Here is a book which is somewhat infamous in Who fan circles. While certainly tonally consistent with the other books under the Virgin imprint, it's in the curious position of having no relation to any of their existing ranges, and functions as a "Doctor-lite" sort of story wherein our title character barely features. Instead we follow the ambitious journalist James Stevens (cheekily credited as an author on the cover) who becomes wrapped up in circumstances surrounding the UNIT stories, ending with Day of the Daleks. Rather than the standard narrative style, Who Killed Kennedy is presented to us as a diegetic text, an exposé written in the manner of any number of schlocky conspiracy texts. The resulting effect is quite strange, but if there was ever an era to set this story in, it's this one.
The predominant theme of the work seems to be that of lost innocence, and of a world gone wrong in a moment of senseless terror. It's a bit on-the-nose how the story mentions that James spent his 18th birthday working as a junior journalist because it coincided with the JFK assassination, and never got to celebrate becoming an adult. By the timeframe of the story proper, he's become a cynic buried so deep in his work that he doesn't notice his marriage falling apart. The story actually does very little to endear the man to the reader for the longest time, but his inevitable breakdown leads him eventually in a more likable direction, even if he is ultimately a tragic character. It's his cynicism and willingness to assume the worst about the world that lands him in his predicament; if he wasn't so convinced that UNIT was up to no good, and so interested in his own self-promotion, most of the terrible things that happen to him probably wouldn't have happened. It's telling that he's chastened when he realizes toward the end that UNIT and the Doctor have been saving the world all this time.
The trauma of the JFK assassination on a certain generation is also something that was touched upon in Wonderland, though not in as much depth as we see here. Although James was not present at the event (as a teen, anyway...) as Summer was in that book, it's clear that the passing of Camelot left him with a huge chip on his shoulder and a lifelong fascination with the death of Kennedy. It's fitting that his adult life both begins and ends with this historical event, given that the book makes the rather insane decision of having an older James be the one who pulled the trigger. I don't mean "insane" in a derogatory sense, of course; it's a clever idea, but audacious in the extreme considering the subject. No longer content with merely toying with the mythology of Doctor Who, here the licensed books move on to toying with the icons of Western civilization at large with the same carefree ease.
Of course, here the mythology of the series and the real mythology being played with are one and the same. Doctor Who's debut was infamously overshadowed by the JFK assassination, and ever since, its iconography has haunted the series - from The Deadly Assassin, to this book, to Rose. It just can't get away! It's like some sort of original sin which just cannot be excised. So why is this original sin juxtaposed so directly to the earthbound stories of early Doctor Who? It's impossible to miss this other strand within the novel, one that seems to shine a spotlight on a great big blind spot of the program, namely the common failure to account for the consequences of the Doctor's adventures.
The big example here is obviously Dodo. Her characterization through the novel is mostly quite charming, but nobody remembers that. This book is most infamous for her attempted sexual assault, her pregnancy, and her death. Needless to say, these are all very shocking. Quite honestly, I could have done without any or all of these. Poor Dodo had a bad enough time on televised Who without needing to be put through the wringer here too! But it draws attention to the carelessness of the way she was written out of the show. Although the Doctor tells us in this book that he still feels responsible for her, it's hard to see how when she seems to have been left to fend for herself for all those years and dies an ignominious death. Then later on, there's a shocking moment where the Third Doctor encourages James to take revenge for Dodo's death! Since when urging people to take vengeance a part of the Doctor's M.O.?
As wrong as it all is, there's a kernel of truth behind the implicit criticism here, that when the smoke clears, the Doctor's responsibility seems to be at an end. It's an inevitable consequence of the adventure serial that the program still sort of is at this point, but it's still alarming when it's highlighted. Stray poachers, hapless UNIT soldiers, and ooh-arring homeless people seem to get casually offed with a regularity that's more startling now than it was in the Troughton years, by virtue of the fact that we're now in a context we understand. When a bunch of people get fried by Cybermen on a space station in the future, it's sad, but there's no size to it. When someone recognizably from our epoch of history meets the same fate, it has a different resonance.
I won't call this a moral failing or anything; it's perfectly understandable that the show doesn't want to dwell on the corpses when the adventure is over. So it mostly falls to diversions like this one to highlight the blind spots and make us think of the era differently. As more of a positive, it also highlights what's good about it, namely the densely connected world that is quickly building up around the Doctor during his stay on Earth, and the generally more mature tone of stories. That's a lot to celebrate, no matter what its shortcomings may be.
"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Well, that was a harrowing series of philosophical utterings that I just typed. How about something more fun? Like The Curse of Peladon?
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 1 April 2021.)
No comments:
Post a Comment