THE DOCTOR WHO RATINGS GUIDE: BY FANS, FOR FANS
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Synopsis: Aeons ago, a group of young Time Lords tried to
understand the very nature of the Celestial Toymaker. It went horribly
wrong. One of those Time Lords eventually absconded from Gallifrey and
became a wanderer in the fourth and fifth dimensions... but the Toymaker
exists there too, watching and waiting.
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Reviews
A Review by Graeme Burk
18/11/99
It was a strange sight to say the least: Two gentlemen, sitting on a
Greyhound bus, reading the exact same book, pausing frequently to make
derisive remarks. Ratings Guide editor Robert Smith? and myself
both read Divided Loyalties during our 13 hour bus ride to Boston.
We began just outside of Buffalo, and finished it just as we came onto the
Massachusets Turnpike -- it sustained us the entire 7 hour drive through
New York State. We mostly kept up with each other, but by the end I was a
chapter ahead of Robert.
In a private mailing list I'm on and on rec.arts.drwho, Divided Loyalties is
something of a poster child for all that's bad in Doctor Who
fiction. Indeed several of my friends and colleagues have all given it 0
out of 10. I went into reading it with a tremendous amount of anti-hype,
if you will. What did I find when I read it?
It's bad. But not as bad as everyone is making it out to be.
Yes, it's pretty damn dire. It has excereably-written phrases (which
blame needs to be shared practically anyone with the word "editor" in
their title, including consulting editor, commissioning editor, editorial
assistant and copy editor -- a humble proofreader on contract should have
deleted or radically restructured "the levers and lights blinking
like an epilectic disco" line. It's a shameful indictment that this book
was basically sent out "as is"). It shamefully wallows in continuity like
a pig in its own feces. It gives a hugely unfavourable and grossly
out-of-whack portrayal of the Doctor and companion team, which I feel is
inexcusable.
It's basically terrible.
But is it worthy of the the worst book in the line, zero out of ten,
Gary Russell-is-the-harbinger-of-the-apocalypse-of-Doctor-Who
treatment I've found it getting from some fans?
First of all, I think there has been worse novels published this year
alone. All the EDAs between Revolution Man and Autumn Mist are excerable, self-indulgent, badly
plotted, badly written affairs which demonstrate equal amounts of hackwork
and continuity fecal-wallowing (only internal to the novels instead of
external to the TV series). I was able to read Divided
Loyalties from cover to cover-- I couldn't do that for Dominion or Deep Blue, both of
whom had far, far worse writing-- the only difference was, you couldn't as
easily point and laugh at individual passages, like "the levers and lights
blinking like an epilectic disco" or "She would prove herself a courageous
daughter of Hull." In spite of its encumberances, Divided Loyalties
still reads infinitely better, and clearer, than any novel by David
McIntee.
Lets talk about the continuity fanwank. It's prodigious, and it's
horrible-- no argument, there-- but worst-ever? Not a chance. The "Young
Doctor Who" sequence is bad-- and basically boils down to the Doctor and
his pals and gals encountering a mishap while joyriding-- but the Hartnell
stuff in Lungbarrow is equally risible in its
transparency and level of useless minutae. The story itself at least tries
to occasionally do things-- I didn't say they were particularly
successful, but he does make the effort-- with the Celestial Toymaker, as
opposed to any Terrance Dicks sequel which just performs bus tours of the
previous stories settings.
And as for the characters. I can't really defend them, but they do
improve a bit at the end, which is something no one has bothered to say.
Don't get me wrong. This is a dreadful book. I like Gary
Russell's books, and I hated this one intensely. But I don't think it's
that terrible. It's not a zero. Not if I can actually read it
without difficulty. And certainly not when there's been at least 6 other
novels equally as bad released in the same year-- four of them at least
claiming to be original at the outset. At least Gary admits he's a hack.
Part of me thinks this book is only getting slagged off for political
reasons, rather in the same way the entire Pertwee era received a 0/10
from a Popular NA Author whom shall remain nameless. I think people are
offended by the fact that DL is essentially a pulp book.
Furthermore, because Gary Russell is tied to Big Finish, people find
themselves yet again disgruntled by who is perceived to "own" the vision
of Doctor Who; if this was written by Gary Russell the hack writer
of Legacy, as opposed to Gary Russell, the current
producer of the closest thing we have to dramatic, non-book Doctor
Who, I think we'd have a very different response. We book lovers get
rattled when we think that others are encroaching on the good work the
books are doing and essentially ignorning them, rather in the same way
many NA fans became indignant when Gary Gillat killed off Ace in the DWM
comic strip.
Personally, I think the thing that bugs me most about this novel is
the occasional glimmerings that Gary Russell is just give us a
tacky-but-enjoyable novel like Legacy, which fade
about a page later. Similarly, there are points where I liked the attempt
to use the Celestial Toymaker too, but they quickly fade when all of a
sudden we're getting the entire cosmology of Doctor Who shovelled
into a couple of paragraphs.
This is a terrible book. It's a 3/10 book-- which puts it under
the worst book score I've given this year thus far (4/10, to Unnatural History), but only because I deducted an
extra point because the editors need to be penalised for how bad this book
is.
At the same time, it should be noted that 3 may not be a zero, but
it's pretty damned close.
