Trial of a Timelord
So Vile a Sin
Bad Therapy
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Trial of a Timelord So Vile a Sin |
Virgin Books Bad Therapy |
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| Author | Matthew Jones |  |
| ISBN# | 0 426 20490 5 | |
| Published | 1996 | |
| Cover | Mark Salwowski |
| Synopsis: In the aftermath of the previous adventure, the Doctor and Chris try to find some peace in 1950's Soho. But a race who can be anything you want them to be forms a bizarre link to a planet, where the Doctor discovers his past is waiting to catch up with him. |
A Review by Shaun Lyon 16/9/99
I've a number of things to say about this book, but I had to give it a few days to think about it before I set pen to paper (or, in this day and age, finger to keyboard). Bad Therapy was quite a jumble: an ordinary action-adventure-mystery combined with a psychological thriller, a parable about tolerance and a subplot which didn't quite belong there thrown in for good measure. It was a good read, most certainly, but still left me a bit cold.
Bad Therapy is the type of novel where the villain is one of the least important parts of the puzzle, and is already outlined by the time you get to, say, chapter four. What is more important, usually, is the impetus behind the villain... why the villain is doing what he or she is doing. Not so in this novel. Instead, the focal point of the book is the fallout from the villain's handiwork, to the point where the villain -- a man called Moriah, the "man god of Kron'Tep" -- becomes almost an afterthought, and appears in what should have been the end of the book. Unfortunately, in one of the only truly negative things I can say about this novel, Bad Therapy ends about forty pages too late; it almost feels like one of those cliched second-endings tacked on at the end to pad things out into a real adventure. Doesn't quite work.
Clever readers will have already picked up a side plot in my review. That's right... Kron'Tep. At long last, Doctor Who fans are given an alternative ending to the saga of Peri Brown and Yrcanos -- no longer was the bumbling American botany student forced to stay with Yrcanos on Earth and endure life as the wife of a champion boxer (probably one of the most ridiculous endings ever for a Doctor Who novelization, and you can thank author Philip Martin for that one!) Instead, Peri -- now called Queen Gilliam by her subjects -- has spent the past 25 years in the company of a man she does not love, forcibly remaining his queen on Kron'Tep while spending her time dabbling in archaeology. Yes, yet again we discover a companion who has suffered through separation from and abandonment from an uncaring Doctor. One wonders how this guy ever kept any friends.
Anyway, Peri has uncovered something on Kron'Tep, ruins that lead her to discover that a long-held secret concerning Moriah and Petruska (let's just say they're to Kron'Tep what Antony and Cleopatra are to Egypt, and leave it at that), a secret that eventually brings her to Earth in the 1950's to meet with the Doctor. Here we have one hell of a coincidence, which is cleared up in one very unconvincing scene. Author Jones should have cut this entire subplot out of the book, left Peri where she was, and cut off the last 40 pages, and I'd call this a classic.
That's enough of the bad. The good is the stuff that begins when the Doctor and Chris, fresh from their adventures in the 30th Century in So Vile A Sin The Doctor is immediately thrust into an adventure when he discovers a dying boy who doesn't seem to have any identity. This leads him and Chris into a liaison with a group of social misfits who hang out at an underground club called the Tropics. This is perhaps the strongest part of this novel, and indeed one of the strongest parts of any of the New Adventures thus written: while other novelists have worked into play a gay character here or there (stemming from the fact that a large percentage of the authors of the Virgin books seem to be of this persuasion), Jones has created a very strong character in young Jack Bartlett, the post-teen lover of the boy who died, and who has lived under the thumb of blackmail by a gangster who has threatened to expose his sexual orientation to an uncaring world. (This book takes place, of course, before the Stonewall riots of the 1960's, which marked the beginning of the gay liberation movement.) Jack is soft but strong, and one of the most compelling characters in recent New Adventures memory; indeed, Gilliam asks him toward the end of the book if he's the Doctor's latest traveling companion (and he seemed ready-made to follow in Roz's footsteps), but Jack instead stays behind.
