Customer Reviews

The Turing Test (Doctor Who Series)

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When I was a youngster the Doctor Who novelisations produced by Target sparked my interest in reading. The likes of Terrance Dicks, Gerry Davis, Ian Marter, and Malcolm Hulke provided me with much pleasure and led me to explore more of the local library before I ventured into "more serious" fiction. Those early novels were formulaic and this is wittily shown in an essay by Paul Magrs, a wonderful British novelist whose work seems to draw on magical realism from Gabriel Marquez and Terrance Dicks, where he explains how these early Target books influenced his writing. In those early Target books certain nouns always had the same qualifying adjectives. Pockets were capacious. Hair was "a mass of curls" or "an unruly mop".

It had been some years since I read a Doctor Who novel, and it was Paul Magrs move into the stable of BBC writers that led me to read one or two of the recent novels. The books today are very different to the fiction of fifteen or more years ago. They are well written adult science fiction. Things do not always work out for the best. Life is not simple. Characters are no longer brief descriptions recalling much enjoyed television stories but are fleshed out, alive.

The Turing Test is a fine example of the modern Doctor WHo novel, and indeed may be a level or two above the norm. Set in the Second World War and featuring as central characters Alan Turing, codebreaker, Graham Greene, spy and occasional novelist, and Joseph Heller, pilot and future novelist; the story features the eighth incarnation of the Doctor. Stranded on earth he has lost his memory, and is wandering waiting for a meeting in St Louis in 2001. It features codes, and aliens; but also meditations on sex and sexuality, the value of humanity, and the nature of fighting.

The novel is divided into three sections. One written from the perspective of Turing, one Greene, one Heller. Each is in the first person. The conceit in lesser hands would have failed but Paul Leonard mimics the styles of the latter two well, and provides a distinctive voice to the lonely Turing. As someone that has read a lot of Greene lately I feel that Leonard's writing evoked something of Greeneland.

The particular value of Leonard's style and structure is that in giving each character an opportunity to speak their character can be revealed in a manner that does not require revelation upon revelation. Further, each character's perspective being very different - from Turing's naivety, through Greene's bitter cynicism, to Heller's battling pacifism - we are shown different facets of the Doctor, the central character. For a character with a huge past (to his fanbase) placed in a story arc based on a breakdown and terrible amnesia, this novel succeeds in casting new light on him.

It is an impressive adult sci-fi novel. Mr Leonard is to be congratulated.

Readers are referred to the first novel in the arc, The Burning by Justin Richards, and Paul Magrs The Scarlet Empress, for other very good examples of the new Doctor Who novels.

Whenever I open a Paul Leonard "Doctor Who" novel of late, I feel dread in the pit of my stomach. I've come to expect short books with 200 pages of terrific writing, and 40 pages of a haphazard sloppy conclusion which has the feel of something written on a newspaper in an airport barber shop.

"The Turing Test" also comes at a critical time -- it's the third book of the Caught-On-Earth arc. Our Doctor, memory gone, friends gone, TARDIS inoperable, has been stranded for 45 years, and is only just beginning to piece together that he's not human. It's Leonard's task to portray the Doctor's first escape attempt -- and also the first appearance of bona-fide outer space aliens since this arc began. Oh, and it's World War II.

On the face of it, then, this is a book that needs heavy Doctor involvement -- it's the first serious wrinkle to the character of this tabula rasa Doctor we've had over the past few books. But Leonard chooses to tell the story from the point of three real-life narrators -- Alan Turing, Graham Greene, and Joseph Heller -- each of whom tell a bit and piece of the story before dying, and then pass the tale to the next author.

This is classic Paul Leonard on two grounds -- he gets to kill characters off, *and* he gets to leave a story unfinished not just once, but two times over in the same book! I was dreading the final Joseph Heller segment, but to my surprise and delight, this is the best of all, the most manic writing and (arguably) the most sensible standpoint of the three narrators. This portion I finished in one night. The Graham Greene section felt like a slight letdown -- the narrative POV didn't seem as careful (or intentionally careless) as the Heller or Turing bits. I'm also leery of reading the memoir of someone who's about to take his own life -- the Turing chapters are seemingly dictated in his final hours, and the endless self-deprecation seems intrusive -- but on the whole these chapters are a good way to begin the tale.