A Review in the voice of Rowan Atkinson by John Seavey
20/11/99
Responding to Graeme's review here -- I'm sorry, but I'm going to have
to disagree with you. It's exactly that bad. It's precisely that bad. My
cup runneth over with badness. It's a whole bag of bad here. It's a
pre-emptive bad. It's bad from beginning to end, not sparing a moment to
cease badness. It's superlatively bad. It takes previously bad novels, and
shoves them up the ass and spits them out without apparent effort. It's
the 'bad' by which all other bad is judged. And I say this without any
malice towards Mr. Russell, whom I'm certain plays with cute fluffy
animals just as well as the next person. But this is bad. It's easily
surpassing Dominion in its badness; Dominion was simply a mediocre, forgettable novel, with
plodding prose and a slow plot. It beats out Autumn
Mist in its badness; admittedly, Autumn Mist was
quite, quite bad, with a fanwanky "I want to write a fantasy novel, but
can't" feel to it; and, OK, Deep Blue reached, and
reached hard to attain the level of badness extant in Divided
Loyalties, and nearly succeeded. But Divided Loyalties dug
deep, and had the strength to sustain its badness long after Deep Blue was but a faint scent on the water. Because it
wasn't enough that it was bad, it was bad and carved out a major chunk of
Doctor Who continuity to call its own. I mean, Deep Blue was bad, but it was inconsequential. We can
all say, "OK, Deep Blue happened, but if it hadn't,
things would be much the same, so we can all just let it die." But NO.
Gary had to try to sculpt the past of Gallifrey together from all of its
disparate elements, like a blind man adding arms to the Venus De Milo.
He's like Bloody Stupid Johnson from the Discworld--not just bad, but
ambitious...the kind of man who would drag 2000 tons of rock in front of a
window "because it would drive me mad to have to look at grass and trees
all day long". He reaches further than anyone else ever had, and as such,
the shadowy gap between his ambitions and his reality is that much more
apparent. In short--it's not much worse than all of the other bad novels,
but because it tries to be so much better, we hate it that much more.
A Review by Michael Hickerson
22/11/99
I've enjoyed Gary Russell's Who-related offerings for
years--even going back to the time when he served as the chief reviewer
for Doctor Who Magazine. His books have always been interested in
bringing back less-developed villians and characters and giving them a bit
of depth, background and updating. For the most part, he's been
successful and has created some enjoyable books.
That trends continues with his latest offering, Divided
Loyalties.
Russell's latest offering takes place in the early goings of the 5th
Doctor era and the reader is quickly able to tell that Mr. Russell has an
afinity for the era. In an era that was swamped with TARDIS companions,
Russell does something few of the television writers were able to do--give
each character something interesting and relevant to the plot to do
without it seeming forced or making the character one-dimesional.
Russell even goes so far as to try and explain why Adric is, at times,
wishy-washy as to which side of a conflict he's on. (No small feat
there).
As he's done with such previous efforts as the Scales
of Injustice, Russell gives the supporting cast of an era a bit of
depth--depth that directly impacts the novel. Russell has each of the
three companions questioning their role in the TARDIS, their relationship
with the Doctor and the rest of the crew, their reactions to each other
(Adric's self-image is hysterical at times--he can't understand why the
crew doesn't love him and how his attempts to be one of them can fall so
flat on their face) and the consequences of leaving their lives behind to
travel with the Doctor. It's fascinating to read, especially as its
revealed late in the book why these issues are brought up and how they
affect the outcome of the novel.
The other major success of the book is the Doctor--both in this fifth
incaranation and in an early incarantion back at the Acadamy on Gallifrey.
We see how the sins of the Doctor's past catch up with him and get a large
portion of continuity in the second section of the book. It's interesting
and Russell thankfully avoids the pratful of having the story take place
too much in the past and, thus, lose the driving narrative of his novel.
Also, we see an interesting take on the fifth Doctor--one that comes out
of the time and place in which the novel is set. It's early enough in the
era that the new Doctor is still figuring out his place and identity but
enough in that he's not too niave. We also see a bit of the dark side of
the fifth Doctor begin to emerge.
It makes for a fascinating novel...
Add to all this the Celestial Toymaker, who gets the lion's share of
development--into this past, present and future. To say too much would be
to reveal some of the joys of the late stages of the book (and even the
early ones at that!) and would ruin some of the fun. Let me just say that
it fits together fairly well and doesn't directly contradict much in the
TV show. It also tries to tie in the lost episode, The Nightmare
Fair with good success.
The only drawback about Dividied Loyalties is the cliched
situation of a remote Earth outpost facing unknown danger. The characters
on the space station are poorly drawn and end up being little more than
one-dimensional military characters for the Doctor to interact with while
things are happening to the TARDIS crew. There should have been a
stronger way to use these characters in the overall scheme of the story
and it's the only really major drawback about Russell's latest offering.
However, I can tell you that if you like Gary Russell books, this
one's for you. If you've never read his stuff, this is a good one to
start with.
All in all, an enjoyable Doctor Who effort.
A Review by Finn Clark
9/1/00
This was no ordinary Gary Russell novel. We thought we were prepared,
but no human mind could have comprehended the full measure of the horror.
