Matrix

Suggested pre-viewing - Survival and Trial of a Timelord
Do not read after dark.

This is a book about the Valeyard.

Sorry to spoil the twist. It's not just that he's my favourite all-time villain, and that I'd have hated it for ticking everything on my bad Who book list if not for this fact - I feel the Valeyard does have the right to take the Doc to some dark places, in a way no other villain does.

It's because this is a book about dark sides.

The Doctor and the Valeyard. Ace, and Cheetah Ace. Malacroix who blackmails people by hanging onto their twisted secrets, and who it is hinted has a nasty secret himself. The Dark Matrix, the dark TARDIS, the evil past incarnations (oh, I'll be getting onto them in a minute...) Even dark London.


But on a deeper level, it's about the effects of supressing your dark side - and the answer isn't as simple as you'd expect. The Valeyard is everything the Doctor ignores in his character, just as the Dark matrix is everything the Gallifreyans have been supressing. But then there are the freaks - who in this particular Victorian setting, are the dark mirror of humanity. And they too are locked away by the world which is ashamed of them. Just as Ace strives to set them free, so it is strongly suggested the Valeyard's compassion* for the trapped Dark Matrix, which cannot help what it is, is perhaps his chief motivation.

*incongruously Fivey noun chosen very deliberately.

While black magic is an intrinsically crappy way of getting things done, I can honestly see the Valeyard relishing the Victoriana and coming up with something this showy and melodramatic. (One wonders what the Matrix Valeyard could have done to Clacice of Time's Champion. I bet he could have given her a proper black magic bitchslap...)

And naturally, the Valeyard would adore Victorian England - and it's as much of an atmospherically OTT representation as his Fantasy Factory was. Prostitutes! Circuses! Fog! But it works, it taps into that Dickensian ideal we've all got locked away. It's knowingly hackneyed, but that's why it works so well. It's been suggested more than once that using those five real life murders is tasteless. But Jack is more than that, as both this book and From Hell* suggest. It's not so much about him, but the idea of the ripper. I admit it's a powerful one - it instantly conjours slippery cobbles and gaslight. In a way, he's more of an admirable rebel than a murdering thug, showing the true underbelly of Victorian society amongst all it's high morals. At the time, the entire country was obsessed with the murders. The fact that we're still talking about five women who history would never have remembered otherwise proves that there's something intangible about the figure that won't go away.

*Alan Moore's Ripper epic, almost certainly inspiration.

It's this vibe the book taps into, and it's backed up by some truly brilliant atmosphere. On cold paper it all seems a bit daft. But the gorgeous style makes it effective. After years of whezzings and groanings, finally a description of the TARDIS' arrival which is not only mysterious and alien, but terrifying. Even to an audience who knows it so well - we share Jed's fear. I love the description of the Trial space station too.

It's also nice to have a book so defiantly about that particular Doctor. Setting the Valeyard against 6 works because he's just so heroic. One feels the shock factor would be lost on 9 and 10, who have the Time War as tangible proof that he is capable of intense darkness. But 7 walks a fine line with his behavior, so setting him against the Valeyard is perhaps the most interesting at all - because where 5* or 6 could say "I'm not like you", and 9 and 10 "I know I am you" - 7 is still trying to strike a balance. And the book is his - even the eerie Victorian setting brings up memories of Ghost Light style wackiness. Naturally, the Doc's not giving anything away - which gives it an extra layer of mystery - and though the novel can't resist a Utopia moment at the end, he clearly has a good feeling all along about what he's up against.

*and it's a shame this is a confrontation we'll never see, I'm curious to see what would happen. I did have a great dream once where Five was chasing the Valeyard through the London Underground and British Museum...

A deliberately unMcCoyly trait is the fact the Doctor is off guard and terrified the whole way through, which again I admire. Because the Valeyard has that right, to know him that well. And after that, the pace doesn't let up. One moment they're sitting on a beach, and then two pages later they've been plunged into living hell - very pacy, very exciting, and very dangerous all the way through. Disorientating in a good way, because we're exactly as confused as the heroes. In fact, "disorientating in a good way" would sum up the whole Seventh Doctor's era for me perfectly.

