Virgin New Adventures

#009. Love and War ~ 9/10

◆ An Introduction

You can only push someone so far before they break, which the Doctor is going to find out the hard way. He has done terrible things to his companion, put her through some awful situations in the past, but she was always loyal to a fault. But not even Ace will be able to forgive him this time round…

◆ Publisher’s Summary

On a planet called Heaven, all hell is breaking loose.

Heaven is a paradise for both humans and Draconians — a place of rest in more ways than one. The Doctor comes here on a trivial mission — to find a book, or so he says — and Ace, wandering alone in the city, becomes involved with a charismatic Traveller called Jan.

But the Doctor is strenuously opposed to the romance. What is he trying to prevent? Is he planning some more deadly game connected with the mysterious objects causing the military forces of Heaven such concern?

Archaeologist Bernice Summerfield thinks so. Her destiny is inextricably linked with that of the Doctor, but even she may not be able to save Ace from the Time Lord's plans.

This time, has the Doctor gone too far?

◆ The Seventh Doctor

This was the first book in the range from a returning author, that being the extremely talented Paul Cornell. I gave his characterisation a lot of praise the last time round, and that’s not going to change at all during my review of this adventure. His writing for the Doctor is fantastic in ‘Love and War’.

The Doctor was getting strange these days, a bit distant, like he was plotting again. Another big game hunt, another war against the monsters. Hadn’t that attitude got him into enough trouble already? The Doctor wasn’t a man, although he looked like one. Shreela had joked about Ace looking for a father figure, and Ace had replied that it was more like an ancestor figure, since the Doctor was 783 years old, give or take a year. He was a Time Lord, more than a Time Lord, from the ancient world of Gallifrey. He navigated time-space in a police box. He fought evil and did good. And he was Ace’s best friend. The Doctor likes to illustrate his explanations. Lately, he’d stopped explaining everything, stopped sighing and showing Ace that he was hurting too. He was like a sheet of placid water, hardening into ice. The Draconians apparently referred to him as Karshtakavaar, the oncoming storm. He appears only when there is terrible danger. Sometimes the Doctor picks the people who’ll travel with him, but often they pick him instead. Upon hearing that Ace had fallen in love with Jan, he basically gives her an ultimatum – life with the Travellers or life in the Tardis. He even compares the situation to Susan’s departure from the Tardis, when she fell in love with David Campbell. Upon being questioned by Benny, the Doctor claims that he doesn’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, but does have a model railway set somewhere. He likes chaos, big explosions, rebellions, that sort of thing. He admits that he could have changed the Tardis’s chameleon circuit ages ago, but he likes the shape. And the motto. Call here for help. That’s what he does. Let little children sleep safely at night, because he’s searched through all the shadows and chased the baddies away. He’s what the monsters have nightmares about!

◆ Ace

This book introduces us to a brand new companion, but not before inflicting a severe amount of heartache and mental trauma onto our current companion, who then ditches life aboard the Tardis for the next three books. The writers of the ‘New Adventures’ really seem to have a vendetta against Ace, because they always put her through the most horrific or downright miserable situations. That being said, her characterisation in this novel is on point.

Ace hadn’t wanted to weep herself, because, dear as he’d been, she hadn’t seen Julian for years. Recent experiences had taught her about the pain of nostalgia. Maybe she’d think about it a while later, shed a few tears when she’d got the memories sorted out. You had to be careful with tears. Ace sometimes wished that that wasn’t true. Ace had actually walked up to her old front door that morning, looked through the letterbox. She’d asked the gang not to mention that they’d met her recently. Maybe her mum thought she was dead. After all, the time storm that pulled her away from Earth had left things in a mess. If she’d mourned and got over it all, Ace sometimes thought that there was no point in going back and opening all her mother’s old wounds. But, and this was odd, as Ace got older she was thinking more and more of just popping in, having a cuppa. Hugging her mum and just saying… no, that was just a stupid childish daydream. That couldn’t happen, so there was no use thinking about it. Ace believes that she assumes the worst because of the life she leads. Long time ago, she told herself that if she had enough, she’d always give money to people that needed it. First impressions count for a lot… which doesn’t stop Ace from rugby tackling Benny to the ground during an impromptu fencing match with a Traveller! At the beginning of chapter eighteen, Ace realises that her so-called best friend had known about Jan’s infection all along, and kept it from her to make sure that Jan could use his pyrokinesis to ignite the Hoothi Sphere. The world has been saved, but the girl from Perivale is angry and horrified, and who can blame her?

◆ Bernice Summerfield

Paul Cornell is responsible for writing a fair amount of Doctor Who stories, but none are more influential than ‘Love and War’. I honestly find it impossible NOT to hear Lisa Bowerman reading all of Benny’s lines in this novel, because I’ve been listening to the character’s spin off series for years now. ‘Love and War’ was a phenomenal introduction to Professor Summerfield, and I cannot wait to heap tons of praise on her character in the coming months, or however long it takes for me to power through these novels.

