17 - Birthright

In Nigel Robinson’s second entry in the New Adventures, Birthright separates the Doctor from his companions, with Benny stranded in Edwardian London and Ace on a hostile alien planet.  While it’s far from perfect, it’s still a compelling read that gives us a look into the escapades of the Doctor’s friends when he’s missing in action!

In 1909, a string of murders throws London into a state of panic, with the more superstitious among them fearing that the mythical Spring-heeled Jack is on the prowl.  One of London’s newer residents, a certain Dr. Bernice Summerfield, has been marooned there for two months, after being unceremoniously thrown out of the no-longer-bigger-on-the-inside police box she once called home.  Enlisting the help of a quirky little Russian detective named Popov, Benny begins investigating the murders, which lead to a mysterious man named Jared Khan.  These parts of the book are by far the most immersive; they’re a slow burn, and before the action starts we get a lovely glimpse into Benny’s life in the 20th century.

Meanwhile, another fragment of the TARDIS has deposited Ace on the barren planet of Antýkhon, on which a group of insectoid aliens called the Charrl have nearly driven the native humans to extinction.  With the help of a mysterious hermit named Muldwych, the Charrl Queen had used a time rift called the Great Divide to enlist Jared Khan’s help in tracking down the Doctor, and now hopes to invade 20th century Earth as a new home.  This section of the book drifts into generic territory, and I found the twist that Antýkhon is a future Earth to be predictable, but luckily it’s shorter than Benny’s half.  After Ace falls through the rift, she reunites with Benny, and Muldwych helps the two of them redirect the Charrl into the TARDIS’s infinite depths.

For a Doctorless novel, there’s a surprising amount of Doctor to be found.  Not only does Benny keep finding her circumstances ensured by several “John Smiths” working in the background, but Muldwych is revealed to be a future incarnation of the Doctor himself, desperately working to recover his TARDIS and escape the post-apocalyptic Earth.  It does feel at times as if Robinson started using the Doctor’s meddling as a crutch to get Benny out of situations; in one particularly far-fetched scene, she is arrested for murder, but the Prime Minister himself shows up to let her out on request from his friend John.  I would have preferred to see Benny being more self-sufficient; she makes a good protagonist and it undermines the conceit of this story to have the Doctor keep intervening.

Still, Birthright is a fun adventure that makes good use of its medium, and Its flawed pacing doesn’t do much to detract from that.  Time to see what the Doctor was up to the whole time...

Virgin New Adventures #17:
--- "Birthright" by Nigel Robinson

Timewyrm: Apocalypse is a book I think is a little underrated. I'm not saying it's good, it's thoroughly average, but people calling it the worst of the Timewyrm quadrilogy is a take I just can't agree with. It's entirely inoffensive and hell, Nigel Robinson had some good ideas. But, he managed to get a second chance and everybody pretty much unanimously agrees that this is the better of his two novels. A dark, Edwardian, slightly gothic tale of war and survival underpinned by some pretty boring pacing and a surprising amount of padding for such a short book.

The Doctor is gone. Ace and Benny have been split up, the former in the far future, on a dead world, protecting an indigenous population against the monstrous Charrl, an insectoid warmongering species and the latter being stranded in Edwardian London, forced to play in the Doctor's cosmic chess game. As these two worlds collide, the Earth prepares for war.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

This story is what is known as "Doctor-Lite", featuring mainly the companions with the Doctor either only in parts or completely absent. For one half of the book, it follows Benny trudging through Edwardian London, investigating a series of gruesome killings whilst the second half has Ace leading a revolution on a dead planet. Immediately from that description you can tell that one half is going to be better than the other. The devastated world of Antýkhon isn't an inspiring setting and the side cast is notably hostile and uninteresting but the grim dark, gothic characterisation of early 1900s Britain is so very vivid and alive, and the same goes for the story in each.

The most notable pro of this book is easily its characterisation of our two leads - Ace and Benny. Benny was a character who, with no visual aid given to me, I had a hard time visualising as I read her books but for some reason, in Birthright, it just clicked. Same goes for Ace; New Ace is an idea I'm on the fence about, I like it in concept but most writers just interpret it as "be edgy and get Ace naked at some point in the book" but Robinson got her down as a tough but fair woman who could handle herself in the new, mature landscape of the VNAs, which I adore. The voice of these characters is so clear and well-written that I can't help but love them in this book.

However, this book has some major flaws. Side cast is something it really struggles with, I mentioned that not a single character in Ace's half of the book is interesting but the same kind of goes for Benny's story. There is one exception, a rather sweet Russian Detective called Mikhail but his character just got simpler and simpler to the point of him just being "the nice one". One aspect of the VNAs I really like is Seven, I find the dark trickster and cosmic chess player to be such an interesting interpretation of the Doctor's character but here he just feels over mythologised. The idea of the Doctor going around, setting up traps for enemies years after already beating them with said trap, helping companions out of situation by jumping in in the future and saving them is great on paper, but Robinson uses it for every other conundrum in this book and it quickly just becomes a way to write himself out of problems. There's a section where Benny is sent to prison for all of one chapter before the Doctor, low and behold, had written her a way out of prison.

A major complaint of Timewyrm: Apocalypse was that it was "too formulaic", being a pretty generic false utopia plot and Birthright doesn't exactly stray away from the simple either. It's revealed late in the book that the ruined world of Antýkhon is, say it with me now, actually Earth from the far future. Planet of the Apes did it and everyone just decided to copy it, that twist isn't original and it adds nothing to the grand scheme of things.

There's a lot more to say about Birthright, like the hermit Muldwych, who is actually an alternate version of the Doctor who was also Merlin (the Virgin New Adventures everybody!) or how there are very Timewyrm: Revelations sequence in the TARDIS towards the end of the book, but this review is long enough. Birthright gets the characterisation of its lead down perfectly but then encapsulates that in a pretty middling story.

7/10

Pros:
+ Pitch perfect characterisation of Ace and Benny
+ Edwardian London is a great and realised setting
+ Mikhail is a very likable, if simple, side character
+ Having the Doctor own a flat in 1900s London is a concept I really like. The Doctor owning property across Earth in case he needs to seek refuge just seems like a no brainer idea to me
+ The chapters in the TARDIS' telepathic circuits are wonderfully surreal

Cons:
- First half is much better than the second half
- The side cast are mostly forgettable or straight out of a pantomime
- Jared Khan is a pretty lame villain with a pretty cool idea behind him - that of a man who has lived for centuries wanting to possess the TARDIS
- The twist that Antýkhon is just future Earth is boring, contrived and logicless
- The Doctor is way too over-mythologised to the point of becoming a writing loophole
- A few too many ideas for its own good