Plot: Standby for a rootin’ tootin’ adventure in the Wild
West with dusky babe Martha Jones and her sonic slinging, fancy talking
companion the Doctor! They’ll be parties, gunfights and plenty of riding
through the desert and alien weapons that threaten to destroy the Earth in its
infancy…
Mockney Dude: I really don’t understand the comments of
people who say that the tenth Doctor is ill characterised in these books. Read
on to hear some top notch characterisation of one the most subversive and
aggressive of incarnations…
The Doctor had a way about him as if he took every piece of
sadness in the universe personally and like he had the sole responsibility to
banish such things. His open manner is infectious and his intelligence
stimulating. He is so fascinated by anything out of the ordinary sometimes he
needed reminding that normal people are caught up in it. ‘We just help the ones
we can’ – the Doctor and Martha make an excellent life saving team. In chaos
the Doctor became the eye of the storm. He held a sheriff’s badge once and it
brought him nothing but trouble. He requires a gun belt so he can brandish his
sonic! The Doctor can make a good time out of anything, never mind if it was
terrifying as well. Usually it takes at least 3 minutes for people to want to
kill the Doctor. He is a Time Lord and moves between the ticks of a clock. He
is described as Rides in Night, Brother of Coyote and the man who defeated the
Bad Wolf. A legend, a story for young braves. After Martha is shot he is a
nightmare storm, absolutely furious as he approaches the long riders. ‘Like
knows like Doctor. I can smell the blood on you. I can hear the echo of war
that clings to your coattails. Such dark glory. I envy you.’ The Doctor’s
mood darkens when the Clades brandish him a murderer. On another day he might
have turned his back and let Nathan kill Godlove. When Martha is at the very
edge of her life the Doctor can see the sheer weight of blame in Francine’s
eyes. Once it is inside the Doctor’s mind it forces him to see Rose, Mickey,
K.9, Captain Jack and Sarah Jane dying in wastelands of fusion bombs. He was
willing to do a terrible deed, to destroy so much to defeat a terrible enemy.
When the Clade ask him to merge with them and dangle the carrot of hunting down
every last Dalek and erasing them from existence, he wants to agree. He hates
himself for that. If he had been one with the Clade the Daleks would be gone
and the Time Lords would have survived, Rose would still be with him and the
Cybermen would be nothing but scrap metal. The Doctor knows violence, he knows
anger only breeds more anger. The Doctor can think beyond four dimensions and
he locks the Clade weapon into a feedback loop. He doesn’t mess about, he drops
a hill on top of them! With the Doctor around nothing will seem scary again.
Delicious Doctor: You will hard pressed to find a book with
Martha written for more accomplished than Peacemaker. James Swallow simply gets
her, the mild lust for the Doctor, her love of travelling and her ability to
snap into action as a training medical student. Throughout she continually
sparkles with wonderful observations and sneaky peeks at her family life and
Swallow seems to enjoy really selling how accomplished this duo can be at their
height. Whilst Donna will always be my favourite tenth doctor companion (and
one of my favourite companions full stop) Swallow convinces that Martha was top
dog here.
Martha slyly suggests that their movie is a date. When they
were kids Martha, Leo and Tish always stuck on a western whilst Francine cooked
a joint and made great roast potatoes. With her mum and dad they would eat
during the last half and thinking of
them causes a tightness in her chest and a pang of homesickness. She feels
cheerless that a creaky old western is the only way she can feel close to her
family. Martha wonders when she will get blasé about time travel because it
hasn’t happened yet. She wants to visit the Alamo, Deadwood, Tombstone and the
gunfight at the OK Corral (‘Been there, done that’ the Doctor retorts). Martha
studied smallpox in her training and remembers the victims scarred by lesions
and blinded. Quack Doctors with made up cures make Martha quietly furious. At
times the Doctor thinks he is in charge but that’s not how they work. Martha
sighs with regret when she tells Jenny its ‘not like that’ with the Doctor. She
thinks life challenges us and we should challenge it right back. Injured people
are her priority. I love the moment when the Doctor makes Martha realise that
prejudice can cut both ways. Martha sticks her cowboy hat at a jaunty angle and
declares herself ‘very Madonna.’ Living on the outskirts of London’s sprawl all
that country horsy stuff felt a million miles from the world she comes from.
