Eighth Doctor Adventures #9 - “Longest Day” by Michael Collier

My main gripe with the EDAs so far has been the character of Samantha Jones. She’s characterised as a fiery teen from London with a passion for athletics, a strong will and a spunky attitude - in other words, a sporty Ace. She is, in every sense of the word, dull. She is an amalgamation of other companions shoved into a blender and poured into a human-shaped mould. I find her extremely boring and, as of now, one of my least favourite companions. However, Longest Day, written by series editor Stephen Cole under a pseudonym, marks the point where the EDAs start to have a little more cohesion. Sure, Alien Bodies introduced the characters and themes that would tie the entire range together, but it’s Longest Day where things actually become a little more serialised and a little more connected, kicking off our first “arc”, as it were, where Sam and the Doctor become separated and the novels finally decide Sam should be an actual character.

Hirath is a planet that is ripping itself apart, ravaged by unusual temporal anomalies and used by half a dozen corrupt regimes as a prison planet. When the Doctor and Sam find themselves split up on the planet’s surface, they each ally with fellow prisoners, as an extraterrestrial menace encroaches on the planetoid.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I think the first thing I need to talk about and get out of the way is Sam. Alien Bodies made her feel a little more interesting, Option Lock gave her some nice interactions with the Doctor and some good dialogue that actually gave her some personality, but it’s Longest Day where she actually begins to grow a little as a character. Cole actually manages to do something really interesting, where the story begins with her as usual - kind of fun but overly superficial - but then we get to see her change into an actually interesting character as the book progresses. I may have just described every character arc in existence but with Sam already established as a dull space filler, it was like magic to read. And how does Cole manage this amazing feat? Trauma. A whole lot of trauma. Seriously, Sam goes through some shit in this book and by the end is tired, embittered and much more interesting. Watching her desperately struggle to cope without the Doctor, attempting to pull together an alien group that ostracises her as people continue to die around her, really makes you invested in her endeavour and certainly sets up some great action in the next few books. As for the story, it can be comfortably split into two parts: Sam and a prison gang getting terrorised by mercenaries and the Doctor and a stranded alien travelling across the time ravaged surface. The former of these two plotlines is by far the superior one and was genuinely a devastating read. Basically, Sam gets in with a prison colony where a revolutionary called Felbaac is hiding out. Eventually, the corporate goons looking for him arrive and hold the encampment hostage, deciding to torture the group by making Sam choose between killing two of the prisoners she’d befriended or letting the entire group get shot down. Eventually, she resolves to hitting herself over the head with a gun butt until she collapses and is unable to choose, at which point an incredibly well constructed shoot out occurs and the corporate goons are killed. And this is only a couple chapters of an incredibly tense and interestingly written plot. It always amazes me that my first introduction to Cole were his children's books and then he writes stuff like a woman trying to kill herself by repeatedly pistol whipping her own head. It is a dark and dire story where no character is on Sam’s side and the isolation and stress she feels, as she is put in increasingly worse places, really helps build out not only her but the real meat of this book.

As for the Doctor’s plot, he’s simply wandering through some great worldbuilding with an alien woman called Anstaar. It’s not as tense or interesting as Sam’s stuff and it contains a number of my complaints with the story but it is a chance to see more of the world of Hirath, which is great. Ravaged by storms of time, we wander past the same man frozen in thousands of seconds, clones of him like living animation frames stretching miles, or plants that live and die and live again within a moment. When I read the blurb for Longest Day, I was immediately struck by how great the idea behind it was and how interesting Hirath sounded; thankfully, I was not disappointed and Cole wrote some really great visuals into his novel, even if it doesn’t exactly contribute to a cohesive story. Another cool detail is that the Time Trees from Genocide show up, which, along with some details from Option Lock - such as Sam’s hair - following through into this novel, adds some really great continuity to the EDAs. Eventually, these two plots converge in a genuinely pretty great climax. Cole uses a technique not too dissimilar to what Richards did in the previous book, flicking between short, punchy paragraphs to create fast action and it genuinely makes the last 20 pages very quick and fun. Not to mention, Sam’s breakdown at the apparent death of the Doctor was really well done and finally cemented her as an actual character for me, after the first five or so books worked to deprive her of any significant personality.

