The Doctor, Mel, and Evelyn are up against an ESP wielding spy network, Amazonian assassins, sinister albinos, death cultists, and an elusive lunch schedule in one batshit crazy turn of the millennium sci-fi cum espionage romp. Grab your multicolored coat and pour yourself a glass of carrot juice, we're going Auton hunting!
There's no other way to say this: Gary Russell's Instruments of Darkness is a bloody train wreck. A whirlwind, highly readable in most places train wreck... but a train wreck nonetheless. Where to even start with this one? I believe this novel is certainly an endurance test for avid Whovian readers. One might be tempted, as I was, to put the book down before getting through the first few pages. The opening pages are dedicated to scenes of grisly murder and several attempted rapes, which is more the kind of edgelord milieu you expect to see in Doctor Who's Virgin New Adventures series. The Doctor (ostensibly our main character, no?) also does not appear until some 30 pages deep into the story. That's when I started to realize Gary Russell is indeed enough of a madman to basically try and re-create a Doctor Who season 22 story in novel format.
If you haven't watched for a while or you're a lapsed fan, season 22 is where script editor and ingratiating gobshite Eric Saward thought it would be a great idea to take the leading man Colin Baker out of the story for the first twenty-five minutes or so of almost every serial while turning the amount of nihilistic violence in the show up to eleven while the show's producer John Nathan-Turner was probably too busy sipping martinis to notice.
That divisive style is what Gary Russell chose to partly emulate here. But our fearless author doesn't stop with his delusions of being a mad scientist there, oh no. Instruments of Darkness is actually the third in a loose trilogy of Doctor Who novels, one of which is from a completely different book series from a completely different publisher with a completely different incarnation of the Doctor! Confused yet? To be fair, thanks to the 'wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey' nature of a series like this and some quick recapping of events, it's probably okay if you come into Instruments of Darkness without reading the prior novels.
And then there's the seemingly never-ending parade of side characters in this book who are introduced on a whim and then disappear into the ether for ten or so chapters only to make a sudden return later in the narrative when convenient to the plot. Meanwhile, the side characters that actually are given a fair amount of print and character development are abruptly killed off in random acts of cruel violence that are - again - not too far removed from the Saward stewardship of Doctor Who on television.
Gary Russell clearly wants to be writing an espionage-tinged 007 continuation novel here, so much so that in an eye-rolling, groan inducing passage we learn that the Doctor is great chums with author Ian Fleming and, naturally, he introduced Fleming to an ornithologist friend of his with a familiar namesake that would go on to inspire the spy novelist. I can only assume this is a nod to the Doctor influencing H.G. Wells in the serial Timelash, but my goodness, is it really necessary to be that cute? Does the Doctor have to be responsible for every cool thing in history?
DID I ALSO MENTION that Instruments of Darkness serves as a crossover with the Doctor Who audio adventures by providing us with the prose debut of a previously audio-only companion character?
Is anybody following this?!?
So you're probably thinking this whole book sounds like a complete disaster up to this point (and you'd be mostly right), but there's something about this wonderful mess that just... works. In addition to Bond, there's a heavy X-Files flavor about the proceedings as well, and this meshes well with the Sixth Doctor's more 'action man' style. But what really takes Instruments of Darkness to the next level - and what makes this a recommended read for Whovians - is the author's insertion of Evelyn Smythe into the proceedings. Amidst all the mayhem and spider's web of plot twists is a touching and oftentimes hilarious repartee between the Doctor, Evelyn, and Mel, the latter of which cottons on fairly quickly that there is a love affair always simmering beneath the surface between the Doctor and Evelyn. She is, in many ways, the perfect companion for the brash and arrogant Sixth Doctor, because her no bullshit schoolmarm demeanor is always capable of keeping this version of the Doctor in check and she appears to finally be an intellectual equal of the Doctor. The Doctor and Evelyn quarrel throughout most of this story like an old married couple and poor Mel is usually caught in the role of referee trying to separate them. Russell's handling of this is so infuriatingly charming you can't help but root for these two to somehow break the chains of forbidden love and retire to some groovy space bungalow on a distant planet. Alas...
Recommended...?
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