Customer Reviews

Return of the Living Dad (Doctor Who: The New Adventures)

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Oh dear. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. RETURN OF THE LIVING DAD. A Kate Orman novel that I didn't like. And I don't really think it's a particularly bad novel, per say, but rather that there were a lot of little things that annoyed me, and they slowly built up. By the time I got to the end, I just wasn't in the mood for it any more. Too much in-jokiness. Too much fluffiness. In short, too much style, not enough substance.

I think that the book's biggest problem is that, paradoxically, it contains both too much and too little plot. There's a lot of actual action, but very little feels of consequence. Let me describe what I'm talking about. The book starts with Benny and Jason finding a clue as to what happened to Benny's long-lost father. So, they meet up with the Doctor, Chris and Roz. Then they jump back in time. Then they go through a time warp. Then they spend some time in 1983. Then someone gets captured. Then there's a jailbreak. Then someone else is captured. Then there's another escape attempt. Etc, etc, etc. There is actually a lot of plot; the problem is that it's all paper-thin.

And there's also something that had previously annoyed me in Paul Cornell's HUMAN NATURE that is turned up to eleven here: the fandom in-jokes. Specifically, the near constant references to rec.arts.drwho. Now, I was a regular in that newsgroup during the period that this book was written, so I recognize many of the references. The problem is that as soon as I come across one of these, I'm mentally taken out of the book and placed back into USEnet of the mid-1990s. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course, but I don't think the author expects me to be thinking more about long-dead running jokes and flame-wars than about the book that's in front of me.

Don't get me wrong. Sometimes references to outside material can add immensely to a story and can make the reader think about things in more than one way. This is true whether the reference is to a previous story in the series ("Oh, so the bad guys from story X were working for the evil guy from story Y. Hmmm, that's quite interesting.") or to material outside the fiction completely ("Oooh, a subtle satire of early-20th century American foreign policy! How clever!"). With references of the kind seen here, my reaction is rather different ("Hey! It's old whatshisname from rec.arts.drwho! What a nut that guy was! Wasn't he the guy who stole someone's airline ticket to get to Visions and then drunkenly demanded that Sophie Aldred look at his crayon drawings of K9?" -- this is a simulated convention story; if it were an actual convention story, it would involve an NA author and alcohol poisoning.) Slight references I can stomach, but I swear that some of the conversations were complete cut-n-paste jobs (the UNIT-dating example springs instantly to mind).

Getting back to the story proper, this desperately felt like it wanted to be a HAPPY ENDINGS style adventure, where there's little in the way of plot and just a lot of fun frolicking instead. But it seems almost afraid to go too far in that direction. Every time it looks as though it's going to settle down into pure romp mode, someone needs rescuing, or an alien's gone missing, or the Doctor gets angsty. It felt as though it was trying too hard to be fun and to be an adventure, and instead of being a fun adventure, it just ended up as a misfire. Benny's father, Isaac, would appear to have to bulk of the story resting on his fictional shoulders, but since the character just didn't quite work for me, I could never really get into the book.

Still, it's not all bad. It's an Orman novel, so we're assured of some deft prose. The story is well paced and I never felt bored (compare this to THE DEATH OF ART which I'm struggling through right now; I may literally fall dead of old age before I get through it all). There are a handful of nice scenes and great character moments. They just sort of felt grafted on, or isolated.

I was disappointed rereading this one. I don't really recall much of anything from my first reading, which should probably have set off some warning bells. Of course, when looking back at this period of the NAs, it's noticeable that if you don't like the Kate Orman novel you're reading, there's no need to worry: a different one will be along in a couple of months. And fortunately, I think everything else she's done has been better than this one.

This is one of the few original Doctor Who novels I have read that actually surpased the TV show in quality. I realize that this is high praise, but with this book Ms. Orman achieves a level of excellence rarely reached in Doctor Who fiction. The book deals with long time companion Benny finding her long lost father displaced in time in late 20th century England.While on Earth, her father has set up a motley band of aliens and science fiction fans who work at returning stranded aliens to their homes. However, not long after the Doctor and company arrive, strange things start to happen, so to speak. When all is said and done, we are left with a book that takes fantastic characters and treats them in such a way that if we try hard enough, we can easily think of two or three people we know in real life who are like them. As an extra special treat, we get a mastermind villian (for lack of a better term since he really isn't) who has truly original motives for what he is doing. This is a rarity in Doctor Who stories. The only downside to the novel is when the Doctor's life flashes before his eyes, and he is haunted by the "ghost" of his former self. However, this is a small quibble compared to the overall excellence of the book. Unfortunately, this book is out of print, but it is well worth the search if you can find it.