Simon A. Forward

In brief: Don't waste your time with Drift unless you think you would really enjoy a banal X-Files knock-off mixed with a banal soap opera knock-off.

A real shame, because I was looking forward to this book. Again, I've been stupidly found guilty of judging a book by its cover, but we can't help ourselves sometimes, can we? It's a human mistake, one that everyone seems to make from time to time. I was ensnared by the cover art of Drift, believing I would receive a moody or atmospheric piece show more intertwined with a fair amount of sci-fi/horror flair. And what did I get instead, besides a headache? A shitty suburban soap opera mixed in with some 'aliens vs. the military' type bologna that wouldn't even cut it in those low budget made-for-TV movies they show on the Sci-Fi Channel every Saturday. The only thing going for Drift, and the only reason I don't give it a zero outright, is that it's readable, so at least the torment will be over soon enough should you make the grave error of picking this book up.

The plot involves the Doctor and Leela landing in contemporary New Hampshire during an epic Thanksgiving blizzard. The Doctor immediately stumbles into a covert search operation being handled by White Shadow, a vaguely Torchwood-type unit that hunts down alien tech and salvages it for study and possible future use by mankind. In this case, White Shadow is seeking the wreckage from a military jet, the contents of which are also of particular interest to a pair of CIA agents in town and some batshit cultists. The Doctor, still using his credentials as UNIT's scientific adviser, attaches himself to White Shadow and joins in on the investigation, believing the snow storm is much more than just aberrant weather.

This all sounds like a really great set-up, but let me backtrack a little first and discuss all the pointless domestic drama. Before this, we're introduced to the local sheriff, a vanilla bumpkin by the name of Mackenzie. We are also introduced to Mackenzie's girlfriend, the completely frigid and unlikeable Martha, her annoying daughter Amber, and Amber's wayward drunk of a father Curt, who is driving back home to see his little girl on Thanksgiving (with all sorts of Thanksgiving 'presents' to give to Amber, because, you know, Americans exchange gifts on Thanksgiving... huhh???). Domestic drama! Martha doesn't want Curt to come anywhere near their daughter, because he's a bad influence, and Mackenzie has been having thoughts about another woman, his policewoman partner, who later goes missing in the snowstorm. Domestic drama! Oh, and we also discover shortly after that Mackenzie just happens to be the brother of Morgan, White Shadow's leader, which leads to... you guessed it, more domestic drama! Nevermind the fact that I've watched much better daytime soaps before, but this romance novel fodder has absolutely no place in a Who novel. It's not even on the same level as Dark Shadows, which I might be able to accept if it was shoehorned into a Doctor Who story. When the idea for original Doctor Who novels was initially proposed, the famous quip of "stories too broad and deep for the small screen" surely didn't include THIS.

The Doctor spends large chunks of the book on the sidelines, and Leela - poor Leela - may as well not even be listed as a character she gets so little time devoted to her (she's paired off with a Native American psychic named Krystal Owl Eye Wildcat, who essentially replaces Leela in the 'noble savage' role for 95% of the novel). This means that part of the story follows the exploits of the one-dimensional military folk, and the other half of the plot is propelled by the two aforementioned secret agents, Mulder and Scully, I mean... Melody Quartararo and Parker Theroux. Yes, I'm serious. Those are really their names. Simon A. Forward comes across as the anti-Douglas Adams in the name game department. Adams would often come up with silly, irreverent, yet memorable names for his characters. And then there's Forward, who will just annoy you with stupid, highly unlikely character names. Irving Pydych? Michaela Zabala?! Dermot Beard?!?!

The absolute worst thing about Drift, the thing that will give you those little uncontrollable urges to chuck the book across the room, burn it, or run it over with a car, is the horrific attempts at Americanization by the author. As I understand it, Simon A. Forward is from Cornwall, and while Cornwall might very well be the English equivalent of the Deep South, hailing from there does not mean you are automatically an expert on how people live in the States. It's like when an American tries to write something set in the UK without having a clue about the place and they force every single character to say "Cheerio!" and "Pip-pip!" whilst twirling their bowler hats on top of double decker buses and drinking cups of tea. Forward's Little Town, USA features many of the tired backwater stereotypes: everyone drives a truck, everyone owns a gun, everyone swears a lot, everyone drinks Jack Daniels and wears sunglasses and hates the rest of the world. Blah, blah, blah. And the effort to include American vernacular in the dialogue is even more jarring than those stereotypes. I feel the author should have either completely forsaken any attempt to make the dialogue 'realistic' (because the half-American/half-English speech just doesn't work), or set the contemporary story in a setting he was intimately familiar with, because the author's version of modern America comes across as a bastard child of Stephen King novels and CNN.

