Virgin New Adventures #23 - "No Future" by Paul Cornell

Paul Cornell has been, for a very long time, one of my favourite Doctor Who writers ever; and since Rob Shearman never wrote an original Who novel, I can safely call Cornell my favourite author from the Wilderness Years. From the groundbreaking Love and War to the gorgeously rich Goth Opera, Cornell has had a pretty much flawless streak throughout his tenure, so didn’t it come as a surprise that one of his books seemed relatively maligned. No Future is usually brought up as Cornell’s lesser effort - an opinion seemingly even shared by the man himself - so I found myself entering it tenaciously. Especially after the absolute joy that was Conundrum, did I find No Future to be the let down I was told it was?

Somebody has been playing with time. With his TARDIS crew divided and his old home of London falling into anarchy, the Doctor finally enters an end game with an unseen foe. But with even his closest friends turning on him, can the Doctor win this match?

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Let me just begin by saying this is by no means a bad book. Cornell is one of the writers who I think can never do true wrong. All of his books carry an excellent style and characterisation to them and even though this is probably the worst solo effort I’ve seen out of him, it doesn’t lose the charm that makes him so good.

Anyway, let’s recap: this is the end of the alternate time cycle - the arc of books that began way back with Blood Heat - and Cornell has the tall task of wrapping up all the plot threads and reuniting our characters, who have drifted apart in recent novels. Not easy, certainly, but if anybody should be up to the task, it’s this guy. Right? 

Well, first of all, I think No Future is perfectly serviceable in all these departments, the arc is decently concluded by the time it wraps up and we can move on to bigger and better things. However, there are a lot of ups and downs in the way he carries it out. For instance, I think his biggest challenge was probably character since things had become so strained between members of our cast. In my opinion, he succeeds the most with Ace, who is at the forefront of this novel.

Ace, in this iteration, is a soldier, a violent and volatile woman hanging by a thread, ready to turn on her travelling companions at any point. And here, she does. I. Love. This. This is something I have wanted for so long: a companion who actually betrays the TARDIS team in a believable and sympathetic way. Ace has been through some s**t in this series so when she seems to switch sides half way through, we believe it. Do you know how difficult it is to have a character actively try to murder the other leads and still feel sympathetic? It’s like the perfect culmination to where she’s been going since Deceit and I was enraptured with every detail about her heel turn. And then it turns out she was just manipulating the antagonist. Frankly, this is understandable - she still had to be a companion, that wouldn’t really work if she tried to murder the Doctor and Benny in this book. But to that I say: “cowards!”. Do something new, do something fresh, this was predictable! Granted, it’s not bad, it still feels natural and ties off her character growth nicely but personally, I would’ve found it way more interesting if she fully did betray the Doctor here. Although, betrayal or not, this is still a great book for Ace.

As for the rest of our cast, the Doctor is also pretty damn stand out. This seems to be the end of his overly moody phase, which is a relief, but you can really tell how much Cornell gets Seven. The chessmaster is robbed of his board, his pieces retroactively taken away from him, and he has to save the day on his own two feet again. Really, this only works because of his dynamic with our main antagonist - the Monk. The Monk is not a character I would’ve thought would work in the VNAs, he’s a decidedly silly 60s villain whose concept doesn’t really work anymore because the Doctor has turned meddling with time into his MO. However, in came Cornell and he absolutely solved it. One, he doesn’t change the Monk’s character to be darker or anything, this is still a gloating, self-aggrandizing asshole with a huge ego and the book still makes him a threat through his unhinged abilities as a time lord. He’s a really interesting villain because he’s not outwardly threatening and obviously flawed, which we honestly rarely see in these grand, time hopping villains. And then there’s the relationship he has with the Doctor, which is where the real good stuff comes in. To exemplify this, I’ll just talk about my favourite scene in the book; the Monk has captured the Doctor and is monologuing about how he acts all superior and criticises the Monk’s own use of time travel whilst turning around and doing the same thing himself and when he tries to turn it around on the Doctor, ask why he can do it and the Monk can’t, the Doctor just replies: “skill.”. And that single line saves the Monk as a character whilst also perfectly capturing what makes Seven so great. The Doctor meddles with time, sure, but the Monk bulldozes it. There’s so much good stuff between these two, from when the Monk realises he’s nearly revealed his entire plan in a monologue and stops himself to the final confrontation between the two, where the Doctor tries to save the Monk’s life despite everything. They’re really the crutch of this book and were by far the best part.