Benny was thirty. Much humour there, she remembered; oh yes, this team of hers had fondly taken the Mick. Thing is, she didn’t feel much different. Still a girl, still drinking too much wine and sighing a lot and keeping that stupid diary. By page thirty-five, she is already smashed on ale and having an impromptu fencing match with one of the Travellers (I absolutely adore this character). Benny is absolutely fascinated by the badges on Ace’s jacket, because they’re all from one of the eras she specialises in, early space age. She thinks that travelling through time and space in a police box is very baroque. Benny was originally from an Earth colony named Beta Caprisis. Her dad was a bigwig with Space-fleet. Her mum stayed at home with her, until she was seven. Then the Daleks came. When the war broke out, her family was suddenly tactically important. Her dad was at the front, of course, but they broke through. Her mother grabbed her and her doll Rebecca, and ran for one of the shelters. Benny dropped her doll and her mum went back up the street to get it… perishing as the Daleks started bombarding the planet with plasma beams. So she was sent to military academy as an orphan. Whilst discussing her past with Ace, Benny admits that she faked her qualifications – she’s not technically a real professor. She agrees to travel with the Doctor, on the condition that he promises never to play games with her life.

◆ Story Recap

Prof. Summerfield has been working with a team of archaeologists to unearth a Heavenite arch, hoping that it will answer a few questions about the long extinct civilisation. It’s during this expedition that she would cross paths with a pair of time travellers.

The Doctor arrived on a trivial mission – to find a book, or so he says – and Ace, wandering around the local settlement, becomes romantically involved with a charismatic Traveller named Jan. But there are far more concerning matters unfolding on Heaven.

There’s a local suicide cult in communion with a fungoid hive-mind that feeds on blood and breathes poisonous gases, one which has returned to the planet in the hopes of using the abundant corpses in an attack against Gallifrey!

The Doctor has the power to stop the Hoothi from carrying out their plan to decimate his homeworld, but Ace will never forgive him for what he has to do. By doing terrible things that must be done to fight back, the Doctor would lose the best friend he could ever have asked for… but gain a new one in the process.

◆ Mario Toads Are Just Evolved Hoothi

Whilst this novel is significant for the departure of a long-serving companion, and the arrival of a brand new one, ‘Love and War’ is generally just a damn good read. I think we should kick this review off by discussing fungi, and why Paul Cornell has put me off ever having a mushroom omelette ever again.

Once known as the master strategists of the galaxy, the Hoothi were purported to have evolved on a world where severe climate change wiped out all other life, thus growing up around death on a massive scale.

The Hoothi were a hive-minded race, usually travelling in fours that formed their own group minds within a greater species consciousness. They could also access the memories and experiences of the beings they devoured and brought into the group mind, meaning it was possible for an absorbed being to regain their individuality and affect the rest of the group mind. A single Hoothi could still retain the millions of individual minds that had been absorbed, which is a frightening thought.

Much like the zombies in The Last of Us, they were fungoid creatures that lived off decayed matter, infesting bodies and using them as pawns in their games. I think the most frightening thing about the Hoothi is how they spread their infestation. You only need to come into contact with one of their spores – which resemble white fibres no larger than a strand of dog hair – to make you into a dead man walking. The Hoothi can activate the spores at any time, causing the infected host to explode with grey fibres until they resemble a bulbous, walking mass of Cordyceps.

I’m quite surprised that the Hoothi haven’t made another appearance, because they are quite easily one of the most horrifying species ever introduced into Doctor Who!

◆ Can You Feel The Jantasy?

Let’s move onto the topic of companions now. Ace makes the decision to leave the Tardis at the end of ‘Love and War’, but I take issue with the events leading up to said decision.

This is the second novel in a row where Ace has rapidly fell in love with some bloke, and then decided she wants to spend the rest of her life with him, or some such crap. The whole storyline feels a little bit cliched, and I am genuinely not convinced there were any actual feelings between Ace and Jan – this hunky pyrokinetic just sweeps into her life and she follows him blindly like a puppy dog! Who are you trying to fool, Mr Cornell?

The biggest issue with Jan is that I keep comparing him to the love interest from the previous novel, and Robin was a much better written character overall. There seemed like a genuine connection between Ace and Robin, and her decision to leave the Tardis and settle down in Crook Marsham was believable.

Whilst I definitely wasn’t feeling the Jantasy – congratulations if you get that reference, by the way – the scene where Ace finally makes the decision to part ways with the Doctor is phenomenally well written. The manipulation has gone too far, with the Doctor even attempting to justify Jan’s death by claiming he’d saved the lives of millions of people. Ace is left distraught and broken, and I quite frankly can’t blame her. It’ll be a few books before we’re reunited with the girl from Perivale, and the Doctor will quickly realise the damage he has done to his so-called best friend.

◆ Conclusion

“They grew up with death, and now they’re exporting it. Ground floor. Victims, aggressors and chinaware.”

‘Love and War’ is perhaps most famous for the departure of a long-serving companion, and the arrival of a brand new one. Having fallen in love with one of the locals, Ace finds her lover snatched away from her… just another casualty caught up in one of the Doctor’s grand schemes. The manipulation has become too much for her so, full of hatred and pure disgust for her old friend, she runs away from him. But as one companion leaves to become a militaristic thug working for Space-fleet, another decides to join Team Tardis – someone who refuses to be manipulated, someone who wont take any crap from the Doctor.

This book is the debut of Bernice Summerfield, and she happens to be my favourite part of the entire adventure. This sarcastic alcoholic who deserted the war effort, landed on some colony world in the back end of beyond, and faked her qualifications to become an archaeologist. I’ve spoken at length about this character during my reviews of her own spin-off series, but it’ll be nice to explore how her adventures began in this range.

‘Love and War’ might be vitally important to the ‘Virgin New Adventures’ range, but it also happens to be a damn good science-fiction book in its own right. Get yourself a copy. I can guarantee it’s a purchase you wont regret.