The Shadows of Avalon is one of those books that are ‘turning points’ in the Doctor Who range. I had gleaned various titbits of information over the years – I knew it featured the Brigadier; I knew Compassion became a TARDIS; I knew a future incarnation of Romana appeared.

On Gallifrey Base, I was once in a discussion that had involved another fan asserting that Cornell ‘forces’ his ideas of continuity on to everyone else (mainly in terms of a certain renegade Time Lord’s incarnations). This novel did crop up in the discussion but, as I hadn’t read it at that point, I found it difficult to defend. However, I did refute the idea that a writer ‘forces’ their ideas on to Doctor Who. As another poster on GB once wrote, what one irate fan calls ‘forcing ideas’ everyone else calls ‘telling a story’.

But then I read The Shadows of Avalon and whilst I still don’t subscribe to the ‘forcing’ terminology, I do sort of see where the other side of the debate may be coming from.

I didn’t enjoy The Shadows of Avalon very much. It took me a very long time to read it because I wasn’t particularly inspired to pick it up of an evening. When I did read it, it felt like it was going around and around in circles with nothing much actually happening of interest meaning I rarely read more than one chapter at a time because I was getting quite bored.

The story involves a gateway opening to another dimension. A dimension where magic and dragons are real and that was set up by Time Lords during the Roman invasion of the Celts. The descendants of the Celts who escaped to this dimension live there still but, when the rift between their world and ours opens, are forced into a war.

The TARDIS is destroyed by the rift opening leaving the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion stranded there. The Brigadier arrives as a UNIT representative. He is mourning the death of Doris. Odd things are happening to Compassion. And there are Silurians in this dimension too!
There is a lot in this which could have been fun to read about. Unfortunately, Cornell seems obsessed with exploring the Brigadier’s grief. And it goes on and on and on. The Brigadier is suicidal; determined to join Doris in death. All of this is awful to read because its terribly depressing.
The war between the Celtic tribes, the Silurian tribes and the UNIT humans is interminable and dull.

Unfortunately, these two aspects dominate the book pushing the three regulars to the sidelines. I really like the 8th Doctor and he is usually a joy to read in print, even in the less engaging books that I’ve recently read, such as Frontier Worlds and Parallel 59. Here though, with the emphasis squarely on the Brigadier, his character isn’t given enough to do. There is a very artificial divide formed between the Doctor and Brigadier over the war where I never quite understood why they had fallen out as friends.

Compassion is turning into a TARDIS – now apparently this has been foreshadowed in the previous books but it has been so subtle that aside from a bit of ‘something odd is happening to Compassion’ I didn’t really have an inkling from the text that anything was happening. In this book, though, it means that Compassion acts out of character for the most part and never really feels like she is doing anything.

Fitz fares even worse and does practically nothing of note throughout the entire book. This is a crying shame because Fitz is one of my favourite companions, particularly in the books.

Cornell is obsessed with telling us about the Brigadier and how much he misses his wife. The point is laboured over and over again. It got to the stage where I didn’t actually like the Brigadier any more and his sudden change of heart towards the end of the book really didn’t affect me the way I think it should have.

There are some nice touches. The Celtic court involves lots of echoes of Time Lord society. There is fun to be had with two Time Lord agents who are stirring up the war and intend on forcing Compassion into becoming a TARDIS. The character of Queen Mab is good and, as much as I came to loathe what was being done with the Brigadier, her interplay with him was quite fun.

The climax is also quite entertaining as it sees the Doctor become more proactive, the Brigadier is out of the doldrums and there is some exciting action confronting the Time Lord agents. But this was too little, too late.  And then Romana turns up. Although I knew she featured in the book, I had, by this point, forgotten she was supposed to be in it. I was surprised by her eleventh hour appearance and then disappointed when I realised she was there for little more than exposition about Compassion’s transformation and to push the Doctor off on to his next story arc – escaping with Fitz aboard Compassion – now a fully-fledged TARDIS. Romana could have been absolutely any other Time Lord as the fact she is Romana, albeit a future incarnation, has no bearing on her role in the story.

One interesting aspect was the depiction of the Silurians. About halfway through the book I realised I had been imagining them as the new series versions rather than the classic, which is of course what Cornell would have had in mind when writing the book, published as it was, long before the new series appeared. Something about the way they were written seemed more tuned to the sleeker, more feminine version of the Silurians.

By the time I finished this book I was wondering what the point of it was. It’s examination of grief was heavy-handed and repetitive. It’s use of the regulars was appalling and it’s central plot was incredibly dull. It’s only real purpose to the ongoing narrative of the novels was to facilitate Compassion’s final transformation.

The run of stories leading up to this in the EDAs have been a bit lacklustre but have generally had a plot which has kept my attention. This is easily one of my least favourite Doctor Who novels ever because it’s plot is dull; it spends far too much time on the Brigadier’s grief and interminable battle scenes; and the regulars are side-lined far too much.

A huge disappointment.

Inside of this book there are two books: one is about the dream kingdom of Avalon and their war, the other is about Compassion being turned into a TARDIS. Book one? I could not care less. Book two? Hell yeah.

Picking up right where 'Parallel 59' left off, we learn the Doctor and Fitz stayed on Skale for a while, helping with the rebuilding of the planet after the massacre. Compassion was acting so cold and being so unhelpful in general that the Doctor shipped her to Earth because she was annoying him, which is objectively very funny. He gave her a little list of things to do while she was there, which included 'make friends', 'kiss someone properly', and 'fall in love'. That's his way of begging her on his hands and knees to please form some sort of bond with people. Doesn't work. Anyway, back on Skale, there's a second where we (and the Doctor (and Fitz himself)) are quite sure Fitz is going to stay behind with Filippa. The time to say goodbye comes and Filippa just asks him to visit sometime and kisses him goodbye. He's relived, but it is sort of implied he is planning on coming back to her eventually. I frankly doubt we'll ever see that place or that woman again. I'm just glad he's not pulling another 'Revolution Man' on us, and so is the Doctor, who was probably internally panicking over the prospect of traveling alone with Compassion (like he does in 'The Blue Angel'). The Doctor and Fitz head back to Earth to pick up Compassion, and the TARDIS explodes immediately upon landing, stranding them + the Brigadier, who was around, in Avalon.

