22 - Conundrum

Doctor Who thrives on change and experimentation, even if it doesn’t always work out.  Fortunately, when Conundrum swings for the fences, the ball doesn’t land for 250 glorious pages.  Many of the earlier books in this range benefited from the new format, but this story was the first that only works as a novel and nothing else.

The Doctor, Ace, and Benny land in a sleepy English village, which seems to be populated entirely by pulp cliches. There’s the retired superhero Norman Power, the Hardy Boys-esque Adventure Kids, a witch named Rosemary Chambers and a priest hunting her down, a serial killer on the loose, a film-noir private detective from the States, and a psychic investigating the strange happenings of the town.  It’s a bizarre, nostalgic collage of characters that seem haphazardly thrown together, and before long it becomes clear why…  The Doctor is trapped in the Land of Fiction once again!

Steve Lyons seizes the opportunity to weave a self-referential, tongue-in-cheek narrative that proves itself to be a worthy successor to The Mind Robber.  The third-person omniscient narrator begins making remarks to the audience, and before long we realize that the Master of the Land himself is talking to us as he writes the book in real time.  Several of the plot points rely on the relationship between the “writer” and “characters;” for instance, the Doctor makes up technobabble to explain Norman’s powers, and when the Master (no relation) uses this plot point later, it’s revealed that the Doctor tricked him by lying about the properties of a real force, effectively building a backdoor for himself.  As in any good mystery novel, perceptive readers can also pick up on earlier details to guess at the reveals.  Norman Power is the only character given any significant amount of depth (his scenes with Benny are some of the most heartfelt sections of the book), and we soon learn that’s because he’s a real person, unlike all of the cliched works of fiction around him!  It’s all of the little things that make Conundrum such a treat, and I could go on and on about it.  The Master’s little remarks verge into Douglas Adams territory sometimes, and it’s so fun to see him write himself out of corners, memory-wiping Ace or cutting to a different scene when the narrative is in trouble.  It’s a glorious story that just wouldn’t work on TV, given how reliant it is on the prose.

This alternate universe cycle has produced three of the best books in the series so far, and I’m loving the momentum.  Especially if you liked The Mind Robber, you’ll love Conundrum!