Hogan Reviews

It’s been about two years since I’ve been so caught up with Big Finish releases that I can actually post reviews of other Doctor Who stuff during quieter periods. The last one was in the middle of the Second Doctor part of this random TV and other media marathon and I actually went on to write the three other Second Doctor reviews before this site went on hiatus, so these next three random Who reviews are still in the old review format but Third Doctor onwards will match with current reviews. Without further ado:

So the non-TV part of the Second Doctor’s run in this chunk of older Who reviews starts off with a book review, a rare thing on this blog due to nothing other than me being a slow reader. Anyway, when I decided to finally go back and read some of the Doctor Who books I’d always wanted to read this was an obvious one because the idea of not just the Second Doctor meeting the Master but also a look at how The Doctor’s old friend became his enemy was too interesting a concept to pass up. Did it live up to that possibility? Let’s find out!

Synopsis:

Darkheart: a faded neutron star surrounded by dead planets. But there is life on one of these icy rocks — the last enclave of the Earth Empire, frozen in the image of another time. As the rest of the galaxy enjoys the fruits of the fledgling Federation, these isolated imperials, bound to obey a forgotten ideal, harbour a dark obsession.

The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive to find that the Federation has at last come to reintegrate this lost colony, whether they like it or not. But all is not well in the Federation camp: relations and allegiances are changing. The fierce Veltrochni — angered by the murder of their kinsmen — have an entirely different agenda. And someone else is manipulating the mission for his own mysterious reasons — another time traveller, a suave and assured master of his work.

The Doctor must uncover the terrible secret which brought the Empire to this desolate sector, and find the source of the strange power maintaining their society. But can a Time Lord, facing the ultimate temptation, control his own desires?

*spoilers appear from here on out!*

The Good:

As the title of the book implies, the main draw of the story is The Master heading down the dark path of villainy, and in that sense the book is good even if it takes a long time to get there. At this point in his life The Master is known as Koschei and is travelling with an Earth woman named Ailla, trying his best to do good in the universe while working for the Time Lords: in other words is basically The Doctor but not on the run. For the first two thirds we see Koschei maybe crossing the line a little bit but generally being a stand-up guy, but when it seems Ailla is killed he grows angry. He begins to think about using the unique Darkheart paradox-free timeline altering power at the centre of the story to right that and all other wrongs in the universe, but you know the problem with absolute power and all that. What makes matters worse is he finds out Ailla wasn’t killed but instead regenerated because she is actually a Time Lord spy planted on Earth to be picked up by Koschei because his own people don’t trust him. Throw in The Doctor refusing to join him in using the Darkheart and he feels betrayed by his lovely human friend, his own people and his best friend all at the same time.

The anger consumes him and he actually uses the Darkheart for unpleasant means, altering the timelines of a whole crew of non-humans into humans (or erasing them entirely) despite that making no sense. He then offers people the ability to wipe out whole worlds to save loved ones, including giving Victoria the chance to wipe out Skaro before the Daleks have a chance to kill her father, but although she is tempted, she manages to pull away. In the end The Doctor destroys the Darkheart but Koschei is caught in the strange aftereffects of the blast and begins to rapidly regenerate, going through a whole host of bodies before escaping. His survives as his Roger Delgado self, explaining why he has no regenerations left as of his next body despite his school friend only being on his fourth (at the time we first see the melty Master) and his general hatred for his old friend throughout the rest of the series. Hell, his trying to steal The Doctor’s lives in the TV Movie almost seems like karma now, from The Master’s perspective…

Technically for the vast majority of the book The Master doesn’t look like Roger Delgado, but makes sense for a more eye-catching cover I guess!

As for the rest of the book? It has its moments. Victoria is given a lot to do, she befriends Ailla as well as the whole captured, escape, recapture stuff and the whole business with The Master and the Darkheart. In the end the experience is so bad she internally suggests that the next time they arrive on Earth she’s ending her journey, which of course is what happens. The Doctor and Jamie meanwhile spend most of the book in the middle of a three-way war between the people of the “lost colony” of the Earth Empire, the ships of the new Earth Federation trying to reintegrate them back into the fold, and the Veltrochni, who are an alien race who lost an expedition in the system and want to find out what happened to them, and kill anyone responsible. It’s a good set up, but it does get dragged out a bit too much…

The Bad:

As just mentioned, the story is prolonged, and not in a particularly good way. The first third of the book is fine scene setting, but the middle third is all static, a few scenes of The Doctor and co going from one side of the war to the other, Koschei and Ailla talking to one side or the other, and nothing happens until suddenly it’s the last third and everything kicks into high gear. If this was ever adapted into another medium then it wouldn’t be hard to pick where scenes could be cut from, put it that way…

The only other thing was maybe a few too many name drops of races not involved in the story at all purely for the sake of it. It’s unnecessary, and just screams of someone trying to show-off that they know the series well…

The Continuity:

As mentioned, this is set directly before “Fury From The Deep”, where Victoria parts ways with The Doctor and Jamie, and mentions her debut story, “The Evil of the Daleks” at several points, specifically the fate of her father.

Apart from that there are just the aforementioned name dropping of a half dozen other races from Who history. I’ll also mention that it’s said The Doctor and co had just left Vortis, this is a reference to the book “Twilight of the Gods”, where the Doctor revisited the planet… for some reason. I doubt I’ll get round to that book any time soon…

Overall Thoughts:

The Dark Path isn’t perfect, it sags quite badly in the middle, but as for telling a “villain origin story” for The Master it works well, so well that I got annoyed with Big Finish audios trying to make the earliest Masters out as being very like the Delgado and onwards ones. Still, continuity issues or not, it’s a good story, and well worth reading.