Nobody else in the cast really hits the same highs but they’re still pretty strong. I can safely say I love Benny now, even if she doesn’t grow that much throughout the book. She joins a punk band and has some great scenes with the Doctor, it’s enough. We also have UNIT returning, which should be an instant positive for me but I do feel their characterisation was a little weak. The Brigadier didn’t feel quite as lovable as usual here, I don’t know how to describe it. However, it’s still UNIT and I’m still happy.

So, our characters are all pretty strong and their development is solid, we can confidently call that part of the story good. But how is the rest? Well, this is where No Future’s failings begin to show themselves because this book can only be described as a mess. So, I mentioned how the Monk was our surprise villain, yeah? Well, so are the Vardans, who have been working with the Monk to invade Earth. But also so is a chronovore that the Monk has trapped in his TARDIS. And that chronovore is talking to Ace in her dreams and also that punk band Benny joined have to do something to save the world and UNIT’s been mostly replaced by Vardans and- it gets cumbersome quickly and ends up being pretty damn hard to follow. You can tell too much stuff needed to be in this book because a lot feels rushed. Scenes happen without context sometimes, whole plot threads barely go anywhere, a lot of the novel feels like filler, it’s a very unpolished novel in my opinion.

And what makes it stranger is that there is genuinely brilliant stuff here; the aforementioned moments between the Monk and the Doctor are obviously the highlight but there are whole stretches of this book that felt like true, 10/10 material, with some incredible ideas and moments of character. The way I’d describe it is I feel like this is a great book that got published a few drafts too early. It’s very rough around the edges and it begins to hurt the story in major ways. For one, the first half is very slow and takes a good hundred pages to get to the real plot and all that great character development is just kind of written off in the end. For as much as I love what this did with our companions, the conclusion is a travesty. Ace was faking the whole time, the last however many books of tension are instantly forgiven and they literally go hand in hand back to the TARDIS. I understand that they had to resolve the tension because it was beginning to impact the stories too much but when half the story is about the end point of that tension being a betrayal, the sudden hokey skip off into the sunset doesn’t hit well at all.

Which is a real shame, because No Future felt so close to being great. The energy is really there, the use of a counter-culture movement in the plot really gives the whole novel such a lively momentum that makes it a super easy read. It’s just that the plot is so cumbersome and poorly handled. I think Cornell did what he had to do and the arc concluded well, but there’s too many plot points being juggled for this to feel satisfying as an individual novel.

6/10

Pros:

+ Incredible introspection of Seven’s character

+ Ace gets some all-time great material

+ Kinetic and rebellious tone

+ Peppered with moments of true greatness

+ The Monk was a surprisingly interesting villain

Cons:

- Overstuffed and incohesive

- Difficult to follow in places

- Pacing is all over the place

- The conclusions to the character arcs are disappointing

"Scream, I'll save you later."

I read 3 Paul Cornell books. I really loved all of them. I read a fourth Paul Cornell book. I really loved it. Big surprise.
As always the man's a great, subtle character writer who does some truly beautiful things with the dynamics here. The prose is gorgeous and punchy. The plot is wonderfully twisty. Cornell is one of those DW writers who gets how to make a story totally saturated with fun and interesting Concepts without letting the plot get bogged down by them, and this one has SO much fun snuck in amongst all the big important plot beats.
I love the Monk in this. This might actually be my first Monk story, in fact. He makes for a great villain with his grand and unbeatable schemes built on a foundation of pathetic, childish motivations, i always love that kind of contrast in a villain (or a hero, as this version of the Doctor dips into that sort of territory pretty frequently, and to great effect).
Ace also does pretty darn well here, starting out sinister and eventually coming back around and revealing her motivations. you get a great sense of just how much she's grown, and how even when she's got the darkness in her soul she's had since returning in Deceit, she's still managed to grow into an adult with a good heart and a good head. I dearly love the knight in shining armor she plays to the Woman in Red here. It's such a romantic role for her, and one that feels just right for the Champion's steward...
Bernice is great here as well, with so much heart and a bit of comedy. We get to see the complexities of her dynamics, caring deeply for her companions, understanding they're imperfect and getting frustrated with them, and still being maybe a bit too quick to forgive them some of their faults.
This is another story in my favorite genre (one that Cornell seems pretty keen on as well), one where the Doctor finds himself suddenly, terrifyingly, stumbling over his obstacles. He's left blind here, and nearly out-gamed if it weren't for the grace of Ace's loyalty. And he knows it too.
The emotional lows here are *low*, and it all wraps up in a happy ending that still manages to be bittersweet. It's hard. And maybe things wont get better in our lifetime. But this turned out alright, so maybe other things will turn out alright for us, too.
And of course I have to shout-out Cornell's returning love for rough and tumble sweetheart anarchists. Can't think of another piece of media that ends with the good guys wishing their buddy good luck with the anarchist revolution. Good for him.
10/10

