The Future History Cycle Zamper Happy Endings The Well-Mannered War

Virgin Books The Highest Science The Future History Cycle Part Three

Author	Gareth Roberts
ISBN#	0 426 20377 1
Published	1993
Cover	Peter Elson

Synopsis: A Fortean Flicker brings the Doctor, Benny, a group of humans and the turtle-liked warmongering Chelonians to the world of Sakkrat, home of an ancient empire and its long-lost discovery The Highest Science. However the arch-criminal Sheldukher has also come to Sakkrat in search of the Highest Science and the Doctor and Benny discover that nothing may be what it seems.

• A Review by Keith Bennett
• A Review by Andrew McCaffrey
• A Review by Terrence Keenan
• A Review by Brian May
• A Review by Finn Clark
• Enter the Chelonians by Joe Ford

A Review by Keith Bennett 11/6/99

The Doctor picks up a Fortean flicker, a "chaotic force of coincidence that can snowball unpredictably, breaking the links in the chain of casualty" working somewhere in the cosmos, and tracks it to the planet Vaagon, where he finds several, varied beings...

This debut by Gareth Roberts is a breath of fresh air, bringing together a good, old-fashioned science fiction story, laced with humour, action and several fasincating characters.

The Chelonians are marvellous. Reptillian (like tortoises) and overwhelmingly proud, Roberts seems to use them as a witty commentary on Earth's own society. "Chelonian does not kill chelonian" and "no chelonian runs from danger" are a couple of laws of the race, but as their situation goes from bad to worse (and they are just side issues to the main story), their taboos get broken one by one, the leading Chelonians continuously trying to justify the means by the ends.

Two of the highlights involving this race come when General Fakrid is dying and he breathes to Jinkwa, his second in command, that he is... actually... his... mother, Darth Vader style (they're all male and lay eggs). Then later, with Jinkwa in charge and everything looking grim, he decides there is one option left. One of his offsiders gasps, "You can't mean... Strategy Z!"

Hysterically funny, and Roberts' tongue is so obviously in his cheek.

Sheldukker, "the most wanted criminal in the galaxy", is also a nice change. Rather than the raving madman, or smugly gloating sadist, he is, on most occasions, a calm, almost laid back villain.

All this might tend to make the other factors look a bit pale. Indeed the ending has the Doctor freezing the Chelonians and humans in time, and finding it too dangerous to do anything but leave them there until he things of a way about the problem one day! What about the poor humans??

There are other complexities to the story, and Gareth Roberts brings it all together in an extremely entertaining and amusing way, with the Doctor and Bernice, eventually (after Ben Arronovitch stuffed Benny up in his mind-numbing Transit) proving to be a likeable team. (8/10)

A Review by Andrew McCaffrey 13/5/02

The Highest Science certainly begins with a lot of potential. Interesting clues about the plot are dropped early on, and were effective enough at piquing my interest to make me curious about what was going to happen next. Unfortunately, the book failed to deliver and a promising start led to a complete misfire. The fact that this story began with such an interesting premise makes the incoherent mess that follows seem that much more unfair.

The Highest Science attempts to do quite a number of things at once, and manages to fail at just about all of them. Parts of the story seem light-hearted and camp, but it's campiness without being fun, which just makes the whole thing just look silly. The villains are over the top, stopping just short of twirling their mustaches and tying Benny to a railway line. As has been stated many times before, there's a fine line between parodying bad action-adventure cliches, and merely rewriting those same cliches over again. Unfortunately, this book fell into the latter and not the former of those categories.

The plot had a certain amount of potential when the book started, but the amount of padding severely hurts the overall effect. Characters get lost, wander around, become distracted by random events, etc., etc. Entire stretches occur in which not a single thing advances the story. In some books, this isn't necessarily a problem, as padding can reveal interesting character moments, or amusing conversations, but there is none of that to be found here. One can almost see the author getting bored with the story as one continues along. Plot threads are dropped and then never recovered. The prose becomes rushed, and hurried. Story-telling is replaced by padding. It's corridor-running, but in book form and without much in the way of entertaining dialog.

In other parts of the book, the author goes for a militaristic style and isn't entirely successful here either. The introduction of a new race of military-driven aliens would have been much more interesting had the creatures actually displayed any original characteristics at all other their physical appearance. They're the same boring, conquer-the-universe-at-all-costs monsters that we've seen over and over again. They have a few good moments, but for the most part I was utterly bored every time they took the stage.

