BBC Past Doctor Adventures

#025. City at World’s End ~ 10/10

◆ An Introduction

My feelings towards Doctor Who have been on a roller-coaster journey these past few years. I got bored with BigFinish and abandoned it a month before the pandemic kicked off, spending many a lockdown obsessing over a vinyl record collection that now sits gathering dust in my loft.

I still absolutely adore the audio adventures – taking a great deal of pride in my collection, that has gradually been building in size for seven years – but I could feel myself becoming bored once more. Thank Christ for the novels, which ensure my bank account is always bordering on empty!

I’ve actually owned this book since before the pandemic – always intrigued by the apocalyptic cover art, and a title that just screams 60s Who – but I never read a single page of it. Time to change that fact.

Who wrote this one again? Oh right… Christopher Bulis. Well, hopefully this wont be another generic runaround with all the artistic value of television static.

◆ Publisher’s Summary

The Doctor and his companions land in the city of Arkhaven, the last bastion of civilisation on a doomed world.

The inhabitants of the city are pinning all their hopes on a final desperate gamble for survival. Behind the scenes there are jealous factions at work, secretly contesting for the chance to shape the destiny of a new world. Beneath its ordered surface, Arkhaven is a city of secrets and mysteries where outward appearances can be deceptive.

Is the thing they call the "Creeper" really at large in Arkhaven's eerie outer zone — and is it beast or machine? What is the hidden force at work that has acted so strangely upon Susan?

With Barbara lost and the countdown to doomsday drawing to a climax, the Doctor must discover the true nature of the final enemy — or is that enemy simply fear itself?

◆ The First Doctor

We already know from his work on ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ that Christopher Bulis has a fantastic understanding of the original Tardis crew, but his writing seems to have improved, generally, during the four years between that book’s release and ‘City at World’s End’. Within the first three chapters we get snapshots of the mischievous glee the Doctor exhibits when exploring a new time and place, of the stubbornness he has towards his human companions and of the absolute adoration he has for his granddaughter. Hartnell’s rendition does appear to work extremely well in print, and this was clearly written by someone who adores the First Doctor. This is on par with – if not better than – how he was written in ‘The Plotters’.

The Doctor isn’t operating a taxi cab service. He promised to return Ian and Barbara to their proper location in space and time as soon as it was practicable, but he refuses to leave this place without making at least a cursory examination. Who knows what strange and wonderful things they might find out there?

◆ Susan

Christopher Bulis greatly improves upon his first story to feature this cast of regulars, by actually giving Susan some interesting material. The book wants you to believe that she is trapped in some nightmare whilst undergoing treatment for her injuries sustained at the beginning of the book, but – like most things in Arkhaven – everything is shrouded in deceptions.

Ian and Barbara had been Susan’s teachers back on Earth in 1963, but now, as her strange origins became more apparent, she was growing away from them. To outward appearances and in some mannerisms she was still a teenage girl, but Ian sensed a personality of great strength and boldness developing within her. Susan ended up being badly injured by rubble coming off a collapsing skyscraper towards the beginning of the book. The injuries were so severe that, had treatment not been administered immediately, they would have triggered a regeneration!

◆ Ian

Christopher Bulis deserves much praise for his handling of Ian in ‘City at World’s End’. The former science teacher spends most of his time in the company of the Doctor, seeing the deceptions of Arkhaven peel away like the rind of an orange. He is definitely the audience avatar of this story, which is a role he fulfils perfectly.

Ian could not take in the full implications of the situation. The city around him, the very land on which it rested, was going to be destroyed by a cataclysmic event of such magnitude that it was beyond his comprehension. The death of an individual he could understand, but not the death of a world. He accepted the concept intellectually but not in his heart. Perhaps that was for the best. Otherwise he might end up like those poor wretches around them.

◆ Barbara

Does Bulis have some form of vendetta against Barbara? His first book with this set of regulars had her getting injured by a dragon’s tail whip. Then, within the first few chapters of ‘City at World’s End’, she’s almost crushed to death and buried alive by a collapsing skyscraper! Despite getting the least to do out of the four regulars, the writing for the former history teacher is still impeccable.

Barbara sometimes wonders whether even after all this time the Doctor resents the way they came aboard, and is determined to take them back home by the longest route he can find as a punishment.

◆ Story Recap

Sarath is a world living on borrowed time. A meteorite struck its moon ten years ago, knocking it out of orbit and causing it to gradually disintegrate. In little over a months time, the moon will come crashing down to the planet’s surface and cause untold devastation. The crust would crack, and everyone would be killed in an instant.