How could we have known? We live on a placid island of ignorance in the
midst of black seas of fanwank, that we were not meant to explore. Some
day the accumulated weight of fan speculation will open up such terrifying
vistas of anal retention that we shall either go mad from the revelation,
or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
There are books too terrible for the Doctor Who fan to read.
Such tomes include the dread Necronomicon by the mad arab Abdul ad-Azrad,
Cultes des Goules by the Comte d'Erlette and Unausprechlichen Kulten by
von Juntz. But now there is another, kept safely under lock and key by
trained gorillas at Miskatonic University. It is Gary Russell's
Divided Loyalties.
Okay, okay. Enough with the Lovecraft rip-offs (but if only).
Divided Loyalties is by turns monumentally irritating and lots
of breezy fun. It could only have been written by Gary Russell, but
sometimes it seems like a very cruel parody going almost too far to be
believed. The Russell tendencies are all present and correct, blown up to
gargantuan proportions. Let's start with the fanwank.
Bloody hell, there's a lot of it. Great undigested gobbets of
continuity are spewed up in our faces, albeit sometimes chewed up a bit.
Reactions to this will vary. Do you live for endless references to
televised stories, books, comics, Audio Visuals stories et al? Do you
enjoy clip shows on TV? If you've suffered twenty years of insomnia
because you didn't know Tegan's middle name, this is the book for you.
If nothing else, you could try sending yourself to sleep by counting the
continuity references (though it would probably be quicker trying to count
the TV shows which aren't referenced).
Oh, I'm being mean. There's actually a lot of fun to be had in that
kind of thing, if you have an open mind and are among consenting adults.
Yes, it pushes one's Whoish buttons to squeal in recognition of this or
that old story. If nothing else, it's a sort of crutch for the
imagination. Much of Divided Loyalties will play inside your
eyeballs in a sequence of remembered images.
However it's also a pain in the arse. This book had me swearing out
loud. Every so often a nugget of fanwank would slip its needles under my
fingernails and I'd utter "buggeroff buggeroff buggeroff" or "fucking
hell". Such obscenities were particularly common during the middle
section, popularly dubbed Gallifrey Hills 90210. Is it epic? Is it
awe-inspiring? Or is it just too banal for words? There's stuff in there
which I just don't want to know.
I could go on. To pick one random irritation, why the hell should the
Traken Union only contain five or six planets? I'd always assumed it was
an awesome federation that had dominated hundreds of star systems for
uncounted millennia. Wasn't it also Gary in Legacy
who decided to make Galaxy Five just a little terrorist organisation and
not a galaxy at all? What's the big deal about making everything
small?
But in a way, all this is justified. Divided Loyalties is a
book about the past. The Toymaker, the Doctor and even his companions
have their past lives raked over. Old wounds are opened, old loyalties
tested against new. If you can't go apeshit with fanwank in a book like
this, when could you?
And it's not just thematically relevant, but it also gives us the
book's best elements. Gary's strengths have generally been in taking past
Whoish elements and exploiting them for his own use, as with Liz
Shaw in Scales of Injustice and the Colin-and-Bonnie
team in Business Unusual. Adric, Nyssa and Tegan are
companions who have all drawn criticism in the past, but their portrayals
here are the strongest bit of the book.
Admittedly their characterisations here are so broad as to be
pisstakes, but at least they're full of energy. These are caricatures
rather than portraits, maliciously exaggerated and hilarious to read
about. Some of this is laugh-out-loud stuff. Sometimes it even manages a
subtle new perspective that makes you stop and think for a moment.
If you like Adric, Nyssa and Tegan you'll enjoy this... and if you
hate them, you'll enjoy it even more!
About the original characters... well, I suppose there must be some.
I can't remember who they were offhand. Some guys on a spaceship, I
think. Nothing terribly memorable. The Toymaker's up to something bad,
but that didn't imprint itself on my memory either.
In summary, this is probably a much better book than I've painted it.
Divided Loyalties pissed me off magnificently, pressing all my
wrong buttons, and this review is no doubt unfairly biased. There are a
lot of Gary Russell fans out there and this book has been well received in
many quarters. Besides, he's now in charge of the Big Finish audios (all
hail!) and deserves far better than to have me being rude about his books
again.
It's ambitious (which is good) although backward-looking (which isn't
necessarily bad). But if you want to read a good Celestial Toymaker
story, personally I'd point you in the direction of Endgame (DWM 244-247).
The Final Test by Jason A. Miller
5/5/00
Reading the first four reviews of Gary Russell's Divided
Loyalties is a bit like playing that old Sesame Street game.
Three of these things belong together. One of these things is not like
the other. We have above us four reviews, all penned by erudite
contributors to this site. One of them is very polite, mildly
deferential, and a bit courteous. The other three are, well...
self-explanatory. It is, unfortunately, not the place of this review to
even the scales.
What a woefully-written book that was, wasn't it? Divided
Loyalties went off on so many wrong tangents and got lost in so many
unfortunate turns of phrase that it's hard to tell just what the final
product was supposed to look like. This brings us to the first positive
comment of this review: The book is made up of short, quick sequences and
chapters, none lingering long enough individually to be odious. However,
taken in the aggregrate, at the shorter-than-usual-for-the-BBC book length
of 249 pages, all those sequences add up into something more sinister.
