Doctor Who: Blue Box [Paperback]

But for some reason 'Blue Box' falls flat, with the Doctor a particular problem. There are several possible reasons. One is the absence (perhaps intentional) of a tangible threat, a reason for all the anxiety and tension, a motivation for all the running around. At no point does Earth feel threatened, and Orman doesn't seem compelled to introduce a threat. 'Blue Box' entertains the reader, but doesn't really grip them in the way this sort of thriller normally would. In some respects, 'Blue Box' is marvellous. The narrative voice feels well developed, and is refreshing. Peri, the Doctor's companion, is written with such care and complexity that it puts all of Nicola Bryant's (the actress who first played Peri in the Doctor Who TV series) screen time into shadow. Sarah Swan, is a living, breathing person, like everyone else, rather than just another 'bad girl': her angry rages are some of the most real, exciting aspects of 'Blue Box', because the reader almost fears she'll lash out between the lines. But I never worried about what would happen if the Doctor failed. Doctor Who is about winning, succeeding, pulling through, against all odds; about good defeating bad, about saving lives, not losing them. When the Doctor wins, we cheer, and when we read about the Doctor, we want to know how he is going about winning. And it is on this level that 'Blue Box' fell flat. The Doctor is distant, detached, and this is either a symptom or a cause of the problem. Going about his business saving the world, telling people of the terrible potential for disaster contained in the artefact, the reader often feels like asking: "what are you saving the reader from?" or "what is this terrible potential for disaster?" Like Peri, I felt locked out of the Doctor's mind, and so locked out of the tension and anxiety experienced by Bob, the Doctor, Peri, and Swan.

Orman's latest novel is by no means a bad book. In fact, it is a very good book in many respects: the quality of writing (her descriptions of the US landscape are fascinating), characters (a small cast, but one of the best to grace a Doctor Who novel), and action (the hacking scenes are masterfully choreographed). There have been few foes as intriguing as Sarah Swan, and few moments as funny as the big revelation that the narrator, Chick, is in fact... Well, I won't spoil it. But for this reviewer, it never fully came to life.

No sooner do the Doctor and Peri land in Washington DC in 1981, then the Doctor just disappears. Peri searches for a while, and then goes to a hotel room to wait for him (thankfully, the Doctor has a seemingly infinite line of credit, something I'm very envious of). When the Doctor finally gets ahold of her, he asks her to track down Bob Salmon, a computer hacker who helped him out. Together with an intrepid computer reporter, the Doctor and friends are trying to track down pieces of a valuable artifact, an alien device that could spell the world's doom if it falls into the wrong hands, hands like those of Sarah Swan. Swan is the ultimate hacker, not caring about world domination, but instead craving the power that computers will have over everybody. To Swan, this will be the ultimate computer, and will allow her to do anything she wants. That's not something the Doctor can allow. Blue Box is the story of the history of computers and hacking, and what one woman almost did to bring it all under one thumb.

Techno-thrillers are all the rage right now, but most of them are on the cutting edge, with fancy gadgets and computer power that makes something the size of a fingernail be able to run the world's computers. Blue Box isn't like that, though. It's the dawn of the computer age and the Internet, when only 200 computers were on the Net. The Doctor and Salmon do their hacking on an Apple II, for goodness sake! Orman has all the lingo down pat, pointing out how bulky the computers are, how slow they were. One of the benefits of setting the book in the past is that you can have the characters make a lot of "predictions" and you get to choose how far off-base they are. Orman seems to have a blast with this, with Salmon talking about how one day people will be ordering pizza online, and how you can't have the general public on the Net or it will go completely down the tubes.

Orman's characterizations are wonderful, especially the Doctor and Peri's. Peri's having a crisis of conscience, wondering what her place with the Doctor really is. She's completely out of her element in this environment, not knowing anything about computers. It gets incredibly boring watching him hack away at the keyboard, and she jumps at any chance to actually do something. The book seems to take place right at the junction between the two television seasons that featured Peri, as they still bicker like a married couple but it's not as harsh as it was in their first season together. The second season seemed to have wiped most of it away, which was too abrupt a change. Here, they have their tiffs but you can see the underlying friendship beneath the whole thing.

There are two major problems with the book, though. The first is the dullness. There's only so much excitement to be had out of people talking to each other on computers, threatening each other on computers, and breaking into people's computers. Orman tries to put some action into it, and there is the usual exciting climax, but much of the book consists of somebody typing away at somebody else. This can be effecting in character studies or books about relationships, but in a Doctor Who book it just falls flat. Orman tries gamely with the characterizations, but I had to plow through the boring parts to get to the good ones.

One other major problem is something I have never seen from Orman before, and that's sloppiness. The book is told as if it's an expose by a journalist. Yet there are scenes that there is no way the narrator could have seen. Perhaps some of it is "fictionalized," but even if that's the case, there are some perspective changes that don't match the style. When Swan is cursing the reporter out in her mind on page 254, he keeps referring to himself in the third person. It was quite strange. Even worse then this, though, is the sloppiness as far as where people are in relation to the story. There's one sequence where the Doctor's supposed to be alone, and we know where Peri and Bob are (back at the reporter's apartment). Yet it then says "Behind the Doctor, Peri and Bob were wincing." While I can't place any other specific incidents of this, I did get that feeling a couple of other times as well. It's almost like she wasn't quite paying attention, or perhaps something changed and she forgot to go back and erase all of the tracks.

The characterizations are what bring this book up to the level that I'm putting it. If they weren't spot-on, this would easily be a 3-star book. Because of them, however, I'm bumping it up to four. It's still one of the weakest books I've seen from Orman, though. Here's hoping her next one will be up to her usual level.

David Roy