Fiction Review

The disturbing cover to DOCTOR WHO: DARK PROGENY by Steve Emmerson.
© 2001 BBC Books

DOCTOR WHO: DARK PROGENY

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Friday, September 07, 2001

As gigantic terraforming city machines move across the surface of Ceres Alpha, a group of babies are born with unusual telepathic and telekinetic abilities. The computer systems keep going down, and the terraforming isn't going smoothly. Project head Gaskill Tyran, a man a little too in touch with his dark side, attempts to suppress an archaeological dig that will put the terraforming behind schedule. But when the Doctor arrives following the infection of his companion Anji with a telepathic virus, he realizes that the dig may hold the answers to all their problems.

After Dave Stone's uneven and often overly clever book, THE SLOW EMPIRE, DARK PROGENY should have felt like coming home again. In a way it does the book is an interesting read. In fact, it's a bit too interesting. DARK PROGENY has the same problem as Emmerson's earlier book, CASUALTIES OF WAR: it'll take you about a hundred pages of reading about the way the city machine operates and how the people within live into their hundreds and change their bodies at will to realize that not a great deal has happened in the plot. After the startling birth scene at the beginning of the novel and the TARDIS' emergency landing on Ceres Alpha which splits up its crew, it takes several character studies and lots of not running around before the plot actually begins to me again.

This is not, however, entirely a bad thing. Emmerson is one of the few writers in the range who takes so much trouble to establish a definitive sense of setting for his novel, in the same way that other books in the range, such as FESTIVAL OF DEATH and EARTHWORLD, also do. In fact, DARK PROGENY is most reminiscent of the Virgin New Adventure THE ALSO PEOPLE by Ben Aaaronovitch, only without the carnival atmosphere.

Emmerson also does a marvelous job with his own characters: Gaskill Tyran, the sort of villain who makes your flesh creep; the grieving parents Veta and Josef, who end up being more than just a pair of throwaways as the novel progresses; and the soldier who slowly becomes more than a cardboard stereotype, De-Ann Foley. As interesting as Emmerson's characters are, though, he spends a bit too much time with them and too little with the principle cast. Anji in particular is grossly underused, despite her psychic "infection" by the children. Emmerson does delve into her head a little to reveal more about her past, including the existence of a younger brother named Rezaul and her maternal feelings toward him. But apart from that and a few pop culture references she makes which sound odd coming from her when they actually came from her late boyfriend Anji spends much of the book out of it, leaving the burden on the Doctor and Fitz. Sadly, Fitz gets only a bit more use than Anji does, and his prolonged separation from the Doctor causes his scenes to drag.

Emmerson is in fine form with the Doctor, though, who does seem to have finally made it home. THE SLOW EMPIRE and DARK PROGENY are the first two books in the current story-arc that don't make continual references to the Doctor's memory loss. It's only when the Doctor makes a brief passing reference to it, and when Tyran uses "oh, no, not the" mind probe on him in an attempt to access his memories, that you'll realize you haven't noticed it - both books are far better for it. For that matter, very little self-referencing goes on in this novel at all I obviously couldn't resist the mind probe in-joke in this paragraph, but Emmerson did, and I applaud him for it.

The thing you'll remember most about DARK PROGENY is the setting and the atmosphere, not the story. The explanations at the end don't stick in the mind too well, as if even Emmerson realizes that the plot isn't at center stage here. It's a risk, but not a badly taken one.