Among those who liked Divided Loyalties, the buzzwords seem to
be, "It's like a Terrance Dicks" book. But it isn't. Superficially, yes
-- it ties in to previous and popular stories, explores Gallifreyan
mythology, and is made up of numerous short chapters and scenes. But
while Dicks' novels resurrect the past, they don't, by and large, try to
explain the past. Make no mistake, new stories are being told -- perhaps
with only 63% original material, but they are new.
Perhaps Gary Russell's biggest failing here is that he tries to explain
too much. We have the Celestial Toymaker, seen over a period of four
weeks, thirty-five years ago; perhaps only because Michael Gough is still
a productive, in-demand actor that the Toymaker is also still in demand.
But Russell explains the entirety of the Toymaker's origin -- so he stands
around delivering exposition, not doing anything for literally the book's
middle 200 pages. Russell redefines the role of the Black and White
Guardian (there's now a council of 6). There's a lot of Lovecraftian
name-dropping. For heaven's sake, he even gives an origin to the boxy
robot (seen on the book's back cover in an ill-disguised screen capture
from the original story). Does it add anything to our appreciation of the
DW Universe that this robot came from a planet called Kakkena? Why didn't
the robot do anything new in this novel?
This same eye for inappropriate detail is also turned toward the
companions. I agree with Michael Hickerson above -- it's an achievement
that each of the three TV companions is here given something to do.
There is the sense that Gary wants to round everyone out. It's just that,
again, we perhaps learn too much -- we meet Adric's parents, learn Tegan's
middle name, and find out who Nyssa slept with before leaving Traken (all
right, it was a teddy bear. Called BeeBee.). We learn about Alzarian
body chemistry, and just why Adric was so smelly (for those of you whose
VHS cassette of Full Circle came with the
scratch-n-sniff sticker set). The lone appreciated element here is
Tegan's family tree -- we met more of Tegan's relatives on Doctor
Who than those of any other companion, so it was nice to feel that
they all tied together somehow. We get lost for pages at a time in their
internal dreamscapes -- shuttling back and forth between there and reality
without much logical explanation.
Without giving more than token mention to the mind-numbingly silly
"Time Lord Kids" sequence in the middle (which ran about 30 pages too long
and encompassed too much mythology for a treatment so superficial), let's
make one final comparison. The back-cover blurb of any Virgin New
Adventure would always describe accurately the first 40 pages of its
novel. Anything beyond page 40 was left up to plot twist and authorial
invention. But on the back of Divided Loyalties, all the terms of
the back-cover blurb aren't met until just shy of page 200. Had I been
with the Toymaker while reading this book, I could have asked him to state
"GO FROM PAGE 200!", and skipped the beginning, relying only on the blurb.
Without all that weight, the conclusion may have seemed less derivative.
It may have made more sense. Even the return of the biggest DW
cliche ever -- the Doctor lives because a one-dimensional tertiary
character engages in an act of pointless self-sacrifice -- may not have
grated, liberated from all the book's earlier cliches.
There are many things I wanted to learn about the Doctor's childhood,
and about the Celestial Toymaker (for indeed, Toymaker is a marvelous story). It's just that this was
not the right vehicle. When Gary Russell says in his postscript that he
wanted to "discover" more about the Toymaker, one may be forgiven for
getting the impression than he wanted to "create" the Toymaker -- and one
day be the answer to the trivia question in The Sixth Doctor Who Quiz
Book, "From which planet did the Toymaker's Magic Robot come?". I only
wish the book's other details -- prose, internal logic, characters -- had
been so meticulously laid out.
FTRCODW by Robert Smith?
13/3/00
Everything you've heard about this classic is true - and more. It
encompasses everything that's truly, truly awful about Doctor Who
fiction... and does so in a way that's a joy to read from start to finish.
Kitschy and trashy in all the best ways.
It's long been a personal tenet of mine that Doctor Who can
survive being bad, but it can't survive being boring. Gary Russell's last
novel was the mind-meltingly dull Placebo Effect,
where the only mild relief to be had was the hysterical so-bad-it's-funny
religious 'debate' at the centre of it. With Divided Loyalties,
he's taken that central idea and turned it into a novel.
Make no mistake, this is a terrible book. Words cannot adequately
describe how bad this is. I've read some pretty bad fan fiction in my
time, but this surpasses even that. The Eight Doctors
was bad, but in a childlike and terribly naive way. The
Pit was bad because it aimed too high and fell on its face. The
original novels of Barry Letts combined appalling writing with idiotic
plot points. Divided Loyalties sweeps all of those aside without
even trying. It takes everything wrong with those books, and incorporates
them without even breaking a sweat. This is an awful book.
Yet, that really doesn't seem to matter. I loved it anyway. Every page
gave up a fresh horror, so much so that after a while I stopped shuddering
in disbelief and just went with a flow. And seen with those eyes, the book
works a treat. It's tacky fun, like bad seventies art. It's fan-fiction
taken to its illogical extreme.
But it positively flew by! I like that. Don't worry about
characterisation, or plot, or consistency -- this book is clear proof that
these things really aren't that important. A speedy read can save even the
most lifeless book... yet DL is more akin to a comedy villain who
just won't stay dead. Every time you think you've reached the absolute
nadir of the book, the next few pages reveal new depths of badness. The
words "so bad it's good" don't even begin to summarise it.