23 - No Future

As the Doctor’s escapades through parallel timelines hurtle toward their conclusion, Paul Cornell brings us back to UNIT in the 1970s for one final showdown.  It’s easily his worst showing so far, mainly because it feels fragmented and wraps up the conflict between the Doctor and Ace far too quickly, but it’s still an enjoyable read with several returning friends and foes.

I’ll start with the bits I enjoyed.  The UNIT family is always a welcome presence, and here they bookend the arc: while Blood Heat saw the Doctor run in with a battle-scarred alternate UNIT, the “real” Brig, Benton and Yates reunite with him at last in 1976.  Mortimus the Time Meddler is exactly who I hoped would be behind these interventions into the Doctor’s timeline, and his bumbling yet charming persona carries over perfectly into prose.  Here he allies himself with the Vardans (The Invasion of Time), who seem to have been included, to my delight, just so that Paul Cornell can make jabs at them.  By capturing a chronovore named Artemis, the Monk has been interfering with the Doctor’s timeline in attempts at revenge, and has used her power to free the Vardans and help them invade Earth.  It’s a lovely collage of classic villains that fit together nicely, and the Monk’s efforts to tempt Ace with promises of a better world are reminiscent of the later audio adventure The Resurrection of Mars, juxtaposing his and the Doctor’s moral systems.

However, it’s in this subplot that the cracks begin to show in Ace’s emotional journey.  The centerpiece of the Monk’s forbidden fruit is a resurrected Jan (Love and War), by whose death Ace is apparently still heartbroken.  This would be a powerful moment if it didn’t seem to backtrack on Ace’s character development, given that she had “consigned him to the lucky escape category of old lovers” by the time she reunited with the Doctor in Deceit.  Other readers may disagree, but I didn’t find her sudden preoccupation with Jan to be quite convincing (although I understand completely why Cornell wanted to connect this novel to his last).  The resolution to the novel involves Ace tricking the Doctor with a very Doctorish scheme, after which they are finally able to put aside their differences.  This was another plot point that I found somewhat jarring, since Ace’s problems with the Doctor at this point have more to do with the collateral damage of his schemes than the way he personally manipulates her.  I also believe I might be too young to fully appreciate this novel - it’s steeped in the culture of 1970s British punk rock, and the generation who grew up immersed in that world will probably love its setting.

While it is flawed (as Cornell himself has said), No Future brings the alternate universe cycle to an exhilarating end which has a lot to love - just don’t expect it to carry forward the momentum of the last two stories.  Onward to a less angry Ace and a meddling-free future!

Well to start off I should say that my experience with this novel was weird, unfortunately due to getting busy I read this novel over a scattered period of days which led the narrative flow of the book not being as smooth for me as well as me not being able to remember many plot points at times, however I will say, character/prose wise this was amazing, it’s definitely Cornell’s worst of the 3 NAs he’s done so far but that’s not fair to say when his other 2 were my top 2 of the range, no future is still great, letting us feel bad for the monk, satisfyingly wrapping up the Alt universe cycle (although the books plot feels a bit all over the place) as well as emotionally wrapping up all the character arcs of the last few books letting our tardis team finally be happy, finally be able to accept eachother , ace is able to manipulate the doctor beat him at his game, the doctor goes from warrior to healer and he accepts ace has grown and is different, they embrace eachother and their future relationships, Benny also comes to terms with both of them, she can’t and won’t leave the doctor. And I can’t wait to see this new friendlier dynamic explored.