John Peel: Timewyrm: Genesys

(As I said before, no it's not that John Peel)

In retrospect, you have to admire Peel's courage in taking on this project. After all, this would be the first official Who story since the series ended and you can guarantee that no matter what he'd written, there'd have been someone complaining about it. Wisely, he realised this, and didn't go too far away from what was expected. That's not to say Genesys is just another Who story - it clearly takes advantage of the freedom of the new format - but it's still close enough to the original to reassure fans.

The temptation for any author would have been to start this book straight after the end of Survival, but Peel instead takes us into two seemingly disparate scenes - a space battle and then, back in Earth's past, Gilgamesh's meeting with (and refusal of) Ishtar. If you know even the basic story of the Epic of Gilgamesh (there's a good overview here, by the way) then Peel's intention is already clear by this point. It's a neat reversal of the format of the old Who historical stories. While they often played fast and loose with the established facts of history, here Peel presents the 'real' story that history played fast and loose with. Chariots of the Time Lords for those of you who remember Von Daniken.

It's definitely interesting to read a Who story set on a much wider scale than we ever saw in the TV series. Not limited to what the BBC special effects department can conjure up (or emulate in a quarry somewhere in the South East), we get entire Mesopotamian cities, huge temples, mile-long buried alien ships, evil Goddesses somewhere between Alien and Terminator 2 and Gilgamesh portrayed by a young Brian Blessed. Well, that's how we comes across to me, smashig down doors, shouting loudly and hamming up every scene he's in.

Of course, it does have it's flaws. While I'm sure the teenage prostitution and bare breasts of the Priestesses of Ishtar are probably historically accurate, I'm not really sure Peel needed to mention them so often. It seems too much as though he's waving a flag emblazoned with 'Look! This is an adult book!', as though he's not convinced his plot in itself is enough to justify that title. And yes, there is Naked Ace in this book, and no, I'm not going to discuss it.

Still, Peel's characterisations are good, and the Doctor and Ace are recognisable as the same people we saw on TV, though with greater depths than may have previously been encountered in a Doctor Who book. The story's also good fun. While there's no doubt that the Doctor will win in the end, and history will proceed as normal, Peel manages to establish enough doubt as to how he will do it, and there's always the sly smile as you see how he incorporates the Epic (and previous Who continuity) into the story. And of course, notbeing restrained by budget, the availability of actors or anyone's acting talent allows Peel to bring in a couple of previous Doctors for cameo appearances, though while the Fourth Doctor's appaearance at the start is relevant to the plot, the appearance of the Third near the end seems more like a bone thrown to the fans that a necessary plot development.

But, it's an interesting start to the New Adventures series, and sets up the Timewyrm series nicely with the baton being handed on to former Who script editor and veteran Target author Terrance Dicks for the the next book, Exodus.