23 - No Future

As the Doctor’s escapades through parallel timelines hurtle toward their conclusion, Paul Cornell brings us back to UNIT in the 1970s for one final showdown.  It’s easily his worst showing so far, mainly because it feels fragmented and wraps up the conflict between the Doctor and Ace far too quickly, but it’s still an enjoyable read with several returning friends and foes.

I’ll start with the bits I enjoyed.  The UNIT family is always a welcome presence, and here they bookend the arc: while Blood Heat saw the Doctor run in with a battle-scarred alternate UNIT, the “real” Brig, Benton and Yates reunite with him at last in 1976.  Mortimus the Time Meddler is exactly who I hoped would be behind these interventions into the Doctor’s timeline, and his bumbling yet charming persona carries over perfectly into prose.  Here he allies himself with the Vardans (The Invasion of Time), who seem to have been included, to my delight, just so that Paul Cornell can make jabs at them.  By capturing a chronovore named Artemis, the Monk has been interfering with the Doctor’s timeline in attempts at revenge, and has used her power to free the Vardans and help them invade Earth.  It’s a lovely collage of classic villains that fit together nicely, and the Monk’s efforts to tempt Ace with promises of a better world are reminiscent of the later audio adventure The Resurrection of Mars, juxtaposing his and the Doctor’s moral systems.

However, it’s in this subplot that the cracks begin to show in Ace’s emotional journey.  The centerpiece of the Monk’s forbidden fruit is a resurrected Jan (Love and War), by whose death Ace is apparently still heartbroken.  This would be a powerful moment if it didn’t seem to backtrack on Ace’s character development, given that she had “consigned him to the lucky escape category of old lovers” by the time she reunited with the Doctor in Deceit.  Other readers may disagree, but I didn’t find her sudden preoccupation with Jan to be quite convincing (although I understand completely why Cornell wanted to connect this novel to his last).  The resolution to the novel involves Ace tricking the Doctor with a very Doctorish scheme, after which they are finally able to put aside their differences.  This was another plot point that I found somewhat jarring, since Ace’s problems with the Doctor at this point have more to do with the collateral damage of his schemes than the way he personally manipulates her.  I also believe I might be too young to fully appreciate this novel - it’s steeped in the culture of 1970s British punk rock, and the generation who grew up immersed in that world will probably love its setting.

While it is flawed (as Cornell himself has said), No Future brings the alternate universe cycle to an exhilarating end which has a lot to love - just don’t expect it to carry forward the momentum of the last two stories.  Onward to a less angry Ace and a meddling-free future!