We are finally told why the TARDIS kept going to strange, time-space distortions on Earth (in 'Unnatural History', 'Dominion', etc.). As the Doctor theorizes, 'All those strange realities were her trying to escape her fate, trying to convince herself that [...] she wasn't going to die when she hit the gap between worlds.' And why did she follow the dimensional disturbance in Drebnar ('Frontier Worlds') and the Mechta shared dream ('Parallel 59')? She knew what was coming, and was sort of preparing herself to 'face her death'. Now, I know the TARDIS is not really gone for good, because there are 1231920 other stories set after this where she's alive and well, but the Doctor cannot sense her at all, and we have no reason to believe she's not dead. Sad!!!

The Brigadier is here and he's very sad as well. Sadder, even. His second wife Doris (not Kate's mother, by the way) died tragically recently, and the Brig, repressed man that he is, has not allowed himself to properly grieve and recover from it. He is so deep in it that he's suicidal. I didn't read the VNAs or saw much of him outside Classic Who, so seeing him like this was not a fun time. Kind of similar to seeing an older, jaded Jo Grant in 'Genocide'. Paul Cornell, the author, does his best in exploring the Brigadier's pain throughout the book, and although gloomy, this was one of the best parts of it. The Doctor and the Brigadier butt heads as never before, as the Brigadier kiiiinda starts a war with the fairy Silurians of Avalon, the Fair Folk. All their scenes together are quite good, as the Doctor is desperately trying to de-escalate the situation, while the Brigadier stoically insists there is no other solution.

The Doctor, in a sense, is in a similar position of despair as the Brigadier. The war breaks out, and he's stuck in Avalon, fighting with the Brigadier, and not knowing where Compassion and Fitz are, or if they're even alive. We know he gets antsy without the TARDIS, and he still has a lot on his mind from his recent encounters with Faction Paradox. He doesn't know what they did, but he knows they did something to him ('Interference'). 'While Faction Paradox existed, there was no reason for him to do anything', as they can change history around him and undermine all his efforts. The Doctor's feeling 'sick at heart, incapable', but he says he 'won't be distant from [himself]', and that he's going to find out whatever is hiding in Avalon, whatever must be found to stop the war, and save everyone. He makes a point in this story to interfere anyway and not let the possibility of Faction Paradox or whoever else changing history stop him from doing what he thinks must be done. By the end of the story, he's come to terms with it. As he puts it, 'Just because nothing is written in stone doesn't mean I can stop kicking over the statues!' So he will keep doing his bit, as always, no matter what.

I must say I do not vibe with mystical-fairy-Arthurian flavored fantasy in my Doctor Who. Avalon and its politics are incredibly simplistic, and I honestly could not get attached to any of the side characters in this book. Not Queen Mab, not her adviser, whatever his name was, not anyone. Yes, this book has the Doctor riding a dragon against fighter planes, and yet I was yawning. Mab's little insta-crush on the Brigadier was also quite strange. I'm glad he begins to heal by the end of this story, when he realizes things are only really worth something because they eventually end. He stays behind in Avalon; I hope he has a good holiday.

The big thing that happens in this book is Compassion turning into a TARDIS. Which is insane, by the way, but does make sense with everything that has happened recently. The TARDIS saying she could be so much more in 'Frontier Worlds', the scanner blowing up in 'Parallel 59', the war TARDISes and Marie recognizing her in 'The Taking of Planet 5'. Basically, it's the Doctor's fault. I don't think there was any way he could have possibly predicted this fantastic development, so I can't really blame him. They say it all started in the Obverse ('The Blue Angel'). The Remote absorb information, so filtering signals to Compassion's receiver through the TARDIS programmed her with 'everything about the TARDIS'. Now, this could all be fine (more or less), as Compassion is pretty okay with being a type 102 TARDIS once the change happens. The problem is that Romana III, President of Gallifrey, wants to breed her like a dog to make 103s (like Marie) for the war against the Enemy. Romana!!! Our friend Romana! I'm scandalized. She sent two agents to Avalon to make sure the change happened according to history and to bring Compassion back to Gallifrey, even if they had to off the Doctor to do it. I cannot express how much I hated Cavis and Gandar, the Time Lord interventionists. They were like a Gallifreyan Team Rocket, but more evil and extremely unfunny. They shall not be missed. The Doctor is obviously livid (due to plot reasons, he's yelling at her while soaking wet and shirtless, which made for a funnier scene than intended), so he does the good old trick of stealing a TARDIS and running away with his companions; it just so happens that one of said companions is a TARDIS. So now we're on the run from the Time Lords, and isn't it sad to have to think of Romana as an enemy...

Final thoughts: amazing developments for the story, massive change in the status-quo, but otherwise not the a very compelling story, and I frankly don't care for Avalon at all. The character bits with the Brig and the Doctor were quite good, but we got very little of Compassion, who is basically another person by the end of this book, and Fitz does and says next to nothing throughout.

There was one haunting line in this book that I have to point out. The Doctor is putting his life on the line to prove a point to the Brigadier, he's about to be shot down and thinks

Maybe next time he'll be someone who could control his destiny, and not have to make this gestures.

Knowing how Eight dies and who he becomes, this is heartbreaking.