None of the characters manage to rise above the status of one-dimensional, and this sadly includes the regulars. The Doctor exists purely as some sort of generic collection of mannerisms, and Benny spends so much time in a drug-induced stupor that we never really get much in the way of development. Most annoying of all, near the end of the book, even Benny remarks on how out of character she is behaving because of the strange drugs she was accidentally taking. It's an excuse, and a lame one at that.

All in all, I can't say that I enjoyed much of anything in The Highest Science. One or two occasions of humour actually work, but not enough to out-weight the plodding nature of the story. The ending of the book is one of the biggest cop-outs ever observed in a Doctor Who tale, and it's a wonder that it ever got past the editor. Ripping off the climax to Timelash is not the way to go in Doctor Who story-telling. From the hideous cover that features a claymation Seventh Doctor (who seems to be contemplating flipping the bird to the audience) to the awkward nature of much of the prose, this is not one of the NAs that I will be rereading in a hurry.

A Review by Terrence Keenan 10/12/03

It's no big surprise that Gareth Roberts is a big Tom Baker fan. So it shouldn't be a big surprise that even when he writes for other Doctor, there will be times when he'll become Big Tommy B-ish.

Case in point, The Highest Science.

The Doctor comes across as a bizarre amalgamation of Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy. So, he's a clown, a wise-ass, a man of mystery and a chess player (but an improvisational chess player). It's one of the best 7th Doctor book characterizations ever. This Doctor is always fascinating to follow around.

And what about Bernice Summerfield? She's not a Lalla Ward Romana clone as I thought might develop (to match the Baker-esque moments of the Doc). In fact, she's like Sarah Jane Smith without the screaming. Bernice comes off as a very traditional companion figure. Bland, but quite enjoyable.

The Highest Science features the debut of the Chelonians. Well developed, if a bit old fashioned (notice a developing trend here...), the Chelonians owe a lot to the Sontarans in their creation, and although Roberts comes really close to having them slip into parody, they don't.

The plot is convoluted, with nods to Douglas Adams and foreshadowing some Loz Miles concepts -- a fake cosmic power and numerous legends being used to trap a violent criminal, random events occurring through time manipulation, a clockwork doctor fighting a force of chaos. It develops along nicely, with a couple nice surprises along the way. In the end, The Highest Science is everything that makes Who fun and entertaining: a solid story filled with interesting characters.

A Review by Brian May 5/5/04

"Instead of his usual behind the scenes stage management of pawns and other pieces, he was confronted by an array of unpredictable variables. What was worse, he could not be sure of his opponent's motives or what their outcome might be." (pp.163-164)

In other words, this is a traditional Doctor Who adventure. After the Virgin bombardment of "rad" stories such as Warhead and Transit, it's a step back to the cosy, old-fashioned style of story. There's a TARDIS crew separation, a bunch of evil aliens in the way, and a master criminal to outwit. And, as the above quote reinforces, the character of the Doctor is like that of the old days, as well. No manipulation, no puppetry. The seventh incarnation is like that of season 24 - arriving, encountering and reacting, just as previous Doctors did.

The Highest Science's traditional elements make for a refreshing change, even if this means it's a little more straightforward than what we've been used to in recent books. It's a good blend of action and mystery, with a quest-style adventure, complete with ancient legends, a mysterious city and a holy grail at the end of it all. Although hardly original, this novel succeeds because of Gareth Roberts's brisk, engaging prose and his subversion of the whole sub-genre (I'll come to this later).

Roberts manages to give convincing backstories to the various characters. The three festival-goers come from an intriguing subculture - the various genres of music, and the fact that they usurp and surpass each other as the most popular and influential in regular cycles, is quite amusing. I'm also glad music lovers of the future have their own bands and artists - it's a refreshing change from 20th century performers being the focus of their tastes (cf. Revelation of the Daleks, The Pit). But the three characters - Sendei, Molassi and Rodomonte - are not very interesting, and despite the conflicts between them, all the scenes with them are basically padding - to fill some time and give Bernice something to do while she's separated from the Doctor. They're also very rapidly despatched, indicating that the author doesn't know what to do with them (or that they've outlived their usefulness). Molassi's interpretations of Zagrat's music - all those pretty lady and clever boy "prophesies" - are mildly interesting but overall, these characters and their situations are merely pagefillers.

