Parallel 59 [Paperback]

The story is neatly divided into two sections with Fitz immediately becoming separated from the Doctor and Compassion. The Doctor and Compassion are captured by a government task-force and mistaken for spies while Fitz has adventures at a place called Mechta where things are not quite what they seem. Boiled down to their basic elements, both segments are fairly unoriginal, but the Fitz sections manage to rise above expectations due to the inspired execution. One mistake made is that for the second book in a row, Fitz begins an ill-fated romance with a native of the environment that he finds himself marooned in. PARALLEL 59, while not doing a bad job in this department, pales when compared to the Fitz relationship portrayed in FRONTIER WORLDS.

The sections containing the Doctor and Compassion rarely move beyond the type of adventure that we've seen time and time again, though to balance this out there are some hilarious portions mixed in. The secondary characters in this section all seem rather bland and faceless. There's the group of outlaws that we know so well from various other Doctor Who stories. There's also the large government-controlled project featuring bureaucratic types that we've seen in those same previous Doctor Who stories. Add one or two double-agents, and you're left with the entire dull cast. None of these characters leap off the page and become anything more than the simple two-dimensional figures we've been seeing.

Overall, this book was fairly disappointing, yet there were one or two very entertaining sections, and the further adventures of Fitz were rather enjoyable. I wouldn't mind reading further solo books from either of these two authors in the future, but I don't think their styles were really suited for co-authorship. It led to a feeling of inconsistency here that was very distracting.

Convinced that they're from another planet, Haltiel, the Skalens set about interrogating the Doctor and Compassion. But the denizens of Parallel 59 are very politically charged, and some of them don't want the Doctor to repair the damage to the space station (which had unwittingly been caused by the Doctor and friends). Compassion escapes, and finds the obligatory band of rebels. However, she and the Doctor are marooned, forced to leave the TARDIS behind in the space station. Not only must the Doctor recover his beloved time machine, but he must also save Fitz from the true nightmare of Mechta...

This is the first novel by the editor of the BBC books, Stephen Cole, and it looks as though it could have been a real disaster, a case of too many chefs (Peter Anghelides is acknowledged to have helped out also). But Anghelides seems to have carried on with the most effective device of the previous novel (his own 'Frontier Worlds'), by having Fitz narrate his time in Mechta. This again brings us closer to Fitz, a character who had previously seemed lifeless. There's nowhere near the same level of wit as in Frontier Worlds, and Parallel 59 appears to be quite formulaic (how many cultures has Fitz lived in now?), and Compassion seems to bear a gun as unthinkingly as any Ace (but without the same gung-ho). The opening's also quite dull, as we're told about the dramatic escape from the space station, rather than being shown it. This adventure is also the first to feature an unclothed Doctor, but this sight doesn't seem to faze his cell companion, Compassion, so we must assume that the Doctor is fully humanoid in appearance (no hidden appendages like the Centauri in B5). But then it's hard to see Compassion reacting to anything much.

There is a point in the novel where all the plots and counterplots seem facile, but there's an even bigger twist towards the end. And this novel's conclusion is it's real saviour, for it is genuinely pulsating. If you go and reread the opening pages, you do realise that there are subtle signposts to what's going to happen. With three authors contributing, Parallel 59 could have been a disaster. It's a triumph that a clear narrative emerges, and the authors certainly couldn't be faulted for the use of their imaginations. There are duff parts certainly, but the final drama, I think, makes up for it. Parallel 59 certainly gave me that always desired DW buzz.