Virgin Missing Adventures

#024. The Scales of Injustice ~ 10/10

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◆ An Introduction

Gary Russell is one of the most recognisable names in the history of this franchise. My journey into the expanded universe of Doctor Who happened because of his countless contributions, so I guess I should send him the bill for the countless amount of CDs and novels that make my room look like an outlet of WH Smith!

‘Legacy’ was the first novel he contributed to the franchise, and it was widely criticised for being a continuous stream of vomited up continuity. His second novel went down like a lead balloon with the fandom, with most people describing it as a horrendously awful and exceedingly generic invasion plot (the artwork also made the titular cat-people look disturbingly like shaved furrys). It seemed like his third novel was destined to be another flop… but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

‘The Scales of Injustice’ is widely regarded as being one of the greatest pieces of Doctor Who literature ever written, and many people consider it to be the true finale to Season Seven. Liz Shaw is one of my favourite companions of all time, something I have made apparent in several prior reviews, so it’s time to find out if Gary Russell give her the departure story she deserved.

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◆ Publisher’s Summary

"And what exactly, Doctor Shaw, do you think C19 does with the dead bodies of plastic dummies, reptile men, primordial throwbacks and all their human victims?"

A little boy goes missing; a policewoman begins drawing cave paintings; and the employees at the mysterious Glasshouse are desperate to keep everyone away — the Doctor suspects it's all down to a group of homo reptilia. His assistant, Liz Shaw, has ideas of her own and has teamed up with a journalist to search for people who don't exist.

While the Brigadier has to cope with UNIT funding, the breakdown of his marriage and Geneva's threats to replace him, the Doctor must find the reptiles alone.

And behind it all lies a conspiracy to exploit UNIT's achievements — a conspiracy reaching deep into the heart of the British government.

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◆ The Third Doctor

Gary Russell manages to effortlessly capture the essence of Pertwee in prose. You can quite easily imagine him speaking every line with that gorgeously sibilant voice he had. The characterisation of the Third Doctor in ‘The Scales of Injustice’ is perfectly executed, despite the fact he is barely present in the novel.

The Doctor was without doubt the most inspiring and intellectual person (Liz couldn’t say “man” because that implied human origins, and she knew that to be wrong) she was ever likely to meet. He was also the most insufferable. And he needed Liz as an assistant about as much as he needed a bullet through the head. The Doctor could be very patronising when he was irritable. And he was frequently irritable.

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◆ Liz Shaw

A character who I’ve massively praised in many a prior review, and she currently stands as my third favourite companion of all time (just behind Bill Potts and the first Romana). Liz was a budding young scientist who wouldn’t suffer fools lightly, and was one of very few who could claim they were intellectual equals with the Doctor. It’s always saddened me that she got written out of the series so abruptly, not even allowing the viewers the chance to say their goodbyes. Caroline John sadly passed away over a decade ago, but I think she would be proud that her fantastic character finally got the departure story she deserved. Thank you for treating the character with such respect, Gary Russell.

Liz had been stuck in the large but rather drab UNIT laboratory for eight months now – starring at the same grey-brick walls, the same six benches with the same scattered tubes, burners and Petri dishes for far too long. Liz told herself often that before her “employer”, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, had whisked her down here she had been enjoying her life at Cambridge, researching new ways of breaking down non-biodegradable waste by environmental methods. It had been a challenge, one that looked set to keep her occupied for some years. Scientific advancement rarely moved fast. Instead, she had fought a variety of all-out wars against Nestenes, strange ape-men, stranger reptile men, paranoid aliens and other assorted home-grown and extra-terrestrial menaces. Her initial and understandable cynicism about the raison d'etre for UNIT had quickly given way to an almost enthusiastic appreciation for the unusual, unexplained and frequently unnatural phenomena that her new job had shown her. Her most recent assignment had pitted her against an alien foe not only far away – the tropics – but, via the Doctor’s bizarre “space-time visualiser”, back and forth in time as well. UNIT had provided her with novel experiences if nothing else. Army men, Liz had decided long ago, were just overgrown schoolboys who had exchanged their catapults and stink bombs for mortars and guided missiles. She had doctorates in chemistry and medicine, and an honorary doctorate in metaphysics and humanities. Plus assorted qualifications in economics, history and Latin. Everyone had lives that she could not know, and her own existence would only touch an infinitesimal proportion of the world’s population. Although that knowledge had scared her a little, it had also fascinated her. Since then she had devoted herself to other people. It was that which had driven her towards science at school, college and eventually university. Receiving her doctorate from Cambridge was, she had thought, the pinnacle of her career.

