STORY PLACEMENT

 THIS STORY TAKES

 PLACE BETWEEN THE

 NOVELS "THE SPACE

 AGE" AND "THE

 ANCESTOR CELL."

 

 WRITTEN BY

 ANDY LANE &

 JUSTIN RICHARDS

 

 RECOMMENDED 

 PURCHASE

 OFFICIAL BBC 'EIGHTH

 DOCTOR' PAPERBACK 

 (ISBN 0-563-53808-2)

 RELEASED IN JUNE 2000.

 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

 

 BLURB

 Banquo Manor - scene

 of a gruesome murder

 a hundred years ago.

 Now history is about

 to repeat itself.

 Pieced together From

 the accounts of SOLI-

 CITOR John Hopkinson

 and Inspector IAN 

 STRATFORD FROM THE

 Yard, the full story

 of Banquo Manor can

 now be told AT LAST...
 

 

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The Banquo Legacy

JUNE 2000

 

 

                                                       

 

 

The Banquo Legacy is an exceedingly unusual book, even for Doctor Who. Penned

by incoming editor Justin Richards and frequent contributor Andy Lane, this unique offering fuses time-honoured mystery and horror with artron inhibition fields and randomiser codes, creating a novel that unsteadily straddles two genres, teetering precariously throughout.

 

As a starting point, I love the authors’ innovative premise. As the penultimate instalment in

a complex and sprawling story arc, one expects a certain amount of progression and The Banquo Legacy is able to boast this in spates. Having eluded the Time Lords for at least three novels’ worth of adventures, this story opens with Compassion becoming snared in

a Time Lord trap – an artron inhabitation field set up by one of the many Time Lord agents hunting her across all time and space. Although the field drains almost all of Compassion’s energy, she is able to save herself by materialising around a human host and blocking the Time Lord agent’s transmission to Gallifrey. The snag is, until the Doctor can find a way to shut down the field, she will not be able to dematerialise, and the Doctor will not be able to regenerate, should the need arise. And unless the field is shut down quickly, Compassion will be consumed by the young woman whose form she has temporarily appropriated. She will be, effectively, dead.

 

However, the narrative is presented not as omniscient prose, but as first person narration, which is a risky move in a range like this if it isn’t the regulars that you’ve got telling the tale. And here I’m afraid that it’s a risk that doesn’t pay off - whilst the pomposity of the prose and the tautness of its grammar instantly evoke a 19th century feel, neither of the storytellers are particularly interesting characters, and almost inevitably their dreariness infects the story that they conspire to narrate. This is a real shame as at its best, The Banquo Legacy captures the feel of Sherlock Holmes’ investigations as told through Doctor Watson’s reminiscences (of which Lane is an aficionado), particularly given the analogous twists and turns of plot.

 

It is admittedly quite fascinating to read about the Doctor and Fitz as seen through different eyes, but personally I’d have been much more interested in the Doctor’s inner monologue. How often in Doctor Who has the Doctor been in a situation where, for an extended period, he is forced to confront his own mortality? Lane beautifully explored the Doctor’s feelings about death in his Virgin novel Original Sin, and so it’s doubly disappointing that we aren’t made privy to the mortal Doctor’s heightened fears here.

 

The novel improves greatly in the final third as Simpson is revealed as the Time Lord agent and events hurtle inexorably towards The Ancestor Cell. It’s as if, in an instant, all the clichés have evaporated; what had been almost a genre parody is suddenly afforded real depth.

The frightful injuries that Simpson suffers are brought into sharp focus when we realise why he’s put himself through what he has... or I should say for whom. The gentle passages that deal with Simpson’s emotional motivation are juxtaposed with lurid descriptions of empty, cavernous eye sockets, provoking the reader’s revulsion and pity in equal measure whilst also ensuring that going into The Ancestor Cell, there’d be no lingering doubts about the beneficence of the Doctor’s erstwhile companion / the Time Lords’ incumbent President.

 

 

Moreover, the final chapter and

epilogue are rather stirring. The

image of rats nesting inside a

dead scientist’s skull is incredibly macabre, even for Richards, and

the brilliant simplicity of the final

line really whets the appetite for

the cataclysm that is to come.

 

“He started down the corridor. It was the last thing he never did.”

 

However, much like that of the story that it tells, The Banquo Legacy is a failed experiment. It’s bold and innovative, and at times downright brilliant, but I’m afraid that all of its charms are quite easily outweighed by the sheer tedium of its bloated middle.

 

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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