The Eyeless
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BBC Books The Eyeless |
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| Author | Lance Parkin |  |
| ISBN | 1 846 07562 9 | |
| Published | 2008 |
| Synopsis: At the heart of the ruined city of Arcopolis is the Fortress. It's a brutal structure placed here by one of the sides in a devastating intergalactic war that's long ended. Fifteen years ago, the entire population of the planet was killed in an instant by the weapon housed deep in the heart of the Fortress. Now only the ghosts remain. The Doctor arrives, and determines to fight his way past the Fortress's automatic defences and put the weapon beyond use. But he soon discovers he's not the only person in Arcopolis. What is the true nature of the weapon? Is the planet really haunted? Who are the Eyeless? And what will happen if they get to the weapon before the Doctor? |
A Review by Joe Ford 6/4/09
I read recently that the NSAs need their own equivalent of Alien Bodies to really make their mark. The general feeling amongst fandom who talks about these books is that the quality is getter better but they have needed one book to truly stand out in the crowd. To push the envelope and see if the audience can handle something very different to the norm. The Eyeless is that book and the fact that Lance Parkin wrote it really surprises me.
I am the hugest Parkin fan, don't get me wrong. Just War was possibly the strongest debut novel of any Doctor Who author. The Infinity Doctors contains some of the finest science-fiction imagery it has been my pleasure to read. Father Time and The Gallifrey Chronicles are two of the best EDAs and both weave themselves beautifully into the series' mythology and add layers of depth. Trading Futures is one of the few novels that made me laugh out loud. Parkin is a highly accomplished writer. However, I have come to know what to expect from the author and The Eyeless is not it. Lance Parkin populates his book full of characters who warm your heart. His books cheer you up with their optimism. He explores the wonder of the universe and often uses the Doctor to expose those wonders to the secondary characters. Not here, oh no. The Eyeless is brutal. It's ugly. It's graphic. It's massive. Written as here, it is the nastiest threat the Doctor has ever come up against.
The Eyeless feels like a hybrid of Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, Vanderdeken's Children and Beltempest whilst being miles better than all three of them. It takes the breathless scale and beautifully imaginative landscapes from Marc Platt's near-impenetrable opus, the exploration of a deadly trap from Christopher Bulis's puzzle book and the astonishing death toll and the taste of defeat from Jim Mortimore's massacre in print. I am surprised that it was published as a part of this series because it lacks the humour we have come to expect, has long stretches of prose without dialogue and pushes the Doctor to his limits both physically and psychologically. If you have been disappointed by the lack of depth in the NSAs then this is the book for you. There is some stunning development of the Doctor's character that is tied directly into the root of the series. This is the book that affords a brief glimpse at the Time War and allows the Doctor a shockingly racist moment. A book that brings home the pain of loss and the scars that won't heal on the one man who lives on.
No allowances are made for a child audience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that a child could not read this but it has not been lobotomised like so many of the earlier NSAs. Take the setting, which is beautifully realised in the first six pages and detailed on a huge scale so you can easily visualise this alien metropolis. Parkin then spends the first third of the book taking the audience on a trip through this ruined paradise, painting a shocking picture of poverty and plenty sitting side by side. Take the guest characters who reveal new shades every time we meet them. Some of whom are bumped off unpredictably to further the plot. Or even the pace of the book which enjoys several breathers to flesh out this world some more. This is as far from a TV ripoff like Feast of the Drowned as you can get.
The real star of the book is the Fortress, that looms over the book in the first half but becomes the setting of some tense and exciting passages in the second half. Told almost entirely from the Doctor's point of view, you slice this book into thirds; the first easing the information about the situation, the second revealing the face of this disaster and the last the race to destroy the ultimate weapon. It is this last third where the Fortress comes into its own as a living, thinking weapon determined to kill anybody inside its belly. Sounds like Death to the Daleks? Forget it, this is terrifying stuff and the atmosphere building is incredible. You will genuinely believe this edifice can take down the Doctor, that's how effective it is. There is some creepy imagery at work inside the Fortress, enough to put the wind up the Doctor who can feel the building thinking against him, predicting his every move and thinking up a new and more dangerous countermeasure. Doomsday weapons are an old idea but, by revealing the winding devastation this one has already caused before the Doctor explains what it has the ability to do, it chills the blood.
