Customer Reviews

Parallel 59 (Doctor Who (BBC Paperback))

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This is the first novel by both series editor Stephen Cole and co-author Natalie Dallaire, and it's a good, fun, straightforward science fiction adventure.

Slightly reminiscent of the previous book, Frontier Worlds, in tone, this book begins in media res, with the Doctor and Compassion separated from Fitz early on. Fitz winds up in utopian Mechta, while the Doctor and Compassion find themselves on the planet Skale, where power blocs called Parallels are engaged in a tenuous, paranoid cold war. Specifically, they end up in Parallel 59 (no surprise there), which keeps the population in the dark about other Parallels much like the society in 1984. Can the Doctor and Compassion uncover 59's Big Secret Project and its connection to Mechta? Does a duck quack?

Ordinarily, I have trouble with books that introduce an alien society. Just trying to remember all those alien names and picture what everything is supposed to look like gives me a headache. The authors keep things fairly straightforward and recognizable here, which allowed me to concentrate on the story and characters. They did a particularly good job bringing the Doctor and Compassion to life, and Fitz's portrayal was a logical extension of the character we've seen in other books. The supporting cast is likeable, particularly the people in Mechta.

The only real letdown came after I'd finished the book and thought about it. Once the Big Secret Project's secret is revealed, it's never really explained why anyone would go to that much trouble in the first place. At that point, though, the story was moving so quickly that I didn't notice it at the time.

Doctor Who fans who prefer stories that play with the formula more, like those by Lawrence Miles or Paul Magrs, may find this book a little too straightforward for their tastes. For those who just want an entertaining Doctor Who story, this should fill the bill quite nicely.

While not the greatest of the BBC books so far it was far from the worst and I would gladly try any other book by either writer in the future. The dialogue was very good, characterization was very consistent, and the book had the feeling to it that the authors had pictured a whole world even though they were just presenting the slice of it necessary to the story. There were only two areas I felt could be improved: First was the lack of any imaginative twist or turn to the story. (mechta for example. If you don't guess THAT one your book's missing some pages) Then there's the characterization of Compassion and Fitz. Compassion was created to be the Anti-Sam, a human whose thought process was totally alien. Now they've already started to strip that away, even as they continue to destroy everything about Fitz which made him so perfect for the series to begin with. All in all, tho' the book was well worth recommending. Maybe not a good jumping on point to entice friends with but a good book nonetheless.

I love it when a Dr Who novel starts part way into the story. The Doctor, Compassion and Fitz are separated right from the beginning as a result from fleeing a doomed space station. Sadly I found the only interesting bits to be read were about Fitz's exploits on the other world, Mechta, a colony for convalescents, whereas the Doctor was tending not to do much and Compassion was being annoyingly annoying once again (still with no insight of who or what she is). The action and pace does pick up in the 3rd part of the story, giving the Doctor and Compassion a more interesting exciting role to play. Worth a read, but don't expect much from it.

Escaping from a doomed space station, the Doctor and Compassion splash down in the waters of the planet Skale. Fitz, as per usual, has gone his own way, and arrives on the pleasant world of Mechta. Compassion and the Doctor are not so lucky, as they are captured by Parallel 59, owners of the orbital station. The Skalens are a paranoid, competitive bunch who have divided their planet into seemingly arbitrary power blocs. In contrast, the Mechtans are chilled, relaxing in convalescence. Fitz literally becomes immersed in their culture. So Fitz once more acts the playboy, where his only anxiety is keeping each of his lovers unaware of the others. But is there really something sinister in Central, as Fitz's circle would have him believe? And what's happening to the people who leave Mechta?

Convinced that they're from another planet, Haltiel, the Skalens set about interrogating the Doctor and Compassion. But the denizens of Parallel 59 are very politically charged, and some of them don't want the Doctor to repair the damage to the space station (which had unwittingly been caused by the Doctor and friends). Compassion escapes, and finds the obligatory band of rebels. However, she and the Doctor are marooned, forced to leave the TARDIS behind in the space station. Not only must the Doctor recover his beloved time machine, but he must also save Fitz from the true nightmare of Mechta...

