I have to say, this seems like a story that is set at precisely the right point in time. We're now only a few seasons away from our first proper introduction to the diabolical Master, and just one more televised story away from saying goodbye to Victoria. The funny thing is, as always, that it's a post-facto rewrite of the show's history, so no matter how apropos its canonical positioning might be, it's still out of place. And the book was written at such a curious time, too. This was the penultimate Missing Adventure before Virgin lost the Doctor Who license. Did that affect the tone of this novel? It's possible, I guess. The foreword is certainly wistful enough.
If I had to make one serious complaint about this story, it would actually be about Ailla. As a character she's fine, but I don't think that the twist of having her be a Time Lord (a term which, I note, is fastidiously avoided throughout the novel) was the right way to go. Her tragic demise at the Darkheart would almost certainly have been impetus enough to set Koschei down his spiral, and her revival and regeneration rob that demise of any of its impact. I was also a little puzzled that she didn't seem to take Koschei's rejection of her after her regeneration very hard at all. Quite a stiff upper lip on that one...
The setting is an intriguing one. Darkheart (as well as being a fitting name for the last bastion of what's basically the Imperial Remnant from Star Wars) is home to some interesting astronomical phenomenon, and the society existing there is well rendered. I admit, I had my suspicions from the start of the novel that the colony had been transported forward in time, but I was a little bit off, as it turns out that the colonists had been using the eponymous Darkheart to keep themselves alive as pseudo-immortals. Oh well, I was close.
This is kind of a darker version of The Time Meddler in many ways. The Imperials governing Darkheart are clearly a fascist dictatorship, a far cry from Vikings, and I certainly didn't see Peter Butterworth snapping anyone's necks. The book does display a lot of the grit and violence inherent to books of this range, but it's never to a grotesque degree, and there's a good amount of genuinely moving psychological horror here. This is seen most especially in the sequence where the alien members of the Piri Reis' crew are temporally rewritten to become humans. I wonder what became of them after the end of this story? With the Darkheart destroyed, there certainly wouldn't be any way for them to return to normal.
The book holds the Doctor meeting Koschei back somewhat, so accordingly they don't run into each other until the halfway point of the story, and even after that they are separated most of the time. I didn't really notice it too much, and I do feel like Koschei's long slide into losing his grip on empathy is a convincing one, but in hindsight it is a bit of a pity that the Doctor didn't get more segments alongside him. Giving him a "human" companion is a clever play on the usual dynamic, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Also, I most certainly caught the fact that he was goofing off playing Doom on one of the Imperials' computers while waiting for the Darkheart to boot up. I don't think I've ever pictured Roger Delgado doing that before!
The author really leaned on Jamie's Scots identity, which was fun. I mean, the show hardly shies away from it, but it definitely seemed like the opportunity was being taken to show off a grasp of Scots language and cultural mores of the Jacobite era (whether it's research or firsthand; I do see the author's surname). I found it quite fun, personally, but the star of the show here is really Victoria. It's nice being in a prose format, because it's easy to get into the thought processes of the characters, which in this period usually do not come across well on screen. I came to understand Victoria's impending departure pretty well from this. It seems kind of obvious in hindsight. She really only came along to start with because she needed a surrogate family of sorts after her father was murdered. Now that she's grown in the course of the last season, it's clear why she'd want to put all the danger and excitement behind her.
Overall, the prose ranges from amusing ("Oh my, yes, Jamie, it is a big one.") to rather dark ("Surely it was the infinity of death that was most frightening, but equally the infinity of immortal life would be just as fearsome.") Generally, I'd rate it quite highly; the descriptions of locations are especially sumptuous, and the dialog is good.
In the greater scope of the program, it's interesting to think of this as an alternate origin of the Master, whom we won't be meeting properly for a little while yet. Interestingly, the foreword to the book quotes the TV movie: "I’ve wasted all my lives because of you, Doctor..." I thought it an interesting choice, because on reflection, it is really all that the Master does throughout his life, at least in the Classic run of the show. Although he visibly has his own adventures from time to time, no matter what he does, he invariably ends up drawn into the Doctor's orbit as an antagonistic force, like the Darkheart to the Doctor's neutron star. It's the same force that draws him down his Dark Path to villainy at the end of the story, when he eschews his name from the Academy and takes up a title, just like his old friend did. It's kind of like he was fated to become the Master at the close of this book all along. It's a funny old thing, time travel.
Fury from the Deep is next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 10 March 2021.)
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