Ace, too, is the perfect companion for all this. Seven and Ace are very very close, and she trusts him absolutely; at the same time, Ace knows better than anyone the Doctor's ability to turn on a knife's edge and knows that often her trust is misplaced. Tell Rose or Sarah Jane that the Doctor was the Ripper, and they'd smile at you politely. Ace knows it's scarily plausible. And ultimately, the identity of the killer isn't ever given away, not obviously. Is it the Doctor? The Valeyard? Does the distinction even matter? I must face the fact I'm two years older than Ace, and can never hope to be that awesome. She's lovely, as always. She has a very hard time, but it remains gripping not exploitative, engaging with the practical difficulties someone stranded in the past would encounter.

As a whole, then, marvellously creepy. You can nitpick - yes, you can't deny the middle gets very repetitive - but taken together, it's a great achievement. I'm happy to see Ian and Barbara get together in a world without the Doctor. I've always liked the Wandering Jew, and though I'm not sure what the thematic point of having him there is, it was nice to see him. Continuity wasn't too heavy handed either - I loved the room of clocks, and though I feel "who am I..." could ultimately get old, I'm still enjoying it. But best of all, Ace turns up in a knackers yard. Brilliant

Would the Valeyard have hurt Ace? Interesting one. I can't quite...even though my origin story for him, as "Doctor 10.5" in Journey's End, almost certainly includes Rose's murder. But...it's Ace!

I've been devouring extended Valeyard media as fast as it's produced, and while none of them have produced what I regard to be a perfect interpretation, each of them show up a facet of his character in a different way. He Jests at Scars caught what I see to be a key character facet - his confusion at his past. He remembers being the Doctor, being the hero - so why doesn't it work any more? Why did he ever think all that good was a good idea? He slipped in and out of Doctorliness beautifully, sometimes with nostalga for his memories, sometimes with scorn. Mel's idea that he was still the Doctor was even convincing - you never knew which of the two you were dealing with.

But it was let down by bad dialogue and some dodgy universe-domination motivation. Time's Champion gave him a bit more presence, a more rounded personality on a scene-by-scene basis, some gravitas - even if I had issues with some of the directions they took him in, particularly when they shackled him to Timelord continuity.


Then Matrix does something different again. This Valeyard is terrifying.


I can't deny I've always found him very scary, and not only the intrinsically creepy fact that this is my Doctor either. It's the mirthless smile, the dead eyes and that cold voice. I spent most of Ultimate Foe murmuring "shit!" under my breath, and not in the usual way that the word "shit" is applied to Trial of a Timelord either. And when things started getting tense, I couldn't help but curl up into the corner in which I was reading and mutter under my breath.

Shit 13 tombs, shit Valeyard-TARDIS, revalation shit, OH SHIT NO* (and it's about now that the world just falls into pieces) and then yet another one for the Destroyer of Worlds bit - yet another bit of weird Time War foreshadowing that isn't actually foreshadowing.

*...and he really does, you know - that's what makes it so twisted. Watch it again.

They're good examples to pick, too, because I've never really noticed them. In my Time's Champion review, I dismissively complained: "The Doc doesn't really have a dark side. He's a complete hypocrite, often too nice for his own good, but I can't imagine a walking talking Evil!Doc being born merely from leaving Sarah Jane in Croydon and once, briefly, considering smashing a guy with a rock." I'm glad they didn't bring the rock into it. As an example of darkness, it's been overused. The examples they did choose knocked me out of the blue, because they are unusual but also far more meaningful.

It was like Ultimate Foe all over again, and when the book was all done I actually paced the university for goodness knows how long, then phoned a friend, just to get it all out of my head.

Yet while the reveal is brilliant, the resolution is pants. The same "this universe isn't big enough for the both of us" approach which never worked with the Master either. It's a shame that a novel this inventive couldn't come up with something more novel than a duel, the death is necessary but contrived, and the dialogue seems to get worse the higher up the tower they get. I didn't think Timelords were affected by altitude...? I admit to being knocked sideways by the suggestion that the Valeyard's motivation was deeper than vengeance and violence. But it was all, ultimately, so predictable. Shame, because it is a book which deserved better. The atmosphere would have been better sustained had the Valeyard got away, the same lingering sense of threat which Trial of a Timelord gaineed by its sneak reveal at the end.

But the twisted incarnations really stuck with me, and it's the chief thing. Not a book to read after dark. Unless you fancy reading it by candle light...