Doctor Who Book Review: Dreams of Empire · 12:48am Apr 9th, 2014
Now for the second book in the 50th anniversary collection. Dreams of Empire by Justin Richards, circa 1997. I gotta say, I was really looking forward to reading this one--the Second Doctor's the one that really got hit hard by the whole "missing episode" thing, so I kinda have a thing for anything regarding him.
The last book was Starship Troopers meets Agatha Christie, this one was more Ceasar Augustus (or, rather, a 'what-if' scenario of him getting ousted before becoming emperor) and Man in the Iron Mask. In space. Some years after the great Haddron Republic suffered a great civil war, the instigator of the war, Kesar (yeah, I know, subtle) and his supporters are in a comfortable but secure meteor prison--Kesar himself in a Darth Vader-ish helmet due to an assassination attempt shortly after the war. On the day that the current Haddron rule and his former best friend Trayx is coming to make a visit, a murder happens in the prison. A murder which may give way to something that could topple the still-weakened Republic.
So, naturally, the Doctor and his companions, Jamie and Victoria, stumble right on in.
Now, I mentioned in the last review that the Doctor didn't come off as the main character, that he was just sort of in the background much of the time, at least until the endgame. This time, however, by virtue of being the Second Doctor, he is both much more involved and much more entertaining than he was in the previous book. Though it takes a chapter plus a few pages for him to show up--in order to set up the situation of Haddron--but once he stumbles on into the plot, he's there to stay. This book does an excellent job of establishing the Second Doctor's clownish persona. He enters the story sitting on a plateful of sandwiches and his last line is wondering who left a half eaten sandwich on the control console (he did, natch). At one point, he unlocks a door with his new sonic screwdriver--after having to adjust it multiple times, because it doesn't quite work yet. And so on. Then comes those instances of brilliance that makes the Doctor the Doctor. And when those roll out, you realize he's been watching an waiting the whole time. Even when being brilliant, he usually does something silly to undermine himself, until he closes the noose around the bad guy's neck.
In contrast, Jamie and Victoria are much less helpful--Jamie is just too ignorant of the current culture and technology and Victoria... well, she can scream. Jamie at least gets some awesome moments when the inevitable war does break out, though.
All around, this story felt much more like a Doctor Who story. There was darkness and violence, of course, but that was far from the point here, compared to the previous book. While in the previous book the Doctor was just dragged along by the plot almost unwillingly and mostly messed things up just by existing, here the Doctor worms his way into the heart of the story and stays there, making it very clear that he's the one that saves the day. He and Trayx bond over their mutual respect for the others' intelligence and chess. Chess is a big motif here.
This story is more subdued, more political than the last, but when things get moving, they get moving hard, and the Doctor just brilliantly stumbles his way through the whole thing. 8/10
While Christopher Eccleston is my favorite Doctor, Patrick Troughton is my favorite classic Doctor.
Troughton was actually my first Doctor, though I didn't know it until years later when I started watching the classic episodes in the break between season 6 and 7. My first episode was about halfway through War Games, so I got the tail end of Troughton's run, watched a few more episodes of the show, then forgot about Doctor Who until Series 2 of New Who several years later.