This is the first novel by the editor of the BBC books, Stephen Cole, and it looks as though it could have been a real disaster, a case of too many chefs (Peter Anghelides is acknowledged to have helped out also). But Anghelides seems to have carried on with the most effective device of the previous novel (his own 'Frontier Worlds'), by having Fitz narrate his time in Mechta. This again brings us closer to Fitz, a character who had previously seemed lifeless. There's nowhere near the same level of wit as in Frontier Worlds, and Parallel 59 appears to be quite formulaic (how many cultures has Fitz lived in now?), and Compassion seems to bear a gun as unthinkingly as any Ace (but without the same gung-ho). The opening's also quite dull, as we're told about the dramatic escape from the space station, rather than being shown it. This adventure is also the first to feature an unclothed Doctor, but this sight doesn't seem to faze his cell companion, Compassion, so we must assume that the Doctor is fully humanoid in appearance (no hidden appendages like the Centauri in B5). But then it's hard to see Compassion reacting to anything much.

There is a point in the novel where all the plots and counterplots seem facile, but there's an even bigger twist towards the end. And this novel's conclusion is it's real saviour, for it is genuinely pulsating. If you go and reread the opening pages, you do realise that there are subtle signposts to what's going to happen. With three authors contributing, Parallel 59 could have been a disaster. It's a triumph that a clear narrative emerges, and the authors certainly couldn't be faulted for the use of their imaginations. There are duff parts certainly, but the final drama, I think, makes up for it. Parallel 59 certainly gave me that always desired DW buzz.

Hey! A Doctor Who novel written by a woman! That doesn't happen too often, Kate Orman aside, so it's kind of worth pointing out even if it doesn't really speak to the quality of the book or the lack thereof (Orman's books tend to stand out not because she's a lady but because hers tend to be really good) . . . interestingly enough, we get a fairly standard Who adventure here, not so much formulaic as nothing spectacular. Entertaining without being exciting. Perhaps I should explain.

Landing entirely by accident in a space station that is governed by a cybernetic entity and containing many people kept in suspended animation, things go wrong immediately and the team gets separated before the story even properly starting, with the Doctor and Compassion winding up on the planet and captured by the people running the facility and poor Fitz winding up in a perfect world with other people who are all there to relax and be cool.

On the planet, the Doctor and Compassion start to unravel the intricacies of this world, which is obsessed with furthering itself in a space race (and is in competition with several other Parallels) and thus winds up being somewhat paranoid, with practically everyone suspecting him of being an alien (they're right, as it turns out, but for the wrong reasons) and alternating between attempting to interrogate him or wanting to execute him. Just another day at the office, really.

Meanwhile, Fitz begins to sleep his way through the colony. I'm only half-kidding, as he begins to take apart the mystery of where he is and what it all means.

Given this description, you can probably guess that Fitz isn't actually on a colony and this will not end well, and its to the authors' credit that they manage to construct a society in less than three hundred pages that has a scope beyond what we see on the page. The Skale are nuts in some respect but it's a logical kind of nuts and once you accept that logic you begin to see why they're not real balanced. There's all these little components parts that would probably fall apart under close examination but work for the purposes of the story. Then you do what Doctor Who generally does best, which is drop the Doctor and his pals into a currently running but somewhat tenuous situation and allow him to run amok as best he can. As only he can, really.

Given this situation, it's still not surprising that it's less than exciting in parts. The early scenes with the Doctor dueling with the station dwellers, toying with them in and aggravating them at the same time while trying to find out as much information as he can, are interesting in watching this Doctor probe and prod without being overt about it (or so overt that they think he's just kidding). Especially when we don't know much about the situation. But we get to a point of diminishing returns and eventually the story devolves into the various people on the station trying to double cross or one-up one another because everyone is paranoid or working as a traitor. Even the Facility Head's gradually growing paranoia never comes to the fever pitch you hope it will (which, alas, would be reminiscent of every head of every station in every Doctor Who story, so maybe it's for the best) . . . this leads to a lot of passages, especially in the middle of the book, where everyone is just talking at each other and you're waiting for something to happen.

