Virgin New Adventures

#013. Deceit ~ 5/10

◆ An Introduction

The Doctor has friends across the width and breadth of the cosmos, and he occasionally treats them very badly.

Having fallen in love with one of the locals on a planet called Heaven, Ace found her lover snatched away from her. He was just another innocent life caught up in her friend’s Machiavellian machinations. The manipulation became too much for her so, full of hatred and pure disgust for the Time Lord, she ran away from him.

Ace has spent three years becoming combat-hardened and cynical: she has fought against Daleks and other intergalactic threats, but nothing could prepare her for what happens next.

Old wounds are about to be re-opened, and it’s time for a long overdue reunion…

◆ Publisher’s Summary

"Take Arcadia apart if you have to."

The middle of the twenty-fifth century. The Second Dalek War is drawing to an untidy close. Earth's Office of External Operation is trying to extend its influence over the corporations that have controlled human-occupied space since man first ventured to the stars.

Agent Isabelle Defries is leading one expedition. Among her barely-controllable squad is an explosives expert who calls herself Ace. Their destination: Arcadia.

A non-technological paradise? A living laboratory for a centuries-long experiment? Fuel for a super-being? Even when Ace and Benny discover the truth, the Doctor refuses to listen to them.

Nothing is what it seems to be.

◆ The Seventh Doctor

Peter Darvill-Evans was the man pulling all the strings for the ‘New Adventures’, and he gave himself the task of establishing a new status quo for the range. The Doctor spends the majority of ‘Deceit’ wallowing in self-pity, doubting himself and his actions. Someone has already tried this approach to the character – it was Mark Gatiss, and it was only five books ago – and their execution was a lot more polished.

It’s also worth mentioning to you all what happens during pages 80 – 91. This is the scene where the Doctor is reunited with Ace, their first meeting since her departure in ‘Love and War’. This should have been incredibly tense, as they attempted to pick up the shattered remains of their friendship, but Darvill-Evans makes them recount several of their previous adventures instead. It makes the whole scene incredibly clunky.

He found a mirror in one of the rooms. He studied his reflection. He saw a short, slight figure, of indeterminate age. He thought he probably looked a little comical, with those tartan trousers, the paisley patterned scarf and tie, the battered straw hat and the dusty jacket. The eyes that stared back at him were brooding, troubled. And not surprisingly, he thought. Who was he? The question mark motif, endlessly repeated across his pullover and reiterated in the handle of his umbrella, seemed peculiarly appropriate.

◆ Bernice Summerfield

Unlike her fellow travelling companions, Benny’s character didn’t need to be drastically reimagined. She was only created four books ago, yet she’s already been given a fair amount of backstory and some utterly terrific moments.

‘Deceit’ does a fantastic job at highlighting her maternal instincts by pairing her up with Elaine Delahaye; an Arcadian native who was witness to her sister’s murder, which led to her becoming catatonic with shock. Benny is clearly the first person to show her kindness in a very long time, but that kindness is what helps her recover.

She’d never beaten the Doctor at four-dimensional chess, and she had never expected to. A Time Lord, she reasoned, would always have a better understanding than her of a game in which the pieces could move temporally as well as spatially. The trouble is, Bernice said to herself, when you don’t know what’s normal, you can’t tell when things are going wrong. When you find yourself travelling through time and space in a craft that looks like a blue crate on the outside and seems to be infinitely large on the inside, you tend to take the bizarre for the granted. In her short experience of travelling with the Doctor, she had found that being saved from certain death entailed the likelihood of suffering a fate that was even worse.

◆ “New” Ace

‘Deceit’ is most notable for its reinvention of perhaps the most beloved companion of the 1980s. Gone is the excitable and rebellious teenager, replaced by a combat-hardened and cynical young adult. I find it seriously cool that Darvill-Evans basically turned the girl from Perivale into Ellen Ripley!

I know a lot of people aren’t keen on “New” Ace, but I’m looking forward to seeing how the writers will utilise such a different take on the character. And rest assured: there may be some changes, but her trademark sarcasm and spirit are very much intact.