What is really going on makes for interesting reading, but it gets a little confusing when the reader begins to wonder who is real and who isn't. Tilda (the head of the Tropics club), Patsy (Chris' would-be lover), Eddy Stone (Jack's dead boyfriend), the mysterious Major, and young Dennis (a dark-skinned boy) are all Toys, creations of Moriah, protoplasmic constructs that mold themselves to be the ideal companions of those who they come into contact with; Patsy is the perfect mate for Chris, Eddy and Jack are perfectly matched, Dennis fits well with older Mikey who is looking for a little-brother, and so forth. I could get into the why's of the story, but that would ruin the most important bits. (Although, as an aside to Mr. Jones, you're not fooling anyone. If you're going to rip off "Absolutely Fabulous," -- Patsy and Eddy indeed -- there are more subtler ways of disguising it.)
Yes, it's confusing. I've found that it sorts out much better in print than in review, so you'll have to read it for yourself. Bad Therapy is a good novel (again, it could have been 40 pages lighter and the Peri bits clipped out) and says some very important things about the nature of relationships. It might offend the few readers who cannot stomach the idea of gay relationships and such; that's their unfortunate loss. But Bad Therapy is written well and stands on its own as a very atypical Doctor Who adventure.
A Review by Sean Gaffney 21/9/99
I found it interesting, considering the plot of Bad Therapy, how much this book depended on So Vile a Sin. This is the emotional aftermath of that book, dealing with the Doctor and Chris' feelings of grief and loss following the death of Roz. Therefore, reading it before SVAS is very much like effect before cause. The deep emotion hasn't hit me yet, and it won't till April. Ah, well.
Despite that, Bad Therapy is an excellent book, with several intriguing viewpoints. Another book that, although they might say otherwise, wouldn't have gotten past Submission 1 if it were a BBCNA.
Plot: Nicely tying in with SVAS, and the 6th Doctor story Mindwarp, the plot is about emotion, about Moriah creating the Toys through guilt, and the Doctor forced to confront his own tormented feelings for both Roz and Peri. Roz is dead, but her presence permeates the book, especially in the relationship between Chris and Patsy. A couple of odd things, maybe others could answer them. How did Moriah live for thousands of years, anyway? And was the balck cab really necessary, or was it just a Hammer Horror touch. I mean, you could just have abducted them normally.
The Doctor: Downbeat and mortal, this is a Doctor who has lost the battle one too many times. The best line of the book is when he asks Peri why he is the only one who cares if an entire species survives. Too often the Doctor puts the needs of the many in front of the needs of the few, and here he begins to wonder why everyone questions this. This Doctor, more human than we've ever seen him and yet still an alien, is the beginning of the transition to Paul McGann.
Chris: Chris has always been outward in all his feelings, and this comes to a head in his bonding with Patsy, and you wonder at the end whether he did create her through his grief. Better written than most authors write Chris, but again, a lot depends on SVAS.
Gilliam: Oh, boy, another alternate ending of the Peri story. Still, if you were to choose between this and Peri as Yrcanos' manager in wrestling matches, I'd go with this one. Her pain doesn't just go away, and it is only the knowledge that this Doctor is so different from the one she knew that enables her to begin to forgive him. I would have liked to see a resolution with Yrcanos, though.
Others: Tilda, Jack, and Patsy shine, but the others are too vague to be memorable. Moriah is an average dolally villain.
Style: Very similar to Human Nature, with its feelings right on the surface, and the chance of a brief respite being dashed. Still, I didn't notice any grevious problems with the writing.
Overall: Still incomplete till April and SVAS, but eminently readable in its own right, Bad Therapy is a very nice book to read at the holiday season, when emotions tend to roil anyway.
8/10.
