Doctor Who: The Colony of Lies

Past Doctor Adventures #61

by Colin Brake

The year is 2539. Arriving on Axista Four the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie find the colony in a state of chaos. A breakaway group of colonists -- the 'Realists' -- has abandoned Ransome's Back to Basics ideals and is creating a new high-tech settlement. The 'Loyalists' who remain are dwindling in number and face total extinction. Meanwhile, a spaceship from Earth has arrived with news that 80,000 refugees are about to descend upon the planet; the Realists are staging raids on the wreck of the colony ship, and in a secret underground bunker mysterious aliens who claim to be the planet's first colonists are beginning to awake. Who are the dog-like aliens who call themselves Tyrenians? What is the secret agenda of the sinister Federation Administrator Greene? And what really happened when the colony ship crash-landed on Axista Four 100 years ago?

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 2003

About the author

Colin Brake is an English television writer and script editor best known for his work for the BBC on programs such as Bugs and EastEnders. He has also written spin-offs from the BBC series Doctor Who. He currently lives and works in Leicester.

Brake began working on EastEnders in 1985 as a writer and script editor, being partly responsible for the introduction of the soap's first Asian characters Saeed and Naima Jeffery. From there, he went on to work as "script executive" on the popular Saturday night action adventure program Bugs, before moving to Channel 5 in 1997 to be "script associate" on their evening soap Family Affairs.

In the early 2000s, Brake wrote episodes of the daytime soaps Doctors and the revival of Crossroads.

Away from television, Brake had his first Doctor Who related writing published as part of Virgin Publishing's Decalog short story collection in 1996. He then had his first novel Escape Velocity published by BBC Books in February 2001 as part of their Eighth Doctor Adventures range based on the television series Doctor Who. At the time, Brake was quoted as saying how appropriate it was that he was now writing for Doctor Who, as he was briefly considered as Eric Saward's replacement as script editor on the show - a job that eventually went to Andrew Cartmel instead.

Brake followed Escape Velocity with the Past Doctor Adventure The Colony of Lies in July 2003, and then with the audio adventure Three's a Crowd from Big Finish Productions in 2005. His Tenth Doctor Adventure The Price of Paradise was released in September 2006. He has also written an audio for their Bernice Summerfield range, and a short story for their Short Trips range.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

The year is 2539. Arriving on Axista Four the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie find the colony in a state of chaos. A breakaway group of colonists - the 'realists' - has abandoned Ransome's Back to Basics ideals and is creating a new high-tech settlement.

I’d planned to re-read this novel as I couldn’t really recall the plot, but the cheapest copy is going for £35 on eBay! :(

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why is it that every SF/Fantasy series can't resist doing a space western? They never turn out well, and they never make much sense. The original "Star Trek" got away with it because its episode was a surreal dreamscape...and "Doctor Who" on TV got away with it because its episode was set in an actual 19th century town with a twist. But western towns in space? Sigh...never a good thing, and it's not really much of anything here. This is bland and silly and reads like a waste of time...another Colin Brake novel that doesn't do anything for me. And why have the framing device of the 7th Doctor & Ace around this 2nd Doctor/Jamie/Zoe story? It's not even necessary. I suppose there are space western fans out there (shudder!), but I'm not one of them. Not exactly the book I was hoping for to mark my 4000th entry on Good Reads.

[Frank Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great story and is written well. A good Two adventure with an unexpected appearance by Seven and Ace.

[Jacob Licklider · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a part of me that believes The Colony of Lies only came about because Colin Brake realized that every time Doctor Who attempted a space western it utterly failed. The Space Pirates is a mostly missing serial that couches itself in western imagery and tropes while dealing with mining. The Colony of Lies boasts a cover of the Second Doctor overlooking a town from the Wild West, right in front of a crashed spaceship. Westerns as a genre come out of America’s manifest destiny, an aspect of colonialism and imperialism creating the imperative of expansion across the country by force. The history is an inherently bloody one, something the genre has been reckoning with since the 1970s. The Colony of Lies proposes that humanity’s expansion into space is going to follow the same path of bloody conquest. This is a novel where the title gives away the twist, the colony setting that does in fact take nostalgic inspiration from the western genre for its level of technology and aesthetic and as such is built on lies. While the colonists’ story is that they were invaded, reality is that humanity are of course the invaders and displacers of the native population.

This twist is nestled; the aliens turn out to not actually be aliens but another group of humans who have been genetically engineered away from humanity. It’s this secondary twist that undercuts Brake’s major themes examining imperialism. It cuts out half of the imperialism from the text itself in favor of bioengineering ideas. Perhaps this is something that was fitting for commentary in the early 2000s, there’s even an argument to be made that in the present. This is a post-9/11 novel after all, and the bioengineering is for creating super soldiers just as in reality the United States is invading Iraq. The way The Colony of Lies reads, however, is as if Brake pivoted when the world changed. It’s certainly not the worst potential pivot, there is a story to be told there, but Brake does not give enough material nor enough characterization to the supporting characters to make it all.