To list the faults of this book would be a novel in itself. Indeed, it
essentially is. The regulars are terrible, squabbling and unlikable the
whole way through. Adric's body odour is a subject I thought the novels
would simply have the good taste to avoid: nope, it's here along with
everything else.
We have flashbacks galore and every second one appears to be to The Keeper of Traken for some reason. We've got
ludicrous and nonsensical backstories for more characters than we can
sensibly grasp. We've got an attempt to tie into The
Nightmare Fair that manages to destroy the central revelation of that
book by having the Doctor mention it in passing no less than three times.
"Whatever phantom zone she had found herself in, she would conduct
herself with all the strength of a true daughter of Hull." Bwahahaha!
On page 83, Adric's keen analytical mind is carefully and logically
examined in novel form, when his brilliant scheme for getting back to
Alzarius involves... reversing the CVE coordinates! I swear, I couldn't
make this stuff up if I tried.
The Young Doctor Who segment has to be seen to be believed. And even
then, I'm still in awe. The Doctor in these flashbacks isn't played by
William Hartnell. Oh no. He's played by Peter Davison in a bad wig,
hamming it up, like a flashback episode of The Golden Girls.
We've got yet another character named Townsend, partly to remind us
this is a Gary Russell book (I half expect there to be a different
Townsend in every Big Finish audio production), partly to tie into Deadfall, just in case the three billion other stories
this book references aren't enough.
This isn't a Past Doctor Adventure, it's a Target novelisation of A History of the Universe. The Big Fish has outdone
himself with this book. It's FTRCODW, but it's doing it shamelessly. It's
worth every cent I paid for it -- although to be fair, I should mention
that it was a birthday present.
Divided Loyalties is, despite every intention to the contrary,
not the worst Doctor Who book ever published. Unashamed hackwork,
yes. Appalling in every measurable way, yes. But it's never boring and I
have the sneaking suspicion that it will age like vintage late-seventies
Who: in years to come it'll acquire a cult following for its
pantomime-like awfulness. Sign me up now for a lifetime membership.
Provided Novelties by Richard Salter
9/5/00
Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
Most amusing things about Divided Loyalties from most
amusing to least most-amusing:
- The Afterword, in which the existence of this exercise in fanwanking
is justified. The Toymaker, apparently, is much less charming and elegant
in The Nightmare Fair than in his first TV
appearance, so this entire novel is meant to explain this important piece
of DW canon even though most people had put the change down to
crummy writing (or just didn't care).
- The way there's absolutely no character growth until right at the
end, where we're told that each character feels he or she has 'really
changed' as a result of the events in this book. There's something wrong
with a novel that has to tell you characters have changed and in what way.
- An astonishing cast of cardboard extras, some of whom die near the
end without any affect whatsoever on the other cardboard extras. "We'll
mourn for them later," says one of cast of his dead colleagues. He
doesn't then add, "I can fit that in Tuesday," but he should.
- The Young Doctor and his posse of future Gallifreyan villains. So all
the Doctor's childhood friends turn out to be evil. I'd be worried if I
were him.
- Tegan being told that the Observer could unthread her air hostess
uniform from three hundred miles away or somesuch.
- A plot that has the Doctor in a white realm (again) where anything is
possible (again) against a malevolent evil (again) who refuses to just
kill the Doctor and his friends and instead must build intricate and
pointless games for them to play (again).
- Billions upon billions of unnecessary continuity references,
approximately twenty five billion per page.
- The where-are-they-now section right at the end.
- The Tegan subplot that adds nothing.
- Lots of recaps of TV stories we already know well.
- The identity of the Observer.
And the least most-amusing thing about Divided Loyalties:
I'm afraid I can find very little that's positive to say about this; I
can only imagine it was written in a hurry. It's not boring though, and
I have to admit it was entertaining after a fashion.
A Divided Loyalties Confession by Judi Grant
4/3/00
Well...
... if you just read one word after the other; if you don't think about
it for one second, if you don't remember episode plots; if you think about
some of the worst, nonsensical, badly acted, scenery wobbling episodes; if
you skip over the Young Timelords thing, and the last 20% of the book...
... Divided Loyalties was quite enjoyable in a backward sort of
way. It took me back to DW at its campy worst. My impression is
that DL was not meant to be taken seriously; I certainly didn't.
In fact, it reads like a send-up, it's so terrible. This is more than I
can say for some other travesties passed off as serious science fiction.
4/10, for delightfully deliberate cheesiness.
PS: I didn't pay for the book either :)
A Review by Steve Traylen
11/2/01
Being a year or so behind everyone else I've finally got to this.
It's bad. I mean it is just so full of shit that I don't know where to
start. I'm still in shock I think. I mean I knew what was coming, I had
read the reviews but I still nearly screamed on the bus when I read about
Adrics BO. I'm pretty sure that every single story was referenced at some
point, usually with some dire retcon. I can remember nothing about the
original characters ecept they were from a space ship and the Doctor was
female and German. Characters get introduced and then diappear for no
reason, the MP from the start the Daughter from Hull?
Then just when you don't think it can get any worse we have the Young
Doctor Chronicles. So every famous Gallifreyan was in the Deca, the
Doctors gang? Good job there wasn't just 6 of them, they could have been
the Sexa.