A Review by Andrew McCaffrey 29/4/04
If you're not familiar with "Mystery Science Theater 3000", then you should be. It's the show where a guy and two robots are forced to watch incredibly awful movies, staying sane by constantly heckling the badness. Watching this series gives one an insight into a broad spectrum of horrible filmmaking. One of my favorite episodes is The Creeping Terror. During the production of this motion picture experience, they accidentally dropped the sound equipment into a lake, rendering them with no means of recording vocals on location. Rather than taking this as a Devine Hint To Stop Making A Bad Film, they decided to continue anyway. To fill in the obvious shortcomings of a film in which half of the dialog was not recorded, the final product features a narrator who constantly explains what's going on in front of us -- the most amusing examples being the scenes where the Voice Of The Director informs us about the conversation between two silent, mouthing people.
Why am I blathering on about MST3k in a review that's supposed to focus on Bad Therapy? Because I think I've found the prose equivalent to The Voice Of The Director Telling Stuff We Should Be Able To See For Ourselves. The prose is, frankly, bizarre. While the strangeness mostly stops before the book's second half, the first portion is full of examples of this weird storytelling convention. Characters are conversing, the narrator interrupts, summarizing large chunks of the conversation, and then dumps us back into dialog. They're the weirdest violations of the "show, don't tell" rule that I can recall.
As I said, thankfully, this stops at the midway point of the novel. But the rest of the book isn't very good either. It's a story set in London of the 1950s. This was a very bigoted time and place. How do I know? Because the book keeps telling me so. It occasionally attempts to show me the negative side of this setting, but never approaches authenticity. At times it felt it was retreading some of the ground covered by Russell T. Davies in his far superior Damaged Goods, but such comparisons are almost insulting. While Davies had me completely believing in his characters, Jones presented me with clichs and stereotypes.
I did like a few things about the book. The "bloodthirsty driverless cab" is actually a creepy bit of writing. The atmosphere is occasionally effective. The problem is that there's little else to wrap these good portions in. The storyline meanders all over the place, and there's a false ending a good fifty pages before the book finally ends. The plot feels very forced; characters must act bizarrely in order for the story to continue, and one wonders why the Doctor doesn't just save the day when he has the chance (because the book hasn't finished yet, obviously). There are scenes that just seem needless in hindsight. Yes, having Cwej randomly dream about the Doctor's forthcoming regeneration may have seemed interesting at the time, but why is it here? What does it add to anything?
The Doctor and Chris are awkwardly separated, apparently for no reason other than to have the Doctor spend time with the annoying Mary Sue-like character. I kept asking myself, "Who the hell is this Jack character, and why the hell should I care?" (Disclaimer: I have no idea whether Jack really is a Mary Sue creation, since I know absolutely nothing about the author. But it overwhelmingly felt like one, and even if that impression is far from the truth, the important thing is that I kept getting distracted by that feeling.) Granted, he's not as irritating as the students in Jones' Beyond the Sun, but if you're going to have a story that heavily revolves around its characters, make sure that they exist in more than one dimension.
Speaking of character issues, this book received praise for dealing with the aftermath of Roz Forrester's death, which is flattery that frankly surprises me; I felt the book's handling of Chris and the Doctor's grief was fundamentally wrong. When people are in mourning, what is one of the most common ways they have of coping? They distract themselves; they stay busy so that they don't have to think about it. And, in the short-term, that works. When you're busying yourself, you can escape your grief because you simply ignore it. But that's not the way grief works here. Here, it's the quiet moments when the characters don't find themselves thinking about Roz, and the loud, busy, adrenaline-packed moments when they do. Take the sequence with Chris on the train. There's a whole series of quiet times leading up to this when he doesn't think about Roz even though there's nothing keeping her out of his mind. It's the moment he's engaged in hand-to-hand combat with some alien monster that he can't shake Roz out of his head. I realize that we can't pick when a recently deceased loved one will jump back into our thoughts, but doesn't that strike anyone as being backwards? Again, while this is something that appears to correct itself towards the end, it's a flaw that quite annoyed me during the opening and middle.
