Doctor Who: Christmas on a Rational Planet

Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures #52

by Lawrence Miles

‘An end to history. An end to certainty. Is that too much to ask?’

December, 1799. Europe is recovering from the Age or Reason, the Vatican is learning to live with Napoleon, and America is celebrating a new era of independence. But in New York State, something is spreading its own brand of madness through the streets. Secret societies are crawling from the woodwork, and there’s a Satanic conspiracy around every corner.

Roz Forrester is stranded in a town where festive cheer and random violence go hand-in-hand. Chris Cwej is trapped on board the TARDIS with someone who’s been trained to kill him. And when Reason itself breaks down, even the Doctor can’t be sure who or what he’s fighting for.

Christmas is coming to town, and the end of civilization is following close behind...

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Christmas

277 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 1996

Reviews

[Two Envelopes And A Phone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this one - especially after digging it out near Christmas, and devouring it all over again. It's a convulsing porridge of strange and delightfully blurry ideas. It's also a Doctor Who novel by Lawrence Miles - so, some of the basics: we get dropped into a mess right away and it's difficult to say, ever, even with later explanations, what caused any and all effects; some things that most seem like they should connect up, out of all the swirling confusion, end up not connecting (or, I didn't wring out the quick sentence or paragraph that mad sense of why this all had to happen in one book); finally, the wrap-up goes beyond even the Doctor's normal routine of metaphorically saving the universe by pulling a funny hat out of a rabbit-punch. Then again, this is the Seventh Doctor, and if there's a Doctor who can pull a bottle out of lightning, thus soothing the lightning's long suffering and persuading the lightning to chase all bad things away, for a while...this is that Doctor.

Of course, any time the universe is disintegrating, or falling to pieces or whatever, there's that much more freedom to write SF that is exceptionally discombobulating or even non-linear. I should say that although the symptoms are the same, the universe isn't technically unraveling - it's more like a suppressed/abandoned human (or even Gallifreyan) delight in Unreason, the supernatural, superstition, or silly imagination has finally led to a conscious but suppressed sentience of pure Unreason to start pulling apart the Logic and Reason of reality, starting in and around New York at Christmas, 1799.

Is the book feminist and male-bashing, or is it actually male chauvinist pig stuff? Logic, Reason, Science, Cold Hard Facts - is that all (mostly?) the domain of males? Meanwhile, do we take females as intuitive, "earthy", less process-oriented or coldly scientific? Do we buy that? If that's a theme underpinning the battle for a tolerable reality on display in this novel, is the offense against women for the suggestion that they are "irrational" compared to men? But then again, that's presented as a good thing; the male "logos" has dominated and suppressed any other way of looking at things for long enough - do we look at it like that? Okay, is the theme of the book insulting to men - cold oppressors, woman-haters due to perceived basic differences, rationality and logic as ruthless and male.

Back up, back up. This is not shoved in anyone's face throughout the book; rather, it's lurking in the background, occasionally lunging forward, as some very intriguing food for thought. It's fascinating to see this background noise fuel the heroes and villains, and victims, lining up against each other or getting caught in the middle, in a battle that will decide how rational the universe will be when the dust maybe turns pink, unsettles, and floats up to a new giant elephant in the sky (depending on who wins).

As far as my fanboy reasons for liking the book: the Seventh Doctor is at his escape-artist best here; I know how to pronounce 'Cwej' this time around; the visuals are a blast to imagine as if it were a TV show; I loved the Interface's origins, and the power of the amaranth gone amok; the Carnival Queen is wonderful, especially her ultimate attitude; it's all even more chaotic than usual, but that's okay.

Oh, and this time I knew who Charles Brockden Brown was - late 18th century American novelist, wrote that cool creepy book, Wieland. All hail re-reads when they pay off (and fuzzy logic as perhaps a cool compromise when it comes to kneading needed foundations of a just reality?).

[Jon Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chaos vs order at the dawn of the Age of Reason through the lens of Grant Morrison and David Lynch. Or, if you were part of the fandom debates of the time, rad v trad. In some ways it’s aged beautifully as it touches on how easily madness and wild ideas can engulf humanity (particularly the US), and the sprawling chaotic nature of the Carnival Queen prefigures Faction Paradox. Perhaps you can read this as Miles summoning those ideas into being, before refining them but then that’d be a kind of triumph of rationality.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2265864.html[return][return]Miles' first novel, with all the elements that he would later use, but not yet in their mature form. The 1799 in America environment was interesting, but ran slightly off the rails at times, the Tardis/Gallifrey bits fairly incomprehensible, but at least Roz got some good sequences despite a generally dodgy line on gender and race.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twisted indeed! A darkly humourous, darkly disturbing, and darkly fascinating mix of (1) colonial American history, (2) sensuous & mystic French agents, (3) enjoyable master-manipulator 7th Doctor shennanigans, and (4) a glorious outing for jaded companion Roz Forrester. It's a pity the sub-plot featuring companion #2 (Chris Cwej) is so tame and unengaging by comparison.