The Eyeless are a fine addition to the Doctor Who universe. Or they would be. Taking lots of SF staples (telepathy, transparent, share conciseness) but given that little Parkin touch of magic and they glow from the pages. Taken on their own, the Eyeless and child character Alsa would be quite interesting but after you put them together and they start to infect each other and share memories and emotions things become a lot more interesting. Plus, they give the book one of the more intriguing titles in the range...
The characterisation of the Doctor is exceptionally strong as you would expect from Parkin. What you get a sense of is that the author hasn't just attempted to copy David Tennant's mannerisms in print but has actually put some thought into what makes this explosive and scarred incarnation tick. Whilst it is tempting to keep referring to the Time War as this big unknowable event in the Doctor's past, Parkin has created a story where the effects of the Time War are felt around every corner of this wartorn planet. The moment he turns on the ghosts of the millions who were lost on this world and tells them they don't have it so bad is magnificent. Some of Midnight's clever characterisation works its way into the story too where the Doctor's show-off attitude and lack of diplomacy lands him in hot water. He has to keep his wits about him and the last third of the book sees him attempting to outfox the inhabitants of the planet, the Eyeless and the Fortress. You have to love the scene where 80-odd Eyeless rush him at once and he manages to take them all down. The very nature of the story, the Doctor landing on a planet to destroy a weapon of universal destruction, is worthy because this is only something he would do without a companion. This story would not work with a Rose/Donna/Martha cluttering up the space. The very nature of the Doctor being alone makes him more introspective and allows us to learn more about him.
Once in a blue moon, a piece of writing in a Doctor Who book takes my breath away. It happened in Camera Obscura when the Doctor crawled across the Yorkshire moors to escape a disfigured creature. And in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street when we visit the disgusting Kingdom of the Beasts. Or even Parkin's earlier Father Time when the tower block burst into rose petals. The Eyeless managed that twice with me, with chapters five and eleven. Chapter five is a dialogue-heavy scene, loaded with terrific characterisation and sizzling dialogue that sees the Doctor lose control brilliantly. Chapter eleven is an orgy of destruction and violence, so beautifully captured I might as well as watching a movie. After I read the latter, I grabbed Simon and read it out to him and he grinned and nodded appreciatively, he who loves all of those Star Trek/Star Wars battle sequences.
The Eyeless is written with a great deal of care and passion. It is tightly written and does not waste a paragraph. The characterisation is stronger than we have seen in this range ever and the last third is unputdownably good.
NSA writers take note. The stakes have now been raised. Considerably.
A Review by John Seavey 21/11/09
So I've now read it, and there's definitely a lot to like about it. It has a sharp pace, some blisteringly good prose, and a "villain" that in some ways is the epitome of Doctor Who villains (very smart, but lacking in perspective - and not just lacking, but refusing to gain.) It has good monsters (and I think they were necessary, if not to the theme then to the plot...it would have been kind of a short book if it was the Doctor outwitting a thirteen-year-old girl and her friends.)
In some ways, the Doctor in this book reminded me of Granny Weatherwax in the Discworld books (which in some ways makes Alsa a nastier, spikier version of Tiffany Aching.) He's immensely powerful, ancient, and alone... and alone because of his power, which makes him simultaneously terrifying and sad. There's one scene in particular, towards the end, where I could almost picture Granny delivering those same lines.
However, I have a few nagging, lingering, spoiler-y complaints.
So first, let's deal with the community of survivors. I'll let this slide, under the category of "begging the question", but I will for the record say that I don't think there's enough genetic diversity in thirty-seven people to repopulate a planet, even if you could get the numbers up. I know there's a brief mention of the pre-cataclysmic Arcopolitans "eliminating genetic disease", but I just don't buy that they could get rid of every harmful recessive to the point where inbreeding wouldn't set in as a problem a few generations down the line. But again, begging the question.
