Andrew
Smith and Matthew Smith – the two names from my youth which occasioned in me
such feelings of jealousy that I might as well have had a big sign on my
forehead that said ‘under achiever’.
Games’ buffs of a certain vintage will recognise the latter name as that
of the teenager who wrote Spectrum classics ‘Manic Miner’ and ‘Jet Set Willy’
but it was the former who convinced the thirteen year old me that I’d already
missed the talent boat. Author of really
rather brilliant tv story ‘Full Circle’ while still in Primary school (or so it
felt at the time), Smith disappeared into the black hole which is the Police
Force, and has only recently resurfaced in our little corner of the internet,
producing work for Big Finish and now – more unexpectedly, perhaps – for Declan
May in this book.
But
enough of the slightly breathless history lesson, what’s ‘The Celephas Gift’
like, I hear you ask? It’s damn good,
actually. The story has a complete shape
which, for all their positive qualities, some of the other stories so far have
been missing (though, to be fair, those without such a structure have been so
for a reason) – a sense that this story has a beginning, a middle and an
end. It helps that there’s something of
a pre-credits sequence, as the Doctor completes one (unseen) adventure and then
suffers the ramifications of the fallout from that adventure, but Smith is
clever in that, while there’s a definite sense that this story takes place
against the background of a wider War, and that this is not the Doctor we’re
used to, there’s enough meat in the story he tells for us not to care that we’re
not seeing the bigger picture. A high
spot of the early part of the collection, even amongst strong competition.
The next
story but one is a reworking of a chunk of Shakespeare’s Henry V, so it’s good
that two such meaty pieces are constructed around a third Declan May (this time with the assistance of John Davies) entry, ‘The
Girl with the Purple Hair’. Less
immediately about the War Doctor himself than about his new, occasional
companion, Jenny Shirt, and her perception of him as he visits at various points in
his own timeline, it still manages to add another brick to the character May
has been portraying all along.
And so to
the reworking of Henry V! In some ways
this is simply an extended joke, with key roles for Commander Maxil (primarily
remembered on Gallifrey, we are told, for shooting an unarmed man), Castellan
Kelner (similarly ‘feted’ back home for his craven behaviour during the
Invasion of Time) and Commentator Runcible (a joke all in and by himself), as
well as any number of other references to make the long term fan chuckle in
recognition. But is it too much of a
stretch to suggest that almost the last line of the footnotes makes the key
point of the piece in noting that the cowardly Runcible, post-regeneration, ‘became a War TARDIS flotilla commander and
was known as ‘Lady Runcible The Fearless’, one of the most ruthless and capable
soldiers in her field’. There’s a
warrior in all of us, if need be, apparently….
‘…half-crazed
Robomen, force-mutated mounds of pain rejecting their half-destroyed mechanical
prostheses, and time-distorted semi-corpses from unidentifiable races… If you were expecting more belly laughs from
‘Here Comes the Doctor’ by Christopher Bryant then you’re in for a
disappointment, though I suspect that would be the only one you’d
experience. I must admit the name is a
new one to me, but I’m very keen to read more.
There’s an air of RTD about the way he punctuates the meat of the plot
with carefully constructed lists like the one above, or drops unexplained
references - ‘I saw the birthing of the
Final Pathogen’ – into the Doctor’s dialogue.
Equally, though, there’s an old
school feel to the Doctor turning up in disguise rather than waving the psychic
paper around, then having to use his wits to convince people he’s the good
guy. For myself, I though it was missing
a trick to have the Daleks turn out to be the bad guys (though the clues were
there, which I did appreciate, in retrospect) but the author makes up for that
by allowing the story to continue beyond the point at which a common or garden
short story would stop (read it yourself – didn’t you expect Aceso wasting the
flying Daleks to be the end?). And
Bryant’s War Doctor – the Patient, as he’s known here – makes May’s look like
the softest liberal bleeding heart ever.
“People change’, indeed.
Christ.
A really
good short story feels like a novel in miniature – obviously not so detailed
and maybe not so tricky, but with several characters interacting in several different
ways, and a variety of plot twists and so on.
A really great short story does all that and yet still feels the perfect
length. This is a great short story,
simple as that.
[Seasons of War is
a charity Doctor Who short story collection, edited by Declan May, with
all proceeds going to the Caudwell Children charity. It's a long book,
with a lot of stories, so I'll be reviewing it in chunks of 4-6 stories
at a time over the next week or so…]
