12 September, 2023

The Long and Winding Blue Road


The planet Ost, 1170 by local reckoning. The leader of the Anki, Raysa, is with her Mekash or apprentice, Nayab. Things are looking grim as the Anki are fleeing to the desert from hordes of the evil Asposti. Raysa and Nayab are "sharin", the singers and dancers of the Anki.

We then flashback a couple of hundred years and meet another Mekash of the Anki named Demik. He is a student of the dances and songs of his people and we readers learn that the dances are magical. These sharin types are something like bards, apparently, if I may thrown in a Dungeons & Dragons reference. The magic of the dances can manipulate nature, whether it be replusing a storm or easing the pain of the sick. One day he goes on something akin to a vision quest. Demik heads into the desert in search of the First Singers, the gods of the Anki. He hopes that they will teach him a new dance.

He comes upon a ledge and atop it is the TARDIS. It dematerializes but Demik has the gift of second sight and sees a "blue scar" where it had stood that appears as a knotted line. Thinking it a sign from the First Singers, he makes his way up to the ledge where he tinkers with the knot and dances before it. His terpsichorean cantrip opens a gap in the fabric of reality and before him lies a blue road which leads Demik to the door of the TARDIS where he finds the Doctor standing beside his ship.

The Doctor recognizes that Demik is in danger and offers help but the Mekash stumbles and falls back to the world from whence he came. But he is now a sharin with a new dance - the Blue Road Dance - which opens a portal to another world where a First Singer has help on offer.

Back in the desert, Raysa and Nayab are running out of hope as the Asposti are closing in. But then they stumble upon the site where Demik found the TARDIS and Raysa performs the Blue Road Dance in order to open the portal and let what's left of her people flee.

The pair manage to enter the portal and now walk the Blue Road.

We are then transported to the planet Eshraya where the Doctor has just arrived after leaving Ost and the intriguing Demik. He contemplates the blue stain next to his TARDIS and as well as the weird power that Demik, who just left, demonstrated. The Doctor is apparently a Beatles fan as we heard him play "Hey Jude" previously and here his recorder "tootles" out a bit of "Across the Universe". Suddenly he hears a woman's voice.

At first, the Doctor is unable to touch or do anything with the blue stain. Then he relaxes and just falls into it. Both he and Raysa are taken by surprise when our Time Lord tumbles into her arms seemingly from nowhere as she stands on the Blue Road. He convinces her to reconsider her dancing and to dance as the situation demands, not necessarily in strict imitation of the sharin before her.

The Doctor offers a little recorder music for Raysa who dances and this opens a portal to Eshraya. She and Nayab are able to save the remaining Anki. Several years later, Nayab is contemplating the blue knot left behind when the TARDIS left. He figures that it will lead to everywhere the Doctor has been. Wanderlust is urging him to hit the Blue Road once again and follow the TARDIS. After a little cajoling, Raysa acedes to his request.

The marauding Asposti come across as the Romans with the Anki being the Jews at Masada. Sadly, there's no Jamie here - I guess we've heard the last of him - and the Second Doctor comes across as being very true to form, despite the paucity of words dedicated to him. This leaves us with the Anki. I thought it was really neat that their First Singers are kind of like the Ainur and sang the world into existence. It was also really hoopy that the sharin practice spellcraft by dancing.

Although this story had a rather serious tone - the Asposti appear to not take prisoners, after all, I enjoyed how Milton wove some mysticism into a novel take on travel through the Vortex. From the prose, I could see Troughton's expression when Demik stumbles upon him as well as when he fell into Raysa's arms.

I am not usually a fan of "primitive people" Doctor Who stories but I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

No comments:

Post a Comment