The Chelonians however, are a brilliantly realised alien race - the pictures of them on the cover add to this. They're a combination of Sontarans, Draconians and Daleks - warlike; imbued with a high sense of honour; and rampantly xenophobic, killing humans just because they're different. Their amazement that humans kill other humans (and one of their flimsy excuses for culling them) is a steal from The Power of the Daleks, but Roberts manages to get away with this, basically due to the excellent way he's depicted them. Fakrid and Jinkwa are the only two given any depth and analysis, but they're an interesting contrast. Although hardly endearing, Fakrid is the old soldier, to whom honour means everything, while Jinkwa is the upstart, who cannot handle power once he receives it.

But it's Sheldukher and his team that are the best realised of the characters (with the exception of Postine, who merely fulfils the henchperson muscle role). Sheldukher is built up as the master criminal, legendary and notorious, so it's quite fun to see him as a nondescript, average sort of man. But he's a right bastard, isn't he? Paranoid, sadistic and amoral. The way he ages Rosheen and Klift proves this, and those scenes are quite disturbing. Rosheen is given the greatest angle of reader empathy, but then there's that terrific moment when the Doctor, upon finding out who she is, turns his back on her. The Cell is excellently realised - it's repulsive while at the same time inducing pity. Its pain is awful to comprehend, and its death is something the reader wishes for as well, just so it's out of its misery.

The "eight twelves" are the incidental characters they're meant to be - Roberts avoids going too deep into their personas, although Vanessa's a brave and plucky girl, while that Witcher is a proper wanker - his death wasn't too unpredictable! The Doctor and Bernice come across well, though not spectacularly - the latter is largely sidelined in the red herring subplot, while her addiction to the bubbleshake isn't as dramatically milked as it could have been. The Doctor mentions the importance of treating her, but it's given no sense of urgency and played down too much. As mentioned already, the seventh Doctor is more the innocent traveller in this, but sometimes the characterisation is more akin to Patrick Troughton. In his tirades against the Chelonians while being held prisoner, the dialogue seems more suited to the Time Lord's second incarnation.

I've referred to the red herring in the plotting; I've also noted how Roberts subverts the quest adventure. Well, the ending is the ultimate red herring, and Roberts successfully manages to pull the rug from beneath the readers' feet. It's a proper deus ex machina, with the demise of the villain having been engineered from the beginning (a la The Hand of Fear, The Five Doctors), albeit in a more convincing way than these televised stories. But the build-up, with the Doctor and company making their way through the ruins of the temple, is rather flat. The beings they meet, the Monumental Guardian and the two Constructs, are hardly scintillating encounters. In hindsight this all makes sense, as it's not really a treasure hunt but a lure, but while it's happening there's a definite lack of edginess or mystery.

Nevertheless the idea of the Fortean flicker is inspired, allowing the perfect excuse for so many coincidences (although the one at the very end pushes it a bit.) Roberts writes well, and has injected lots of humour into the book, with some memorable quotes, and that "You can't mean... Strategy Z?" is so ludicrously bad it's just got to be deliberate!

The Highest Science is good fun and intelligently written, with its traditional feel imbuing it with a sense of charm. Despite some superfluous characters and scenes, it's highly enjoyable. 7.5/10

A Review by Finn Clark 13/9/04

Gareth Roberts is best-known for his MAs, three in Season Seventeen and one in Season Two, and rightly so. Those books are joyful romps that have always made me laugh (though their popularity among fandom seems to have diminished over the years), but his NAs are strange half-breeds: neither fish nor fowl. At times they're very dark, with political cynicism and a Mortimore-esque body count, but somehow they're also trying to bubble with Gareth's gift for comedy. The result is often an uneven tone that serves neither the darkness and the gags.

I think Gareth's NAs got worse as they went on. Zamper is dull. Tragedy Day is great fun for the first 200 pages, then falls apart so spectacularly that it becomes barely readable. Even The Highest Science isn't without its problems, but despite a "two bees in a jar" plot I thought it was entertaining and a genuinely strong book.

First and foremost, it made me laugh! This book isn't an out-and-out comedy, but it has a consistently ironic tone and some killer gags. I defy anyone to read Mr Peploe's story on p13 without chuckling, while p61 has my all-time favourite comedy scene in an NA. ("The Doctor decided it was almost like real life, in a glamorized sort of way.") There are British cultural references, but somehow Gareth Roberts manages to make you laugh instead of swear when he parodies a line from a classic movie. It's like the pisstake chapter titles in Donald Cotton's Target novelisations, inspiring Virgin authors to try to do the same but with somewhat tragic effect. Donald Cotton is funny and his imitators weren't. Simple as that. So is Gareth Roberts.

