Retrospective: Mark Morris by John Seavey 16/12/03
In 1997, just as Virgin did when it began publishing original Doctor Who adventures, the BBC tried to reach beyond the established pool of writers working on the series and bring in fresh blood. Their first new author was Mark Morris, an author already established in the horror genre and a fan of the series... unfortunately, the BBC's early books weren't nearly as successful as Virgin's, a trend that extended to the new authors chosen. Morris' two books for the BBC Doctor Who range, The Bodysnatchers and Deep Blue, are both undistinguished potboilers, and when taken together they reveal serious problems with the author's ability to finish off a book.
Both Bodysnatchers and Deep Blue have a certain pleasant flow to their prose, which is a plus; Morris' writing style is reminiscent of Christopher Bulis in many ways. It won't impress, and it won't cover up deeper flaws in the books, but it does have a certain pull to it. You find yourself going along from one chapter to the next, oddly charmed even by the cliches and well-worn phrases. Morris is a bit different from Bulis, though, in that he dwells more on horror; whether it be Skarasen devouring helpless Londoners, or humans transforming into vicious Xaranti, Morris has something of a knack for extremely vivid descriptive prose.
Unfortunately, he doesn't have much of a knack for characterization. He's good with the regulars, providing a decent Tegan and Turlough, a Doctor-ish Doctor, and a surprisingly fun Sam (even if she does seem more like Ace than anyone else); even his Litefoot comes off in print as being similar to the character from The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Once he leaves for original characters, though, they quickly descend to the level of simple caricatures.
Worse, his plots feel like padded run-arounds. (Even with the padding, his novels are quite short, and I suspect that large margins and big print mean that they're even shorter than they look.) That's not necessarily a fatal flaw; a silly run-around, well written, can still provide an enjoyable way of passing an afternoon. But his endings leave a sour taste in the mouth that negates any good will he's generated to date; The Bodysnatchers ends with the Doctor incompetently murdering a host of Zygons, and Deep Blue ends with him defeating an alien menace by throwing tap water at it.
After that, it's difficult at best to regain the respect of an audience, and Deep Blue has been to date Mark Morris' final novel for the Doctor Who line. Perhaps that's all to the best; he might well be capable of significant improvement, but even with significant improvement, I don't think he'd be much more than the next Chris Bulis... and we've already got one of those.