TITLE

Half Life

AUTHOR

Mark Michalowski

PREVIOUS FORM

for the defence: Relative Dementias (PDA, and his debut novel too!)

for the prosecution: A bit nit-picky maybe, but his piece on The Happiness Patrol in DWM's The Complete Seventh Doctor was pretty naff.

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT ALFIE?

An artificial war-machine yearns for peace, and is nicely settling into a new life half-buried in the soil of the planet Espero when its previous employers, and their opponents, come a-looking. In the process the Doctor and Fitz lose their memories, while Anji Trix (sorry, force of habit) is not careful enough about what she wishes for...

Although the prospect of yet another burst of amnesia for the Doctor had me alarmed, this book turned out to be an entertaining little read, and although there are various references and moments that mark it out as an entry in an on-going series, the story itself is 'standalone' enough to give the whole thing a nice sense of freshness, now that the Sabbath Arc is over. Arguably there are too many elements in the mix (the mysterious wave, the night creatures, the Makers, the Oon, amnesia, the power-play for the 'throne') but they are handled and juggled well.

There are a couple of nods back to the climactic events of the previous book, with Trix lamenting that she's had enough of both apes and crystals, and with references to the Doctor having locked himself away in the depths of the TARDIS to mourn the death of Miranda.

A variety of previously-visited worlds get name checked, amongst them Ceres Alpha (from Dark Progeny) and Heritage, both from the BBC books, and also Eden, home of season 17 nightmares.

The issue of memory loss is also touched on (unsurprisingly, given parts of the plot) with the Doctor's 100 years stranded on the Earth being mentioned. We even learn of another as-yet untold adventure from that period, when he recalls playing Super Mario Bros in a pub in Bradford during the eighties. Exciting times indeed... Oddly enough, the Doctor also senses that the identity of this book's villains (a race known rather enigmatically as 'The Makers') is something he would have known about in his earlier life, even though I can't think of any EDA in which they appeared. Maybe I'm just being, as Mary Whitehouse would have said, a bit, sniff, dim.

We are reminded that the Fitz we know and love is in fact only a 'remembered' copy of the original (as occurred during the epic Interference), and on the subject of Fitz' memories, having become a bit hazy in books such as Mad Dogs and Englishmen, he now remembers in detail exactly what happened in The Ancestor Cell.

There is also a reminder of the climax to Camera Obscura, where the Doctor is confronted by mirror images of men he didn't recognise (but which, of course, we know to be his various previous incarnations). He still doesn't know who or what they signify, although he does now sense that they were somehow familiar...

Both of the above suggest to me that the EDAs are highlighting various items of unfinished business, getting themselves ready for the impending end of the road - and even the book's acknowledgement "to Russell T. Davies for being lovely and for giving us all hope again" lends an 'end of an era' shadow to proceedings.

But never mind all this sentimental waffle, I'm sure what you really want to know is whether there is even so much as a blip on the 'Fitz the Stud' radar after his recent, incredibly fallow patch. Well, frankly no, although he does have an intriguing dream in which he finds himself naked and rubbing buttocks with the Doctor. My word!

Talking of gratuitous nudity, Trix starts the book naked in the bath. Huh, Anji never needed to resort to flashing her flesh or shaking her booty to try and win over readers. Although she did wear that bikini back in Trading Futures. Ah, happy days...

A character called Madam Xing pops up, having apparently met the Doctor before at some point, and offers to fully restore ALL his memories. Although he declines, she pops up again right at the end of the book, talking in a very cryptic manner to an unidentified companion. Clearly they have an agenda of some sort, which in some way revolves around the Doctor regaining his memories. They even postulate that if the eighth won't restore them, maybe "his next regeneration will be... more amenable." No mention of leather jackets or a Northern accent though...

A couple of interesting things here. Firstly, being offered the chance to fully restore ALL his lost memories, the Doctor declines the invitation. Essentially he is now at peace with himself, happy, or at least happier, not to know what he once was. What's interesting about that is that, yet again, it has that sense of readying the EDAs for the end of the road; although just as whenever a character in a war film says "See you back in Blighty" you know they will be dead within the next ten minutes, it seems here that having now said that he's happy without his memories, you can be sure the Doctor will be getting them back before the last reel.

The other thing of note is that, as well as amnesia, Fitz and the Doctor find their minds slightly mixed up, with the result that Fitz is rather more confident and intuitive than usual, and the Doctor starts to admire the local ladies, and finds himself itching for a smoke. It also gives the Doctor some enlightening insight into how scary it can be to be the companion for a change, hesitant, frightened, relying on the Doctor to pull something out of the hat at the last minute.

This Book: Ha-ha, a birthday present just a month ago from my bruv & co. That's the way, ah-ha, ah-ha, I like it, ah-ha, ah-ha.

Running Score: £112.80 saved against RRP to date.