Dire... even by TV tie-in standards. show less

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3769111.html

I'm greatly enjoying these set of adventures of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart set just before the arrival of the Third Doctor into his life. Here he is sent off to the Aegean Sea to investigate mysterious threats, with his usual crew of assistants (who all get something to do) and an eccentric archaeologist and a Soviet officer who becomes a reluctant ally, along with a ruthless South African baddie. It fairly cracks along and I enjoyed it. Forward show more wrote one of the first Doctor Who books I read this century, before the 2005 reboot, and I've liked his work more often than not; this one's certainly in the "more" category. show less

I bought only four of Telos Books' fifteen Doctor Who novellas during their original run, so I was quite pleased to find this in a Kansas used bookstore. It was decent: the sixth Doctor and Peri land on a mysterious planet, there's an explosion, they get separated and each fall in with a different lot. So, not super-original, but it had some good touches. As well as some predictable ones. The Doctor doesn't always feel right-- he's a little slow on the uptake, not rising to the defense of show more the crab people as quickly as one might want. The crab people being, of course, the coolest part of the book, adaptable soldiers in a war being fought years after it should have ended (see what I mean by predictable?), all with distinct personalities, especially Scrounger. Peri is, as usual, put through a ridiculously over-the-top traumatic experience. One cannot see why she would wish to travel in the TARDIS, and suspects that she should be pretty psychologically damaged as a result of them. Has anything nice ever happened to that girl? show less

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/shellshock.htm

This is a good piece, and if all Doctor Who fiction were of this quality the world would be a better place.

The Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri Brown arrive on a deserted warship on an unspecified planet which might be Earth. They get separated when the ship sinks, and the Doctor finds himself playing the role of mentor to a small group of cyborg crabs and their human friend Ranger, survivors of a vaguely (but sufficiently) described show more horrible war, now marooned on a beach where the mysterious monster Meathook is picking them off one by one. Peri meantime spends most of the book disembodied and trying to regain contact with the Doctor.

The plot jumps between viewpoints and back and forth along its own timeline, and for Scrounger the crab, one of the viewpoint characters, we switch to the present tense. This mimicks the effects of Ranger's shell shock, as a result of which he looks "at the world as through a splintered lens". It's a difficult trick to pull off but it's done effectively. The insane Ranger and non-human Scrounger make effective viewpoint characters.

We gradually build up a picture of Ranger's motivations and his real relationship with the crabs, Meathook, and the disembodied intelligence which takes Peri under its wing. Scrounger is an engaging cyborg whose story ends on a note of triumph. Peri's character also is given some added depth (controversial in fan circles, I understand) which makes her relationship with the Doctor more convincing. I half-recognised elements from China Miéville, Iain M. Banks, and Brian Aldiss, but the combination here is original.

There are a couple of weak points. Because this is Doctor Who fiction, it is a given that for continuity's sake the Doctor and Peri will have survived in more or less one piece at the end, so rather than sympathise with their plight at any stage we tend to wonder how the author will extract them from it. Of course the author can and does compensate by introducing interesting and sympathetic secondary characters such as Ranger and Scrounger who we know are much more expendable.

Also the Doctor of Shell Shock is not very reminiscent of the character played by Colin Baker, forced as he is to be mentor, counsellor and comforter to Ranger and the crabs rather than an unstable zany extrovert. If the point of Doctor Who fiction is to develop the relations between established characters, and explore the nature of the Doctor, then this story cannot be rated a success. On the other hand, if the idea of Doctor Who fiction is to write good sf which has the Doctor and companions as the main characters, then Simon A. Forward can congratulate himself on a job well done.

As with all Telos productions, the book is nicely packaged. There is an introduction by Guy N. Smith, author of horror novels about crabs (which is a bit misleading because the story turns out to be more sf than horror) and the deluxe edition includes a frontispiece by Bob Covington and the autographs of Messrs Covington, Smith and Forward. I still think £10 for a hardback novella (let alone £25 for the deluxe edition) is a bit steep, but these days Telos are far from the only offenders on that point and presumably it's what the market will bear; I guess that waiting for the paperback is not an option in this case. show less