[BOOK]
By: George Mann
Published by: BBC Books
RRP: £12.99
Available: Now
"War changes everyone... even the Doctor"
Expectations were high for Doctor Who's big 50th birthday party, with much fevered debate about who (or which Whos) would or should be attending.
So it was divisive to say the least when The Name of the Doctor, the series 7 finale, revealed that there would be an uninvited guest at the table, a Doctor that until then, we never even knew existed...
Was it a cheat? A cheap gimmick? Does the existence of this new old Doctor rob us of everything we'd hoped for from the 8th Doctor?
At first glance some were outraged at what seemed like a fit of vanity on the part of Steven Moffat. Was he really winding down the Doctor's regenerational clock just so that he got to be in the driving seat when the question of the Doctor's lifecycle needed answering? Well, maybe a bit, but...
Moffat's explanation for the War Doctor is intriguing; he couldn't believe that the happy go lucky 8th Doctor who was easily amused by shoes would sink to the rock bottom moment of ending the Time War in an act of double genocide. Wiping out the Daleks at their genesis had been beyond Tom Baker's 4th Doctor, and which of any of the Doctors could wipe out all of Gallifrey, including its' children?
Logically, it had to be another man that had done the terrible deed, and so the "Other Doctor", the "War Doctor" was conceived; the one with no number, who didn't count. This is the incarnation that the others were ashamed of, because he was ashamed of himself. They denied he'd ever existed, and tried so hard to forget him that they'd even convinced themselves in flashback montages that he'd never been the Doctor at all ...
He was the Doctor on the day it wasn't possible to get it right, and he believed he'd lost the right to call himself "the Doctor", that he'd broken the promise and become both cruel and cowardly. What he did, he did in the name of peace and sanity, but not in the name of the Doctor.
When the ominous chords of doom introduced John Hurt as (shock horror) the Doctor, it was far from clear exactly what sort of man he was going to turn out to have been. Broken, yes, defeated, yes, the Doctor's shameful secret, yes. And no sort of Doctor at all?
Well... not exactly. Come The Day of the Doctor, what we got was not quite the dark Doctor we'd been led to expect. Weary and battered, certainly, but this "Not the Doctor" Doctor was acting very suspiciously like you know who, griping about big red buttons and putting his more youthful future selves in their place.
We got a fascinating, creaky, crackly, cracked but vulnerable and loveable, rascally incarnation, that, let's be honest, was - at least in terms of screen time - as much the Doctor as Paul McGann.
Where McGann's 8th Doctor scores over Hurt's War Doctor is in spin-off media: over 70 novels, 70+ Big Finish audio plays and 10 years' worth of the DWM comic strip. This "new" Doctor has a lot catching up to do, and in Engines of War, the work begins! But be honest, did you really think we'd be seeing any more of him once The Day of the Doctor was over?
Engines of War is perhaps even more unexpected than the War Doctor himself, but has been eagerly awaited ever since its announcement, proving that there's an appetite for further tales of the Time War and the terrible deeds of the warrior with the mantra of "No More".
Thankfully, it's an unqualified success.
Mann captures John Hurt's weary, wheezy, cracked, yet twinkly performance perfectly, and each utterance fits his delivery to a tee. He's as cantankerous and irascible as you want him to be, but not quite as resigned as he is when he meet him in The Day of the Doctor. There's still fire in the warrior's belly, and while his speech patterns are recognisably "old school Doctor", he's a man more of action than words; a man who doesn't hesitate like he used to...
It's in the battlefields of the Dalek-occupied nightmare world of Moldox that we're introduced to erstwhile companion "Cinder". This young woman was forged in the fire of a war with the Daleks, orphaned and trained as a soldier from the age of 7. She's the fresh pair of eyes through which we see the War Doctor, but she's also a kindred spirit. Much like Cass in The Night of the Doctor, she's mistrusting of, and even outright hostile towards, Time Lords. The peoples of the universe, it seems, blame them almost as much as they do the Daleks for the carnage laying waste to time and space.
Although he's working a little more closely with the Time Lords than we might have expected, or than we might like, the Doctor is as at odds with his people as ever, clashing with faces old and new, and taking no prisoners. He's renounced his old name, but they still throw it back at him, as a taunt, the ideal he's no longer able or even willing to live up to.
He's a bit more gung ho than you might have expected too, but whereas other Doctors might become oncoming storms with a banana daiquiri in their hands, the War Doctor is much more the destructive force of nature willing to get his hands dirty.
As Cinder and the War Doctor forge an uneasy alliance, we see the dogged determination of a man who still, despite everything, thinks that the war can be won, that the Time Lords are still worth fighting for. They're about to test his limits, though, because when the Daleks develop a weapon of mass destruction that could wipe Gallifrey from time itself, the Time Lord President stoops to depths so horrific that the War Doctor finally has no other choice than to declare "no more."
There's perhaps a tendency for writers of Doctor Who tie-in novels to take the much-vaunted unlimited budget of print and run with it into territory that is in fact so far removed from the TV show as to be unrecognisable as Doctor Who at all, perhaps on occasion even completely incompatible (hello Michael Moorcock!).
Engines of War strikes exactly the right tone, lavishing its limitless budget on the scale of its space battles and the variety and complexity of Dalek design rather than on unfilmable conceptual frippery. You can easily imagine seeing this on screen, as a more muscular cousin to the war scenes of The Day of the Doctor, while it's a read that's as accessible, warm and engaging as the more accomplished Target novelisations. Whilst spotlighting a character so steeped in the Terrance Dicks originated "never cruel or cowardly", there's also the pleasing depth of character and motivation that's more often ascribed to the novelisations of Dicks' old writing partner Malcolm Hulke. Nevertheless the blood of the modern series pumps unmistakably through the veins of this beast.
Its down to earth and action-packed approach is perhaps in part dictated by, but also very well serving of, its setting in the battlefields of the Time War, from the muddy trenches of Moldox to the more-palatial-in-print citadel of Gallifrey's Capitol and other similarly foreboding areas of the Time Lords' homeworld.
It's a rare thing indeed for a story to be both epic and intimate, horrific and joyous, nerve-shredding and just damn good fun, all at the same time. In fact, pretty much everything is in perfect balance here, including continuity and invention. There's plenty of loving tickles of your fan bone, but none of the clumsy nudge-nudge, groan-worthy fanwank variety. Where characters, settings or references from Who gone by are included, they're included because they should be, not just because they could be. There's enough here that's new, or at least fresh, though that the crumbling touchstones of the past seem there precisely so as to impart a weight of history for the characters and events to tear down with relish.
It all leads to an ending that's perhaps a tad predictable but cleverly makes a virtue of its inescapable inevitability, something that the writer pleasingly achieves without any tedious sledge-hammering of portentous prophecies of destiny.
Engines of War is an intriguing and engrossing tale of a new old Doctor with whom we've got some catching up to do, and who makes us run to do it. He packs a punch whilst delivering the Doctorly goods in style. He's not cruel and he's not cowardly, but he's uncompromising and he's no hesitation in giving anyone who gets in his way some blood and thunder.
I wasn't familiar with Mann's previous works but on the strength of this I'm definitely inspired to seek them out, and any follow-up to this thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying examination of the uncompromising War Doctor that comes from the pen of George Mann will definitely be a day one purchase.
9/10
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