From: jblum@macbeth.umd.edu (Hi ho -- Kermit the Frog here...)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: NIGHTSHADE: a mini-review
Date: 28 Aug 92 21:13:06 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

(This first part is sort of a teaser, like the kind you find on the
back cover of a book, not really a spoiler)

The old man sits alone in his room.  His parchment-pale hands grasp a
walking stick, and his rheumy eyes drift vaguely, seeing nothing.  Once
those eyes had been piercing, able to command men with with a look,
and the hands had taken him into realms undreamed of by normal, earthbound
men.  But now that is all in the past.  He's old, and he's retired.

Still, at least he can be seen in reruns now.

The man is Edmund Trevithick, and his TV series, NIGHTSHADE, was a
groundbreaking piece of TV SF.  BBC2 has brought it back from TV Heaven,
and that's generated a flurry of interest.  But, for the most part, he is
alone with his memories.

And his memories are company enough.

Because now he's catching glimpses of the monsters he once battled on the
screen as Professor Nightshade.  Here, in the tiny English village of
Crook Marsham, in 1969.  And this time they're not men in rubber suits
anymore.

Doctor Who: Nightshade by Mark Gatiss.

(review ahead)

The recent New Adventures novels have each strived to be, in one way or
another, the "ultimate" Doctor Who story.  Timewyrm: Revelation was the
ultimate exploration of the Doctor's character and repression.  Cat's
Cradle: Time's Crucible was the ultimate (or penultimate) exploration
of Gallifrey and the Doctor's background.  Cat's Cradle: Warhead was the
ultimate tale of the Doctor's dark side -- his tendency to be judge, jury,
and executioner, a devious manipulator.

Nightshade plays with all of these ideas.  But it is also the ultimate
exploration of Doctor Who as a television program, a series that is fondly
remembered by people who were not even alive when most of it first aired.

The central idea of Nightshade is nostalgia.  For loved ones.  For old
familiar things.  Old ways of life.  The Doctor's old way of life, before
he became a cosmic do-gooder (and eventually cosmic manipulator).  For the
people the Doctor left behind -- his granddaughter, his old companions.
For lost ideals and idealism, all gone to dust.

And out in the village of Crook Marsham, there is a force which feeds on
these memories, which forces the Doctor to think about his own life for a
change.

Cleverly, Mark Gatiss sets the story in the Sixties, a time which many people
of today (including Ace) feel nostalgia for.  But he shows us that people
who live in the past might lose their grip on the future.

The novel is written in a very Stephen King-ish style, with echoes of The
Daemons and The Awakening -- an isolated village, cut off from the world,
with links to the past and a very strong, close-knit community.  Call it
Castle Rock or Crook Marsham, the village is just as much a symbol of a
simple life now past.  Nostalgia again.  But in the end this village will
leave its occupants little to feel nostalgia for.

As the story unfolds, Gatiss pulls few punches in shaking up the characters'
comfortable world -- and the reader's.  He knows precisely when to satisfy
the reader's expectations, and when to shock them by not giving them what
they want.  As usual in this sort of soft-core horror novel, it becomes
clear which characters are cannon-fodder and which will survive.  The
shocks come when Gatiss starts killing off the ones who were supposed to
make it.  Characters who the reader cares about, who have been carefully
built up and developed, DIE.  And suddenly the comfortable, predictable
elements of Doctor Who aren't so safe any more.

Nightshade is a very strong book which works on multiple levels.  It's a
classy adventure/horror story that, while not as strong on Doctor/Ace
development as it could be, creates vivid original characters.  It's also
a mind-game about the human tendency to look backwards in all its forms,
about the desire for the safe and predictable that lives within all of us.

The only time this doesn't work is in Ace's love-interest in this book.
Not to spoil too much, but he's a contender for the David Campbell
Why-On-Earth-Should-She-Fall-For-Him Award.  He's a completely bland
character, with absolutely no characteristics that would jump
out and inspires the kind of love-at-first-sight that Ace feels for him.
It's just that the writer decided that these two characters should fall
for each other, and they do.  Maybe his point was that, after all her time
traveling with the Doctor, Ace would be attracted to someone completely
normal and earthbound... nostalgia for safety?  Still, Gatiss should have
been able to make us feel what she felt too.  As it is, it's a major step
back for Ace's character -- it's a believable relationship for the sixteen-
year-old she was in Dragonfire, but she's 22 now.  Is the pull of the
familiar, of "there's no place like home", really enough to turn Ace back
into Dorothy?

All in all, though, a very good read, and a truly professional first novel.
It thrills you... but leaves you thinking too.