She deals in explosives. Ace is on secondment from IMC. Now in Special Weapons, attached to the First Infantry. Or she was until now. Ace had a rule never to enter an unknown room without first checking behind the door. She always manages to land in the least desirable areas. If the whole planet was one enormous Regent’s Park, she’d come down in the zoo car park.

◆ Story Recap

The Second Dalek War is drawing to an untidy conclusion, with humanity emerging victorious. With freed up resources, Earth has started the long process of consolidating its many colony worlds across the cosmos. Whilst they were focusing on the war effort, most colonies were managed – not by any recognised government – but rather interstellar corporations: profiteering organisations with full access to entire planets of people and resources.

Managed by the Spinward Corporation, the colony of Arcadia has raised alarm bells inside of Earth’s Office of External Operations. This falls within the remit of Agent Isabelle Defries, who is planning an expedition of the planet alongside a barely-controllable squad of auxiliary troopers. In case the expedition goes pear-shaped, a top-secret weapon is being brought along for the ride. But something is already amiss. There is a stowaway amongst the troops; an explosives expert who could be of great use during their mission. Her name is Ace.

On the surface, Arcadia is a non-technologial paradise. The weather is always nice, the streets are always clean, and there is always enough to eat. But the colonists are occasionally visited by the Counsellors; imposing, hooded figures that give news and instructions from the far-off fortress of Landfall. They warn of the imminent arrival of Defries and her troopers, claiming that their spaceship will bring a deadly plague in its wake. This information puts the fear of god into the colonists, especially when an anachronistic stranger arrives in the town only a short while later. Her name is Bernice Summerfield.

Meanwhile, aboard the Spinward monitoring station, experiments are being carried out involving a gestalt being that has learnt the basics of block transfer computation. An organic supercomputer with sadistic desires, Pool has detected a new mind on Arcadia that would be a great addition to its collective consciousness. Its name is the Doctor.

◆ Sadistic Sensory Organ

Lacuna is introduced towards the beginning of the book as a fiercely intelligent Spinward Corporation researcher. She then receives a promotion, and finds herself acting as the sensory organ for a gestalt intelligence named Pool; continually torturing a promising biochemist, so that the gestalt can experience concepts they believe to be “beautiful”.

There is an incredibly disturbing scene where it’s implied that Lacuna could actually be torturing Britta for her own sadistic enjoyment. She argues that the mind always leads the senses; meaning that Pool is in complete control, and she has no free will, only his will.

It’d be fair to say that she’s more than a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but the subject of her torture isn’t fairing any better. Britta’s psyche has clearly been irreparably shattered, as she’s grown addicted to being tortured. How very Torchwood!

◆ Omnicidal Gestalt

Pool is the collective brains of the Spinward Corporation. At first, centuries ago, they were a research team. The Corporation’s most senior scientists. They conducted an experiment, using semi-organic material to link their minds: six very intelligent and powerful minds became one. And the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

◆ Conclusion

“Mankind’s greatest step forward since the evolution of the human brain.”

An omnicidal gestalt has gained access to the methods of block transfer computation. Now it plans on constructing its own universe of pure thought by decimating the Arcadian system.

Quality control has been somewhat lacking in the ‘New Adventures’ so far, with more than a few abysmal stories slipping through the net. There have also been some smaller issues in otherwise excellent books, such as inconsistencies with the way the Doctor and his companions are written. That’s why this book exists: to set a standard for how the three regulars should be written in future, and to set a benchmark for quality. Unfortunately, it turns out that ‘Deceit’ is one of the most forgettable books I’ve ever read.

The main antagonist is basically what would happen if you removed all the sadistic charisma from Command and Conquer’s CABAL; everyone outside of the Doctor and his friends are blandly written, and about as nuanced as a Greggs sausage roll; and to top it all off, the chapters are nearly fifty pages long!

It’s taken me a whole day just to write this conclusion, and I would really like to move onto one of the books I got for Christmas instead, so let’s just agree that ‘Deceit’ is totally forgettable.