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Title: Hope (Doctor Who) by Mark Clapham ISBN: 0-563-53846-5 Publisher: Bbc Pubns Pub. Date: February, 2002 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Overly Violent, but a pleasing read
Comment: Never before have I seen a Doctor Who television episode or read a Doctor Who book with so many fight scenes. Of course, coming from a reviewer who reads a lot of Richard Stark and Mickey Spillane, you would think that I wouldn't mind the violence. Unfortunately, it just seems out of place in Doctor Who.
Usually, the Doctor likes to work problems out with his mind, and ensnare the villans in clever traps. This book is just overloaded with situations where he has to fight his way out. There is blood everywhere, trying to fuel the story.
The best thing about the book is that it deals with Anji's mental anxiety over her dead boyfriend Dave. It finally brings her closure. The book also features a very fitting, Who-esque ending with a clever trap that Who fans will enjoy.
Clapham's writing is never dull, with good dialogue and great description. You get a real feeling for the dreadful city of Hope, as well as the emotion involved with all the characters. Some drawbacks but also many good points make this novel worth reading.
Rating: 3
Summary: Rope-a-Dope
Comment: A TV critic, once writing about one of Rod Serling's lesser "Twilight Zone" scripts, noted that the episode had just two kinds of characters: those who made speeches, and those who made speeches while shouting.
Welcome to "Hope".
"Hope" is very much in the "Parallel 59" style of "Doctor Who" drab. It's set in the far, far future, on a perpetually overcast planet divided into remote, fortress-like cities. The military and the poor coexist uneasily. There's a lot of bar-fight violence (casinos still exist in the far, far future) and two headless bodies in the first 30 pages. Some characters make speeches. Other characters make speeches while shouting. The Doctor makes speeches. The Doctor also makes speeches while shouting. You get the drift, I think.
The plotting is also all over the place -- first it's a murder mystery, then it's a story about a war between the citizens of "Hope" and the out-of-time Earth scientists (with names like Stephen and Castillo, in the far, far future). Then it becomes a 1960s-style Marvel Comics adventure. Really, if you boil all the plots down to their essence, this is a character study about a cyborg named Silver. Mentally reference him as the Captain from "The Pirate Planet", and he works quite well. It really feels as if Stan Lee wrote the final chapters. "Remember, kids, absolute power corrupts... absolutely!". The villain is dispatched bloodlessly, and the surviving Hopesters gaze hopefully (ha!) into the morning sunrise.
Clapham writes a good potboiler here. There are some heavy continuity references to the Doctor's recent physical trauma, and a very portentous dream which feels as if the editor literally threw that page into the presses as the book was entering its first print run. The human element -- Anji's continuing pining over her long-since-departed boyfriend -- gives this book a little bit of flavor, and as far as run-of-the-mill DW novels go, this one is very tolerable.
Rating: 3
Summary: Hope
Comment: Since this is such a trad Dr Who book, I can start by comparing it to other entries in the series which adhere to the established formula:
Christopher Bulis writes the best trad Who novels. Hope is nowhere near as good as Imperial Moon, or City At World's End, or The Eye Of The Giant. But it is on par with the likes of The Palace Of The Red Sun, or even Shadowmind. It was better than The Ultimate Treasure.
Did that help? No?
Okay. Hope, then, as compared to Trevor Baxendale's Who novels: Certainly not as fun as the shivery Coldheart...but definitely better than The Janus Conjunction. Marginally better than Eater Of Wasps, because the plot is a bit more creative.
No good?
Hmmmm. Hope was much better than Kursaal by Peter Anghelides, probably better than Millennium Shock by Justin Richards, loads better than The Taint, by, uh, Michael Collier, was it? Hmmm. That puts it right in company with Deep Blue by Mark Morris.
The weaknesses of Hope are as follows:
Clapham lacks style, and beyond that, some of his writing needed a stricter editor. He's one of those writers who will use the same adjective or verb twice in adjacent sentences, or even in the same sentence, and it smells more like laziness than a conscious style choice. Plus, you get a lot of simplistic sentences that do little more than state facts, or provide basic descriptions. A little daring, or panache, would be welcome.
Too nitpicky? Well, I should also say that Clapham is one of those authors who has trouble capturing the Doctor's unearthly charisma. He talks too much like just anyone (though, to be fair, the Doctor does have the occasional clever line in this novel). This is an especially bad situation in this entry, because part of the theme of Hope is the Doctor, having recently been reduced to human level physically, trying to make a point that he's still mentally unique. Cornell, Parkin, and Miles have a much better handle on spicing the Doctor up in only a few paragraphs.
What helps Hope immeasurably is the plot, which does keep shifting in unexpected directions, though it does manage--barely--to remain cohesive, and relevant to some basic overall themes. Saying that the book is actually spliced unevenly in the center is unfair, given what is established early-on concerning Anji's mindset. And any angle in a trad Dr Who book which gives the novel any kind of uniqueness above the pack is appreciated...so I didn't mind that the whole "who is the multiple murderer?" mystery scenario finished up awfully early, so that the story could suddenly shift gears and examine Anji's potential betrayal of the Doctor. Anji's dilemma late in the proceedings did relate enough to all that had gone before, previous to the "false" happy ending. I blame Clapham's style, here, for any reader-feelings of triteness or too-sharp turns, not the structure of the plot. Clipping along too fast, and in wooden style, will hurt emotional content in a tale, trad or not trad.
So are the Doctor's adventures in Hope worth sampling? Well, he investigates a string of decapitations, he snoops around a cool city on stilts that hovers over an acid sea, he battles a cybernetic villain who wants ultimate power over everyone, and he learns whether he can forgive attempted betrayal by a friend. You might want to take the trad with the good.
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