Anyway on top of all that I would like to say it is a travesty to steal
the songs and lyrics from the mighty OMD for your chapter titles too.
A Review by Eva Palmerton
1/6/01
I wasn't going to review this, but I doubt the nightmares will stop
until I express my true feelings... :)
This was (as everyone warned me, I know) one of the most painful
reading experiences of my life. Thankfully, I owe part of that to
laughter pains, which is the only reason I didn't give the book
0/10.
Where to begin... first by saying that I don't want to know how long it
took for the friction burns to heal, talk about fanwank! He gave
absolutely everything and everyone a backstory, even giving a name to
Nyssa's teddy bear?! How ridiculous can we get?! Every Tegan thought
process (or nearly every one) was a continuity reference. Hell, half of
the book consisted of continuity references!
But enough on that... let's examine the merits of the story... er,
let's examine the story. There did seem to be a coherent plot,
I'll grant that. It was even a quite simple plot, probably could have
been executed quite well as something novella length or shorter (refrain
from obvious "it never should have been written" jokes).
Which means that the vast majority of the book was nothing but
spacefiller. How else can one explain what inspired Russell to liken
anything to an "epileptic disco"? What on Earth is an
"epileptic disco"?! And why oh why did anyone want to know what Adric
smells like? There are better ways to reach your wordcount than creating
terrible similes and grossing out your audience. And Russell found a good
one... three Nyssa dream segments started with the exact same two
paragraphs. That's brilliant, I say! Great way to reach 80,000!
To the credit of the author, I must say that the young Doctor on
Gallifrey segment was incredibly funny! Oh wait, it wasn't meant to be?
That was the bit intended to set up the serious moral dilemma for the
Doctor? Oh well... live and learn, I guess...
In summary, I think that if the premise of this book had been handed
over to an author who has the ability to perform an action beginning with
the letter "w" other than the action we saw performed by Mr. Russell, it
may well have been a decent story.
It made me laugh hysterically at several points, so I have to give it
merit for that. 1/10
I feel better now... sanity regained...
A Review by Terrence Keenan
9/4/02
A one word review?
(Thinks hard)
Um, got it now....
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
Longer review:
Gary Russell has achieved something special. He has created the
DW book equivalent of Plan 9 From Outer Space. There are some
horrors you have to experience for yourself: watching a Buffy the Vampire
Slayer episode or Stop or My Mom Will Shoot, or reading anything by the
OrmanBlum.
Divided Loyalties is just such a horror. I had read some pretty
harsh reviews, however, like root canal, or giving birth, some painful
experiences must be gone through to truly understand.
Um, we get a whole bunch of very hammy amateur actors from the local
playhouse running around doing a Doctor Who skit for their friends.
That is the extent of characterization for Divided Loyalties. There
is a plot, of sorts, but the plot would only encompass about fifteen
pages.
But this book is neither about plot or character.
It's about continuity. And we get enough to fill the Marinaras
Trench... twice. Almost every book and TV episode got namechecked,
ret-conned and explained. I found myself swearing and rolling my eyes
about every five seconds.
However, the real treat is in the appalling hackwork of the writing:
"Its flashing lights, little levers and computer screens were all blinking
out of time with each other like an epileptic disco."
TEE-HEE...MMMPH..(SNICKER) "Whatever phantom zone she found herself in,
she would conduct herself with all the strength of a true daughter of
Hull." BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
And then there's the Gallifrey Hills 90210 segment, which special
dishonor must be given to. Um, picture Peter Davison imitating Richard
Hurndall doing William Hartnell, and you have the general idea of how
atrocious it is.
I could go on, but one must experience the following for themselves:
Adric's BO, Nyssa's teddy bear, Tegan's conversion to Judaism, the "where
are they now" chapter, the past story summaries in the middle of the
climax, etc.
The only good point is that it's a fast read. You easily get caught up
in how god-awful this book is and three hours later it's over. The
psychological damage might take longer.
A Review by John Miller
15/10/15
Forget what you've read, this book is brilliant.
When Doctor Who went off the air in 1989, the story was carried
on in various novels and published by Virgin Books.
However, these books, while popular with a minority of people, tended
to alienate the masses. Meanwhile, Gary Russell's traditional Virgin
novels tended to be overlooked.
With Divided Loyalties, Russell essentially spoofs the Virgin
Books era, and it's a masterpiece.
Even before the story begins, we are treated to the fact that the title
itself is that of a Babylon 5 episode (very "in" in the mid-90's), and
that the story takes place after The Visitation
(despite the fact that there's no gap between The
Visitation and Black Orchid).
The chapter titles are all those of 80's synth band OMD, spoofing the
Virgin authors who named their chapter titles after indie bands.
The novel spends most of the time looking backwards. Each of the major
characters gets a lengthy 'flashback' sequence that a) doesn't actually
match what we know about the characters, b) adds new information just for
the sake of adding it (such as Tegan being Jewish), c) only takes place in
a dream state, and d) actually contradicts what we know (such as Tegan
missing her father's funeral, when we know that she actually was there).
There are numerous attacks on Adric, his stubbornness, his bodily odour
etc, for no other reason than the author seemingly having a grudge against
this one particular character.
And then comes the Main Course: the Deca sequence. There is so much
here, I'll just keep to some bits.
