Wonderland [Doctor Who, Diversion 9]

Wonderland by Mark Chadbourn
24 April 2003 

It's hard for me to find a more apt descriptor for this story than "absolutely bonkers". This is 1960s Doctor Who recast as a cross between an acid trip and a Lone Gunmen style paranoid fantasy. Wonderland is a paean for the death of the Summer of Love and the loss of American innocence, complete with a rather gratuitous flashback to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Accordingly, it's a little out of place in the Who canon, as it doesn't feel very British at all. This is reinforced by the abrupt shift to a conspiracy thriller in the latter parts of the book, when it's discovered that at the center of the strange happenings in Haight-Ashbury is an alien creature that can only be seen when you're tripping, which is being experimented on by deep-state agents.

Yeah, it's that sort of book.

Discovering in the latter part of the book that the "Combine" is a real thing, and that it controls the US government, is kind of startling. It's even more startling when the story (and even the Doctor himself) confirm it to be true and play it completely straight. It really doesn't belong in Doctor Who, and feels more like it dropped straight out of The X-Files, which I suppose is appropriate given the country this is set in and its date of publication. But it's the one tonal problem with this book that rattled me out of total immersion, much more so than the proliferation of "mature" subject matter. We're also kept at a remove from the Doctor, Ben and Polly, as the point-of-view character is not one of the regular cast, but a young woman named Summer (or Jessica) who has grown into a cynical old ex-hippy by the time that she's narrating the story from. It is an interesting juxtaposition putting the very 1960s Ben and Polly alongside their American contemporaries, but the resulting contrast exhibits how out of their depth the two of them are in a more gritty and realistic portrayal of the era.

A lot of the negative feedback I see about this book centers on the portrayal of the Doctor, namely his distant nature and lack of engagement with Summer's concerns. He does have a tendency to brush her off whenever she tries to tip him off to something going on, but having watched The Power of the Daleks (and now The Highlanders, as of the time of this writing), I don't think this characterization is necessarily as off the mark as some of the reviews I read suggest. This new Doctor, so far, very rarely tips his hand, even to his best friends, preferring to distract friend and foe alike with a strange and almost clownish performance. It certainly doesn't suit some of his later appearances to be written this way, but unless Jamie's tucked away somewhere in the TARDIS for a very long nap during Wonderland, then it must be set between these two TV serials, when this sort of behavior for the Doctor is to be expected. This isn't to mean that he doesn't care, far from it. In a quiet moment in the story, the Doctor finally breaks character to turn and speak quietly to Summer, who is despairing over the situation they find themselves in.

The Doctor took my hand gently and secretly so the others couldn’t

see. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my travels, it’s that, for all its

horrors, the universe tends towards good. In the middle of a moment, it’s

easy to see darkness, and to give in to the blackest despair. But across

the scope of centuries, the view reveals a path that always encounters

valleys but continues ever higher, that never stops rising.’​

It's a lovely little moment, and you can tell he means it, because when he meets Summer again two regenerations later at the end of the novella, he remembers it and reaffirms his belief, inviting her away from the bleak future she thinks she's destined for, to come on an adventure instead. I think that's the central message of this story; the world can be cruel, and innocence never lasts, but adventure and imagination, such as that offered by the Doctor here, can still offer escape, perhaps even a more lasting and meaningful one than that offered by the psychedelic drugs so central to this story.

That isn't to say that the two are treated as entirely incompatible here. One of the best set pieces in the book is the one where the Doctor casually browses in a shop and points out an interesting bong to Ben and Polly. Later he blends in magnificently at a rather wild and drug-filled party where even Ben and Polly seem to have trouble doing the same. As the foreword remarks, the Doctor is a trip in and of himself, and despite the very staid, BBC sensibility and production of the TV program, there is a very clear throughline to be drawn between this contemporary wave of psychedelia and a magic, mind-expanding adventure across the cosmos.

Wonderland was a gripping read with high quality prose, and I was hooked despite (or because of?) the general insanity of it all. I'm torn between loving it for its mad brilliance and hating it for its tonal dissonance, but whichever way I may lean, I'll certainly never forget it.

The Highlanders is next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 15 May 2020.)