Frayed - ★★★½☆

Frayed é a story that shines through its characters.

Tara Samms, the apparent author, is actually a pseudonym for Stephen Cole, an author with a considerable number of contributions to the Doctor Who universe but with whom I have a complicated relationship - in my experience with his writing, his stories range from fun to total disaster. Frayed landed, for me, in the author's better output.

In half of the chapters, we follow the Doctor's arrival at the Refuge, a research facility on a distant planet occupied by humans, which is being attacked by strange creatures, 'humanoid' foxes that appear to be made of dust. He and Susan are separated at the beginning of the story, and the other half of the book is dedicated to a dream world that bit by bit reveals the true nature of the Refuge.

Readers well versed in Doctor Who will quickly recognize Frayed for what it is: a simple base under siege; one of those stories in which the Doctor and company are trapped with a group of characters being attacked by an external threat that wants to dominate the place they are in and, often, not leave any survivors in their path. Another person might be frustrated with this aspect of the book, after all it's nothing that we haven't seen hundreds of other times in the sixty years of the series - but it's understandable why this trope is recurrent in Doctor Who: it makes for very entertaining and fun stories. I personally love a good base under siege.

Where Frayed deviates greatly from what is expected from Doctor Who, however, is in the rather graphic depictions of violence. From injuries on the "battlefield", to very bloody descriptions of foxes killing Refuge employees - there is a moment, for example, in which one of them rips off a character's arm and blood gushes over another -, to very surrealistic moments that take place in the aforementioned "dream world". But it is in the thematic connections between the characters that the book really comes to life.

In addition to our recurring characters, the First Doctor and Susan, we have a range of Refuge workers - including the facility leader, Moseley; librarian Webber; the medic Juniper; the cook Salih and the retired military woman, Cass. Each of them shows a different aspect of life in the Refuge under attack; what happens when ordinary men and women are put into a war zone. And bit by bit, it investigates and reveals different aspects of human nature based on the decisions of these characters throughout the plot.

Moseley gradually breaks down throughout the book, as more of the employees are killed by the enemy and as it becomes obvious that Earth will not send help. He feels like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he is a very sympathetic character also for his flaws. Cass is that very common 'problem character' archetype in Doctor Who, that despicable figure who you know is in the story make everything worse at the most inopportune moment. But I think it is one of the most effective executions of this archetype, the text very convincingly justifies her excesses through her ego, her almost unhealthy obsession with recognition and the violence encouraged by a thirst for blood closely linked to the military mentality. Webber keeps the First Doctor company for a good part of the story and I thought it built a very good dynamic, with him being the most rational person left in the Refuge and allowing the Doctor to navigate the narrative without unnecessary obstacles.

But the most interesting of these characters is Jill, the central figure of the dreaming chapters. As the Doctor quickly discovers, the Refuge was a genetic research facility. At the time this story takes place, it is possible to easily carry out complete genetic mapping during pregnancy. The Refuge was part of a project to genetically treat children who presented genomes associated with a predisposition to commit crimes - or, what in practice turns out to be, a prison for "future criminals" which is quite cruel - and extremely eugenic - although it tries sell itself as a shelter for broken children. Some of them, like Jill, have different degrees of telepathic abilities. Recent events since the fox attack have caused her to be somewhat distraught while being connected to the dream chamber - where surgeries are performed while children are "awake", in induced dreams - and Jill's imagination has taken over the virtual interface.

One of the Refuge employees to whom Jill was very attached, Olmec, dies before the start of Frayed, and therefore the chapters in which we see the girl's dreams are quite symbolic of her grieving, very painful and very confusing, which mixes with stories - Mayan myths - that Olmec told her. The gods and myths are intertwined with the pains of her past, of the abandonment from her mother - who committed suicide - to the physical and verbal violence she suffered in the Refuge or things that she shouldn't have known about, but that were inevitable due to the his telepathic abilities. She discovers, for example, that the Refuge creates babies without brain activity, just their bodies, to remove organs or parts of interest for surgeries on the children; which disturbs her and manifests itself in her dreams in the form of a strange baby that wanders around.

My favorite scene happens towards the end of the story, when Susan - who ended up trapped in the dream chamber with the children - helps and observes Jill trying to get Olmec - who had been seriously injured, induced into a coma and no longer presents significant brain activity - regain consciousness. What Susan soon realizes is that the Olmec that manifests itself in the interface is nothing more than a manifestation of Jill's desires - for a safe haven, for someone to love her, to protect her, to take care of her. It's a cruel scene, cruel as life often is, and that's why it's very beautiful and got to my heart.

There are other unique aspects to Frayed, the most notable of which is that this story is set up as the Doctor's first encounter with humanity. In what it purports to be, it's quite effective, but it's worth mentioning that I read this story as part of my project, Project: Blue Box, in which I'm going through the releases of the Doctor Who universe in chronological order - from the Doctor's point of view - and that this story necessarily takes place shortly after The Beginning, where the Doctor and Susan already meet humans and hear about Earth. This type of divergence is expected from a universe as large as the expanded universe of Doctor Who and it is the type of inconsistency that I think is healthy to just ignore and enjoy the original intention of each work.

What is really peculiar, though, is that this story also sets itself up as when the Doctor and Susan "earned" their names - which once again conflicts with The Beginning - and although I can see some people disliking this idea, since the way in which this happens can be a little anticlimactic, it works for me. It's very simple, happens by chance, and although there's nothing grand about it, it's precisely the type of choice that falls very much in the mold of the classic series in which the beauty of the narrative is often found in the accidents of life and History, with a capital H, than in epic plots of enormous proportions that sometimes the new series trivializes.

Finally, I want to highlight that the First Doctor is very well characterized, still being a grumpy, selfish old man, without a shred of mercy and who thinks too much kf himself, but without going overboard and risking becoming a caricature. Frayed's most palpable flaw is Susan, because although I really like her scenes - there is in particular a fantastic dialogue between her and her grandfather in the last chapter - she takes on a very secondary role in the plot, which I find intuitive on the part of the authors who usually write pre-An Unearthly Child history, but it's always a shame. I think we all like it when she takes on a more active role and shows sides that aren't very common in her time on TV.