First, the Doctor falls asleep, and the chapter is clearly called
'DREAMING'. But here's the best bit. Before this dream, the story never
feels like a Fifth Doctor story, and the Doctor never comes across like
the Fifth Doctor. Now that we move into a First Doctor story, the story
never feels like a First Doctor story, while the Doctor himself is
suddenly a very accurate Fifth Doctor.
The story then starts throwing out continuity references just for the
sake of them. Ones that 98% of people who had watched the episodes they
are from wouldn't even recognise. Every Time Lord, sash, piece of
machinery from every story is suddenly there, at the same time, without
actual story justification for that.
Nothing makes sense. Type 30 TARDISes are new one page, yet the next
page Type 35's are being tested (despite the Doctor's Type 40 having been
an antique). 'Rassilon Imprimatures' mentioned in The Two
Doctors become actual essentials for Time Lords, as without them, no
one can even travel in a TARDIS (so what about everyone from Barbara and
Ian, right through to the Doctor's current companion?).
The book also exposes the stupidity of the whole Master/War Chief split
that Peter Darvill-Evans insisted upon. By using 'Magnus' and 'Koschei' as
two separate characters, Russell makes you want to stand up and cheer.
Because not only are the two characters virtually identical, with Koschei
wishing that he was Magnus, but it shows how limited a 'War Chief' who is
not the Master would be. And let's not forget that "Magnus' had already
specifically been used as the name of the Academy-era Master before, yet
we're now told that 'Magnus isn't the Master, he's just the War chief'.
Magnus spends virtually all his time talking and fantasising about working
with the War Lords, to the point that he's totally one-dimensional, and
there's nothing of him beyond the fact that he will one day work with the
War Lords. Better still, we even find out that everyone knows what became
of the War Lords and the War Games, yet he still goes off to that fate.
Because, separated from the Master, the 'War Chief' is not a character,
he's a nonentity. Better still, the Master uses the name 'Koschei', a name
the Doctor fails to recognise in The Dark Path. The
name 'Koschei' was used in The Dark Path because it
was supposed to tie into Russian folklore. yet here it's just a name, and
shows the absurdity of giving everyone a 'real name'.
And then there's 'Mortimus. An entire New Adventure cycle was based
around the fact that this character was supposedly stranded on the ice
planet after The Daleks' Master Plan and had never
met the Doctor before The Time Meddler. So Russell
inverts this, by having Mortimus be part of the 'Deca', being
level-headed, and actually leaving Gallifrey before the Doctor. So we've
got our "real name" reference, but, by doing so, we've created more
continuity problems then anyone had planned or actually need to be
'fixed'.
And then the Doctor himself, the loner who scraped through with 51% on
his second attempt, is the leader of a ten-strong Beverly Hills 90210
gang, and the star pupil. At least until he's expelled, meaning he'll
never get that all-essential Rassilon Imprimature. Without which he can't
even travel in a TARDIS, let alone control one himself.
The sequence (and the entire book, but especially the Deca sequence)
also includes numerous continuity references just for the sake of making
continuity references. These do nothing to enhance or progress the story,
and are merely constant reminders of the fact that all these words and
terms exist in Doctor Who. This perfectly shows up numerous authors
who fail to understand that making references to past Doctor Who
stories is meaningless if you don't understand what it was that made those
stories work in the first place. Saying 'Omega, Rassilon, Morbius, Azmael,
K'anpo Rimpoche, Borusa, Spandrell' doesn't mean you "get" Doctor
Who. It just means you've memorised words and terms.
The sequence ends with the Doctor waking up, remarking on the weird
nightmare he's just had, and wondering whether he was drugged. But the
best is yet to come.
When the Celestial Toymaker arrives, Nyssa demands to know whether he
is the one making them so uncomfortable and anguished. The Celestial
Toymaker happily boasts that all these dreams were not literal flashbacks,
but rather his attempts to toy with and upset the characters.
This is the masterstroke. The Virgin New and Missing Adventure writers
had seen it as their "duty" to give a real name, and origin story, and
ultimate fate to every character, major or minor who had ever appeared in
Doctor Who. They even 'fleshed out' various characters, with
information that was at once irrelevant, utterly against the characters we
knew and actually had the effect of limiting rather than enhancing the
characters. So, eg. we found out that Dodo slept around, got an alien STD,
and that was why she left in The War Machines. She
was later killed by the Master in the early 70's, because that's when the
Pertwee UNIT stories were set. Or that Mike Yates was actually homosexual,
and ended up living with Tom from Planet of the
Spiders. The Virgin stories tried to redefine Doctor Who (the
female PM in Terror of the Zygons is Shirley Williams in 1973), and tried
to remove other stories from the 'canon' (the TV Comic stories take place
in The Land of Fiction, Dimensions in Time was
just a nightmare).
The one character, aside from the Valeyard, that the Virgin Books
wouldn't touch was the Celestial Toymaker. He was seen to be a
one-dimensional, prejudiced, limited individual who wielded great power,
yet for all that power resorted to petty games trying to alter the
perceptions and understandings of the universe.
