Self-Indulgent NAstalgia Trip: Book 3 - Timewyrm: Apocalypse by Nigel Robinson (October 1991)
Throughout the first three instalments of the Timewyrm quartet, the question of the future of the New Adventures, and of the specific authors' respective oeuvres, hangs over any reasonably in-depth discussion of the books themselves like a shroud.
But where, in the case of Peel and Dicks, this manifested as a comparison between their initial efforts and later books that seemed to lack any of the animating spark imparted by the task of launching an ongoing series of Doctor Who stories in a completely different medium, it takes on a different complexion for Nigel Robinson.
To put it bluntly, it has always been more than slightly puzzling that the same writer responsible for Timewyrm: Apocalypse should, in less than two years, turn out a work of minor moody brilliance in the form of Birthright.
By the same token, while Apocalypse is not an especially good or interesting book on its own merits, it seems fair to say that some of the hatred it has attracted has been overblown. The Shannon Sullivan rankings contend it is the second-worst New Adventure of all time, one of only three NAs and five Virgin books to manage a score below 50%. This is more than faintly silly; Apocalypse is only just about the second-worst instalment of the Timewyrm tetralogy, and yet Genesys sits at a cool 54th place. It is, to my mind, ridiculous to argue that Robinson's work is worse than Peel's edgy sexual objectification of teenage girls, but then it's ridiculous to say that Exodus (7th place) and not Revelation (21st) is the best instalment of the series, but the rankings make that claim too, so hey, what the hell...
In fact, Apocalypse is actually quite comfortably the NA I've written about the most, with this piece being my fourth turn at bat. The first review, in April 2018, was ludicrously short at a mere 300 words, a consequence of my generally not taking the blog all that seriously. I returned to give it a fuller hearing for the thirtieth anniversary in 2021, and again for my university's Doctor Who club newsletter in 2023.
There is, to be sure, something odd in the fact that I've devoted quite as much ink to a book that is, at best, aggressively mediocre, and at its worst stultifyingly pedestrian and dull. Yet, and with the caveat that it's perhaps mere desensitisation from having read it so many times, I can't help but find something strangely compelling in the book's presentation and ideas. And make no mistake, there are actual ideas here, which makes a welcome change from Peel if nothing else (we are not counting "Rape and sexual assault are just, like, culturally relative, man!" as an idea).
It is hardly an original observation to say that Robinson, like all of the NAs' first three authors, demonstrates a conception of Doctor Who prose primarily informed by the Target novelisations. Indeed, as the former editor of those novelisations, the only reason he can't be considered the writer with the strongest ties to the company's output is the fact that one of his two compatriots is literally Terrance Dicks.
But in many respects what's most interesting about this is that Robinson is very particular in the eras of the programme (and its novelisations) that he pulls from. To start with, the plot owes a heavy debt both to Christopher H. Bidmead's Logopolis - a quote from said story's novelisation being repurposed by Robinson to serve as the story's epigraph - and its portrait of a universe on the brink of collapse from entropy, but also to Andrew Smith's Full Circle, with the central twist of the Kirithons' true nature essentially inverting the reveal of the Alzarians' non-descent from the crashed Terradonians (and here, again, Robinson explicitly has the Doctor recall Alzarius).
More revealing, however, is the emphasis Robinson places on the Second Doctor's tenure, with frequent flashbacks that cover the length and breadth of Troughton's tenure, from immediately after The Power of the Daleks to the forced regeneration of The War Games.
This is arguably reflective of the period Robinson's Target novelisations most frequently covered, though in truth we're really speaking more about the sixties serials in aggregate rather than the Troughton years specifically, all but one of his novelisations being for Hartnell scripts. And it is almost certainly wrong-headed to view the stories Robinson adapted as indicative of some special interest in the period; rather, an inspection of the stories in question reveals that they are largely comprised of those stories where the script's original author had passed away, with Robinson taking the novelisation duties in lieu of the standard policy of having said original writer adapt their own work.
All things being equal, it is difficult to escape the impression that Robinson makes the Second Doctor so central to the narrative primarily on account of his introduction serving as the first major point at which the basic nature of what Doctor Who even was as a television programme was decisively and suddenly altered. More to the point, this moment is identified as one defined by a deep-rooted weakness on the Doctor's (and, by extension, the show's) part, the Timewyrm effectively managing to infest his past in order to weaponise it in her schemes against him.
It should go without saying that it is deeply improbable that any symmetry with the status quo of the New Adventures was intended, such an interpretation requiring us to entertain the idea that Robinson was somehow able to preemptively guess at the upheaval of the franchise due to take place in the very next book, if not the next three books. And, well, there's simply not enough material of any great worth or quality in Apocalypse to justify seriously entertaining this as a possibility.
And yet the image remains, stubbornly refusing to be fully banished from our conception of Apocalypse. Of course it does; it's just too useful to pass up. Here, one book before the Wilderness Years completely redefine themselves and the larger franchise, Robinson pens a novel preoccupied with questions of evolution and transcendence in the face of, well, the apocalypse. The parallel is too perfect to ignore, but more to the point, it's perfectly in keeping with what Doctor Who does in the face of the end of all things: push on through and simply decline to come to an end.
In this respect, it's telling that the ultimate endpoint of the God Machine's evolutionary process is labelled the Omega Point, tacitly invoking The Three Doctors, another work where the programme had to reckon with its past before forging ahead into a bolder, stranger future. Raphael's ascension even explicitly invokes J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, and the decision to conclude with his going off to wander the universe thus feels like the most kind ending possible to the longstanding tradition of Doctor Who and its associated novel(isation)s as a series that, at the very least, exists in active conversation with a rich vein of British children's literature.
It is not, no matter what the more vocal critics of the NAs might insist, that this conversation is completely dead from here on out, but it is true that the New Adventures are at the very least going into another room of the house to find someone else to talk to. In hindsight, we know that they'll drift back to that conversation in due course. But now it's time for something completely different.
And so if, in the end, the first three Timewyrm books have felt like an exercise in spinning our wheels while we wait for the actual start of the New Adventures, it's equally true that this is the last point at which a book like Timewyrm: Apocalypse can exist without feeling like a retrograde throwback. "Good," you might say, and fair enough. I adore Revelation and everything to come. But at the very least, it is intriguing that the book seems almost aware of its nature, and quietly, mournfully accepts it.
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Where is the warm nothingness that was so comforting? Now there is nothing but harsh light and biting cold and no possibility of ever going back.
Only choice now - go forward and face the threat, face the future.
The future.
The future is uncertain, and uncertainty worries me.
Scares me.
What will happen? Will I survive?
~ Nigel Robinson, Timewyrm: Apocalypse (1991)
