Byzantium! (complete with explanation mark) is a 1st Doctor novel featuring Ian, Barbara and Vicki and written by Keith Topping.

I’m a huge fan of the TV story The Romans. Byzantium! is set at the very beginning of that story between the initial scenes of the TARDIS tumbling into the ravine and the regulars have shacked up at a Roman villa.

This novel reveals that between those scenes, the TARDIS crew actually took a trip to Byzantium, a Greek city known for its multi-cultural population and, at this time, ruled by the Roman Empire.

Very early in the novel, the regulars are caught up in a horrific massacre and separated, each finding themselves alone in a strange world and relying on various people to help them adapt to what they believe to be their new lives. The Doctor falls in with a group of Christians, Barbara with the Pharisees, Vicki with a Greek family and Ian with the Roman governor responsible for the city on behalf of the Roman Emperor.

I did not enjoy this novel at all.

With the link to The Romans and the suggested historical aspect of early Christianity, I was intrigued by the book. As a Christian, reading a book where the Doctor encounters historical Christianity was something I was keen to read and to see how the Doctor’s attitude towards it was portrayed.

Fortunately, and probably unsurprisingly, the Doctor is portrayed as sceptical but sympathetic. He holds no stall in the actual beliefs, but shows great respect towards the believers. The First Doctor’s acerbic persona does allow for Topping to have the Doctor be rather disparaging of a trio of translators who are working on the Gospel of Mark, but this is very much pitched as one academic berating others for mistakes in their work, rather than any suggestion of an attack of the words being translated.

This was possible, for me, the most interesting and at times entertaining aspect of the novel. However, there was far much more that was wrong with this novel.

The first problem, for me, is that there are so many characters introduced so quickly that before long I was reading chapters having absolutely no idea who was who, what their relationships to each other were and what their role in the plot was. There are governors, centurions, wives, ex-wives, slaves, servants, Christians, Pharisees, Zealots, soldiers, Greeks and who knows what else. I found it almost impossible to follow what was happening, particularly the subplot that Ian is involved in – something about a planned coup on the part of a Roman general against the Roman governor – I think!

But worse than this, for me, was the characterisation of the TARDIS crew. Apart from the Doctor, the three companions are written in such a way as to be practically unrecognisable. Barbara’s character just about survives the novel intact but both Ian and Vicki are written in very odd, and at times frustrating, way – with Ian, in particular, reflecting almost nothing of William Russell’s performance or of the character as presented on screen.

There’s a chapter soon after Ian has ended up at the governor’s villa where he is hit on by different women. This, in itself, isn’t a problem but the way he reacts is completely out of character. He says things like ‘no way, darling’ which sound absolutely nothing like Ian. And then, throughout the book, he spouts various colloquialisms which make it sound as if Topping labours under the misapprehension that Russell portrayed Ian as a cockney wide-boy. Other examples of Ian’s odd dialogue include ‘peachy-fine’ and ‘pure dead easy’.

Vicki fairs slightly better but a lot of the time is written as a horrendously spoilt brat. The way she speaks to the family who have taken her into their house is nothing short of disrespectful and rude. There is nothing of Maureen O’Brien’s performance in the writing.

It’s not unusual for writers of Doctor Who books to sometimes struggle to characterise the regulars accurately. Generally, though, it just means that the Doctor and companions can come across a little generic with the odd character trait from the TV series thrown in here and there to remind us of who they are supposed to be. But in Byzantium! Topping seems to have decided to completely rewrite Ian and Vicki as entirely different characters. It’s very odd and very frustrating.

Byzantium! is structured very much like The Romans. The four regulars are separated early in the story and do not re-encounter each other till the very end. Each has their own story strand much as in The Romans (although there, the Doctor and Vicki remain together) but the main difference is that, in The Romans it is played for laughs (such as the Doctor missing Barbara by seconds in Nero’s palace), whereas here the emphasis is put on four people who assume the other three are dead and that they are stranded in this time (even the Doctor feels this as the TARDIS mysteriously disappears). It makes for a very dour companion piece to The Romans. It’s also a problem because it makes direct comparison with that story inevitable. Seeing as this story is set directly before those events it does seem a little odd to copy that story’s structure but make it less fun.

I came away from this book extremely disappointed, extremely frustrated and extremely confused by the choices Topping has made as an author. A real shame.