The fifteenth book in the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures novel is a perfectly self-contained outing for the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Bernice, but one that still manages to explore fairly unique territory for the franchise. It’s one of the slightly edgier stories in the novel line, but one that gets the balance perfect and doesn’t really feel forced or immature.
The storyline is set in Haiti and deals with the military tensions in the country around the time of the First World War. In some ways, it reminds me of an episode from the 1960s, because it is heavily tied to historic events and very much a case of the Doctor and their companions surviving during dangerous times in history, and I thought that was really well done. You can tell a lot of research went into it, and it’s an era that doesn’t typically get featured in a lot of historic fiction – especially in Doctor Who. This really helps give the story a unique feel.
However, this is a sci-fi element to this story – and it’s a really cool one. Amidst all the bits of armed conflict that the Doctor and friends are trying to navigate, Cthulhu cultists are on the move. This was especially appealing for me, because I have a huge soft spot for the Cthulhu mythos and as I am obviously a massive Doctor Who fan, it delights me to see the mythologies combined. It’s very true to the original Lovecraft stories as well, where you really don’t see a lot of the otherworldly creatures, and it’s all about the people working under their influence. It’s maybe a little too gruesome sometimes, but other than that, I felt this element was handled well.
While Ace is one of my favourite Doctor Who characters, by this point I actually found myself feeling more fondly towards Bernice than her, because she’s so far into her tough guy persona at this point in her life that it makes her seem a little obnoxious sometimes. At one point, she comes across as downright homophobic when talking to someone, which is sad for a character I’ve always read as being pretty progressive. Bernice, at least, feels like a genuinely likeable gateway character, with the Doctor being too far down the rabbit hole of being cold, detached, and enigmatic, and Ace in super macho mode. I think she really needed to be there, because I might have been a bit put off without any regular human people – which is a nice change from earlier where she got kind of side-tracked.
Occasionally it felt a little dry, and some of the language seems kind of uncomfortable and outdated (especially when coming from the Doctor’s perspective or the author’s), but I can partly forgive it when it’s trying to capture the tone of a certain historic era – I just think it should have been contained within the dialogue of the characters from that time. Nonetheless, it was one of the better VNAs, and one I definitely recommend to anyone who loves historical Doctor Who or the Cthulhu mythos.
Score: 8.3/10
