David Ralph MartinCritiques
Auteur de Search for the Doctor
Critiques
Search for the doctor par David Martin
Probably the most interesting from the continuity point of view of the six books, this time "you" are a telepathic refugee from Earth, stranded in a camp on Gallifrey, rescued by the Doctor, and sucked into a struggle with the evil Maker who wants to, guess what, destroy Gallifrey and take over the universe. It's not exactly Gallifrey as we know it, though in fact it's not all that far off the Time War Gallifrey which we have seen recently. There are some silly die rolls and anagram quizzes, but in general the plot is pretty linear, and when Martin lets his hair down there's some writing that approaches being decent.
The story starts with "you" inheriting K9 from the late Sarah Jane Smith, in the year 2056; you then join forces with Drax from The Armageddon Factor, helping the Doctor to defeat Omega who is threatening to destroy the universe by taking over a nuclear research facility for his own ends. Obviously a lot of elements recycled from TV stories which Martin co-wrote with Bob Baker, and it's actually rather well done - a somewhat improvised team ("you", Drax and K9) trying to rescue the Doctor and thwart Omega. The options for success do tend to be the last in the list for each page, with only two exceptions. But on the whole the "correct" choices are fairly signalled. There are a couple of anagram puzzles which are not terribly well integrated into the plot.
Another day, another crisis: K9 is sent to investigate vast explosions in the Zeta Cancri system (also referred to Zeta Four Sector) where it is feared that if the stars collide the whole galactic neighbourhood will be devastated. (I checked, and ζ Cancri is indeed a well-known and complex multiple star system, though of course any the consequences of two of the stars colliding would be neither as immediate or as widely devastating as the book would have it.) Here for the first time we see the Time Lords who give K9 his orders, and they are indeed a rum bunch, though reminiscent of the Time Lord Council we were to encounter shortly in The Tides of Time.
The plot is a bit unfocussed: K9 finds a vast prison ship and an attractive young prisoner called Dea; he frees her, and she explains that they are witnessing the last stages of a war between the Telians and Megallans; K9 and Dea then watch as the two sides' leaders mutually destroy each other. K9, having not actually done anything to resolve the crisis, then stays behind to help Dea care for the remaining victims, explaining to the Time Lords on his return that he was aiming to improve his "understanding of the humanoid race", though with negative results. It's an interesting counterpart to the previous book in that K9 appears to feel that his lack of emotions is a potential disability after all.
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nwhyte | Apr 9, 2011 |
nwhyte | Apr 9, 2011 | 
The last is the most political of the books: K9 is called in to assist the capitalist, colonialist leadership of the heavily polluted planet Tellus (or, as we call it, Earth) to track down a missing colony. "'It's not there,' snarled the president. 'It should be there and it's gone. The whole planet, gone. We own that planet, we've invested billions in it, and we need its raw materials to fuel our power plants and supply our factories. Tellac Inc wants it back. Apart from that they tell me it's playing havoc with navigation ... 0h, and there are a dozen families missing too. Miners, it says here. You better get it back!'" K9 gets caught in a timewarp and finds the missing planet and miners, who are constructing a new Eden with animals from all periods of geological history which they survey by balloon. Votri, the miners' leader, begs K9 to keep his secret; and K9 does so, in defiance of his orders, reporting back to Gallifrey only that the planet has "disappeared from the universe as we know it".
Here we have K9 sent to investigate an outbreak of catatonic insanity among the crew of spaceships working in the Vega system; he is assisted (all too briefly) by a Professor Romius (obviously not Romana). In the end K9 saves the day by taking over the mind of the (unnamed) spaceship captain using his extendable data probe, something we've never seen him do before or since, to appreciate what the humanoid crew are experiencing (which that they are under attack by the Beasts of Vega). These turn out to be imaginary monsters playing on emotion; K9 having no emotion is smugly immune, which rather oddly twists the Cybermen's weakness into being an advantage. As it turns out, however, this is setting up that audacious concept, a character arc for K9, to be developed in the next two books.
The first of the books is the most interesting from a continuity point of view. K9, investigating some mysterious spaceship disappearances, allows himself to be caught by the eponymous Time Trap and is transported to "an immense museum of space exploration, with craft from every civilisation ever to have leapt the stars." The proprietor of this museum turns out to be a bloke in a funny helmet called Omegon, who says that he has met K9's Master, reveals that he was once a Time Lord but was betrayed, and indeed "He had been a great engineer. It was he who had created the system that gave the Time Lords time-travel. 'I harnessed the power of a thousand suns for them,' he said. 'They made me emperor - then plotted to destroy me, and marooned me here! They think I am trapped in this crimson bubble of time,' roared Omegon, 'but soon I shall have my revenge!'" K9 deals with him pretty rapidly after that, but it's obvious who Omegon is meant to be, especially considering who wrote The Three Doctors.
"Search" is authored (in the loosest sense of the word) by David Martin, who wrote several Doctor Who TV adventures in the '70s.
It also makes no sense. From Los Angeles in the year 2056 (why?), to a space lab called "FERN" (indeed), to the return of villains from two different Martin-penned Doctor Who serials (all the better with which to lure first-time readers, no doubt), "Search" is a boring and confusing muddle.
The Doctor is hardly to be seen, there's hardly any decision-making to be had, and the story only has one successful conclusion.
Basically, as both a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, and as a Doctor Who story, "Search for the Doctor" fails gloriously. It's easy to see why they didn't print too many more of these. And why copies are so hard to find.
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