proven himself so many other times that this was either a blip or the result of the heavy hand of editorial, but even so it reads like a perfectly fine basic SF novel. It just would have been if it had deviated slightly.

After being trapped on Earth with no memory of his past for 80 plus years, the Doctor has finally gotten himself a family. His daughter, Miranda, also has two hearts and a high intelligence. After her 'parents' are killed in an Galactic attempt to take her life, the Doctor takes on the role as a foster parent.

Set over 3 periods, the Early, Mid and Late 80's, Parkin has used a lot of media merchandising references to help date these periods - most notably the mega huge 'Batman' franchising of the late 80's. The story of why Miranda is the target for death also lends us to believe that following Gallifrey's demise in 'The Ancestor Cell', the universe has also radically changed through no one controlling time travel for other races.

The only disappointing aspect is the uncharacteristic ending of the novel, but the excitement and reality of the rest of the book fars outweighs this slight inconsistency. Here's hoping there is another book (again by Parkins) that sees a continuation with the Doctors and Miranda's relationship.

Definately the best in the 'Earth Arc' series. Recommended!!!

Father Time is written by Lance Parkin whose previous Dr. Who works include The Infinity Doctors and his most recent release; Trading Places.
Father Time is set in Britain in the 1980s and Parking lets the reader know what part of this decade they are reading about with such references as Teen Titans comic books and how bottled water becomes the next novel thing since pre-packaged food.
The novel begins, progresses, and ends in the 1980s. Without giving too much away, the Doctor, still struggling with amnesia, adopts a young girl known as the Last One. Eventually, the Doctor becomes a millionaire with inventing bottled water and spends most of the 1980s raising Miranda who ironically has two hearts. Parkin's ending hints we may not have seen the last of the Doctor's daughter.
What made Father Time great was the dialogue between Miranda and the Doctor as well as Parkin's description of the decade. Father Time answers the question of what the Doctor would do if he had the unrelenting responsibility of raising a child. I thought the title and the cover to this novel was original and Parkin did not bludgeon the reader with narration like so many authors are guilty of.
I look forward to reading his latest novel.