The Great Virgin New Adventures Review: Strange England and First Frontier

Finally, we’re back with the Virgin New Adventures. It’s been a while but I had a serious burnout by the end of last year, as I’m sure virtually the rest of the world did and just wanted to have a little rest. But I’ve finally decided to delve into the Virgin range of outings for the Seventh Doctor and in this article, we take a look back at Strange England and First Frontier. Strange England, as the name suggests, is very strange, while First Frontier marks the first appearance of the Master in this series of novels.

Strange England

Written by Simon Messingham

Dream sequences are notorious. I don’t think there is a writer around who has ever managed to write one that hasn’t come away sound pretentious or without egg on their faces. Strange England is just that, a dream sequence that runs for nearly 300 pages. But by the end of it, did I think it was a dream or a nightmare?

It starts out pretty well, with the TARDIS arriving in a lovely meadow, following the death of a man who seems to have been killed by an alien insect, but the man’s death has been seen and heard by no one. What follows is a little nastier with a girl being infested by the same insects, using her vocal cords to ‘sing’. There was something of a dark fairytale feel that was enjoyable in the opening chapters but it doesn’t take long before Ace gets separated from the Doctor and Bernice and we are quickly introduced to the rest of the cast of characters in The House.

What follows in the Doctor and Bernice plot is something of a Base-Under-Siege storyline with characters getting killed off in rapid succession and the survivors hunted through the house by evil alien forces. But before that happens there is a lot of the Doctor wandering around making tea and breakfast, while Bernice and a woman called Charlotte decide to investigate around the strange House, to see why the occupants don’t know what emotions and certain words are. There is an air of boredom for Bernice here, that does slowly creep into the prose and we don’t hear from Ace for such a long time, I’d nearly forgotten she was in it.

Ace is unfortunately left to deal with the subplot, where she just gets to be Ace, getting in fights in pubs and even dying, before being resurrected by an even stranger alien force. What was also annoying was that all the side characters in the sub-plot had names that began with A, so there were times when it was hard to follow who was who, especially as there was nothing particularly special about each one to separate them from one another.

We also meet one of the big villains for the story, Doctor Rix, who is nothing but a shouting, raving lunatic, who screams and kicks, literally, his way through the middle part of the book. He is also an incredibly violent character and the book in the second and third acts feels like it’s violent for the sake of it. That is a reoccurring problem with these books, but it is particularly apparent here.

This is Messingham’s first book and unfortunately, it feels like it. With the Seventh Doctor going back to being the master-manipulator, something that the range had evolved past, Bernice not really doing anything and Ace being angry and aggressive all the time, something else this range had moved on from. It’s also overly wordy, I know that sounds silly for a book as the whole point is that it’s been written but his over-describing things really begins to grind on your nerves quickly. And while the New Adventures range had made a name for themselves as a more adult look at Doctor Who, the constant violence, especially here, feels a little childish.

I just didn’t understand any of the story going on here, we are introduced to The Quack, who is obviously supposed to be the Doctor but then it turns out that he and Rix and he are the same person and merge into one being? It’s a shame in the last few chapters because Messingham does manage to make it somewhat interesting again with it transpiring this is all a world created by a dying TARDIS. And credit where credit is due, Messingham does give us plenty of nods and hints to this along the way. But it’s just a chore to get through the middle section of the book to get to that point. It’s not a good show and one wonders whether the editors for the range were on holiday when this was submitted, or they just didn’t care.

As a result, Strange England ends up being one of the worst entries to the range. Not because it’s lacking in ideas, it’s just plain boring. For me, a Doctor Who story can have all the usual tropes we’ve come to expect, so long as it’s a good story otherwise. Strange England has some good ideas that get lost in violence for the sake of violence, too many characters, boring plotlines where even the Doctor and Bernice comment on how dull things are and none of the plot threads gelling as well together as it perhaps first envisioned. But for me, the greatest crime a Doctor Who story can make is that it’s dull and boring. And unfortunately, Strange England is just that.

