Illegal Alien was originally submitted as a story idea for the Seventh Doctor while the show was still on the air. However, its cancellation put the kibosh on that idea and it was instead turned into a novel for the BBC's Past Doctor Adventures several years later. It probably would have worked well on the TV show although some of the gore would have been removed in addition to things being pared down for time.
It is November 1940 and the Blitz is on. Irish-American Cody McBride has fled trouble and his life, more generally, back in Chicago for the friendly confines of London where he tortures his liver and eeks out a living as a private dick. In addition to the Luftwaffe, the city's denizens have to contend with a serial killer dubbed The Limehouse Lurker. One night McBride sees an odd light in the sky and tracks down the location where it crashed. There he discovers a silver orb. Opening, it emits a blinding light causing McBride to fall unconscious.
He awakes to find that Major Lazonby of British Intelligence had the sphere hauled away while he has the same done to him by Inspector Mullen of the London police. Lazonby is all business and military procedure in the name of the queen and country. For his part, Mullen is simply trying to keep a little order amidst the Blitz and sees McBride as an impediment. Our detective returns to his office where The Doctor and Ace drop in for a visit. Meanwhile a businessman named Peddler gets a visit from a gentleman named Wall and his very tall preternatural tough guys. Soon after Wall and his associates leave unsatisfied, our captain of industry meets his maker in a most gruesome manner.
And thusly are most of the major players introduced. The cover of the book has a Cyberman on it –Second Doctor Era – so the orb is a dead giveaway. However, Tucker and Perry do a fine job of having them lie low – but in the open. Cybermen usually stay out of sight underground somewhere and bide their time until the right moment arrives. Here, though, they are in (relatively) plain view. Wall's tough guys turn out to be Cybermen in disguise and The Limehouse Lurker is really a damaged Cyberleader crushing its victims and rubbing their blood on itself to keep the remaining organic bits in working order. In addition to this bit of hideousness, there is a rather disturbing scene where The Doctor is poking around a laboratory where victims are being transmogrified into Cybermen and he finds a baby that is nearly a newborn Cybermat.
Illegal Alien makes many an overture to noir with McBride and a London during the blackouts that provides plenty of darkness. Missing, however, is a femme fatale. This really isn't a problem as the noir business is an added flavor not the main dish here. McBride isn't the most interesting character but he's a good person underneath the stoic exterior and behind the booze. His contacts in the London crime underworld lead us to George Limb, an elderly gentleman with even more contacts - even some highly placed ones in government. I appreciated how Tucker and Perry portray him as a kindly old man but always with a hint of mystery and menace. You're never really sure what side he's on until the end.
McBride is also friends with "Mama", the proprietor of a tavern of the same name. He too is an American ex-pat only he is an African-American. This was an interesting little touch. Firstly, it led to a neat little conversation about baseball in which The Doctor reminisces about having seen Babe Ruth in action as well as having attended many Negro League games. The injection of some American culture, including the Pittsburgh Crawfords which will be obscure to most readers, was a nice contrast to an otherwise very English setting with mostly very English (white) characters. Secondly, having a black character was neat in that it just went outside of expectations. Although not developed on TV, a defining moment of Ace's life was when her black friend Manisha was killed after some racist bastards firebombed her home. While Mama didn't have a large role, I am hoping that it foreshadows a more colorful future.
Illegal Alien takes place sometime after the terminal episode of the Seventh Doctor's run on television. While it was the first Eighth Doctor PDA to be published, it is the third of that series chronologically. So I'm not exactly sure how these novels attempt to build on Ace's character when we last saw her on TV. However, here she is portrayed as having matured. OK, Ace would not be Ace if she weren't impetuous and she most definitely is here as illustrated during the scene where Wall and his Cyber-cronies are getting away in a truck only to have our heroine give chase and stow away on the truck's frame underneath. But she also spends some time looking back and reevaluating as when she thinks of her grandmother and puts herself in her shoes in an attempt to understand how living through the horrors of war shape a person. Ace is still young – she can never get barkeeps to serve her – and foolish but she's turning a corner.
All in all Illegal Alien was a boatload of fun. The Cybermen were appropriately menacing and of course there were Nazis. I'm sure there are tons of references to previous stories both from TV and novels but I only managed to pick up on a few. For example, The Doctor mentions the Daleks invading Earth as they did in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" while Ace refers to her grandmother whom we met in "The Curse of Fenric" as well as her friends from her hometown of Perivale who featured in "Survival".
However, there's no Nitro 9 here as per The Doctor's effort to cut down on anachronisms. Bummer.
No comments:
Post a Comment