Bad Therapy is a book with a grand reputation, and I struggle to understand why. It puts all of its eggs in a small number of baskets, and if you accept those baskets, presumably you enjoy the novel as a whole. Readers who somehow see something worthy in these characters and in their story will no doubt have a higher opinion. But for me, those conveyances were sadly lacking in depth and in maturity. Bad Therapy is a book trying to deal with tough issues and important topics, but it just doesn't seem to know how. It lacks authenticity and believability; in a novel trying to be Deep, these are fatal failings. Oh, and the bits with the Returning, Bitter Ex-Companion were nonsense too.
A Review by Finn Clark 12/2/05
You know, I rather enjoyed that. Bad Therapy has a fairly modest story, but I didn't mind that too much given its character-based focus. Give me a book that stays true to itself instead of one which crams in unwanted doomsday devices, deadly countdowns and alien space fleets.
Most obviously, this is one of the two important gay Doctor Who books. We've seen many gay authors and gay characters in the novels, but unlike all the others Bad Therapy and Damaged Goods are built around their sexuality. You couldn't simply snip the homosexuality from their plots without massacring the novels in question. It's only one element in both books, naturally, but it's integral. These aren't just token gays, but people at the heart of a story of an author with things to say... in this case, about Britain's treatment of homosexuality in the 1950s (not least the fact that it was illegal, though I feel a little silly having to say that in case someone reading this didn't know already).
I like the characters, but less so the resolutions of their stories. The Chris-Patsy relationship had some fascinating ideas underneath it... but unfortunately it gets cut short in a lazy, convenient fashion. That's a shame, since I'd have loved to see where that ended up. Chris and Peri (yes, Peri) get stroppy with the Doctor, each for their own reasons, but at the end of the day it's just the Virgin equivalent of TARDIS bitch scenes. It doesn't really go anywhere.
Nevertheless I still like the characters. Tilda Jupp (aka. Mother) makes an instant impact and I was really interested in the Toys. The bad guys are considerably blander, but even they get a human side and thematic development. Jack Bartlett feels like a Mary-Sue, but an inoffensive and sympathetic one. There are also startling bits of imagery... I'm thinking of the man-eating cab and its Tex Avery physicality, then later the Doctor creeping through the room of murdered Toys. Those impressed me too.
I had mixed reactions to the book's regulars. Chris Cwej fares the best, even if he's mostly confined to his own little B-plot. Admittedly Matthew Jones was fortunate to write the book that followed So Vile A Sin, but he makes the most of his luck. Newly bereaved and still grieving for Roz, Chris is wide open for what Tilda Jupp throws his way. There's good stuff here.
The Doctor didn't impress me quite as much. Fifty-six NAs down the line and with the TVM looming like the spectre of death (even acknowledged in a dream sequence), this 7th Doctor somehow feels as if he's pushing his sell-by date. Maybe it's deliberate? He's vaguely entertaining and never actually bad, but it's nothing we haven't seen before.
Peri is the least satisfactory element. Yet another fucked-up ex-companion, that's what the books needed! Not. It doesn't help that Peri's post-TV adventures have made her timeline more complicated than Mel's and possibly even worse than Ace's. Bad Therapy comes dangerously close to contradicting Colin Baker's The Age of Chaos, though perhaps she eventually got over her mid-life crisis and returned to her children on Krontep. Maybe. If it came to a choice between Colin Baker and Matthew Jones, I know who I'd choose. However in fairness to Bad Therapy, this reread showed this post-Mindwarp Peri to be less miserable and bitter than I remembered... she still dragged down the book, but less than I expected.
Amusingly she has a pure New York accent on p223. Future generations may yet take this as a not-so-subtle indication that the real Peri stayed on Krontep all along and that Bad Therapy only starred her evil twin.
Overall, this is a well-meaning, earnest book with solid themes and convincing prose. It has a new and fascinating race of monsters in the Toys, whom I really liked and wanted to see come good. It struggles to evoke the 1950s (as have all Doctor Who books set in that period, to be honest), but it does quite well at capturing the claustrophobic attitudes and mindsets. Its use of the regulars is a mixed bag, but I'd recommend it for Chris's story. Above all, I liked its characters and wanted to see what would happen to them. Not at all bad.