Brake is one of the few novelists to characterize the Second Doctor particularly well. This incarnation of the Doctor in the novel feels as if he is on the run with a unique morality. The Enemy of the World feels particularly important for Brake’s characterization of the Doctor, throughout the novel he positions himself as the outsider who isn’t going to immediately side with one person. That’s how Brake facilitates the nestled twist, the Doctor not committing to one side being necessarily good or bad. This is also technically a novel featuring the Seventh Doctor, he and Ace appearing in the prologue and epilogue, but the best scene is this brief interaction between the Second and Seventh Doctors. The Doctor is referred to as the Stranger giving the reader the idea that the Doctor has become something completely different by his seventh incarnation, while his second is too terrified to act for fear the Time Lords may finally catch up with him. It does not stop him of course, but it does enough to make him terrified. Brake is also quite good at exploring Jamie and Zoe as both highly insecure. Jamie is particularly well served as there are scenes from his perspective where the reader really understands just how intelligent he is despite his leaps in logic. He is insecure about if he ever will go back and is slightly horrified on how technology and weapons of war in particular will evolve. Zoe is paralleled with him as the always logical one but equally insecure in expanding her horizons because this is forward in history for her, she is terrified at the threats the universe face (Brake references several Dalek stories in particular).

Overall, The Colony of Lies has fantastic commentary at its center, however Colin Brake’s prose is unable to focus on exactly one commentary to make. Paralleling itself with Colony in Space, the ideas are there and they are fantastic, even if the secondary twist goes one step too far to weaken the entire story. The regulars are characterized well even if the supporting characters are almost entirely bland, though the alien race is a cool concept if executed poorly. It’s actually at its best when it is being a space western, proving that Doctor Who actually can do space westerns in the right circumstances. 6/10.

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace" the book promises, giving all those who read the back covers first visions of another "Cold Fusion", a book perhaps contrasting not only the different approaches of two Doctors, but also perhaps the very tone of their eras, with the Second Doctor's "monster of the week" base under siege motif clashing with the more thematically adult narratives of the Seventh Doctor, with their deeper complexities and more extreme moral choices. Even better, it might give the Second Doctor the chance to one-up the always thinking, every base covered Seventh Doctor, since the Second was the one who invented the "wolf in sheep's clothing" approach first, bumbling around comically while taking notes and paying attention and having far more of a handle on the situation than it would at first seem. That could have been a fun story, seeing the Seventh Doctor hoisted on his own temporal petard.

That, unfortunately, isn't quite what we get. For me, the best part of the novel is the author bio, which shows Colin Brake to be both self-effacing and having a good sense of humor, as well as being a good sport, as he backhanded addresses the criticism over his last "Who" novel, "Escape Velocity" which . . . didn't exactly fulfill audience expectations. If the novel itself had contained some of the wit that was in that bio, we might have had a more sparkling affair. Instead it's just rather drab.

It's also very Western. He also comments that this novel came out not long after the Seventh Doctor Past Doctor Adventure "Heritage" which also had a "Wild West on an alien world" theme to it. For what it's worth, "Heritage" did push the theme a bit further and had some more local color. However, what both novels share is that they aren't very interesting. Sometimes it feels like "Doctor Who" is trying to do a Western that tops Bill Hartnell's rather fun "The Gunfighters" (hey, I liked it) and failing miserably each time.

This time out, the Second Doctor and Stalwart Companions Jamie and Zoe wind up landing on a world where the colonists have adopted a "Back to Nature" theme, refusing to use technology beyond what people used in the days of the Old West. Why this? Because the plot requires it. However, you never really get a strong sense of it and before too long it becomes a Generic Colony. In the vain hope of keeping things interesting, it turns out that a splinter branch of the colony called "The Realists" (who embrace technology and are tired of scooping up their own waste, no doubt) keep conducting raids, which strangely enough they don't keep winning even though they have a) common sense on their side and b) presumably aren't relying on horses and plows.

Meanwhile, just to add more drama, a Federation ship has arrived with word that a ton more refugees are coming, meaning that everyone has to be crammed into the tiny island on the planet which is the one place everyone can live safely. Oh wait, just kidding, the entire planet seems to be inhabitable. But everyone freaks out anyway (at least the Doctor late in the game intelligently points out that there should be enough room for everyone). AND a race of dog-people have risen from suspended animation since it appears it was their planet first, adding more wrinkles to things that don't really need wrinkles. Oh hey, another small population on a huge planet. Wherever shall we put them? How about anywhere we want?

I'm sure the author is a good soul and a grand person, probably a lot of fun at a party. But you would be able to tell from this story, which remains as by-the-numbers as they come to the point where its almost plodding and dreary. There's no radical ideas, no interesting points of view, no shocking plot twists of any note, it's just another colony facing a struggle that isn't really that gripping, the story marking time until the Doctor can finally sort out the mess. It just good naturedly shuffles along from point A to point B, never offending but never really getting the blood pumping either. Like methadone in novel form, it satisfies the need without giving any of the high, if one "needs" another Second Doctor novel.

