Timeless

Stephen Cole

for the defence: Co-writer of Parallel 59 (EDA) and The Ancestor Cell (EDA); Vanishing Point (EDA)

for the prosecution: So far, so good...

Two plots, really. Chloe, Erasmus, and Jamais travel the various parallel universes, saving lost souls from them by 'implanting' them into the version of that person in our, 'real' world. All very noble and philanthropic. The other plot is Sabbath trying to get power over Chloe, Erasmus and Jamais so that he can steal their diamonds and nip back to the Big Bang. The two plots just about fit together, but it's a bit hit & miss.

If Timeless has one problem, it's that it's too darned convoluted. There are lots of strong elements - Trix and Fitz posing as a rich couple after 'the ultimate thrill'; parallel versions of people replacing their 'real' selves; the Doctor coming across survivors of his own race. But somehow it doesn't quite come together, and as with The Last Resort, the plot seems to suddenly fizzle out, Sabbath just disappears, and the book ends. The writing is fine, but the story just tries to do too many different things at once.

Maybe it's me, but this whole 'fractured universe' set up has got me really confused. Back at the end of Time Zero a lot was made of the Doctor having bought Fitz's journal from a bookshop, that it could only have got to the shop if the Doctor had sold it, and he could only have sold it to them if he had bought it from them, and he could only have bought it from them if... Well, anyway - I had previously taken this as being a paradoxical SYMPTOM of the 'buggered-up reality' situation, rather than the cause. We've had, what, four books since then, and none of them have mentioned Fitz' journal at all. But here, not only does it seem that the journal somehow caused the whole disastrous scenario, but by simply popping in to the bookshop in question and selling them the journal, the Doctor has restored reality to its proper footing. After all the woe and heartache and sheer bloody gloom & doom of the past few books, is that really it??!!

Quite a few little cultural nods, which at least give some insight into the murky psyche of the author - Travis & Coldplay (page 26), The Monkees (171), Monty Python's Flying Circus (173 & 275), Quentin Tarantino (191), Hoby City (223), and the rather odd fusion of The A Team with Animal Hospital (page 192).

On the subject of the author's murky psyche, chapter 29 appears to have been written while under the influence of season 18 - both Dwarf Star Alloy and "a gravity bubble" are thrown into the mix. There's reference to CHB's CVE back on page 33 as well. And the flamin' Cloister Bell gets an airing on page 9 too!

Also liberally pinched from the TV show, a few lines of text seem eerily familiar, such as "Nobody in the universe can do what we're doing" on page 89 and "an inventive, invincible, indomitable species" on page 182. I don't know, using dialogue verbatim from the TV show, what a dreadful thing to do. For shame!

Some reference is made back to the earth-shattering (well, Gallifrey-shattering anyway) events of The Ancestor Cell. Although the origins of the three time-travellers (Erasmus, Chloe and Jamais) are never made explicit, it is established that Chloe at least has two hearts (sound familiar?) and that her world no longer exists (sound familiar?). Apparently, their world was destroyed by 'the Blessed Destroyer', a mysterious figure with a fondness for the planet Earth (sound familiar?). This possibly makes them Time Lords who survived the destruction of Gallifrey (although that does rather conflict with the number of survivors made so explicit back in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street); or at the very least, they may be of the same race as the Doctor's 'daughter' Miranda.

On to the companions briefly - Trix is now a member of the TARDIS crew, although not a very likeable one; Fitz is going grey; and Anji... leaves.

I know I seem to be forever moaning, but the needlessly obscure & complex plans of Mr Sabbath Esquire are really getting beyond a joke. The scheme of the week this time is to infest a human being with some sort of special diamonds, send him back to the Big Bang, and thus seed the human essence throughout the evolving universe. Thus achieving a human-dominated universe, with no naughty alien lifeforms. It's genocide, Jim, but not as we know it... And apparently this has been Sabbath's aim all along - I feel stupid for not having worked it out several books ago!

However, to make matters ever more confusing, Sabbath's aid in this brilliant scheme, a character called Kalicum, double-crosses Sabbath at the end, and it appears he plans that the universe should be seeded with something different. Quite what, we never learn, and frankly by the end of the book I didn't much care either.

Well at least he does do something in this book... Actually, there are one or two nice touches. In the TARDIS on pages 202/203, he goes into a bet of a depression, tired it would appear of the effort of trying. Anji refers to him as "a survivor" which of course now (although not when the book was written) strikes a note of familiarity with the Ninth Doctor, the self-proclaimed "last of the Timelords". Here the Doctor is even more morose about his orphan status: "I don't survive, Anji. I only endure... Death has forgotten me." Thankfully it's not a tone that stays around throughout the book, although the sense of weariness with Sabbath's scheming eerily matches the mood of at least this reader!

The Doctor's violence also rears its head again, as he very brutally kicks Basalt, one of the villains (already unconscious on the ground) in the guts. The Doctor looks disgusted "though whether at Basalt or himself, Fitz couldn't quite decide." I have to assume this is all going somewhere...

This Book: £3.19 from eBay plus £1.00 postage, which sounded quite good until the tattiest copy of a book I've ever seen turned up in the post. There's 'used' and there's 'abused' and this looks like the latter. Ah well, still a saving of £1.80...

Running Score: ...giving us a cumulative running total of £104.80 against RRP.