Palace of the Red Sun was my second excursion into the BBC's Past Doctor Adventures which were published from 1997-2005 when the new series started. Being a big fan of the Sixth Doctor, my small collection of PDAs all feature the more strident incarnation of the Time Lord bedecked in his gaudy patchwork Edwardian coat.
Unlike Grave Matter, this story leaves the confines of Earth and it has five separate plot lines. First we are introduced to Glavis Judd, an interstellar dictator who likes to think of himself as being benevolent. However, his invasion of the planet Essleven suggests otherwise. The royal family there has escaped Judd's clutches by jumping into hyperspace but he vows that they will not escape his clutches for long.
Along for the ride with Judd quest is Dexel Dynes, an intrepid reporter who is following the conqueror on his ventures in pursuit of something else - big ratings. Dynes doesn't end up being a major player in the story but he does help link the various plotlines and gives author Christopher Bulis a chance to throw in some commentary on the media and cult of celebrity of 21st century Earth.
Meanwhile the TARDIS materializes in the midst of a lavish garden. The Doctor is unable to determine exactly where or when they are so he and Peri head out to investigate. Unsurprisingly, Peri ends up in a bit of peril. She falls into a pit chasing an oddly playful robot named Boots which prompts The Doctor to head back to the TARDIS to fetch some rope. When he returns to the hole, Peri is gone.
She has been captured by one of the robot gardeners and soon discovers that the mechanical caretakers have enslaved other humans who tend the gardens in as parts of chain gangs. The Doctor too runs into a gardener but finds that this particular one, Green-8, is developing sentience and questions his role of servitude.
Amidst the robots and spaceships, the final plot strand involves Princess Oralissa in an odd storyline that seems a medieval throwback. Her parents are looking to marry her off to either Prince Benedek or Duke Stephon, both of whom have come to meet their prospective wife and vie for her hand. For her part, Oralissa desires neither. Distraught, her mind turns to other things including the robot servants. She questions their origins but no one knows or seems to care.
Bulis does a fine job of weaving the various plotlines together and, to his credit, he does so at a slow pace. Nothing is revealed too early. We can see things encroaching but the exact nature of where they are and how they all fit together arent't given until the end of the book. Judd pounds the energy shield surrounding the planet where he thinks the Essleven royal family is holding out and the other characters see the explosions yet where are the Esslevens? We know that Oralissa and the action surrounding her takes place on the same world that the TARDIS landed on but that royal family surely isn't from Essleven. But who are they?
In addition to juggling five strands of story, Bulis throws in some interesting commentary along the way.
I mentioned the media above but there's also The Doctor trying to explain morality to the newly sentient Green-8. Sure, it's not a philosophy lesson and much of it is the sort of boilerplate ethics that has been heard in countless episodes of the TV show but there's a bit more of it and it goes a bit deeper than usual. First there is the issue of slavery as the robots have put any humans they capture plundering the gardens into indentured servitude. With The Doctor as mentor, the robot comes to the conclusion that that situation is wrong. Other moral quandaries come along too including how to treat one's enemies and how to puzzle through the lesser and greater evils. Again, there's no mistaking the dialogue here for Plato, but it outlines The Doctor's sense of right and wrong more deeply than anywhere else I've read.
Palace of the Red Sun perhaps would have benefited with being a bit lengthier. Bulis' flashbacks to Judd in his pre-dictator days seem superfluous. For the purposes of the story Judd simply needs to be a bastard and accounts of his formative years don't yield very much in the context of the story.
But this is a minor misstep because the real fun of the book comes in the anticipation of how the various storylines will finally come together.
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