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◆ Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

‘The Scales of Injustice’ gives us an insight into the personal life of the Brigadier, something which has rarely-if-ever been explored before. Gary Russell’s characterisation of UNIT’s steadfast commanding officer is absolutely marvellous.

Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier, could face Cybermen, Yetis and Autons. He could send soldiers to their deaths and he could shoot someone without a second’s thought. He could chastise, manipulate, staff and lead a top-secret paramilitary organisation attached to a Government ministry. What Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, the father, suddenly and sinkingly realised he couldn’t do was to provide a stable home for his five-year-old daughter. He couldn’t answer her questions. He couldn’t tell her what he did for a living. He couldn’t be around when she needed him. And as that thought sank in, he understood too that his wife must have realised the same thing, many times over. He would try harder to be a better father and husband. He would. There’s a moment in Episode Four that genuinely had my heart breaking, when his marriage collapsed once-and-for-all. Eight long years of lies to his wife, Fiona, had taken its toll. She decided to take their daughter and move back home to Chichester… telling Alistair to stay out of their lives forever. Poor Brigadier.

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◆ Mike Yates

This book features another excellent showing for Mike Yates, who actually gets a shiny new promotion here too!

Mike insists that UNIT sounds quite glamorous while you’re in the regular army, pounding some parade square. Or going on endless manoeuvres in Germany. His reason for joining the taskforce is a long story involving family pressure, peer group pressure, university pressure and personal inability to say no to anyone who thought they could run his life better than he could. He thinks UNIT is great because it has an element of risk. Of the unknown. He’s done things with the taskforce he could never have dreamed of. He has travelled through time rips, arranged for top secret objects to be locked away. He has seen more weirdness with UNIT in two months than he could’ve hoped for in ten years in the regular army. Mike wont leave unless it’s on a blanket-covered stretcher (not quite accurate, try a mental breakdown imposed by a supercomputer).

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◆ Story Recap

Smallmarshes is usually a quiet little town situated on the Kentish coast, but strange things have started occurring. A local policewoman has suffered a mental breakdown and started drawing primitive cave-paintings of bison, woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and tall, man-sized bipedal reptiles with three eyes.

When the report eventually arrives at UNIT headquarters, the Doctor suspects that another sect of Silurians have woken up, and he is determined to make peace with them this time.

Meanwhile, Liz uncovers a conspiracy linked directly to a mysterious branch of the British Government. Department C19 was compromised long ago, the Pale Man saw to that. Now this mysterious villain plans on using alien detritus, hidden in a facility deep beneath the Cheviot Hills, to create a race of super soldiers capable of taking over the whole planet!

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◆ The “Pale Man”

‘The Scales of Injustice’ has often been described to me as the greatest Dr Who novel ever written, and I completely understand why people feel that way. Russell has been contributing to this franchise for nearly three decades at the time of writing this, and this book is honestly his crowning achievement.

This adventure focuses a lot on corruption inside of Department C19, inside of the government department that is directly responsible for UNIT UK. I think it’s time we discuss the man responsible for the corruption, and the net of conspiracies that begin to unravel throughout the book, so let’s talk about the Pale Man!

Originally, he was employed by International Electromatics, where he lost his arm in a workplace accident. He was promised a prosthetic replacement by Tobias Vaughan, but the actual procedure, a partial cyber-conversion, replaced all his limbs and internal organs, as well as heightening his strength and senses dramatically (with the exception of taste, which was removed).

The Pale Man joined Department C19 sometime later, quickly rising through the ranks to become their liaison between official operations (such as liaising with UNIT and running the Glasshouse) and the darker operations being carried out at his headquarters. Unknown to his subordinates, however, he actually received orders directly from Vaughan, presumed by most to be long since dead!