The Doctor acquits himself well in this situation, but the authors don't seem to know what to do with Compassion as they shunt her off into a side plot where she teams up with some rebels and generally acts aloof and mean to them. Her relationship with the Doctor is interesting enough at this point to warrant more space (she's probably the first full time companion we've seen who doesn't actively think he's the keenest but doesn't seem to realize that she's headed for a meltdown of sorts) but instead the writers just have her generally acting cold and callous. She's a hard character to write because she goes against the grain of several companions and doesn't act at all warm or cuddly, but she seems particularly sidelined here.

Which means it comes down to Fitz. And, to his credit, his sections tend to be the most interesting, if only because we spend a good portion of the story wondering what this has to do with the rest of the book. The gradual onslaught of creepy things happening and senses that This World is Not Quite Right gives the book an atmosphere that the generally sterile space station/planet sections don't really have. And as we get an unpeeling of what is really going on and thus things in that world start to get a rather unsettling significance, the book begins to pick up. Although I don't know when his sudden desire to do anagrams all the time came from, it certainly seemed to come out of left field (and gets kind of abandoned eventually) but might have been a side effect of the situation.

The ending of the book helps things mightily, giving us not real exciting hand to hand space station combat on the one hand (it doesn't help that people have switched sides so often that I wasn't sure who was siding with who or why) but Fitz's world getting some real emergency and poignancy, especially when you find out what is really happening. The general level of panic increases and the book sports what has to be one of the most downbeat climaxes I have ever seen in the novels, where everyone's worst fears literally come true. And then it's over. I wasn't sure whether to take that as a daring move or the authors just not sure what else to do.

In any event it's well done. Good portions of the novel may not register with you at all a half hour after reading them and there's certainly very little stylistic flair on display here. But it's done competently and manages to be generally entertaining, even if it's just a stepping stone marking time for the big events to happen in later books.

PARALLEL 59 is a sadly incoherent book, with some really clichéd and dull portions being countered by moments of great interest and wonderful writing. There are some instances of rather clever storytelling at work here, but unfortunately the majority of them get bogged down by formulaic portions that do nothing more then tell the same old story that we've seen many times already.

The story is neatly divided into two sections with Fitz immediately becoming separated from the Doctor and Compassion. The Doctor and Compassion are captured by a government task-force and mistaken for spies while Fitz has adventures at a place called Mechta where things are not quite what they seem. Boiled down to their basic elements, both segments are fairly unoriginal, but the Fitz sections manage to rise above expectations due to the inspired execution. One mistake made is that for the second book in a row, Fitz begins an ill-fated romance with a native of the environment that he finds himself marooned in. PARALLEL 59, while not doing a bad job in this department, pales when compared to the Fitz relationship portrayed in FRONTIER WORLDS.

The sections containing the Doctor and Compassion rarely move beyond the type of adventure that we've seen time and time again, though to balance this out there are some hilarious portions mixed in. The secondary characters in this section all seem rather bland and faceless. There's the group of outlaws that we know so well from various other Doctor Who stories. There's also the large government-controlled project featuring bureaucratic types that we've seen in those same previous Doctor Who stories. Add one or two double-agents, and you're left with the entire dull cast. None of these characters leap off the page and become anything more than the simple two-dimensional figures we've been seeing.

Overall, this book was fairly disappointing, yet there were one or two very entertaining sections, and the further adventures of Fitz were rather enjoyable. I wouldn't mind reading further solo books from either of these two authors in the future, but I don't think their styles were really suited for co-authorship. It led to a feeling of inconsistency here that was very distracting.