STORY PLACEMENT THIS STORY TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE NOVELS "VANDER- DEKEN'S CHILDREN" AND "THE JANUS CONJUNCTION."
WRITTEN BY PAUL MAGRS
RECOMMENDED PURCHASE OFFICIAL BBC 'EIGHTH DOCTOR' PAPERBACK (ISBN 0-563-40595-3) RELEASED IN SEPTEMBER 1998.
BLURB Arriving on the almost impossibly ancient planet of Hyspero, a world where magic and danger walk hand in hand, the Doctor and Sam are caught up in a bizarre struggle for survival.
Hyspero has been ruled for thousands of years by Scarlet Empresses, creatures of dangerous powers that a member of the Doctor’s own race is keen to possess: the time traveller and philanderer, Iris Wildthyme.
As the real reasons for Iris’s obsession become clear, the Doctor and Sam must embark on a journey across deserts AND mountains, forests and oceans. Both friends and foes are found among spirits, djinns, alligator men and golden bears - but in a land where the magical is possible, is anything really as it seems? |
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The Scarlet Empress SEPTEMBER 1998
I have very vivid memories of reading The Scarlet Empress the first time around. In keeping with my usual approach, before reading the story itself I flicked to the end of the book to read about the author. And on this occasion, I was surprised - not to mention rather delighted - to find that instead of limiting himself to a brief paragraph or a smattering of witticisms, newcomer Paul Magrs had written a very fluent and articulate account of a youth spent hungering for Target paperbacks... an account that I could identify with completely.
What surprised me even more though was that – save for the odd fleeting reference to the Doctor’s “capacious” pockets – The Scarlet Empress had very little in common with the range of novelisations that inspired its author. For one thing, it had been written in the most luscious prose style - a far cry from your Terrance Dicks’ and Malcolm Hulke’s (sorry fellers); and for another, The Scarlet Empress was about as far from being a ‘traditional’ Doctor Who story as you can get.
Magrs’ plot is fantastic in the literal sense of the word. His story sees the Doctor and Sam arrive on the planet Hyspero, where they soon become embroiled in a Lord of the Rings-style quest together with the (now legendary) “Transtemporal Adventuress”, Iris Wildthyme. The resultant story is a playful yarn, elegantly presented. Not quite my usual cup of tea, it’s fair to say, but rollicking good fun nonetheless.
And as we all now know, Iris is really something - a wacky, alcoholic old hen that travels the universe in her time and space machine, which is stuck in the form of a London double-decker bus and is actually, believe it or not, bigger on the outside! Iris also has a certain affection for the Doctor – an affection that arguably sets The Scarlet Empress apart from more ‘traditional’ stories – which makes for some humorous, if occasionally cringeworthy, reading.
What I really love about Iris though is her mystique, which she has managed to maintain right to this day. She is so brazen that the reader is lulled into thinking that they have her sussed from the first paragraph, but in truth she’s shrouded in mystery. The Scarlet Empress sees her claim to be Gallifreyan (though not a Time Lady, I note, despite regenerating at the end of the book), and alludes to her rich and twisting history with all of the Doctor's incarnations to date.
“You didn’t foil the Dalek invasion of Earth in the twenty-second century. I did!”
The real delight though is in how Magrs has Iris pass the Doctor’s adventures off as her own. Again, on the face of it, this ‘plagiarism’ is rather comic; however, when Iris puts her case to the Doctor, it really gives the reader pause. Did Iris actually have these adventures in a parallel universe, or some other quantum offshoot? And if so, are her adventures any less valid than the Doctor’s? She would certainly argue that they are more valid, given that she has meticulously documented them.
The only real drawback to Magrs’ using Iris here is that she is such a dominant character that even the vibrantly depicted cast of The Scarlet Empress seem dreary by contrast.
Of course, the Doctor himself is far from dreary. In fact, Magrs writes for Paul McGann’s Doctor with real relish, The Scarlet Empress clearly betraying the author’s passion for this exuberant incarnation, as well as his apparent disdain for his predecessor. Painted here as a dashing, matinée hero, the eighth Doctor is a joy to read about. His contemptuous reading of the Aja’ib (essentially his own life story!) in particular stands out, as does his scene with Iris where they discuss regeneration and talking to their previous incarnations inside their heads.
Given all of the above, The Scarlet Empress has a lot more pros that it has cons. My only real criticism of it would be that the plot is not all that spellbinding in itself, though to be fair I can’t say that this hampered my enjoyment of the book all that much. It’s amazing what you can do with a nicely-crafted turn of phrase and some luminously drawn characters…
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Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2010
E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. |
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