The Pale Man operated out of a facility deep beneath the Cheviot Hills, an underground collection of alien artefacts and other subjects of interest, controlled by C19 since the beginning of the nineteen-seventies. The Vault stored a number of alien life forms, including a de-activated Imperial Dalek from the Shoreditch Incident, and a new strain of Venus fly-trap found in Rhodesia large enough to catch a rabbit or a small dog. Other organic matters stored were Nestene “blood”, a sample of the Silurian virus, Krynoid pods, and fruit from Western Australia containing mercurial dioxide due to fallen particles of dust from outer space. It was in this facility that the Pale Man and his staff began carrying out immoral experiments – they injected a Dobermann with Stahlman’s ooze, effectively creating the universe’s most vicious and deadly attack dog… otherwise known as “the Stalker”.

They also augmented a pair of C19 operatives with alien technology, a man named Cellian and a woman named Ciara, known simply as “the Irish Twins”. I’m going to leave talking about the Twins until I review the sequel to this adventure, where they play a much larger role.

I don’t think anybody would disagree with me when I say that the Pale Man was armed to the teeth with alien hardware and weaponry, but he wanted to go a step further. He intended to use Silurian DNA to create a race of super soldiers capable of talking over the Earth. It’s a pretty good plan, and he certainly had the resources to make it happen. The Pale Man is honestly one of the greatest aspects of this novel; cold and ruthless, never hesitating to kill in order to accomplish his goals. I’m glad to say that his story is far from over, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I haven’t even ordered myself a copy of ‘Business Unusual’ from eBay yet!

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◆ Goodbye, Dr Elizabeth Shaw

I’d like to move onto the reason I bought ‘The Scales of Injustice’ to begin with. Elizabeth Shaw will forever be one of my favourite companions in the history of the franchise. I could honestly spend hours talking about how brilliant she is, but I don’t really want to bore you all witless, dear readers. It’s absolutely criminal that she was denied a proper last adventure, one final hurrah before handing in her notice and departing for Cambridge.

This adventure sees Liz Shaw taking on the role of an amateur sleuth attempting to uncover the corruption deep within the ranks of Department C19. Assisting her is a Dutch journalist… who later turns out to be one of the Pale Man’s hired assassins, who proceeds to shoot Liz in the back! After recovering from her injury, she manages to make peace with her counterparts in the Silurian Shelter – two siblings named Sula and Baal. Liz Shaw played a huge part in saving the day this time round. A fitting final outing for such an amazing companion.

The final four pages of the novel showcase Liz saying goodbye to the Doctor, the two of them having a picnic in Regent’s Park before walking round and having one last conversation. Liz comes to the realisation that, over the eight months they’d worked together, they had never really been more than colleagues. She feels regretful, wishing that they could have been friends. The sort of people who had dinner. Played Scrabble. Went to the pictures. I’ve actually had to take off my glasses whilst writing this section of the review, because I’m genuinely sobbing. The final scene shared between these two colleagues was one of the most well written companion departures I have ever witnessed. Liz Shaw will forever be one of the greatest companions in the history of this show, and Gary Russell has really done her justice.

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◆ Conclusion

“God bless you, Doctor. I’m really going to miss you.”

Hibernation season has ended for another shelter of homo reptilia, and they’ve started kidnapping local teenagers in the hopes of advancing their own genetic research. That’s because these are Silurian-Sea Devil hybrids – born infertile, and with dramatically shortened life-spans. They’re searching for a means of survival… whatever the cost! Meanwhile, Liz Shaw finds herself taking on the role of an amateur sleuth attempting to uncover the corruption deep within the ranks of Department C19. These events are linked by a mysterious figure known only as “the Pale Man”.

‘The Scales of Injustice’ was was a real roller-coaster ride, and it managed to combine all the best elements of a Season Seven adventure. The horrors located inside of the Vault, combined with the Pale Man and his conspiracies, provided us with a gripping political thriller. The Silurians definitely brought the action in this adventure, with UNIT facing off against a full on Dunkik-esque beach landing in the latter half of the novel (which they very nearly lost when the Myrka stormed the battlefield)!

Gary Russell had two hundred and sixty-two pages to work with, and he crammed them full of exciting content that made powering through this novel truly effortless. This adventure also serves as the final outing for our Cambridge bright spark… and her final scene made me sob uncontrollably like a baby! This is one release where you should definitely believe the hype surrounding it. ‘The Scales of Injustice’ is one of the greatest Doctor Who books you will ever read.