That said, Longest Day is no masterpiece and I think whilst the book tries a lot of things, not very many of them land. My biggest complaint is that the scale of this book is off, and if that doesn’t make much sense then don’t worry because I’m not sure how else to explain it. The whole thing feels slight; it has massive events happening on a galactic scale but the story is taken from the wrong angle, as it were. What feels like should be a tale taking place over days, weeks or months takes place in the space of an afternoon, plot points come and go by the chapter, we are only seen effects of this supposed alien empire rather than ever get a glimpse into it. This is what I mean when I say the scale is wrong, the board only has a few squares, the game only takes minutes, this has a scope that is completely absent and it makes the whole thing less impactful and less cohesive, falling in a strangely lukewarm temporal middle ground. I’m not sure if I’m explaining this well but it makes sense to me and what I’m trying to say is the book doesn’t land as well as it should’ve.

Another thing that contributed to this feeling of fleeting possibility is how the characters are just found and dumped so unceremoniously. The story begins with the Doctor forcibly allied with childish drunk Vasid, who may have just gotten Sam killed (the Doctor, oddly, has little reaction to this and continues working with Vasid, skipping what could’ve been a great bit of conflict). Skip a few chapters later, and Vasid is dead. Later in the book, we meet the rebel colony, and are only introduced to a few of them before the mercenaries come. Now, these mercenaries are great antagonists, cruel and callous killers with some serious alt-right affiliations. Not only this, but they create the most dread inducing and tense few chapters of this whole book. However, they last about fifty pages before they’re all gunned down and completely forgotten about. The Doctor and Anstaar meet a man with metal legs - something he really wants you to know about - but then he only serves a little plot convenience and is killed. Sam spends the whole book with a character called Tanhith, who, after seeming to be the only reasonable member of Felbaac’s inner circle, is revealed, in the final act to be as bloodthirsty as every other character despite having built up Sam’s trust; interesting to see how Sam reacts and- oh, he’s dead. Killed offscreen. It really mishandles its cast and makes the best characters get awkwardly shrugged off when the story needs them. And what’s worse is sometimes they’re replaced with worse characters. Those mercenaries I mentioned aren’t the actual antagonists; no, that title goes to the Kusks, a bloodthirsty alien race who want to take back the technology causing Hirath’s strange temporal fluctuations. I didn’t find them interesting or well enough distinguished to be actively threatened by, especially since we just saw characters who were 10x more despicable and scary. It’s simply disappointing after seeing what could’ve been. I think that actually might be this story’s biggest weakness: it’s disappointing. The pace, the focus, the pay off, a lot of it doesn’t work and I think the actual storyline is pretty underwhelming. Not bad, I don’t think, just unfortunately generic compared to the ideas it posited.

Overall, Longest Day was not nearly as bad as I’ve heard. It had some really, really good ideas and did absolute wonders for Sam, who I find I’m actually beginning to like. Not everything paid off, that’s for sure, and the plot could’ve used some work but there were a few moments that felt like genuine, classic sci-fi with some incredible tension and great ideas. I liked Longest Day and I’m excited to see what the Finding Sam arc has in store, even if it wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever read.

6/10

Pros:

+ Sam finally gets some good characterisation in the form of repeated trauma

+ The prison rebellion subplot was easily the best part of the book

+ The world of Hirath was distinctly alien and well characterised

+ The numerous weird and trippy time effects made for some cool visuals

+ The tie-ins to previous books add some much needed cohesion

+ Great ending with some really nice pacing

Cons:

- The scale of the story feels off balance

- The side characters came and went as they pleased

- In the beginning, the Doctor seems strangely apathetic towards Sam’s possible death

- The Kusks felt like underdeveloped evil aliens

- The plot feels underdeveloped