So..yeah..that happened.

Where to begin?

Actually, I’m going to begin at the end and this is spoiler territory so look away if you haven’t read Campaign yet.

And it was all a dream.

As some of you know, I’m a primary school teacher. I’m also an English Lit graduate. So English is my subject. When I teach writing to the little oiks in my charge, there are two golden rules. Don’t start with ‘One sunny day’ and don’t end with ‘and it was all a dream’. What’s worse, though, is when to counter that ending, children write: ‘or was it?’ That’s basically what Jim Mortimore does and I don’t remember the last time I’ve felt so let down by a novel. It felt like such a cop out, childish ending for what had, up to that very last page, been intriguing, frustrating and mind-bending in equal measure.

Campaign starts in an ordinary way but very quickly makes it obvious it’s going to be playing with Doctor Who. Ian is dead. Barbara is dead. Then they are both alive again. And then the universe outside the TARDIS disappears. The tensions between the crew echo the early days of the the series and this is extrapolated to extremes. The story is written as Ian and Barbara’s tale, and mainly from their points of view, and that fits perfectly with the era it is set in.

Within an increasingly bizarre narrative landscape, Mortimore weaves in aspects of the series from ‘outside’ the canon: Cliff and Lola from the original character breakdowns; David Whitaker’s rewriting of the character’s backgrounds in his novelisation of The Daleks; the 17th Century Mortimer family from Doctor Who and the Invasion of Space; John and Gillian; even Butch the dog from one of the early annual stories.

This is fun and cleverly done and I think this is why I was expecting a better resolution than, as it turns out, the real TARDIS crew (the one’s from ‘our version’) playing a fancy computer game. Inevitably, it reminds a genre TV fan of the Better Than Life episode of Red Dwarf – a story which I think handled this concept far more adeptly than Mortimore has here.

I think I expected something about alternative universes; infinite possibilities and the like. Maybe, to some, that would be as equal a cop out but, for me, it would have been more in keeping with the series in this era, than ‘virtual reality’.

The main focus of the book (if it can be said to have one) is of an adventure the crew have had with Alexander the Great. Campaign was written before Big Finish breathed life into the lost story, Farewell, Great Macedon (which is an excellent audio) but there are a few vague echoes of that story. The take on a historical adventure in Campaign, though, is very similar to that from the Short Trips collection, A Universe of Terrors that I read recently. The characters are ‘put through the mill’ (a Mortimore standard) and there is no happy outcome. Even the dramatisation of the Great Fire of London in the latter part of the book (involving the aforementioned Mortimer family) is unforgiving including not only death and destruction but domestic abuse.

And this is probably another issue I had with the book. There is some quite unsavoury stuff: Ian/Cliff commits murder because he is infatuated with Olympia, Alexander’s queen; Barbara/Lola rams a knife into Ian/Cliff’s heart; Susan gives birth to Alexander’s son; Ida and Alan (the Mortimer children) grow up alone inside the TARDIS and form a sexual relationship; Ian/Cliff slits his own throat.

Campaign is written poetically. There are whole sections which play with words and formatting on the page. There are some engaging passages but, in equal measure, are sections which are frustrating in their deliberate obscureness. I lost count of the sections where I had no idea, for quite a while (and occasionally, at all), as to whose thought processes I was privy too. Part of this, of course, is the point as we encounter different aspects of the same characters; Ian and Cliff; Barbara and Lola; Susan, Sue, Bridget,….

I’m not sure I want to read a full-length Doctor Who narrative poem which, in a way, is what Campaign felt like to me. It did lots I liked. I admire the weaving in of the show’s rich, difficult birth and those formative years of spin-off material which worked from a springboard of a series which hadn’t as rigidly defined itself as it would begin to do as the years progressed. It’s fan service and relatively well done (aside from the ending). But the willful obscureness of various sections seemed self indulgent. It was difficult to shake the feeling that this was written with a bit of an agenda.

As I understand it, Campaign was pitched to BBC Books as one thing and when Mortimore delivered something rather different (I’m assuming something similar to this eventual version) they baulked at the idea and sent him packing. If this novel is what he gave them, I have to side with BBC Books. This would not have fitted into the range of Past Doctor Adventures, rightly or wrongly, and is very different to most Doctor Who fiction – even the more ‘experimental’ works. It’s even far beyond the experimental pieces of Big Finish such as The Natural History of Fear or Scherzo.

Maybe I’m being too harsh, but there was a juvenile attitude behind the accomplished prose. It is written well, but the motivation seems to be to stick two fingers up at the stuffed shirts who turned it down. Too many times it smacks of arrogance and self-indulgence and it’s a shame because, as I say, there were so many concepts I thought were brilliant.

I know I was told I was ‘in for a treat’ by the locals round here who have already sampled this book’s delights, but I’ve come away frustrated and not a little disappointed. Part of me also feels a little ‘dim’. Did I miss something? Have my literary skills and scholarly judgement been stunted by years of mainly reading Doctor Who and children’s books? Are people going to come wading into this thread (Mr Mortimore, included) and tell me off for being so dismissive and just ‘not getting it’? I don’t know, but I can’t help the way I feel. It’s the same way I sometimes feel after reading a particularly obscure short story or when I listened to stories such as …ish or The Natural History of Fear from Big Finish; or when I’ve looked at certain examples of ‘Modern Art’. I can’t shake that feeling that the artiste is saying ‘look at me; look how clever I’m being’. That could be my hang-ups and nothing of the sort was intended but we respond to art at our own level and on our own terms. I’ll admit that, for the latter third, I’m not sure I even understood what was going on which probably didn’t help my disposition to the fairly blunt ending.

I didn’t hate Campaign. I didn’t love Campaign. I did enjoy parts. I was frustrated by others. I’m glad I read it (I’m always glad to experience a Doctor Who story in whatever form it takes) but I won’t be recommending it without a health warning. Approach with caution and with all your faculties at 100%.