The Knight, The Fool and The Dead

📝8/10 = VERY ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY VI

The first novel in the Time Lord Victorious event takes Ten to the Dark Times, a forgotten age before the Time Lords, and onto a planet awaiting the arrival of the death-bringing Kotturuh. They are trying to cheat death with a new piece of tech called a Lifeshroud, and that's problematic, of course. Because once the Kotturuh arrive, kill the inhabitants anyway, and kidnap the sole survivor wearing a shroud, they face the rage of a Doctor hell-bent on stopping the Kotturuh from playing gods.

The book fleshes out the Kotturuh and their actions quite well; we don’t see them a lot but learn of their design and processes. We meet several alien worlds and their inhabitants judged by the Kotturuh and how they react to the various lifespans granted to them.

The second half slows down a bit as the Doctor and company prepare to counter the Kotturuh. It then picks up again towards the end as the Doctor begins to show his Time Lord Victorious complex again—he wants to wipe out the entire Kotturuh race, thus changing the future and saving countless lives from death.

But things take a dark turn as Steve Cole begins killing his darlings, leaving an angered Doctor face-to-face with his adversaries. The way he decides to take that one drastic step, despite asking himself whether he has the right, makes him very dangerous and unpredictable, and he becomes something of a villain himself, despite his benevolent intentions.

I like Estinee and Fallomax, who travel around selling Lifeshrouds that don't work to fool worlds and make money. They bring a humane element to the story and are similar to other fraudsters we've met in the franchise. Estinee turns out to be much more, of course, once we learn that she has a natural ability to avoid dying.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the novel is the introduction of Brian the Ood, an Ood assassin who keeps interacting with his translator (named Mr. Ball) and joins the quest to track down the Kotturuh and stop their plans. He's not afraid to use weapons when needed, which causes tension between him and the Doctor, even if Brian is frequently right in his assessments.

Cole writes the story like a New Who episode: it's fast, with short chapters and constantly shifting locations. The story moves furiously forward while fleshing things out as it goes. He also paints vivid alien landscapes and injects the text with well-placed humour.

Cole inserts short interludes between the regular chapters, and these are delightful surprises, as they give us earlier Doctors and their companions, discussing death and sharing the same tale from the Brothers Grimm, told slightly differently every time. The most interesting of these is Interlude 3, where the Eighth Doctor tells the story to Brian the Ood before Ten had met him. This scene takes place during the He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not audio story (Victory XII).

The novel is brought to an effective conclusion, with Ten donning traditional Time Lord gear only to come face to face with Eight, Nine, and the Daleks, hell-bent on stopping him from continuing with his charade. This then leads directly top he nect book, All Flesh is Grass (Victory XVIII).

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• The way the Kotturuh kill people so that they decay and fall into a heap of bones has similar vibes to the Time Disruptor in The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965-1966).
• “Verv-Hoondai Chalskal, High Ambassador of Skalithai and Standing Throne-Being of the Pan-Victis Defensive Alliance” is such an RTD-era name for an alien. The alien in question is a pretty humorous figure as well.

This is a sprawling epic of a story, as the Doctor essentially takes on 'Death' (or the Kotturuh, the race who represent the concept of 'Death' as a being in the Whoniverse).

An exciting story from start to finish. Brian The Ood is a highly entertaining side character, and it's nice to see the Time Lord Victorious stuff from The Waters Of Mars expanded upon.

The cliffhanger is also a nice tease for the second book. I'm not sure if it was deliberate, but it felt reminiscent of the old RTD cliffhangers that would lead into the Christmas Specials.