New Dr Who Christmas on Ration

I came to CHRISTMAS ON A RATIONAL PLANET in rather a roundabout way. While this was Lawrence Miles' first piece of work for the Doctor Who canon, I have only arrived at it recently, after already having read the bulk of his fiction. It gives one an odd perspective. If CHRISTMAS were released today, it would probably be regarded as almost a Greatest Hits collection; it encapsulated a lot of the themes that Miles would develop further on down the line. Some aspects are quite blatant, while others are subtle. But it's interesting to see them here in their infancy -- warts and all.CHRISTMAS ON A RATIONAL PLANET indeed has a plot, although the themes are running so heavily through the story that the actual events feel almost like an afterthought. (This does work to the novel's advantage though, as it isn't a plot-driven story and Miles takes the needed time to allow many of his themes to flourish.) It takes the crew a little while to get to the layout suggested by the back cover, but eventually the Doctor and Roz explore a small town in New York State in 1799, while Chris is lost inside a strangely malfunctioning and disintegrating TARDIS. A large number of the Doctor Who novels written by first-time writers share a striking characteristic: the Let's Throw In Everything But The Kitchen Sink Syndrome. Although it is generally regarded as a bad thing, it can occasionally feel like a burst of fresh air as a struggling author goes for broke trying to impress us. CHRISTMAS shares this feature, and it brings the associated advantages and disadvantages. Miles would learn in time to restrain his themes to a smaller number per book, giving them time to breath without having to jump around between various topics. His "Reason versus Superstition/Magic" stuff would be done better in ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET. His mob mentality discussions would feel more at home in his INTERFERENCE. And his Time Lord mythology-building would get a whole book to grow in ALIEN BODIES (though for the record I should point out that the Time Lord stuff he does do in CHRISTMAS is about a thousand times more interesting than the stuff he would later come up with for the early BBC books).CHRISTMAS ON A RATIONAL PLANET was a book that I very much enjoyed while I was reading it, but its flaws become more apparent with distance. Some of the plot strands take too long to get to the point, while others go on for quite a while and never do get to their objective. The book is sort of like seeing a really good magic show and being impressed at the time, but managing to figure out where the strings and trap-doors must have been while you make your way out of the theatre. Still, it's a damn good show, and the flaws do not distract hugely from the work as a whole. It's not the greatest Doctor Who book that in the Miles canon, but it isn't the worst either. And, as always, Miles' prose manages to convey an aura of overbearing menace.

In this novel, the Doctor returns to his favorite stompingground, Earth. In America, a shadowly clique of conspirators is attempting to remake the universe in their image, while in reality being manipulated by an exterior evil force. This is standard Dr. Who fare, well written, if a bit predictable.