The book's characters are a curate's egg, but overall it's pretty good. I'm not normally a fan of the Chelonians, but they're great here. Admittedly they have the IQ of over-boiled cabbage, but their interactions with the Doctor are a hoot and I was charmed by the one who wanted to be a florist. I liked Sheldukher too, who miraculously manages to avoid being a Hannibal Lecter retread and is kinda fun to read about. His criminal associates even manage a little depth, with the Cell and Rosheen getting some genuine emotion. I cared about both o' those, despite the fact that neither of them should theoretically be a sympathetic character.

Unfortunately we also have the eight-twelves and the space-heads. The eight-twelves are likeable, but their sole plot purpose is to be victims. They get nothing to do. What's worse, the resolution of their story undercuts an entertaining book with a depressing ending, which felt so inappropriate that I can't believe it didn't end up being retconned in Happy Endings. In fact, maybe it did and I missed it.

(NOTE: it did and I did. Happy Endings (pp3-6) opens with Romana tracing the Fortean Flicker, finding the eight-twelves trapped in the stasis field and rescuing them all. With thanks for the correction to John Seavey.)

Then we have the boring loser space-heads: Molassi, Sendei and Rodomonte. For a while I thought Rodomonte was the middle name of Chris Cwej, which would have been kinda cool. Continuity in futuristic names! Unfortunately I was wrong; I was thinking of Rodonante.

I have plot quibbles. How do the Chelonians know that the eight-twelves are called eight-twelves? The Fortean Flicker concept is largely wasted (compare with Terry Pratchett's The Dark Side of the Sun), being almost more important for a retcon in Happy Endings! And have I grumbled enough yet about that unnecessary downer ending? Probably not. In some books it would be appropriate, but this is not such a book.

There's an unusual attitude to death. It's casual but ironic, like Jim Mortimore on a giggle fit. Sometimes it made me laugh. Sometimes it felt sad. And sometimes it felt gratuitous, as if Gareth had decided to kill the cast one by one and was knocking them off at random whenever possible.

I called this a "two bees in a jar" plot, so I should probably define terms. Simply put, this book has no villain. Presumably there's an entity who's dragged all these unrelated people through time to the planet Sakkrat... or is there? Nope, what you see is what you get. Admittedly the Chelonians and Sheldukher aren't nice guys, but they're not the villains. They're as clueless as anyone else. They simply have a worse attitude about it. Notwithstanding the Highest Science which Sheldukher came looking for, in practice this novel is 250 pages of random antagonists running around Sakkrat blindly trying to kill each other. It's like watching bees fight in a jar. It's entertaining in a sadistic sort of way, but you can't say it's going anywhere.

Despite such quibbles, though, I still think this is Gareth Roberts's best NA. It's as entertaining as the best bits of Tragedy Day while largely avoiding the lowpoints of his other NAs. It suffers from that uneven tone I was talking about, but to a lesser extent than plenty of Gareth's other books. Truly funny Doctor Who books are rare enough to be special - and for my money this is one of them.

Enter the Chelonians by Joe Ford 24/9/06

Gareth Roberts, what a worker. He has had to write half a dozen novels (including a NDA), the TARDISodes, the interactive adventure and several comic strips before he gets a spot on the new series. I didn't see Cornell working that hard! Seriously though Gareth Roberts is a name I haven't had much time for over the years and I feel I owe the man an apology as clearly his own brand of Doctor Who is far more worthy than I gave credit. I don't think he writes particularly good novels but he does write excellent nostalgia, especially if you enjoy the lighter side of the show. His season seventeen MAs are unrivalled in popularity, Only Human was a spectacular hit for the hardbacks but personally my favourite is The Plotters, easily Roberts' most intelligent and witty book. His New Adventures were slightly different, his brand of fluffy comedy not really suiting their darker, boundary-pushing format (there's an oxymoron if ever you heard one!).