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This feels to me like a book trying to be too clever for its own good. There are lots of ideas floating around and so many references (mostly snarky) that this could have been a great book but it is underdeveloped and ends up being messy.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good notions and a lot of wtf

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great ideas, some very good writing, but an execution that was badly flawed by reality-twisting hijinks, which tend to bring out the worst in "rad" writers by giving them the opportunity to spew out whatever they can imagine.

I have hope for his future books being great if they avoid this element.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

if jordan peterson could read, he'd love this book

[Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many scenes and great ideas. As expected for a Miles book, it’s an idea a minute. But unlike his other works, this is so incoherent. Most similar to Sky Pirates. Another book I found impressive for its imagination, but found its lack of interesting characters unforgivable.
Here, the characters are great. But still too many with too little stable introduction. I love a dream sequence, so I enjoy the abstractness of the prose but sometimes it does need to slow down and exposition. This is Longest Day levels of ‘I have no clue where I am right now.’
Firstly, the settings. We’ve got 1700s America. Miles’ other novels explore similar themes as this one: he has an affinity for the revolutions and historic events of this era. He seems to love the hypocrisy of the Doctor not changing time. (Which he actually explores excellently in interference). I have read his other works so I know exactly what he’s trying to communicate, but if I hadn’t read those works, this would totally put me off.
The shadow directory place is a great idea. Basically Torchwood before Torchwood. But, classic Miles, makes them more of a voodoo mystic cult. He’s totally on the pulse of 90s culture (this book is pre-Buffy) and yet feels full of the gothic horror of that show. Again, he finally explores it properly in Alien Bodies.
There’s a number of times where the narrative talks about dna, biomass and even ‘alien bodies’ and yet here it makes no sense? Again; he explores it brilliantly with the eighth doctor but here I’m lost to what importance it has. Theres a whole page where the doctor chats about how his companions bodies have been changed. How their children are part timelord (fuck you Moffat, what original ideas have you had?) (actually I apologise, the weeping angels and silence are original)
There’s another sequence where the Doctor and Cacophony discussion a timelord academy game of psychic manipulation. I barely understood it but it’s another dna splicing thing. Oh and we have loads more of the Time’s Champoin / Eternals stuff, which seemingly died off in Human Nature. But I loved that storyline and here I am enjoying it for what it was invented for: mystery and creativity! But all this ‘timelords wove murder into your dna’ stuff is a lot. This isn’t Lungbarrow. Hinting at it is fun but it explicitly states things in this so flippantly. Like Miles is stamping all his head canons into the ending of a long running series. Maybe I’m being very critical of him as I fear I let him get away with too much because I actually love what he adds to the lore and cannon. I feel I need to be reigned in of my admiration of him because it’s so confident and cocky to just piss about with Doctor who canon the way he does. I see now why Chibnall made the Timeless child the way he did: here, this book is nuts and yet is so enjoyable. I suppose it’s impossible for other authors to gage how their canon revisions will go down when Miles’ books are such anomalies.
The story begins to descend into random time lord lore, which Miles is so excellent at. He literally made that Book of the War which is essentially just a list of brillaint time lord ideas. He’s great at calling the time lords more interesting things: The Great Houses, The Watchmakers.
Here we have more clockwork people, predating Anachrophia and Girl in the Fireplace.
The constant analysis of why the Doctor travels with who he travels, his part in the horrors of history. It’s all great and Miles will continue to explore it beautifully in his other works. But here it all feels like post page 200 it has lots to say, but pre 200 it’s a mess of ideas. The experience was only enjoyable because I already have a taste of his work and trust him entirely to bring meaning to the absurd. Judging this as his first novel, I can’t believe they published more of his work!
We have living streets and worlds just like Grant Morrison and Alan Moore comics of this era.
Roz has an excellent beginning scene where she is distressed by the racism of the time. She hides as a mystic fortune teller. Her row with the doctor, and the near-murder to summon the doctor - was brilliant! Her later fights with the clone Roz provided more good character work ‘this used to be me, but I’m not arrogant now’. But I have no clue why she’s here. Oh I figured it out: he wanted the book to be about history? Her part is about how history is ‘a slave ship’ and her past self represents the complicity of humanity, whilst her future self is the victim. Dropping off her fake white middle name ‘Sarah’ for her actual ‘inyathi’ name is a kind of acceptance of her blackness. Acceptance that she is historically different to white people. Her scenes develop into a cinema where she watches history, with atomic bombs etc. it’s way better explored in interference, so again, I can’t talk about this book as a solo piece of work. It’s entirely a doctor who fan throwing up all his ideas incase he can’t write another book. But when he’s commissioned another one he seemingly takes his time.
Everything with Chris was super interesting but again, unfollowable. The exploding tardis is brilliant, but again better explored in Miles’ other works. My favourite scene is probably the ‘where would a timelord hide a secret passage in a library? In one of the books!’ That was fab.
The scenes with Marrielle where she reveals her wants as the villain were exactly like the Celestials in Alien bodies. A being wanting to be beyond the confides of the universe. Paralleled with the Roz scenes it makes sense why a being wants to leave history.
I did gag at the mentions of a Father Time and Grandfather Paradox. Earlier I said ‘this isn’t Lungbarrow’ but the book does have the first reference to ‘the house of Lungbarrow.’ I wonder if this is stuff Rebecca Leveane added in as editor, knowing what was coming? Or was Miles chatting with Kate Orman, Ben and Marc? I assume the latter!

