Doctor Who: Heritage [Paperback]

One of my favourite Doctor-companion relationships has always been the Seventh Doctor and Ace. No matter what you think of the last few seasons of stories, you have to agree that the series tried to do something different with Ace. She was made a dynamic companion, someone who doesn't scream, who changes and learns things in each story. The individual writing of the stories may have suffered at times, but the idea behind Ace was wonderful.

The books have carried that further, creating a wonderfully rich relationship between her and the Doctor. She sees herself as a companion (one of many, as she well knows), but she also sees herself as a student of the Doctor. Thus, her first thought when the Doctor gets all moody and doesn't want to get involved on Heritage is that it's an initiative test for her, to see what she will do if left to her own devices. This quickly subsides, however, and she starts to get seriously worried about the Doctor.

Smith examines this relationship very closely, with long, introspective sections of the book from both Ace's point of view and from the locals' seeing these two in action. It can be quite interesting, though sometimes Smith overdoes it. These passages start to drag on and on with no conclusion in sight, and you realize you've just read a couple of pages and nothing has happened. It's a valuable tool, I just wish there had been a bit less of it. The story, when broken down into its components, feels very insubstantial, and that's a shame. However, I did like the atmosphere that the passages told from the locals' side gave to the book. It really brought back the "who the hell is this guy?" feeling that the very beginning of the television series evoked. The Doctor is a mystery, wrapped up in an enigma (to borrow a phrase). He should be presented like that at times. These are the passages where the introspection succeeds handily.

Given the paucity of characters (there are only 7 Heritage residents who are on screen at all, which gives the impression that Heritage really *is* a ghost town), you would think they would be well done. Unfortunately, that's a hit or a miss proposition. While Lee and Cole are great, the Sheriff is fairly one-note. He feels tremendous guilt about what happened, and how Wakeling and his goons have him under their thumbs. As is usual in stories like this, he eventually gets a bit of a backbone. But that's about it. Wakeling and his cronies are the worst, though, evoking little interest in the reader and becoming very cardboard villains. There is no reason that I can see to have Bernard be a sadistic dolphin in a walker with automatic weaponry in it, besides the "wouldn't it be cool" factor. Sure, the fact that he needs a mechanical translator becomes an important factor late in the book, but overall it comes over as Smith trying to be cute.

Thus, Ace and the Doctor have to carry the novel, and they do a fairly decent job of it, however it's not flawless. I guess the best word would be "overwritten." Smith tries so hard to examine these characters that you just want to tell him to get on with it. He never really tells us why the Doctor has been moody for these long months. As a continuing reader of the series, I got the impression that it was because of the fact that the TARDIS is carrying a coffin with Ace's corpse in it (a dangling plotline from a previous book). However, that book was written by a different author and there's no clue that this book takes place right after it, so you're left hanging. He does have the Doctor say that he's been thinking of hanging up the Save-the-Universe shoes and retiring, but he doesn't give any indication of why he would be feeling that way.

I haven't said much about the story, but that's because there isn't a whole lot to say. It's your typical "visitors come to Western town that doesn't like visitors and is hiding a secret and everybody's hostile to the heroes until the heroes finally reveal the secret" kind of story. It's been done many times, and this story doesn't add a lot to it. The prose is pretty good, but not outstanding. It's a fairly quick read and if you're a Doctor Who fan, it will give you a sense of nostalgia (especially if you're fans of the 7th Doctor). Otherwise, though, there's not much meat to it.

This is your typical middle of the road Dr. Who novel. It won't make you a fan of the show if you're not already one. If you didn't like the 7th Doctor, then you will probably find the relationship and overwriting to be very tiresome. If you like the 7th Doctor, it's a passable read.

David Roy

Oh, wait. Wrong "Heritage".

