DOCTOR WHO: ASYLUM

The Doctor encounters an old friend...before he's met her

By Tony Whitt     July 20, 2001

In 13th century London, a strange tower appears, bringing with it a group of outsiders and a man who's been tracking them for all his life. In 12th century Oxford, proto-scientist Roger Bacon is working on the mysterious Elixir of Life while a murderer strikes down his Franciscan brothers. And at a 35th century university, Nyssa of Traken, former companion of the Doctor, is working on a thesis about the works of Bacon before a temporal anomaly changes history and draws the attention of the Doctor a Doctor who has yet to meet her.

Some fans have called the idea of a companion meeting the Doctor before he's met her "fanwank" and dismissed this book on those grounds, but even fanwank can be good at times. Sadly, Darvill-Evans doesn't do enough with the opportunity to make it good. The Nyssa of ASYLUM is a post-"Terminus" and world-weary older woman who wants to get away from it all, and the Doctor's sudden arrival, despite the paradox it causes, provides her with just the opportunity to get away to the seemingly simpler 12th century. We're given very little to justify this characterization, which is so completely at odds with the character of Nyssa established both in the series and in the Big Finish audio series that it simply isn't the same character.

This is not to say that Nyssa has the opportunity to act in character anyway, since she's not given much to do at all. Instead, Darvill-Evans effectively keeps her out of the action by cloistering her inside a castle (the "asylum" of the title). There, she's romantically pursued by a knight she couldn't care less about, and after much boring soul-searching she eventually comes to the life-shattering conclusion that (wait for it) she's going "to choose to live every minute of every day." Ugh. This lack of action on Nyssa's part is even more noticeable given the enormous missed opportunity in the plot. The aliens stranded in the 13th century are looking for a cure for the Black Plague so that they can survive Earth's history until their ship can leave again, thus causing the temporal anomaly. Surely if Nyssa can find a cure for something like Lazar's Disease, the Black Plague should be a simple matter? But that's not the direction the plot takes us in, and Nyssa is given nothing to do but "self-actualize." Ugh again.

Those aliens don't get a lot of play either. Despite the fact that the book opens and closes with them, we never learn anything about them or their fate. They're simply there to create a big enough anomaly to get the Doctor and Nyssa together and of course the two of them don't stay together that long before they separate anyway. It's a criminal misuse of what could have been a great plot element.

Even the Fourth Doctor is poorly used here. Granted, Tom Baker's characterization of the Doctor is notoriously difficult to capture on paper, based as it is on Baker's extremely visual performance, but some writers are able to capture his distinctive joie de vivre. Darvill-Evans' Fourth Doctor never quite hits that high, and his scenes with Nyssa are particularly lacking.

ASYLUM is much happier when it's trying to be THE NAME OF THE ROSE. The parallels with Umberto Eco's earlier (and far denser) novel are unmistakable, though they're more along the lines of a tribute than a direct stealing. Darvill-Evans also recreates medieval England beautifully, even as he shows us through Nyssa's eyes how deceptive this simpler time could be. Ultimately, though, even his lengthy essay at the end on the writing of fiction in a historical setting is more fascinating than the WHO portions of the novel itself. At the end of the day, ASYLUM is a much better historical mystery novel than it is a DOCTOR WHO book, despite the boldness of the premise. Nyssa deserves much better than this.

DOCTOR WHO: ASYLUM

Grade: C-

Author(s): Peter Darvill-Evans

Publisher: BBC Books

Price: $6.95