This book was published only a few weeks before the release of my last diversion, The Rosemariners, in the late summer of 2012. This is a peculiar time to find a Second Doctor novel. In fact, it was the first featuring that Doctor to be published in 7 years. Come to think of it, there hasn't been one in the 9 years since, either. (Mr. Men does not count.) For all that the Classic Doctors are well-loved by Big Finish, and all manner of audio plays come out every year, Doctor Who's literary world seems to have lost the vibrancy it had during the Wilderness years, though the revival of the Target range has given me a bit of hope.
Despite that, it feels as if BBC Books made a serious effort here to hire one of the most heavy-duty authors they could, and it pays off. I was a little curious how an author with these kinds of hard sci-fi chops would handle the regular cast, since he had not written for the series before, but honestly the Doctor and his companions are handled by this book with aplomb. The Second Doctor feels like himself rather than having out-of-place tinges of the Seventh like I read in Foreign Devils, and has a lot of wonderful and quite Doctor-ish moments. To highlight a few, I enjoyed his retort to Zoe when she asks if too many T-Mat trips as a kid made Boostrap boss Florian so harsh ("Now that, Zoe, is unscientific, unkind, and rather funny."), what seems to be the first use chronologically of the "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry", and his grief and sympathy for Arkive's plight ("‘So alone. So alone!’ And he lowered his hands from his face. He had been weeping, she saw, those deep blue eyes brimming with tears. ‘The emptiness – to be alone for nearly half the age of the universe…’")
The book also handles Jamie and Zoe deftly, as instead of the sort of generic companion stand-ins that companions are often reduced to in the books, they are both given parts of the situation to relate to that bring out parts of their background. The Wheel of Ice itself is pretty similar to Zoe's own space station, and there are plenty of Scots onboard, which makes Jamie feel at home. They both also end up doing quite a lot, which is refreshing.
The elements inherited from the TV show aren't the only good things here, of course. The original setting and characters all come off pretty well. Baxter does a marvelous job of explicating the genuine wonder and majesty of the Saturn system, of its rings and moons, and his description of the massive storms on the gas giant itself is simply to die for. All the descriptive prose is very good, which helps this place to come alive. It's funny that a real place in our own solar system comes across as being a little more interesting than most of the alien planets we've seen so far!
The Wheel of Ice itself is lovingly rendered, and the idea of a space station stitched together out of derelict rockets and other junk is a charming one. I can almost feel the chill of the ice tunnels of Mnemosyne as they're described. "Mnemosyne" is a clever name for this moon, of course, being the name of a Greek goddess of memory and loss. It suits the Arkive, the ancient AI which is the last remnant of a long-dead civilization.
The side cast is very good. The whole Laws family are a lovely bunch in varying ways. Luis Reyes is a very sweet fellow, as is poor Dr. Omar. For my money, my favorite is the gruff but lovable Glaswegian robot MMAC, while Florian Hart, our main antagonist, is probably the most ho-hum of the bunch. The last confrontation between her and the Doctor is maybe the most drab part of the book, which is quite unfortunate, since usually the Doctor's chinwags with his opponents are the highlights of stories like these.
There are some pretty awesome interludes in this book too, where the perspective moves away from the regular characters. These include a rather deep and tragic look through the eyes of the Arkive, a shocking account of the Blue Dolls becoming conscious, the path of the allohistorical lure through the lives of the Laws family over the decades, and one spectacularly unlucky Iguanodon that gets beaned in the brain by the lure's fall to earth.
This was a challenging read in many ways, being the longest book I've read for this marathon so far, and with some of the densest plotting, to boot. But it was a rewarding one to finish, and certainly a very strong addition to the Who literary universe. If my review hasn't spoiled too much for you, I'd recommend giving it a shot.
The Space Pirates is next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 17 March 2021.)
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