Martha recognises shock in Nathan, hiding bereavement behind a wall of anger.
Martha feels sadness about her family knowing they are so far away but joy
knowing they are waiting for her. Lately Martha has learnt a lot about courage,
to be afraid and still face what terrifies you. Trying to be as bold as the
Doctor, even for a moment, was never easy. Martha is shot and the pain is like
a million times every broken bone, rotten tooth and gut sick agony all in a
rush of hurt. She actually thinks am I going to die? Martha snogs the
Doctor to bring him back to reality. Whenever she has a bad experience in the
past Martha always called Tish but she’s not sure her sister would believe her
anymore.
Great Ideas: White fire ripped into them turning their flesh into
ashes – you know you are in for a well characterised book when two incidental
characters jump of the page so well in the prologue. The planet Hollywood has
its sign made out of ice and rock dust in orbit. The Doctor is taking Martha to
the pictures where the chairs are intelligent and mould to your comfort zones.
I love the idea that one of the films is the Starship Brilliant story!
Smallpox has been cured in the Wild West? Nathan is one of the townsfolk who
was struck with the pox and cured and now he is plagued by terrible dreams of a
future war. I like the way Swallow makes you feel sympathy for the unlikable
characters in this book, especially Sheriff Blaine who is shot dead after
betraying the Doctor. There are small mentions of naongenes, New Earth, small moments
of continuity that place this firmly in NuWho territory. The Clades are weapons
that are independently intelligent and so advanced they are capable of
conscious thought and action. They would hunt down and destroy their creators
enemies without pity, remorse or pause. They are the pinnacle of biological
engineering named the Peacemakers, the last resort. The peace that reined in
the wake of weapons brought untold prosperity. The Clades watched and waited
through peace time, silent and calculating. Without fire, blood and destruction
they had no purpose. Peace was repulsive slow decay. They reactivated
themselves and turned on their creators, it had been what they were made for.
They don’t want power or wealth, just to destroy. There’s always a war going on
somewhere and now the Clades exist as mercenaries. All they leave behind them
is ashes and destruction. They have a limited regenerative ability built in –
Godlove’s cure all. Side effects are fragments of the Clades battle reports
from a million campaigns across the galaxy. The telepathic imprint of a never
ending war. The Clades are insidious, Martha will die slowly unless they take
them Godlove. Walking Crow’s sacrifice could have been like a hundred other
scenes we have seen of this ilk but instead it is dignified, poignant. I love
Martha’s mow-bile from Nathan’s point of view! The long riders tear a
rattlesnake in half and eat the raw meat in silence. Like an angry child in a
tantrum the Clades were not going to go quietly. They’d want to destroy
something just because they could.
Funny Bits:
- ‘Jules took a lot of convincing to cut out the stuff about the Silurians’ – the Doctor on Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea!
- Professor Alvin Q Godlove’s Powerful Dispatulated Incontrovertible Panacea Potion! I would buy that medicine just because of the name! Although I am reliably informed by the Doctor that it tastes gross, proof that that is simply the case the universe over!
- Martha calls her buck toothed horse Rose! Ahem…
- Martha isn’t sure if the Doctor looks like Clint Eastwood or the Milky Bar kid!
- The Doctor unleashes a torrent of technobabble – ‘Please do not speak in that manner. It causes pain in my head.’
- When she is shot the Doctor thinks Martha is going to confess her love for him when she just wants to tell him where Godlove is!
- Martha doesn’t leave dirty kilts everywhere unlike some people!
Result: The beating heart of the American Frontier is our
stomping ground in this attractive tale, the Wild West in all its glory! What
impressed me here was how confident and engaging the prose was, James Swallow
is not a name I am familiar with but he writes a Doctor Who story with artful
passion. His characterisation of the Doctor and Martha is peerless and both
characters jump from the page as living breathing people. The Clade backstory
is a little similar to that of the Daleks but its such a good story who
actually gives a damn? I am not a huge western fan so the fact that Peacemaker
appealed to me as much as it did was down to some nifty writing, an authentic
location and a real sense of pace of danger. Lets see another from this
accomplished writer please: 8/10
No comments:
Post a Comment