The Doctor's final revelation -- that, like Li Hsen Chang, and so many other stooges and collaborators we saw in TV "Doctor Who", he's been duped and left behind, and that he now must become less selfish -- is really quick and glossed over. Fortunately, this "off-screen" realization is in keeping with the rest of the book, so it's a forgivable sin.

Some of the endless recitations on religion and morality and, even worse, science, are rubbish. So is the final segment, with our heroes playing out a silly fantasy as Dresden burns. But it's well-written, fast-moving rubbish. Maybe I won't dread the final chapters of Paul Leonard's next book.

I have had some difficulty with the new Doctor Who story arc. Neither 'The Burning' nor 'Casualties of War' have particularly satisfied me as they haven't convinced me that anything has changed. The Doctor has lost his memory, but apart from a few references to this it appears to have had no impact on the story. I was therefore delighted when finally I got the impression that something was very different in 'The Turing Test'.

Paul Leonard writes this story from three perspectives, those of real people alive at the time and still well known today: mathematician and code breaker Alan Turing, and novelists Graham Greene and Joseph Heller.

The Doctor is alive and well on Earth, and is trying to work out exactly who he is. In this quest, he encounters the three "authors" of the story who assist him, in one way or another and with different degrees of willingness, to track down some people who are also very different from other people.

The story is entertaining on a variety of levels. It is a fairly straightforward adventure story (although the backtracking inherent in the changing of "authors" might frustrate some). It is also a different Doctor, one who is operating with a very personal agenda which is at odds with his normal methods. It is also about what makes people "human" (in a very broad sense), and we are given a variety of examples both within the human cast and also with those who are not truly human.

I hope that the rest of the story arc is up to the standard this novel has set.

"Turing Test" needs to go up there with "Interference" as "Doctor Who" books that break the mold and then stamp up and down on the pieces. Narrated, in turn, by fictionalized versions of Alan Turing, Graham Greene and Joseph Heller, this is an outside-looking-in "Who" book that's much more about character than outwitting the latest generic alien threat. Don't expect to be given all the puzzle pieces as to What's Going On, because that's not the point.

The tone shifts wonderfully throughout the book to reflect the styles of the narrators in question - the Heller section in particular brings back "Catch-22" vividly. The Doctor is terribly interesting, here, with his motivation stripped down to very human essentials. This book has probably made the best use of its setting of any of the books about the eighth Doctor exiled on Earth.

Buy it. Read it. Thank yourself later.

THE TURING TEST is one story told by three authors. Mathematician Alan Turing begins the tale, novelist Graham Greene continues it to the best of his abilities, and finally CATCH-22 author Joseph Heller completes the story. Long time readers of the Doctor Who line will no doubt be quaking in fright throughout the final sections - not because of the writing or fear of a manic Yossarian, but from prior exposure to Paul Leonard's books where the endings are often short, hurried or just plain missing in action. Fortunately, this is a book that holds together extremely well throughout its entire 242 page run.

This is an extremely well crafted story. Since this is essentially one story told from three separate viewpoints, there is a certain (albeit small) amount of overlapping. At many times in later sections, I would be eagerly flipping back to earlier portions to revisit an event that had previously been described. Every time I did, I would be rewarded by the new insight or the different perspective (or just the wonderful bickering between the narrators). It's constructed very well and is quite clever once you realize some of the stuff that Leonard is subtly slipping into the story. The attention to detail is quite good and certainly very impressive.

As in CASUALTIES OF WAR, we get a slightly different view of the Doctor depending on which narrator is in control of the story's pen. Each one sees the man differently based on their own prejudices and background. This arc is being handled rather well, and the ending of this particular book is powerful in terms of the individual story being told, and also in the larger context. I'm fairly surprised with how effective it ended up being.

As with the previous two books, the story doesn't end with everything totally spelled out for the reader. But I think this works to much better effect here in THE TURING TEST than in either of those two tales. Here, we have exactly enough framework constructed in order to form one's own conclusions without going into too much detail. As this is a completely character based story, the specifics are entirely irrelevant to the narrative. The book ends exactly where it should, with the Doctor confused and ultimately alone, frustrated at the very last.

All in all, this is a very impressive piece of writing. Each of the three narrators have interesting voices that serve the story well. While the book drags a bit during parts of the middle Greene section, the rest more than makes up for them. Highly recommended, as this is something that the books should be doing more of.

