I'm not sure where Bullet Time is supposed to fit chronologically in the Seventh Doctor's era but it feels like it comes late in his tenure. He is companionless. And he is weary. He explains his neglect of sleep, "I see the faces of every death I'm responsible for every time I sleep. Every enemy, every friend I've lost, every innocent I've failed to save. So I stopped sleeping." You can glean many elements of the New Series from the books of the Lost Years when the show was off the air. With Ace being who-knows-where, we instead are presented with the return of Sarah Jane Smith who is in the Orient plying her trade.
This book gets a lot of points from me simply for its setting. There are side trips to Thailand, Moscow, and the Persian Gulf but it is mostly set in Hong Kong in 1997 as the city prepares to lose its status as an English colony and return to Chinese hands. A nice change from earthly stories set in London and elsewhere in the British Isles. Given the setting, most characters aren't white. There's even a black American Agent thrown in which makes for a good mix.
Bullet Time reads like a spy thriller. It's fast paced with danger lurking around every corner. Sarah Jane recently published an article about the sex tourism industry in Thailand and didn't make any friends for having done so. She is kidnapped by unknown enemies along at the Bangkok airport along with that agent going incognito, Tom Ryder, who tried to intervene. The plan is for them to be thrown out of a helicopter over the ocean to their dooms. Ryder, however, is more than meets the eye as he grabs a couple parachutes and dives out after Sarah Jane. This reminded me of that scene from Moonraker where Bond and Jaws duel it out in midair.
McIntee really went all out here and has thrown in everything but the kitchen sink. A couple hikers disappear in Cambodia after having backpacked out to an area reputed to be haunted and U.N.I.T. was following their every move. Sarah Jane makes her way to Hong Kong where she stops in at the Pimms Corporation for an interview. Head of security Tse Hung is a shady character while PR flack Yue Hwa seems much more amenable. Sarah Jane is escorted to see the big cheese and lo and behold, it is The Doctor sitting in the CEO chair. Of course, she doesn't recognize him as he is now in his seventh incarnation.
It turns out that Pimms is acting as a front for the Triad, a Chinese mafia family, and The Doctor is running drugs. Can this really be? A couple errand boys for the Triad go to exact punishment on one Ah Wing for his failure to pay his debts in a timely manner only to find a small pile of ashes where a body should be. This brings in the police in the form of Inspectors Katie Siao and Mark Sing.
Meanwhile the Russian submarine Zhukov detects a radioactive anomaly on the ocean floor and investigate. They find a deposit of a strange metal which is as light and flexible as plastic and also does not corrode. And, of course, there are aliens.
I this cloak and dagger fest McIntee deftly handles the numerous characters. One of those errand boys, Hong Yi Chung, gets a lot of type until his death while Inspector Siao's relationship with her partner is woven into the narrative fabric which features The Doctor pulling strings in the background as Sarah Jane tries to get to the bottom of things while U.N.I.T. does the same.
But very few people are who they seem. Just what is The Doctor doing heading a company that is running drugs? Has he really gone over to the dark side? Is Yue Hwa really as unassuming as he seems? Why does Inspector Sing always seem to get out of trouble with the internal affairs folks? Who is Chiu, the Chinese man with the purple eyes and blond hair? Is Tom Ryder actually with the DEA? There are a lot of assumed identities, double crosses, and people who keep secrets here.
This all supports what you can say is the story's main case of misidentity – how The Doctor is no longer the man, er, being, that Sarah Jane once knew. Here The Doctor isn't the shining beacon of goodness that she once knew. He is playing his cards close to his chest and manipulating those around him. In the New Series, The Doctor meets up with Sarah Jane again and it is used as a way to further the idea that The Doctor is a loner, that, ultimately, you can't really get close to him. A companion will age while The Doctor merely regenerates periodically. The Tenth Doctor is warm but distant. Bullet Time treads much this same path but the Time Lord is even more distant and a bit confrontational. He tells her, "Perhaps you never knew the Doctor. How can a member of one species really know how a member of another species mind works, or how they think or feel? You've no frame of reference: you can only make assumptions and have beliefs." Elsewhere he says, "I know you’ve missed a Doctor who’s long dead."
This is like the "darker" Doctor we met in the show's last season, the one who would make Ace confront her fears and her past on his terms and not hers, but exaggerated. Here The Doctor's affection for his companions as well as his motives are hidden. I can't really tell if The Doctor's comments and attitude here are simply a put-on in order to get Sarah Jane to exit the scene for her own safety or whether he has really undergone a sea change. Either way, he is no longer the hero she once knew.
One thing I didn't expect from the story was to read about Sarah Jane's death. She is shot in the line of duty when she takes herself out as a bargaining chip for Ryder to use against The Doctor. Heart monitors at the hospital flatline. Can she really be dead? The book has an epilogue in which she chats with The Doctor but it is unclear as to whether she really survived at the hands of a preternaturally gifted cardiac specialist or if her friend was simply trying to find a bit of solace within himself in the wake of her death.
Although McIntee was able to juggle numerous plot lines and character, he arguably neglected the main characters, Sarah Jane and The Doctor. Fans who want their DW stories to follow the pattern established by the TV show where it's mostly The Doctor and his companions with cutaways to the villains to establish what they're up to will be disappointed by Bullet Time. Here Sarah Jane and The Doctor are treated as first among equals. I didn't mind this approach considering all of the mysteries woven into the plot. Plus the story was simply fun and I found myself perfectly content with getting my doses of our heroes meted out as they were.
A wonderful, if melancholy, addition to the DW pantheon.
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