Now She Has Become Death, the Destroyer of Ockara

The Final Sanction begins with Zoe hearing an explosion. Things get worse and really don't let up for 284 pages.

The TARDIS lands on a planet and it isn't long before the crew find themselves in a minefield. The Doctor manages to get himself out of a tight squeeze with the sonic screwdriver after he realizes he's stepped on one and any quick moves would spell the end for him. Extricating themselves from that deadly scene in exchange for a stroll along the beach, they stumble upon an abattoir on the shore filled with the bodies of P.O.W.'s who had all been shot in the head. They are all clad in the same uniform and the Doctor realizes that the dead are Kalarians and that they've landed on the planet Kalaya. He knows all-too well the history of this conflict and wants nothing to do with it. But the horrors continue to be piled Pelion upon Ossa as the TARDIS trio are captured by soldiers wearing armor that makes them look like sharks - the Selachians, whom we met in The Murder Game.

The Selachians throw our heroes into their version of an armored personnel carrier to bring them back to their underwater base. But the Terran Security Forces ambush the APC convoy. The Doctor and Jamie are rescued by the humans but the Selachians get away with Zoe.

Back at the TSF base, commanded by one Wayne Redfern, the Doctor reveals the horrible fate of the conflict that they've been dropped in the middle of to Jamie: the humans will retake Kalaya and then push on to the Selachian homeworld, Ockara. The Selachians are too proud a people to surrender and so Redfern will drop a new and very experimental bomb, the G-bomb, on Ockara which will destroy the entire planet, including thousands of P.O.W.'s. This means they've got to rescue Zoe and get the hell out of Dodge.

This sounds a lot like the Pacific Theater of World War II. The TSF has a strategy of taking one planet at a time which is just like the island hopping that U.S. forces did as they made their way from Guadalcanal to the Solomon Islands to Iwo Jima with the end goal being Japan. Kalaya is the equivalent of Okinawa here - next stop is the homeland/homeworld. The Selachians refuse to surrender just as the Japanese did. And that new, experimental bomb is just the atomic bomb with a different letter preceding it.

At this point, each of our travelers gets their own storyline, more or less, as they are separated and experience the horrors of war from different vantage points.

Ever protective of Zoe, Jamie volunteers to go on a mission to the Selachian base with the TSF in the hope of a rescue. Lyons does a fine job making it an intense battle scene demonstrating the fierce determination of the Selachians and the great killing power of their shark-shaped battle suits. Zoe is not rescued and Jamie is injured in the attempt so we get our first example of the futility of war. Our brave Scotsman suffers some PTSD as well.

Zoe ends up being taken to Ockara and thrown into a prison camp deep beneath the waves. But it's not like Stalag 17 where she sits there throwing a ball against a wall. Think Camp O'Donnell - the destination of the Bataan Death March. She is brutally interrogated but later manages to escape with a fellow prisoner named John Paterson. They make it to the surface and an island. Zoe wanders off into the forest where she encounters an Ockaran. (They become Selachians when they have the lower portion of their bodies amputated so they can fit into the shark suits.) It seems peaceful but, worried that it would give their position away, Paterson beats the hapless creature to death in one of the more gruesome scenes in a book with no shortage of gruesome scenes.

At first, Redfern and the TSF are suspicious of the Doctor and Jamie and the latter volunteering for a mission helped put their military minds at ease. But, when the Doctor is caught trying to make his way to the Ockaran surface (in a bid to exchange himself for Zoe, unbeknownst to them), Redfern becomes even more suspicious than before and paranoid that the Time Lord is a Selachian agent. And so the Doctor is held on Redfern's flagship and spends a lot of time, against his better judgement, trying to convince Redfern to seek a peaceful solution. He also confronts the inventor of the new, highly deadly bomb, Professor Laura Mulholland, the J. Robert Oppenheimer of the story. The Doctor can tell she feels guilt over the awesome power she has given the TSF and he attempts to convince her that it should never be used.

Amidst all of this, there is a lot of fighting and death. Lyons really makes the combat sequences kinetic with lots of close calls. He takes his time to let the fighting unfold instead of trying to get it over and done with. And there are a lot of red shirts who die horribly and graphically.

We learn that the Ockarans suffered greatly under the boot of the humans. Their world was formerly a vacation spot and the aquatic natives were thought to be barely sentient and so they were hunted and slaughtered a bit like seals here on Earth. After the Ockarans became Selachians and donned their battle armor, they gave no quarter to the humans they encountered and mercilessly killed as they conquered planets to give themselves some cushion between them and their human foes.

Lyons perches us on both sides in the course of the book so we get to know all-too well the blood lust that each has. But they also have understandable motivations. The TSF simply sees that the Selachians are killing innocent people and this must be stopped while, for the Ockarans, humanity has brought them nothing but pain, suffering, and death which also must end. Lyons also deftly alternates between the scenes showing the grunts doing the fighting and those with the commanders behind the lines giving the foul orders.

The Final Sanction spares nothing in telling the reader that war is hell. Arguably, it's goes overboard as it begins with horror and carnage and the bodies just keep piling up but Lyons writes a compelling and thrilling tale. What really makes it interesting, for me, is the fact that the Doctor knows the history of the war. He knows that Redfern will have Mulholland activate the bomb (it's not just dropped but rather needs codes from both of them) and that Ockara will be obliterated. All life on it will be returned to star dust. This awful knowledge changes the Doctor and he actively seeks to alter the course of history.

He seeks small changes, at first, rationalizing them away as being insignificant; nothing that Time can't easily recover from. But he throws caution to the wind and moves on to bigger, more potent alterations of the time line.

The Doctor is not the jovial hobo we've come to know and love, playfully poking fun at Jamie and challenging Zoe's knowledge in a kind, avuncular way. He's as serious as a heart attack. He is racked with guilt over Zoe being held prisoner and the fact that she will die if Redfern has his way and does the unthinkable. Knowing history, the Doctor has this tremendous weight on shoulders that he can and must bear, but it brings some things out in him that are usually held in check.

On the other hand, his most noble virtues - loyalty to and concern for his companions as well as a desire for good to prevail (or, at least, not lose) run smack up against all non-interference principles. I believe he even notes that the destruction of Ockara is a fixed point in time, it's one of those events that simply must happen in order for time & space to remain in good stead. Yet the Doctor tempts Fate. It's a fascinating portrait of a Time Lord suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance.

If anyone reads this book and concludes that it's a bit too much, that Lyons seems to have a grim and persistent determination to bash his readers over the head with "war is hell!", I understand. But I really enjoyed this book, even if the scene where Redfern and his squad run across an Ockaran village and lay waste to it brought scenes from the Vietnam War to mind and absolutely broke my heart. He's a very tragic figure and I think the book did a nice job of giving some back story to make him a complicated character instead of a simple warmonger.

There were flourishes of Starship Troopers here, such as how the humans referred to the Selachians as "sharks" just like as Heinleins soldiers call their enemies "bugs". Plus I caught some The Forever War  vibes as well. As noted above, I see many a World War II parallel in this story. With Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer unleashed just recently, it came to mind during every scene with Mulholland.

This is a fine story with some really nice characterization. It is intense and somber but well-rounded. The Final Sanction puts paid to the notion that the PDAs are all simplistic and hokey and pale in comparison to the Virgin novels.

Chris & Matt from the All-New Doctor Who Book Club did an episode on this story and I am off to listen to it now.