This story also mentioned lots about the psychics in the book SLEEPY. Which I haven’t read. I might buy it. It’s an Orman so must be good right? Unless it’s like Blue Box all over again.

[David Layton · Rating 2.25 out of 5]

Lawrence Miles ends up being another writer whose works readers either love or hate. Christmas on a Rational Planet seems to be designed to produce that result. I do not hate this novel, but I did have to force my way through it. I found that the payoff was not worth the effort. Basically, this is a "look how much I can screw around with reality" kind of book. It does not have a plot as such. The driving idea appears to be a notion that the universe is some kind of battle ground between the Eternal Feminine - Cacophony, and the Eternal Masculine - Reason. Thus, the first strike against the novel for me is this ham-fisted gender essentialism. The second strike is Miles' lack of coherent plotting. His notion for what drives a novel is to concoct some threatening situation and have characters escape from it, but nothing fully links one threatening scenario to another. It is as if Miles thinks that constant action, any action, just getting the characters moving, is enough to make the reader ignore the lack of coherence, never to notice that the "plot" is held together with celo tape and paper clips. The third strike is a typical first or early novel error - too many elements. The book reads as if Miles had five half-formed ideas for novels and decided just to cram them all into one. Thus, there's a secret French society devoted to hunting Time Lords, some stuff about latent psychic abilities, yet another reality-warping Time Lord device gone rogue (actually two of them - the amaranth and Interface), some commentary on slavery, some stuff about the fragility of history surrounding a nascent USA, ancient and terrible demigods duking it out, etc. The fourth is all the reality warping. There's too much of it. Miles treats it as his easy trick for avoiding thoughtful examination of reality. The fifth strike is another first or early novel mistake - razzle dazzle stylistics. Miles wants to impress, and so uses layers of internal monologue, disjunctive passages, quick cutting between scenes, snappy dialogue, and so on. These show-off techniques get in the way of telling the story. The sixth strike is an abundance of anachronisms, especially in the dialogue. If you can't write historically accurate dialogue, then don't set your novel in that part of history.

Really, it's a sad case of a novel with much potential thwarted by the writer's ambition and the editor's unwillingness to check it.

[Genevieve Levin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to be fair to this book. Though I’m a huge fan of both New Who and the Classic series, I didn’t start watching Classic until about 2013, and this is the first one of the novels that I’ve read. And I really had a hard time getting into it.

My main issue with it was that it’s one of those books that just throws a *lot* of characters and complex, vague plot elements at the reader with only the tiniest drabbles of explanation. And I can’t be sure whether this is a fair complaint about the writing style or whether the author somewhat reasonably expects you to already have read earlier novels featuring Roz and Chris and certain later-revealed plot elements (not wanting to spoil) and therefore come in with a certain familiarity with them. My experience with TV show tie-in novels is that they’re usually written to be relatively standalone from each other, but that’s not always the case, and since it *is* the first DW one I’ve read, I don’t know if they were usually written with the expectation that they would be read in order.