First Frontier

Written by: David A. McIntee

From the English Countryside, First Frontier takes us to 1950s America, at the height of the Cold War and Alien-mania. Right off the bat, being a McIntee book, there is a lot of historical detail. He had previously written White Darkness, set in Haiti and that also featured a lot of historical detail. If you like historical detail, as I do, then it shouldn’t bother you too much, though there were moments where passages where the detail could have been dialled down a little bit as it didn’t really add anything to the story.

Much of the story takes place around a couple of Army bases that surround the town of Holloman. We meet a couple of residents of Holloman a few times though they don’t really stick around much to add anything to the story, however, McIntee puts in some nice work in characterising the Army personal. Colonel Finney is in charge of the base and for once it makes a change that he isn’t opposed to the Doctor’s presence from the get-go. He gets a couple of nice moments and has some history for McIntee to flashback to when he needs to. Major Marion Davison, who is a military journalist makes a nice third ‘companion’ for the Doctor and gets plenty to do.

I appreciated that for once, there weren’t hundreds of characters to have to try and remember, some of these Virgin New Adventures have fallen into the trap of giving us so many characters it’s impossible to keep track of them all. McIntee makes the right move in keeping the cast small, allowing for more characterisation that makes us care for the characters. Not something every author of these books does very well.

As for the Doctor, Bernice and Ace, they get plenty to do too. While the Doctor sticks to the Army bases for much of the story, Ace and Benny get to have a lot of fun. McIntee allows Benny to experience some history, while painting Ace as an action hero, lobbing cans of Nitro-Nine and firing guns and in one excellent chapter, piloting a plane. I really liked that McIntee didn’t fall into the trap of locking one companion away for half the novel or just not including them in the slightest. So many previous writers have done that and the book really suffers from it. By now, Benny feels as much of a long-term companion, like Ace, so it’s great to see her getting treated like one and equally nice is that the pair aren’t at each other’s throats, something that has gotten on my nerves in the past with these novels.

The alien menace this time around is the Tzun Confederacy. McIntee shows how much fun he had in creating this species, a species that, depending on what job you do, look different. It’s a fun idea, and even more interesting is that they are here to take over Earth, even if they don’t strictly want to conquer it. From the perspective of the Tzun, each of their invasions is more a cultural exchange, with the Tzun and the peoples of other worlds, sharing information, and the Tzun seem to want to put people’s fears to rest, by being, actually, quite nice. Where the Tzun fall short in this book is the insistent technobabble McIntee uses to describe them. We get that they are alien, half the descriptive dialogue isn’t needed and makes some of the passages with them drag on for a little too long. But the Tzun are a good concept for an alien race.

Also making an appearance in this book is the return of the Master, who has escaped from the planet of the Cheetah People right at the last second. His body is slowly turning into a Cheetah and he covers his skin in the typical Anthony Ainley costume. It’s a great story for the Master and one that would have worked brilliantly as an ending to the Ainley incarnation had it ever been made for television. We do get a regeneration here, but McIntee seems a little unsure in his writing how he wants this Master to appear. As a result, he just gets written as Ainley’s incarnation the whole way through. Not strictly a bad thing, but it would have been nice to have a clearer take on the two Masters featured here.

What is fun though is picking up on the little references to the character’s identity that are littered throughout the pages, though it does take till pace 200 for the Master to reveal his true identity. And Benny’s thoughts on what the Tissue Compressor Eliminator looks like was hilarious, even that doesn’t overstep into over gratuitous.

I really enjoyed First Frontier. Having read it in a couple of days not once did I find it boring, though the historical detail might not be for everyone, it does add to the atmosphere of the novel. McIntee’s handling of the characters is also excellent both for the human characters and aliens. Where the book lets itself down slightly is in his overreliance on technobabble and uncertainty on how to write for the new incarnation of the Master. Otherwise, it’s a book that moves at a fair click, springs some nice surprises and for once, treats the main cast much like their television counterparts. Even if it moves away from its town of UFO-mad inhabitants pretty quickly, McIntee manages to show us how these books should be written. I’m hoping that more books from the range will be like this in the future.