More importantly, it's very clearly implied that the Fortress is a Time Lord relic. So why then are its defenses so crap? I mean, yes, laser turrets and gas vents and homing missiles and so forth, but this is a Time Lord defense station, housing a weapon that can wipe out an entire galaxy (or possibly an entire universe.) And it's seriously just "big metal walls surrounding a tower with a weapon, with guns on it"? It's got less-effective defenses than the Doctor's TARDIS, which is hundreds of years older and not designed for military purposes. This really, really threw me out of the story, because even if I decided to ignore all the blatant hints that it was the Time Lords who built the Fortress, anyone capable of designing a weapon that powerful should have been able to think up better defenses for it than, "Ooh, look, the Fortress can turn if the guns on one side get damaged!"
But apart from that, a good book and a nice, fast read.
A Darker Ten by Matthew Kresal 2/3/19
The return of Doctor Who to our screens in 2005 meant an end to fifteen years of ongoing literary adventures for the Time Lord. Though the novels spawned during that period were always technically "TV tie-in", they seemed to push the boundaries of the program. When the New Series Adventures started up, it seemed to very much be an end to an era. And yet, from time to time, writers from that period have returned to the Who literary fold. One such example is Lance Parkin and his 2008 Tenth Doctor adventure, The Eyeless.
In many ways, The Eyeless feels like it could have been a TV story from this Doctor's era. The Doctor, traveling on his own, arrives in the ruined city of Arcopolis. There two groups of survivors are scratching out an existence some fifteen years after the alien Fortress appeared and killed all other life on the planet. The Fortress has remained behind, a dangerous weapon, and one which the Doctor intends to disarm once and for all. That is, if he can get inside and the arrival of the Eyeless doesn't stop him first.
The feeling oozing from Parkin's prose is one that brings to mind various episodes of the David Tennant era. There are strong echoes of Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead from Series 4, with its tale of a deserted planet and characters running around inside a vast, mysterious interior. The Eyeless, the titular villains, are also very much the sort of villains that the RTD era was fond of - disconcerting, strange and without much given away about them. The supporting cast of characters is also neatly drawn in the Davies style, further adding to the flavor of the piece.
Nothing adds to that as much as Parkin's characterization of the Tenth Doctor. Traveling on his own (exactly when isn't clear), this isn't quite the happy-go-lucky Tenth Doctor. Oh, there are moments when he comes through. For the most part, however, the Tenth Doctor of The Eyeless is the darker, guilt-ridden one glimpsed throughout his era. There is a genuine sense of a man still trying to deal with the horrors of the past, made to confront them by what's happened here and the Fortress that looms over the landscape. Indeed, Parkin hints that it could well be a leftover weapon from the Time War, which makes a particular moment where the Doctor confronts the "ghosts" of the city's inhabitants all the more powerful. If, like me, you've craved a darker take on the Tenth Doctor, this is a must-read.
And yet, I can't quite bring myself to give this book a five-star rating. As odd as it might be to say, the book feels very contained compared to Parkin's earlier Who writing. After all, he gave an expansive Ice Warrior invasion of Britain in The Dying Days and wrote one of the greatest Gallifrey stories ever told in The Infinity Doctors. I've heard it said by those who read the Wilderness Era novels and came to the New Series books that literary Who lost its bite to an extent in the handover. In reading The Eyeless, I think there's some truth to that. But in reading reviews of the book, especially on Goodreads from those who have only read books from New Who, I also think it's easy to overstate that. The Eyeless is by far the darkest of the books I've encountered from the New Series Adventures, something that isn't a bad thing.
Though I have some reservations about it, The Eyeless stands for me as the best book I've yet read from the range. Indeed, while it isn't quite a return to form for Doctor Who on the page, it's a reminder of what they can do when given a chance to shine. For that, and its darker Tenth Doctor characterization, it's well worth seeking out.