Of his three I would say The Highest Science is his best. Even though it does share some of the problems of the other NAs up to this point it is far more enjoyable than any one of them (except Nightshade but that's just the Gatiss fan in me!). Here you have a book which is packed full of imagination and clever ideas, great jokes, interesting characters and a fantastic, fantastic Doctor. Whilst it lacks a plot, a satisfying conclusion and an intelligent narrative (thus far an NA trait) these factors more than compensate. For this reason the first fifty pages are easily the best, where Roberts is introducing his concepts, trying to make us laugh, kick-starting the story, I was flicking through this pages laughing and oogling at the man's creativity.

Oh yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Without a doubt the best interpretation of the seventh Doctor in print to this point, a fabulously naughty and impish little man who contains great knowledge, awes at wonders, laughs at jokes but still has immense gravity when the situation calls for it. I absolutely fell in love with the Doctor here and could see McCoy dishing out every single line. Brilliant. There are some lovely observations about him: The question mark jumper is the Doctor's deprecatory sense of humour extending to his personality. He is more relaxed outside of the TARDIS as though his ship unnerves him. His favourite time of day is dawn: a time of optimism before you realise today is going to be exactly the same as yesterday. Described as the weirdo in the hat! After a civilised chat with a Chelonian the Doctor is reminded of the hope that still exists in the universe. Sceptical, and a little naive. It is easy to forget the rest of the universe, especially the human part of it, does not operate on the same basis of the Doctor's clean-cut standards. He beats the rest of the universe hands down at being unpredictable. It was worth trudging through all his frowns to see just one of his smiles. Brilliantly, he longs for a good old-fashioned invasion after so many temporal distortions.

And he's funny too; check out these gags and tell me that the seventh Doctor can't be witty!

"You can't build a tracking device that doesn't beep, can you?"

"I can't imagine the High Council authorising the use of a TARDIS to investigate something so spurious. Particularly when they could be watching paint dry on the Panopticon walls!"

"'Bernice, someone's shooting at you!' 'Oh really?'"

"'Hermaphrodites! Hang about, an old flame of mine kept tortoises, and he definitely had one of each." "Oh really, how fascinating" remarked the Doctor "He was hermaphrodite too?"

"He (the Doctor) had never favoured telepathy as a means of communication; something about rolling words on his tongue (particularly ones with rrs in) appealed much to him.

"A second hand salesman with delusions of grandeur, I've faced worse."

"'It doesn't like you Doctor!' 'This is ridiculous, I'm the only one wearing a tie!'"

"I once had to convince a deranged dishwasher that it didn't want to take over the universe."

The severe lack of plot gets irritating after a while and it becomes obvious that the characters are just running on the spot until the conclusion; basically the Chelonians, humans, mercenaries are all brought to Sakkrat and squabble for 200 odd pages. Nothing of much relevance happens to advance the plot in that time and it becomes clear that the Fortean Flicker is just an excuse to bring in diversions to stop the story climaxing after 50 pages. Worse is the fact that the book seems to be leading up to a huge twist regarding The Highest Science that will mark the book's importance but unfortunately it all fizzles out when the huge twists is... that the planet Sakkrat isn't the planet Sakkrat at all, it's the planet Hogsumm instead and the whole thing has been a huge deception. No big answers, not even as to why this deception was necessary or when the Cell was so important. Thought Match of the Day's ending was annoying? You ain't seen nothing yet.

But I don't want to come down too hard on The Highest Science as I did enjoy it a lot. There were some lovely moments along the way that make the journey really worthwhile. Fakrid's babies being born stillborn is heartbreaking, the adult nature of these books finally blossoming into some strong storytelling. Sheldukher's story, his parent's death and his attempts to fill the boredom that left him with painful, violent, funny, explosive, gratifying things is really disturbing. The Cell's attempts to commit suicide reach a dramatic crescendo when it builds the ship's furnace reaction to critical. Ozaran's "unthinkable" act, disobeying an officer's instruction and turning from his suicide attack to blow up units nineteen and forty is excellent, just what these aggressive tortoises need!

Gareth Roberts clearly does not want to go down the same depressing roads as most of the other writers and is hell bent on letting us see the Doctor enjoying his travels and for that we can only give him a fat sloppy kiss. The Doctor is an absolute joy in this book and it would make a good template for other writers who might want to see why the seventh Doctor can be so unique and yet utterly enjoyable. I feel as though I should be harder on this book but to be honest I found so much of it a delight to read I am feeling uncharacteristically generous. It is this sort of book that lead to the evolution of classics like The Plotters, Mad Dogs and Englishmen and The Tomorrow Windows.

Fluffy and flawed but hugely enjoyable.