Hope

Mark Clapham

for the defence: Nothing. Sorry. Erm...

for the (co-)prosecution: I'm afraid Mark Clapham was co-author on The Taking of Planet 5, a book to which lots of adjectives can be applied, none of them good.

The TARDIS arrives on a bleak and desolate world in the far, far, faaaaaar future. Unexplained murders, megalomaniacs, and silver, superhuman monsters abound - so in other words, business as usual.

Unlike some recent books, Hope doesn't come across as being written by someone with his own agenda but rather by someone whose sole ambition was to write a solid Doctor Who story. That's not to say there's nothing distinctive to it - quite the reverse, and having apparently set itself up as a straightforward 'Doctor solves murders' story, I was surprised when the Doctor managed that before the halfway point! That the story then keeps on developing , without once feeling like it is being dragged out, is a real triumph, and makes for the most easily enjoyable EDA in a while.

This is as much Anji's book as anyone's, with her being offered the opportunity to clone her lost Dave in return for revealing the details of the Doctor's time machine to the story's villain. A lot of soul-searching goes on, but it's credibly done rather than being page after page of angst-ridden twaddle, and her ultimate decision to betray the Doctor's trust is very convincing. There is a very strong scene between Anji and the Doctor when the truth emerges (with poor Fitz as an innocent bystander - of course!) but in the end even the Doctor has to admit that Anji has thought through her decision. If anything it allows the author to reinforce the relationship between Anji and the Doctor, with the latter saying that "We should never let betrayal destroy our capacity to trust." The clone, Dave II, is a physical but not a mental duplicate, and much is made of the difference between him and the 'real' Dave (who appears in the touching prologue and epilogue) although Anji is ultimately pleased that she did it. I believe the phrase is, she obtains closure. Although whether future books will have Anji once more ridden with 'dead Dave' angst when it suits the plot, remains to be seen...

Otherwise, very quiet on the continuity front - Grimm Reality, Dark Progeny, and The Year of Intelligent Tigers get a mention, but that's about it. The Father Time flash-forward comes out of its recent semi-retirement, with the very first snippet (an iron fist missing the Doctor's head and smashing into a wall) giving the Doctor a sense of deja vu when it actually happens on page 235.

And going back to the wonderful Anji, she was a Bros fan in her teens. How embarassing is that, Mrs Curnow?

And thank Rassilon, yes he is! Of the three EDAs I've read this year, this is far and away the best for portraying the Doctor. When he appeared clean-shaven in the very first chapter, I suspected that things might be looking up and I was right!

Story-wise, the Doctor does all the things we would expect him to do. He solves the mysterious murders at great personal risk. He never for one moment trusts the ruler of the township, and he ultimately saves the day, his intellect being more than a match for his enemy's physical power. The Doctor is the hero, the adventurer, the insatiably curious little boy... He - is - the - Doctor!

Character-wise, after a complete absence of it in Mad Dogs and Englishmen, the issue of the Doctor's heart is firmly addressed. Admittedly the grisly practicalities of just how Sabbath managed to do it, are still not touched upon, nor is Sabbath even mentioned - instead there are various references to the Doctor's "illness" with the removal of his heart referred to as having cured him. But what is clear and unambiguous is the effect it has had on the Doctor, in that he is now more 'human' in his capabilities. He needs sleep, the lack of it wearing him out and making him clumsy, and rather than relying on his Timelord strength, he instead resorts to caffeine to keep himself going (well, we've all done that haven't we). He also discovers, at the worst possible moment (page 131) that he is no longer able to easily metabolise drugs and the like, and is thus much more vulnerable to attack; similarly the legendary respiratory bypass seems to be a thing of the past, with the Doctor nearly finding himself choked to death.

Early in the story, the TARDIS sinks to the bottom of the acid sea, and the loss of this old friend affects the Doctor deeply. In fact the Doctor spends the first part of the book wanting to do nothing more than recover his ship and leave - as the back cover blurb has it, "Even the Doctor can't see any possibility of redemption for this cursed place." It is a very human reaction to a miserable, depressing, hopeless environment, and in as far as the Doctor's character can ever be said to develop, the book allows the Doctor to rediscover himself from this rather unpromising start point.

Presenting him at first as being little different from a human being himself, we see his sense of identity reinforce itself as the story unfolds - he dreams of himself as the captain of a ship (pages 67/68) where he "is a new man, unsure not only of what he is doing but of what it is his nature to do" but as a single word of command unleashes the ship's cannons, he ponders "How could he underestimate the strength he held, in a word and a gesture?" He may be human in one sense (his link to the Earth, as established in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, is referred to) but he is nevertheless still more than human. The Doctor sums it up himself, right at the end of the story, neatly summing up the theme of the book as well as himself: "We all have our potentials, our opportunities, our limitations and our failings. It's who we are and what we choose to do that matters in the end."

Oh, and yet again, the Doctor's violence is touched on, during his encounter with the mysterious murderer. Touched on, but not expanded on. It seems to be made too much of in these recent books to be an irrelevancy, but I don't know whether it's all leading towards a resolution or not. Time will tell. It always does...

This Book: For the third and final time, I paid £4.16 all in for a fine second-hand copy of this one from Ant Williams. That makes a saving of £1.83 I reckon.

Running Score: £53.59 against RRP to date.