"Heritage", "Doctor Who" style, is a novel-length short story with the kind of aggressively off-putting cover illustration that has plagued the book line since its inception. A scrawny, barefoot, sepia-colored child, squints at the reader, while a leering mouthful of teeth (think Coldheart or Return of the Jedi) gapes in the sand behind her. Who wants to look at this? Why sell 20,000 books, when you can sell 8,000?

Anyway, don?t be put off by the atrocious cover, or by the suffocating prose. An old "Doctor Who" friend has been murdered, and Heritage is all about the aftermath. Every scene is about how people reacts to that murder. For example, I?ve just finished with the Season 3 box set of "Homicide". After actor Jon Polito was fired following Season 2, an early Season 3 episodes "?Crosetti") was entirely dedicated to the aftermath of his character?s suicide. That?s a bold move, and it?s an effective episode. "Heritage" follows the same funereal theme. The only difference is that Crosetti?s body was discovered at the start of Act One. Here, we don?t learn the body?s identity until page 110, so it takes a while to realize we?re supposed to care.

What takes Dale Smith 280 pages to tell could have been done in "Crosetti"?s 48 minutes. The villain is not the anatomical beast featured on the cover, but rather a mad scientist who?d have been well-played by some Philip Madoc type on TV. There?s also a Clifton James-type Wild West sheriff, a cyborg bartender evidently played by Brendan Gleeson, and a 61st-century dolphin reminiscent of the gangster shark demon from a Season 6 episode of "Buffy". This is a good small cast. The Doctor figures out who?s good and who?s bad in a hurry, and everyone gets their just deserts (as opposed to "desserts"). Except for the dolphin, whose fate is not specified. What happens to him after he doesn?t die? Maybe there wasn?t enough room to say, as if the author couldn?t have omitted three chapters full of descriptions of red sand.

Really, I needed to rinse my mouth out after reading "Heritage". The descriptions of the desert sand mount toward silly proportions, like the out-of-control descriptions of snow in "Drift". Anyone who?s read the Dust portions of "Interference" has already tread this ground.

The subplot is the ongoing 7th Doctor-Ace conflict. References are made to most of the Season 25 and 26 McCoy/Aldred series, so this takes place after "Survival". There?s no explicit mention to the Tucker/Perry Season 27 "arc"; nor is there reference to "Relative Dementias", which presumably predated Tucker/Perry. The Doctor does make reference, somewhere among all the red sand, to a storm coming. Is that the Timewyrm? Or the TV-movie? Honestly, I can?t tell if the New Adventures are even supposed to have taken place anymore. People keep piling more and more stories in between "Survival" and "Love and War". At this point you?d think Ace traveled with the Seventh Doctor for thirty years. Anyway, if 7th Doctor angst hadn?t already been the subject of literally 70 other books, this would?ve been satisfying. Instead, like the characters in the desert, it keeps treading the same old ground.

Another weird narrative trick is the use of epigraphs. I mean, one chapter ends with a revelation about the tow-headed child on the cover. The very next page gives us a quote from her autobiography, which spoils the ending of the book, telling us, as it does, that she?s not going to die, and also who's going to adopt her. A later chapter ends on a mini-cliffhanger, as one character contemplates suicide in an abandoned mineshaft. On the next page, however, Smith gives us his obituary, 14 years hence. And then goes back to resolve the cliffhanger a chapter later. Remember how the US sitcom "Growing Pains" used to solve its characters problems by setting its final scene six months in the future to show how everyone wound up happy again? Of course you don?t. No one remembers "Growing Pains". Anyway, don?t do it again, guys.

What I took away from "Heritage", apart from dry mouth, was a sense of justice. Ended, finally, is the old Virgin/BBC/Short Trips trend of killing off Dodo, Liz or Sarah Jane, or showing us how miserable Barbara, Victoria, Jo, Romana, Nyssa, Tegan, Peri and Mel were after leaving the TARDIS. Here, finally, when an old friend is killed off, the Doctor swoops in furiously and makes the situation right. Believe it or not, he?s never really done that before. Thank you, Doctor.