The novel tries a constant peeling back of what we know, to give us a sense of "everything we know is wrong" but it winds up being one of those situations where if a certain character just spoke up earlier, half the novel wouldn't be necessary (and he doesn't for no other reason than the plot requires it . . . "Heritage" suffered from the same problem). For ways to see that done right in SF, I recommend Frank Robinson's "The Dark Beyond the Stars", or that old standby Brian Aldiss' "Nonstop". Here it just seems rote.

And what about our friends Jamie and Zoe? They're in the novel and that's about the best I can say about it. Jamie is Scottish and people make constant comments that he's wearing a skirt, Zoe is peppy and far smarter than you and nobody does anything too remarkably out of character. The Doctor fares well, at least the Second. The Seventh doesn't do much to justify his inclusion, acting in events out of nowhere and for seemingly vague reasons (just because he doesn't explain doesn't mean we shouldn't have some idea as to why), and then not making much sense as to what he does and how it affects the plot, or how the outcome would have been different if he didn't say anything. I would, however, make whatever sacrifice is required to see Patrick Troughton and Sylvester McCoy on screen together.

The book tries very hard to create some tension, some excitement, anything, but for the most part its not all that much different from one of those landscape paintings hanging in the dentist's office. Sure the wall is probably better off for having it there, but it's not like it needed it in the first place. There's no blatant missteps but no real risks either. To its credit it may be the first time that the episode format makes sense, but otherwise its purely functional, chugging along nicely until we hit the mandated page limit and it has to be over. If it was half as dramatic as the title suggests it might be there could have been some promise but if we wanted to be truthful it could have been named "Colony Where Stuff Happens" and we all could have gone in forewarned.

[Joe Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very straight forward and dead average sci-fi novel with too large a cast and too many quick cuts between the various groupings. Many of the non-TV show based books feel the need to split up the Doctor and his companions into their own adventures with a companion of the author's own creation. Toss in a few sets of characters who have nothing to do with the Doctor at all and you have a book where the Doctor feels like a guest star in his own book and no interaction between the time travelers. Since the fun of Doc Two is his interaction with Jamie, this tends to destroy my interest in a 'Doctor Who' novel.

The novel itself features an Earth colony masquerading as a Western town founded to go 'back to basics' and a rebel group who think this philosophy is killing the little colony. The Doctor and his companions enter this world just a ship from earth is coming in to investigate a distress signal from the rebels. There is an unexpected threat, the military takes over, the Doctor wants peace, lots of people very nearly die, yada, yada...

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting one. Begins and ends with the Seventh Doctor and Ace but the majority is with The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. Normally this kind of story would be a bit boring for me but I really liked the characterisation and Zoe was amazing in this.

[Vaclav Kratochvil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book with spark :-)

[David Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the book has a setting in a quasi-western town on another world, and one character speaks in a somewhat western-like manner, it really is not a western at all. Brake may have been attempting something like a western, with a frontier town, a displaced earlier settlement (i.e. the Injuns) and something like the cavalry in the Earth Federation troops. However, the novel is more straightforward science fiction than anything else. The story and type are of the back to basics (pun intended, for those who read the book) late 1970s style, the reaction against the literary flights of fancy of the 1960s and early 1970s. It has the manner of John Varley or the early George R.R. Martin to it, maybe even Orson Scott Card.

The story involves a failing human colony on an Earth-like planet. The colony had been established on a theory that humanity had lost its way in too much technology, so that a return to the 19th-century style of living would give people a fresh start. However, the founder of the colony died when the colony ship crashed. Now, a century later, the colony is split into the Loyalists, wanting to keep the old ways, and the Realists who want more technology. Complications come when Earth Federation forces arrive to establish the basis for relocating refugees of the Dalek wars to this planet. The Federation ship sets off an alarm and the prior inhabitants begin to stir. Several interesting plot complications ensue, and Brake does manage to keep some surprises well hidden while at the same time logical when they arrive.

The book does not have much in the way of original ideas, but instead takes some well-known elements and combines them in a novel way. There are a few bits to quibble about. How can Jamie hold his own in a one-on-one fight with the biggest and toughest alien dog when repeatedly these dogs have shown the strength to rip apart doors and fling humans as if they were pillows? Does Zoe have to be on the brink of death three times? Why is the colonists' difficulties in getting pregnant not explained? Why is it that Federation official Greene is made out to be something other than human, but is really just another slimy political hack? Of course, the major problem for most readers will be the wholly unnecessary fan-wank of having a seventh Doctor cameo.

To wrap up, despite a few gaffs the book is a brisk read with science fiction elements put to good use.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2033779.html[return][return]a tale of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe on a frontier planet where various factions are in conflict with each other, and really little of much interest happens. There is a brief framing narrative with Ace and the Seventh Doctor, who intervenes at a crucial point to help his former self. Prose style starts off rather badly but settles down to reasonable standards with occasional info-dumps. Not really recommended except for completists like me.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good characterization of the three leads and an amusing guest appearance help this otherwise pretty drab story, but it's still not one of my favorites.