Not a fantastic book, but there's a lot of interesting ideas, and it's very competently written. Way too many side characters, though, and some of the scifi elements weren't very clear. Basically, the TARDIS lands on a strange ship that immediately forces the team to scram into two separate pods: the Doctor and Compassion in one, Fitz in another. The Doctor and Compassion are shot out into space back to the planet the ship was orbiting, Skale, while Fitz remains there. So the Doctor and Compassion end up arrested as spies and saboteurs and maybe aliens while Fitz gets trapped into a dream, communist land, Mechta.

The whole thing with Mechta was pretty interesting. We, the readers, can figure out pretty quickly that Fitz is not in a real place, since the time he perceives doesn't match with the time in Skale, and everyone at Facility One is being very cagey about telling the Doctor where Mechta is. I think this is how it works: Parallel 59 (basically a country in Skale) developed this project where these ships called Bastions were sent into space, forming a mesh around the planet. The idea is that the mesh would protect them from their alien neighbors in Haltiel (who they've never interacted with) and also place all space travel under 59's control. These Bastions need a human brain to be controlled. Not people, mind, but live human brains. Skale's tech is based on these bio-interfaces. 'Flesh-tech', the Doctor calls it. It's not nice at all for the brain involved. These Bastions are full of 59's 'undesirables', criminals and marginalized people, being kept there basically as spare batteries. Once you're used up, your pod is sent away into space. Or, alternatively, down to the planet as a bomb. While you're in the Bastion, you enter this gestalt shared dream place, Mechta, where things are honestly pretty good, a real communist utopia. That's where Fitz is, living life as normal, not knowing where the Doctor and Compassion are, but kind of waiting for them to show up and get him.

Fitz's side story is... fine. He, of course, starts an affair with a married woman as soon as he gets there, then dumps her when he meets Fillipa, this book's designated Mandatory Love Interest for Fitz. He behaves like a complete dick and ends up lying and  cheating on her. I love Fitz, but this was not a good look. We know he's attracted to everyone and falls in love 5 times a day, but c'mon. There was no real reason for him to cheat on Fillipa apart from Denna being gorgeous. It didn't even make that much sense, given how things ended up with Alura in 'Frontier Worlds': I'd expected him to be more careful with these girls' feelings from then on. He does regret his mistakes and constantly puts himself down for them, does the 'I'm such an idiot loser' bit, so it's not like his behavior isn't questioned or addressed. It very much is, and he does seem to learn from it, but I'm just not sure how necessary it was. Otherwise, his part of the plot was pretty slow, almost boring.

The Doctor is in his natural habitat, i.e., a prison cell surrounded by people that want to torture him for both information and for medical proposes. Compassion escapes with some revolutionaries when she gets a chance, but he stays put since he is in the correct place to find out what the hell is going on and how to get Fitz (who he's very concerned for) and the TARDIS back. He does his bit of being non-threatening and very, very intelligent, offers his to help the people at the Facility to fix their mesh thingy to get the info he needs. There's a lovely scene where he's taken to the Facility's meeting and just keeps on being cute, clever, and exasperating in equal measures. Yve, one of the billions of side characters, thinks 'this performing little puppy could bite if provoked'. Yep, that's my guy! Biiiig fan of his fake heart attack as well. This man has 0 respect for his own body, he'll do anything to himself if it moves his plan along. Cute how worried he was for Fitz; he's still guilty about what happened in 'Interference' (not that it was in any his fault...) and has some left over anxiety from the Lost Sam arc. Separation anxiety, I guess? He's okay with Fitz being away so long as he knows exactly where he is and how to get to him, like in 'Frontier Worlds', but not knowing gets him antsy. Speaking of the Doctor's mental illnesses, this book is one example of how his claustrophobia only shows up when the writers deign to remember he has it, and its only as strong as they want it to be. He was only mildly panicky in the escape pod at the beginning of the book, is mostly unconcerned with being in a prison cell for most of the book, and is not particularly affected by the tiny pod he and Compassion are crammed into to go back to the Bastion. I get that they don't want him to be incapacitated, sure, but I'd appreciate some consistency, or some mention of how he's dealing with it.

Meanwhile Compassion's with the rebels, who want to shoot the whole mesh down. They know they can't possibly save those millions of people used to power it, so that's the next best thing. Compassion is not as great as she was in 'Frontier Worlds', but she's still pretty good here. She convinces the rebels the TARDIS can be used to save those people, if they can get the Doctor. She notices she's actually acting as the Doctor's spy, gathering information from the rebels in the hopes it'll be useful to him. She puts that down to the Doctor's and the TARDIS's influence, saying 'she'd obviously been picking up TARDIS vibes for too long -- it was trying to make her into an 'old girl' too'. She also notes that she doesn't really think of the Doctor as a friend, more like 'a function of the universe she could respond to'. She once again says that she feels like she's changing, and it's starting to scare her. She's been having headaches. When the people at the Facility tried to scan her, the machine blew up sky high, but the same machine had no problem scanning the Doctor, 'complex space time event' that he is. She has a freak out after that as well, seems very scared for no discernible reason. The Doctor was confused, and so was I. Compassion was absolutely instrumental at the end. For all that the Doctor doesn't want her to go around receiving transmissions from just about anything, they would all have died if she hadn't been able to interface with the Bastion's systems.

The ending was really not what I had expected. I definitely didn't think there'd be an attack by Haltiel. It shook things up in an interesting way, 100% stopping any plans they had to save the people in the Bastions using the TARDIS. They take control of the mesh and just start bombing the planet. Skale fires back, once they're convinced there's actual aliens attacking, but Haltiel trounces the place and go back home happy. Basically, lots of people die. Lots and lots and lots. Full on disaster.