This was a daring approach that could have fallen flat on its face. However, the author pulls off the task of writing from three peoples perspectives well, especially considereing that two of those people are widely read authors themselves. The pain and frustration inherent in the Doctor at the end are palpable and really topped off a very good book.

This is a step in the right direction at least.

The first two books in the "I forgot everything" arc were decent enough but didn't seem to do much with the whole point of this storyline, that the Doctor has forgotten everything and has to age forward in order to meet Fitz in 2001, encountering strange stuff along the way and solving it without knowing exactly who he is. For the most part the Doctor has acted basically like the Doctor, but just a bit more mysterious, which if you didn't know he had amnesia, then you wouldn't think anything unusual was going on. And considering this is the new and shocking status quo, I've been expecting a bit more from it.

This doesn't fix all the problems but at least it shows a bit more ambition.

Much like "The Burning", the novel is written from the first person perspective of people who aren't the Doctor. It's a shame that they go back to this well so soon after the last attempt but frankly Leonard's effort puts the previous one to shame. I understand why they do it, unable to really delineate the extent of the Doctor's amnesia, they hedge their bets by putting him at a distance to us so you can't tell if he's doing something because he's got a plan or because he can't remember how he normally does it. But for the first time he feels like they're writing him as someone who has forgotten a great deal and realizes it and isn't quite sure how to go about remembering it properly. He still acts like himself, but he has no idea why he's acting like himself, which seems a bit more reasonable than just mentioning every so often that he has no memory.

Leonard does set out a bit of a gutsy challenge for himself, as all the parts of the novel are narrated by well known historical figures. To make things even more fun, two of those people are famous (if dead) authors. This could come across as heavily conceited and he does ease us into the concept by having the first section written by whiny Alan Turing, the introspective gay mathematician who the government is using to make the codes that will help them win the war. A lot of his section becomes creepy when you realize that in real life Turing committed suicide and there's something about writing the fictional thoughts of a person who would essentially finish his section and do himself in that I'm not completely comfortable with but it's not a hideous distraction. What's more of a distraction is how pretty much every person he encounters tells him that he's too logical and too much like a computer and doesn't understand people at all. Not to be mean but after like the fifth time this happens and the poor guy gets berated you start to understand why he was sad all the time. He also has a crush on the Doctor, which is probably an untapped area of fan-fiction that we don't need to consider.

The other sections are narrated by Graham Greene and Joseph Heller, which wind up coming across as better than they have any right to. Leonard doesn't try to do anything radical with them and while I haven't read any Greene novels yet, it strikes me as the kind of tone he would use judging by what little I have read from him. The Heller section actually comes fairly close to how I imagine he would be, even if it is oddly close to "Catch-22" in parts. He gets their fictional voices down well enough to make the book entertaining on its own, without too many "Look at me writing famous authors like I knew them!" theatrics. It could have turned into a dry writing exercise, or as a way to show off how well he did his research but it somehow manages not to.

Which is good because the plot is perhaps the weakest part of the whole novel. As far as I can tell, it involves aliens being trapped on Earth during World War Two and trying to get the heck out of Dodge while attempting to blend in. They aren't explained very well and when they do interact with the Doctor he really doesn't seem to bother telling anyone else about it, which means the book gets more and more vague as we enter into the Heller sequences. It got to the point where I didn't even know what the stakes were and there's not so much an ending as "I guess the book is over" sort of feeling. It feels like we spend so much time setting up the mystery of the situation and the setting that the aliens get a bit shafted and barely play into the novel at all. If not for the presences of the three historical figures, the book runs the risk of not working at all because I can't explain to you even the smallest bit of why anything that happens is actually important. I sort of doubt that was the author's goal.

You could perhaps argue that the author was so into the concept of the novel that he didn't bother writing a plot to go with it and to some extent you would be right. But he succeeds in that concept so well that it's not until you get to the end that you realize that book isn't going to resolve in anything resembling a coherent fashion but by that point you have been enjoying the ride so much that it really won't matter to you. Not all of the Doctor Who line can marry plot with high concept successfully, it's rare that these books even try to shoot for the high concept. So to see this one stretch for the concept and come pretty close to succeeding on its own small terms is worth pointing out and worth applauding, even if I wish they had spent a little more time on making the plot compelling. Maybe next time.