Mark Morris reportedly ranks among England’s most acclaimed horror novelists. One must assume that his original novels are different from his Doctor Who books. At least, this is what I assume in order to make it through all of those long dark nights which I have spent wondering what on earth those British horror critics could be thinking. We’ve all had nights like that, haven’t we?
I have not read Mr. Morris’ other novels, but I shall speculate upon them in ignorance. This is what I suspect his books are like—or, rather, not like:
It is reasonable to assume that his original works do not bring back old Dr Who characters for no particular reason. This is a trait shared by many classic horror novels. If Professor Litefoote turned up in The House on the Borderland, did not develop as a character, and did not perform any function that could not have been performed by any other character, the critical reaction to that book would have been less positive than it is. Similarly, Captain Yates does not appear in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I suspect that Morris’ original works follow a similar policy.
Morris’ original novels are probably not shallow retreads of things we’ve seen a million times already on twenty-year-old TV serials. This explains why The Bodysnatchers and Deep Blue have not a single interesting or original thought between them. He saves all his good ideas for his other books.
Deep Blue appears to be a step above The Bodysnatchers at first glance, since the Generic Mindlessly Evil Aliens of the Month have an original name. When you take a close look at them, though, it turns out that the Xwhatevers are actually the Wirrn. They’re just wearing clever disguises to try and fool us, the little dickenses.
Mr. Morris’ other novels probably do not contain subplots that lead nowhere. One of the most notable aspects of Morris’ Dr Who books is that they both contain a subplot about a young woman who is having some family troubles. In The Bodysnatchers, Emmeline’s parents are killed by the Zygons. This has no noticeable effect on her. She may be on some kind of medication. Eventually, she just sort of wanders off. Or something. I don’t remember.
Deep Blue’s Charlotte has one up on Emmeline. She’s aware that bad things are happening to her. No medication for her, then. Still, her story isn’t resolved. During the book, half her family dies and she learns she’s pregnant. It seems that we’re expected to sympathize and become emotionally involved with this character. Despite this, the last time we see her is when the Doctor leaves her with the survivors in the hospital. We never find out what happens next; her subplot ends right in the middle of the story.
Morris’ other books probably have three-dimensional characters. The Bodysnatchers and Deep Blue don’t. There are some two-and-a-half-dimensional characters here and there, but I never quite got the feeling that these people could be real. They seemed indistinct and samey, as though everyone was based on the same template; they had a couple of variations each, but still seemed interchangeable.
Sometimes we get an awkward infodump giving a character some background. This is always a sign that the character is about to die. Every time I encountered a passage that begun like “Billy lived a happy, carefree life. Every week, he would wander the neighborhood, leaving a dotted line behind him wherever he went,” and went on in that vein for two pages, I knew I could skip down to the next section break, because nothing surprising was going to happen between now and then.
Other comments:
Sometimes the author includes gore. This normally doesn’t bother me at all, but here it doesn’t appear to have been included with any specific effect in mind. It’s just there. Apart from this detail, you’d swear that Morris was completely unaware that anything has happened to Dr Who since 1976. Would somebody please give him a copy of Timewyrm: Revelation?
People have complained about the gore in Deep Blue, but what disgusted me was that the Xwhatevers’ goo is reminiscent of Jello. I don’t like Jello. I live in Iowa, and I have heard that this state had for many years, and perhaps still does have, the largest rate of Jello consumption in the USA. I have also heard that Iowa has the largest per capita number of methamphetamine labs. I believe that these two facts are connected somehow.
Did we really need to hear the story of How “The Awakening” Came to Be?
Turlough did nothing of importance in this story. Oddly enough, this is entirely in keeping with the era in which the story was set.
Do you know how the Xwhatevers transformed their victims into their own species? You will never guess in a million years. Apparently, these aliens secrete a goo which is composed of “belief.” And when people touch it, they turn into spiny aliens just because they believe really hard that they are, taking the concept of mind over matter to ludicrous extremes. I’d like to nominate this for the Stupid Plot Contrivance of the Year award, but such an award does not exist. Perhaps we should set up a fund.
It doesn’t seem like a great deal of thought or imagination went into this concept. For example, if the victims are becoming Xwhatevers because they believe that they are, then why is it that they sometimes don’t seem to know what’s happening to them? How do they know what to believe they’re changing into?
The implications of the Belief Jello are never explored. A world in which the power of suggestion had such a marked effect on people’s bodies would be very different from our own—and from the world the Doctor inhabits. People would be able to modify their bodies at will through visualization exercises. All medicine would work by placebo effect—instead of using drugs and surgery, doctors would help their patients to believe they were healthy. And if someone with strong religious beliefs was cursed by a priest, that curse might just work.
A story set on an alien planet where the inhabitants’ bodies really do respond to suggestion in this manner would have been fascinating. In addition to the standard alien invasion plot, we could have had an exploration of what sort of effects that characteristic might have on a culture. Unfortunately, Deep Blue isn’t that book.
Another thought on the Belief Jello: The Doctor defeats the Xwhatevers by convincing their queen that the Tardis’ tap water is poisonous. Since the extreme physical effects of belief seem to be universal in this book, does that mean he can defeat the Daleks or the Sontarans this way as well? Is Gallifreyan tap water the most powerful weapon in the universe? No wonder Rassilon was able to build such a mighty empire.