Anyway. As a new reader picking up this book out of the blue, I struggled to get into it, and felt like I was spending my concentration trying to remember who everyone was and figure out what they were doing and how they were connected to each other versus actually caring about them or being wrapped up in the plot. Every time I put it down even for a day or two, it was hard to remember who everyone was and what they were doing when I picked it back up. I did keep coming back to it and I did finish it, and I did think the climax was pretty cool, though even then I felt like I didn’t 100% have a grasp on everything that was happening.

So if you’re already a fan of the Classic Who novels and you haven’t read this one, please don’t let my review dissuade you from giving it a try. But if you haven’t read many of the novels before, this might not be a great one to start with.

[Mikey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll just get this out the way and say that Lawrence Miles’s books generally don’t really do it for me. There’s always little parts or concepts that work for me, but for the most part I find a lot of it bloated and a bit... up itself, and early on in this one I was kind of worried that things were going the same way, but thankfully it soon picked up and I found myself really getting immersed and enjoying where things were going.

There’s a fair few threads all going at the same time, and seemingly some picking up from another recent NA, and putting another little interesting spin on that. There’s also some pretty engaging stuff for all three of the mains, with the Doctor, Chris, and Roz all getting a pretty big chunk of the narrative and we get a pretty good exploration of all of them too. It’s nice to have this opportunity to flesh out Chris and Roz, especially Chris considering his (mostly) ‘himbo’ run since joining the Doctor.

Also just while i’m being complimentary of Miles, the sequences in the TARDIS in this novel are exactly what The Doctor’s Wife/Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS should have been. Unsettling, unpredictable, and totally outside of the occupants’ comfort zone.

I think I have two more Miles’ novels - both in the Benny range - to get through, so I’m now actually quite looking forward to getting to them!

[Daniel Cork · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Miles is a rather odd writer. He's praised for his contributions to the franchise but criticized for his demeanour towards other creatives. I love his work, since his stories are admittedly incredibly imaginative and well-written, but he can be rather nasty with other writers, unfortunately. He's very much seen as the black sheep of the fandom because of his behavior. 'Alien Bodies' and 'Interference' were phenomenal novels, so I've been really looking forward to reading his debut.

It's Christmas 1799, nearing the beginning of a new era. Roz is stuck in a village where all the inhabitants hold grotesque prejudices against her. The TARDIS slowly destroys itself, and Chris is trapped in it. The Doctor is determined to stop a terrible catastrophe that could change everything. The universe is on the brink of change, and it all starts with a small, insignificant village on Christmas Eve.

Lawrence Miles' debut novel is dark, fiendishly clever and absolutely bonkers. It hasn't aged well in certain respects, but it's a very well-written novel that is once again an incredibly imaginative read with an interesting cast of characters, fascinating ideas and a universe ending threat that is unlike anything the show has tried doing.

Overall: This is an absolutely incredible novel that slyly references the leader of a cult, later known as Faction Paradox. 10/10

[Dominic King · Rating 3 out of 5]

No book needs to have N words this much really, even with the context provided. This is the second Lawrence Miles Dr Who book I've read (Alien Bodies was the first), and it's clear he's dumped as many of his brewing fan ideas he's had. That said, his ideas are the right kind of whacky for my liking, and clearly set up the groundwork for the abstract sci-fi ideas he's going to explore in the Faction Paradox.

This wasn't read as part of an ongoing series read so I don't know how well it continues the storyline for Roz and Chris, but I got a good idea if their voices from it.

Pacingwise, as in Alien Bodies (or rather, Alien Bodies is as in this), we get chapters from many characters perspectives, that build, slightly too slowly for my liking, to a very thrilling and conceptual climax. I'm happy to forgive abstract description for the denizens of hell for the abstract nature of the threat at play here. Always better to be bold and overshoot, than to be familiar but boring.

3.5/5 would probably read again.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I have my quibbles with this story - the plot didn't always fully involve me, and the gynoids were some weird gender essentialist sci-fi that I didn't particularly like for acting like 'woman' robots would be inherently less 'rational'. But I also think this story's dealing with some super interesting ideas, especially the way it handles Roz and her relation to her own native empire. Definitely feels like something I'll have to revisit down the road!

[Arthur B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts out by asking the reader to accept a really weird sort of cosmic gender essentialism as true. Er, no. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[Mae R · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interested in listening to Roz whine? Looking for a story with more holes than a donut shop?? Then read this book. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and pass on by.

[Rachel Redhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

still a great book :)