Arkhaven now stands as the last bastion of civilisation on this doomed world, where the inhabitants are pinning all their hope on a final desperate gamble for survival.

Arriving atop one of the city’s many skyscrapers, a meteor shower causes the Tardis to be lost beneath massive chunks of rubble… which also appear to have driven Barbara underground.

Susan has been badly injured in the celestial event; her unique physiology attracting the attention of senior clinician Nyra Shardri.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ian find themselves bundled into a refugee camp, alongside the others doomed to die as the moon smashes into Sarath like a ton of bricks!

Arkhaven is a city of secrets and mysteries where outward appearances can be deceptive, which its inhabitants will realise as “Zero Day” draws ever nearer. Sarath is a world living on borrowed time, but who will live long enough to be part of the great exodus?

◆ Last Bastion of Hope

I was hesitant about reading two Bulis stories in a row, simply because I didn’t want to deal with another dose of his usual writing pitfalls, but ‘City at World’s End’ was honestly magnificent.

There’s quite a lot to cover in this review, so let’s dive straight into some positives. The planet might be destined for destruction, but it appears that even Bulis can appreciate good world-building. The last bastion of hope for this doomed civilisation, the horizon of Arkhaven was dominated by the Ship. The vast silver structure extended upwards to over a hundred stories high.

A war with the Taklarians decimated most of Arkhaven’s population, leaving only around eighty thousand alive when the city originally had a population of over five million, but the government covered up the scale of the deaths using hollowed illuminated buildings and various automatons to give the illusion that the population was much higher.

Bulis puts a lot of detail into making this setting come alive, even if it will be utterly decimated by the end of the book. The factions around Arkhaven are all given individual voices and identities too. The NC2s – Non-Citizen, Non-Conformist – who are destined to be left behind when the Ship leaves for the neighbouring world of Mirath. The Elite families of the city, who are so bored waiting for the exodus that they pay for refugees to be smuggled into the city… only to hunt them down like they were nothing more than animals. The only faction that you could class as a weak link are the Taklarians – who are basically supermodels pretending to be Daleks – but even they feel well-written.

Rich and detailed world-building will always be one of the things I value most whilst reading a book, which is why I had so much fun reading something like ‘Burning Heart’. Fair play to Christopher Bulis, cause he absolutely nails it here.

◆ The End of the World

I’d like to move onto a bleak and depressing topic, so it’s now time to discuss the end of the world. One thing I absolutely despise thinking about is my own mortality: in fact, I would go as far as to say it actively terrifies me! Imagining a scenario where our moon would smash into the Earth and crack it open like an egg genuinely gives me anxiety. There might be some rocket ship ready to take a portion of the population to another world – allowing the human race to rebuild somewhere like Mars – but it would likely be reserved for the global elite. The rich and the powerful would leave us all to die, and that’s just a fact.

The thought of losing everything you hold dear would likely drive you mad, or it would just make you all that more determined to survive. You might go to any lengths to save yourself, and that’s an idea this book explores in a fair amount of detail. Would you kill to survive? How many lives would you be willing to take, just to save the lives of yourself and your family? How willing are you to sacrifice your morals if it means you get to see another sunrise? They’re interesting questions that the people of Arkhaven all have to ask themselves, but ‘City at World’s End’ does make you think about what you would do in the same scenario. Realistically, I think I would just panic and spend the final days of planet Earth hugging my boyfriend.

◆ Conclusion

“Tell us how you come not to know half your city’s dead!”

Sarath is a world living on borrowed time. A meteorite struck its moon ten years ago, knocking it out of orbit and causing it to gradually disintegrate. In little over a months time, the moon will come crashing down to the planet’s surface and cause untold devastation. The crust would crack, and everyone would be killed in an instant. Arkhaven is the last bastion of civilisation on this doomed world, and its inhabitants are pinning all their hopes on a final desperate gamble for survival.

Christopher Bulis has long been someone I associate with extreme amounts of padding, one-dimensional characters and generic plots. But ‘City at World’s End’ really broke the mould. Doomsday is rapidly approaching, and our regulars all find themselves struggling to survive in a world which is quite literally at death’s door. This book asks a question of all its characters, whilst also making the reader think about their own answer – how far would you go to survive? How many lives would you be willing to take, just to save the lives of yourself and your family? How willing are you to sacrifice your morals if it means you get to see another sunrise? The prose carries a melancholic beauty and flows like fine wine. Bulis also does a tremendous job with his world-building, meaning all the factions around Arkhaven are fully realised.

A depressing and complex narrative that will genuinely have you questioning your own morality, ‘City at World’s End’ is one of the finest books I’ve ever read.