The Great Virgin New Adventures Review: Original Sin & Sky Pirates!

As we continue our sometimes terrific sometimes tumultuous adventure through the Virgin Novels range, we finally shake Ace, Bernice finally feels like she’s coming into her own, sees the return of an old foe and we meet two new companions that divided fandom in the form of Chris and Roz. And that’s just the first book!

Original Sin

Written by Andy Lane

Well, I wasn’t expecting this book to be as good as it was! That feels like a strange comment, given how I’ve enjoyed all of Lane’s previous contributions to the New Adventures. But I think much of my reservations come from hearing about the new companions, some people really liked them and others didn’t. I must admit, my first experiences with Chris and Roz were thanks to their few Big Finish adventures so I spent much of my time imagining those versions of these characters in this book, but I certainly didn’t hate them.

Of course, in New Adventures tradition there is an extended prologue but unlike other writers who sometimes do stumble at the first hurdle,  Lane keeps things interesting but opens with the end of an unseen adventure, the consequences of which see the Doctor and Bernice put on their path through this book. Lane also wastes no time in introducing us to the baddies (?), the Hith, lizard-like aliens who have poetic names like Hopelessly Forsaken, which actually form a race memory for what happened to them in the past. We meet one of them who is dying and warns Bernice of the fate about to befall the Earth. Right away we’re given the book’s mystery and meet the aliens who don’t take two-hundred pages to first appear!

Of the plot, well reading it, it did feel a little simplistic but there is nothing wrong with that, too many times have writers for this range tried to tell big expansive and sweeping stories and got bogged down in metaphysical mumbo-jumbo which threaten to make many of the books almost unreadable. But a mystery can be as simplistic or complicated as you like so long as it’s well written and Lane manages to write this fantastically well. Sometimes we just want Doctor Who to follow a simple formula, the tagline of these novels, “Telling stories too broad and deep for the television series,” doesn’t always need to be followed to the letter. It takes place in a time period we’ve been to too many times before, and much to Donna’s disgust in Planet of the Ood, we find The Earth Empire prospering off the backs of others, claiming to help planets, like that of the Hith’s, and then stealing and using their technologies.

There is a rampant xenophobia that runs through the habitat the Doctor and Bernice find themselves in towards any aliens that happen to be there and just like humans now, it stems from the fact that they are too ashamed to admit that they were at fault visiting and sometimes invading these other worlds. But there is self-loathing too with some humans undergoing body transformations, which sees them turning into whatever they want to make themselves happy.

This loathing for aliens doesn’t take long to be introduced thanks to the inclusion of another Hith character Powerless Friendless, who has hidden in the shadows of tunnels and alleyways, working terrible jobs in-between xenophobic attacks. I think it’s pretty impossible to not see the racism parallels and no doubt this was what Lane was going for and like all great messages in Who, it is handled with tact and respect and gives us a message without force-feeding it to us. There is also another way to see this corrupt setting through the eyes of the new companions, Chris and Roz who work for the law-enforcement Adjudicators, and they learn that the corruption of their home runs right through their organisation. That isn’t something new but it still makes for great reading.

Roz runs the line of being a no-nonsense cliché, but Lane runs that line just right, giving her just enough sarcasm to allow her to fit right in with Bernice while explaining that her privileged upbringing explains the reasons for some of her actions. She also is still grieving from the death of her former mentor while trying to tutor a new partner. I found myself warming to Roz pretty quickly, but I’ll wait to cast judgment on Chris. He feels like a rather clichéd loveable moron, unfortunately, there were passages where I felt like a moron was much more of a fair judgement.

Finally, out of the shadow of Ace, Bernice shines here, taking on the plight of the Hith in a way that makes the Doctor proud. We get some passages of her looking at her life with the Doctor. She spends most of her time bored in the TARDIS but when things get dangerous, she spends her life wanting to get back to it. Most of her scenes with the Doctor prove that these two belong together as Doctor and Companion and throw some shadows of shame on the writers who didn’t handle the pair very well.

And for a change, the Seventh Doctor comes across as much more thoughtful and reflective here, and much more like the likeable incarnation of this Doctor we have seen on television and the manic-depressive version often portrayed in these books. This is probably thanks to his handling in the previous book, Human Nature, so he feels much more human here, proving that there was still a lot of a narrative to be prodded at following the popular previous novel. There is a bit where he’s pretty near death, probably because Virgin was toying with the idea of regenerating the Doctor, where he ponders on his darker nature and thinks back on the Valeyard.

There was also an interesting look at the Doctor’s morals when he’s dealing with the psychopathic Professor Pryce. Pryce believes there is no solid argument against murder besides people who don’t want to be murdered. The Doctor realises that people can really condemn and rationalise murder in the same instant. And the Doctor sees some sense in that statement. Of course, he must stop it because it’s wrong, and he applies the same logic to time travel too, he’s time’s champion for no other particular reason aside from no one else will do it. It was an interesting look at the Time Lord, peeling he’s ideologies back and noting he is just a man trying to do what he believes is right.

Knowing who the real villain in Original Sin is doesn’t take away from the story. Of course, at the time this book was published it was a shock reveal, but now knowing that it was Kevin Stoney’s Tobias Vaughn from The Invasion, the book gives an interesting look at his character, even if it does a wee bit of retconning in the process making him responsible for a number of adventures in the Virgin books. But Andy Lane seems to relish handling this character introducing him pretty late into proceedings and revealing him as the great mastermind behind recent troubles without jeopardising everything you’ve just read up to that point can’t be easy but Lane handles it with ease.

As the book winds down with the Doctor and Bernice now joined by Chris and Roz as new companions, the Doctor pats the TARDIS console noting that this will be like old times. I’m liking that it doesn’t seem like Chris and Roz will jeopardise Bernice as a great companion now she’s finally in full swing. It’s interesting that the pair don’t really meet the Doctor until pretty late so it does feel like a completely new way of introducing new companions to the TARDIS. Because they don’t read like normal companions it’s pretty hard to work out whether or not they were always intended to be new companions but that doesn’t take away from the fact they are pretty well-written characters. While Original Sin might not feel as dazzling and exciting as Human Nature, it’s a damn good read nonetheless.

Sky Pirates!

Written by: Dave Stone

No. Just no.

To say this book is awful isn’t entirely fair, I’m sure there are some readers out there who will enjoy this one. But I just don’t know what else to put apart from the above statement. Dave Stone is a writer who seems to inspire some feelings of dread with his Doctor Who work. Unfortunately, that might prove true if Sky Pirates! is anything to go by. It was entirely uncompressible full of concepts and characters mashed together like different colours of play dough by a writer who just seemed to be hoping for the best. I had previously thought The Pit was the worst of the range until now.

I’ve really nothing else to say apart from if I hadn’t been determined to read every one of these Virgin New Adventures, I’d have given up with this one after the prologue…

Next Time: The Chelonians are back in Zamper, misprints with Toy Soldiers and The Seventh Doctor shoots Mel in Head Games.