This book shows the reason the Virgin authors were uncomfortable with
the Toymaker. Cornell, Darvill-Evans, Orman, Blum and the rest of them
were themselves Celestial Toymakers, playing games with the Doctor
Who Universe, distorting the characters, situations, and reality to
suit their own petty ends. It's no coincidence that this is a past-Doctor
story rather than an EDA. All the characters here date from the pre-Virgin
books era, and they're all used inaccurately, made to look ridiculous, and
warped around to suit someone else's agenda, something they were never
meant to be, and never should be. Nyssa (a good representation of 80's
Who) angrily demands to know why the Toymaker is treating the Fifth
Doctor, Adric, Tegan and her so poorly, and the answer is "Because I have
the power to, and I can!" And, of course, we get everyone from Borusa to
Azmael to the Rani, to the split Masters on Gallifrey, all made to behave
in a manner that has nothing to do with the Gallifrey of Seasons 1 to 26,
but is littered with multiple references to the Virgin books.
And, surely the First Doctor would have remarked upon the fact that the
Michael Gough face was that of his dear friend, stolen by the Toymaker in
their first television encounter?
And then, to cap it off, this book tries to lead directly into The Nightmare Fair for the Toymaker. Only problem is
it completely contradicts The Nightmare Fair.
What we have then is a book set in a non-existent television gap, which
tries to be a sequel to one story and a prequel to another, while being
incompatible with both the intended prequel and sequel. Continuity
references are used for their own sake, simply to use them. Characters
ranging from the First through the Sixth Doctor's eras are used poorly and
don't actually resemble the characters they really are. Characters are
insulted, anguished, tormented and played with, all to gratify a bored
being from another universe, one who has the power, ability and brains to
do something far more intelligent and constructive, yet is content to
merely mess around with people and situations for the sake of it.
In short, this is a critique of the Virgin Era. Gary Russell has said
on many occasions how Doctor Who is not about the Doctor's past, or
the companions' personal lives. it's about Dalek invasions, giant maggots,
mad scientists etc. Certain writers disagreed and gave us stories about
the Doctor's past, the companions' personal lives etc. Others felt it was
a good idea to reinvent the wheel and retcon the entire Doctor Who
universe to suit their own personal beliefs. Divided Loyalties
shows these stories up for what they truly are. A bad, internally
inconsistent retcon, stuffed with continuity references for their own
sake, and a story that takes place outside Doctor Who continuity
(set in a nonexistent gap), and in this case literally takes place outside
the Doctor's universe, in the Toymaker's dreamscape.
A Review by Steve White
4/2/16
Gary Russell is one of those authors who irritates me, although his
novels are usually fairly entertaining. Both Business
Unusual and Placebo Effect are fairly solid
books, but Russell just seems hell bent on adding as much continuity as he
can, even if doing so is fairly pointless. Seeing as Divided
Loyalties is a 5th Doctor novel featuring the Celestial Toymaker, I'm
afraid it will another case of continuity overload. Oh, and Russell's
writing style comes across as very smug which serves to irritate me
further.
Divided Loyalties does indeed start off with a continuity
overload and smugness abounding. To my surprise, the continuity is just
time placement (other than the obvious inclusion of the Toymaker) but the
smugness is almost unbearable. Adric has BO? Why do we need to know that?
Are we meant to hate him more than we already do? It's just frustrating
how Russell seems to enjoy these glimpses into the characters that serve
practically no purpose whatsoever.
The novel doesn't start very well, in all honesty. The Toymaker seems
to be taking people from time to play his games, including the Doctor's
companions; however, there is little closure to be had. We have 4 people
in a game, but none are concluded satisfactorily, which rather begs the
question why the time was taken to explain the games in reasonable detail.
The thread about the TARDIS' arrival and the silence of Dymok is
interesting, but it takes a back seat to the Toymaker.
The middle section of the book then goes off on a wild tangent and
explores the Doctor's life as a student of Gallifrey and his very first
run-in with the Celestial Toymaker. This bit is really good, and, despite
it being Russell smothering on some more continuity, I ended up really
enjoying it. The important bits could have been condensed to a prologue,
but it was interesting nonetheless.
The end, however, is very convoluted and not really that enjoyable.
Russell again tries to join up far too many dots making references to both
The Key to Time and The
Nightmare Fair, before delivering a totally unsatisfying ending.
The Doctor is the often-bland 5th, diluted even more by the fact
Divided Loyalties has only 250 pages and a good portion of those
are dedicated to the pre-TV-era bit. The little he does have to do is a
good representation of the era, although it's hard not to write for the
5th. Tegan is shown to be more brash than usual, which I didn't enjoy;
likewise Adric seems even more annoying than his on screen persona which
again isn't enjoyable. Nyssa isn't given much to do, but at least her
representation is true.
The villain of the piece is the Celestial Toymaker, a great character
but sadly ruined by Russell's prattling. He is revealed to be a Guardian
(in the same vein as the Black and White guardian), which is again yet
more layering of the continuity Russell seems so fond of. The tie-in with
Time Lord history is actually quite clever, and Rallon's struggle is
fairly poignant.
Speaking of Rallon, the Deca students are all very well-written, and,
despite my annoyance with Russell over this sort of work, I did enjoy
these bits. The remaining cast all fade into obscurity, however, which is
never good.
As I suspected, Divided Loyalties is another fan wankfest from
Gary Russell but with an interesting enough story to hold it together,
albeit only just. It isn't going to win any prizes, but it isn't
horrendous either.
5/10