The main moral question they raise in this story was whether rescuing the people in Mechta was the correct thing to do. Compassion doesn't think so: Mechta is a good place, where they have good lives. Why force them to come back to the planet that cares so little for them they were being used as human batteries? The Doctor disagrees: there's people on Skale that still care for them, and they have the right to live a real life, however difficult real life is. Well, in the end, no one gets to choose anything, as Haltiel takes the choice from them. In the end, Compassion and the Doctor manage to save 7 people, including Fitz, and that's it. Fillipa is one of the survivors, to Fitz's immense relief. They book ends as the Doctor is taking the TARDIS back to Skale, so it's a bit of cliffhanger, I guess, to what Fitz is gonna do next. Not that I had any doubt he's staying.

Some more torture for our dear Doctor. Very mild, by his standards, but torture nonetheless. There's a few scrapes as well, but nothing major

Memory Loss:1 (in 'The Eight Doctors')
Serious Injuries/Near Death Experience:12 (gets vampired 'Vampire Science', nearly drowns in the Thames in 'The Bodysnatchers', bomb+fingers broken in 'Kursaal', electrocuted in 'Longest Day', gets shot + severe blood loss in 'Legacy of the Daleks', nearly squashed by giant hydra in 'The Scarlet Empress', leg broken + slapped around by giant tentacled monster in 'The Face-Eater', stabbed 3 times in 'Unnatural History', electrocuted in 'Autumn Mist', broken arm + more in 'Interference' 1&2, broken wrist + near death in vacuum of space + more in 'The Taking of Planet 5', falls from a cliff + shot in 'Frontier Worlds')
Torture:6 (in 'Genocide', 'Seeing I', 'Unnatural History', 'Interference' 1&2, 'The Taking of Planet 5', 'Parallel 59')

The last of these I read, as part of my one-book-per-Doctor 50th Anniversary marathon, was Frontier Worlds.  Set on an alien world with corporate goings-on and dark secrets hidden by those in power, it wasn’t a book I fell in love with.  Parallel 59 is a very similar story and I had a very similar reaction to it.

It sees the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion embroiled in the political machinations of yet another bland planet.  The one interesting aspect, involving Fitz, is ruined somewhat by the twist of where he is, and the Doctor and Compassion’s adventures involve a whole collection of indistinguishable characters who I couldn’t muster any affection for because I spent half of the book not understanding who was who, how they knew each other, what they did on the planet and what their motivations were for their actions.

Let’s be positive for a moment.  The Doctor and Compassion are well-written, although I still find it hard to warm to Compassion as a companion (although that is kind of the point, I am aware – she isn’t supposed to be particularly likeable, sort of like a female version of Turlough).  She resents the fact she is coming to rely on the Doctor and there is some (very subtle) foreshadowing of what will happen to her in the next book, The Shadows of Avalon.  The Doctor feels like Paul McGann/the 8th Doctor and however much I like or dislike any particular EDA I don’t think I’ve ever felt the various authors haven’t captured the essence of the 8th Doctor.

By far my favourite part of the book were the sections involving Fitz.  Fitz is separated from the Doctor and Compassion even before the book has started and awakes to find himself in a place called Mechta.  Here, he begins to establish relationships with a whole range of people – mainly women – and becomes involved in a rebellion.  Mechta is a very closely controlled place with any disturbances quietly dealt with by the Correctioners.  As Fitz’s segments of the story play out, he (and the reader) becomes increasingly uneasy about what exactly is going on in Mechta.  People are awaiting return to their home colony (even though they cannot actually remember it) and when their papers arrive they are taken away in a red car.

It transpires that the whole world of Mechta is a shared illusion and these people, including Fitz, are floating in space, in capsules.  This is actually a bit of an anti-climax as I was rather enjoying the ‘1984-ish’ aspects of this world.  To find out none of it is real undercut the drama somewhat, although the final part where Fitz thinks he is escaping a dying world by hitching a ride behind a red car is quite tense as, by this time, the reader knows that being ‘red-carred’ is actually when the people in the capsules die.

Fitz is easily my favourite 8th Doctor book companion so far, after the rather formless Sam and the currently difficult to love Compassion, and he ranks highly in my ‘expanded universe’ companion rankings along with Benny, Chris Cwej, Evelyn and Charley.  Despite a bit of a damp squib ending to his story in this book, he still gives a lot of value for money.

The rest of the story, though, as I’ve said, is populated with a bunch of characters I was continually confused by.  Working out who was who was very difficult as well as how they were linked to each other.  When one character eventually deposes another in command, or when a different character turns out to sort of be working with the rebels only she isn’t, and when another character who seemed to be in relationships with two other characters, I just spent the book wondering why I should be caring about a rather faceless bunch.

The climax also involves an alien menace suddenly arriving from somewhere else (literally with about 4 short chapters to go in the book).  The characters of Skale, the planet this is set on, had referred to Haltiel (the menace that arrives) throughout the book but the writing had made me assume they were a made up menace which was all part of the political machinations of the characters on the planet.  Consequently, when they did turn up, in a fairly faceless way, I wasn’t that bothered when they started killing people on the planet below (especially as a large chunk of their victims were from an area of the planet that the story had never referenced or visited in the narrative).

The terrible irony of my not enjoying very much of this book is that I have an autographed copy.  I went through a period in my teens and twenties where I attended a lot of signings and conventions.  As a result, I have copious autographs from actors, directors and writers (among many others).  One such writer is Stephen Cole.  He has signed my copy of Parallel 59 with legend ‘Natalie wrote the bits you didn’t like’.  Eek!  By that logic, Stephen wrote the Mechta bits and Natalie wrote everything else (which is easily at least two thirds of the book).  He really was tempting fate with that comment!