Dark Progeny

Steve Emmerson

for the defence: Casualties of War (EDA)

for the prosecution: Nothing - what a good boy...

A proposed Earth colony on the planet Ceres Alpha is having trouble with its terraforming project. The planet's ancient sentience is trying to make the humans aware of its existence, and has genetically altered twelve newborn children for as a means of communication. Of course being human, the colonists lock up the children rather than listen to them... D'oh!

This book's nearly three hundred pages long, but the story isn't long enough to fill it. Consequently Fitz spends the whole book getting lost/found/threatened/chased, before finally bumping into the Doctor back at the TARDIS. And although it appears early on that Anji is going to be integral to the plot her 'storyline' is in fact equally spurious. What there is of the actual story is good, but the irrelevancy of the various supporting 'plotlines' interrupt and distract from a simple but effective main story. It's not bad by any means, but it could do with being shorter.

There's so little herein that I have to resort to such irrelevant trivia as Anji having a younger brother called Rezaul, just to justify the heading! And also, er, apparently Anji doesn't like rats. I know what she means...

The silver lining to Anji and Fitz being relegated to the touchlines is that the Doctor is given pretty much centre stage. The most triumphant demonstration of his essential compassion is in his relationship with the mutated children - his instinct isn't to hurt them or to be afraid of them, but to first delight one with a magic trick, and then to befriend and release them all.

We also get some real emotion from the Doctor, when he believes he has left Fitz for dead. We get both the extreme sadness and self-blame, when he thinks of Fitz at the funeral of one of the children; and we get the other side to that, with a joyous reaction on finding Fitz alive and well and happily having a shower in the TARDIS.

And there is a lovely self-assessment from the Doctor himself, when he describes himself as "a man who thrives on improvisation."

This Book: Once again, let's give it up for eBay. I got a brand new version of this novel for 99p - even allowing for £1.75 worth of postage and packing, that's still a saving of £3.25.

Running Score: £36.96 against RRP to date.