Doctor Who: Hope by Mark Clapham

Doctor Who: Hope Reviews

• 
  Numa Parrott

  The imagery in this story is fantastic. It inspired me to do a lot of sketches.
  
  That being said, it draws a lot of disappointingly obvious parallels with Treasure Planet--not the least of which was 'Silver' the cyborg. It also feels a lot like an episode of Classic Who mixed with
  The Time Machine. None of that made it any less enjoyable though.
  
  We finally get a look at how the Doctor is coping with the loss of a heart. Anji and Fitz are well portrayed, although I was more interested in the local characters.
  
  If you love the Doctor, read it.
• 
  Nicholas Whyte

  
  http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2281389.html[return][return]Fairly standard Eighth Doctor story, with the Doctor unravelling a local political intrigue as the price of regaining the Tardis, mislaid as so often. There is a very nice Anji subplot exploring her relationship with poor Dave who was killed in her first appearance, eleven books ago.
• 
  Jacob Licklider

  The Eighth Doctor Adventures have generally struggled when it comes to characterizing its female companions. Sam Jones as initial companion was by far the weakest of the bunch, largely having her characterization be shallowly defined as activist and sassy as her character traits in an attempt to replicate the success of Bernice Summerfield. Her immediate successor Compassion fared better by at least having a defined character and interesting concept for a companion, a woman from the future becoming a sentient TARDIS, but again there was inconsistencies in characterization and underutilization until her last run of appearances. The current female companion, Anji Kapoor, by comparison is a back to basics model of companion who doesn’t really want to travel with the Doctor. Her introduction, Escape Velocity, was something of a mission statement for the character was that her boyfriend Dave was the one who was really companion material, but he was murdered so Anji took his place. Now here I am several books later and a year since I last read a Doctor Who book with the enigma that is Mark Clapham’s Hope, the book that feels like it’s meant to be Anji’s book. As a character she has been served well in previous books but with installments in the lead-up to this like The Adventuress of Henrietta Street being very much the Doctor’s book and even further back Revolution Man being largely Fitz’s book, Anji needs one that essentially defines who the character will be and what she needs to go on. It becomes especially interesting because that’s not how the book actually begins.
  
  Hope begins with Mark Clapham deciding to push the Doctor and company to the end of the universe in a setup that Russell T. Davies would draw on for “Utopia”. The setting is literally called Hope and it is clear from the off that the hope is false. There is an organized militia in the city of Hope, the leader of the city is Silver another time traveler of a sort with a mechanical exoskeleton and electronic memory, and the TARDIS falls into the sea. Much of Hope owes itself to film noir as it does cyberpunk, blending the two genres wonderfully with the Doctor being put in his own desperate situation. This is one of those points where the Doctor’s own need for control becomes a problem for himself, agreeing to help Silver in exchange for retrieval of the TARDIS. While not made explicit in the text, Silver is a Cyberman, converted at some point in Earth’s future while retaining aspects of his humanity. At this point in the future, humanity has already evolved so seeing three figures that look all too human, and for one of them have found themselves closer to humanity then ever before, they are the outsiders. Silver as a character also fits largely into the mythic trickster category of fiction: offering people exchanges for what they think they want, always with a price and twist on the original deal, and this is the man the Doctor must make a deal with to see himself, Fitz, and Anji survive. The Doctor and Fitz’s plot to hunt a killer is one of those perfectly good plots, Clapham’s prose is quite compelling and it allows a lot of worldbuilding of the setting. If it were just this plot, you’d have a fairly solid Doctor Who novel, but Anji is what elevates it above into something at the very least more interesting.
  
  Anji Kapoor didn’t really want to travel the universe, that was Dave’s wish. Like happens with many of the Doctor’s companions along with the wonder of the universe there are also the dangers and trauma, especially present around this period of the Doctor’s life. Mad Dogs and Englishmen may have proven a respite, but Hope sees Anji’s mind preoccupied with thoughts of Dave from the first page. This is a story where there honestly isn’t much for the Doctor’s companions to do, so Anji has plenty of time to herself and time to speak with Silver. Clapham sets up this interplay of predation between the two. Silver is far too charming and has far too many resources at his disposal, and Anji has been thinking about Dave. Silver wants an escape, not a way to steal the TARDIS, but a way for Anji to give him the knowledge to build one of his own. Silver’s backstory is framed as a pulp adventure hero’s backstory and that pulpy charm allows him the perfect route under Anji’s skin. Despite in her heart knowing that Dave is gone and never coming back, time travel does not allow for resurrection at least in the usual framework of Doctor Who, Anji’s temptation to have a Dave II cloned and brought into existence is the unsettling aspect of Hope. It’s the hope that gets the woman through, and is something that has already shattered when the idea first arises, elevating Clapham’s novel.
  
  Overall, Hope is a great novel to come back to the Eighth Doctor, Fitz, and Anji after my stint away. While not particularly strong in certain areas, the Doctor’s plot is actually quite weak in places and a bit too standard, it philosophically embodies a lot of what the Eighth Doctor Adventures are going for. It also gets to the roots of what the Cybermen and their relationship to humanity actually is without using the word Cyberman anywhere in the prose, but best of all, it’s the showcase for Anji Kapoor that she perhaps needed to lay her baggage behind her. 8/10.
  
• 
  John Parungao

  The Eighth Doctor novels are in a world all their own. This novel is an adventure that starts with one of the basic tropes of Doctor Who, namely separate the Doctor from the Tardis. What follows is an adventure where the Doctor and his companions are in need of the help of the locals. Fortunately they receive help from the local warlord, a cyborg known as Silver.
  Silver acts like the Tony Stark of his era, but his motives aren't entirely pure. Silver needs the Doctor and the Tardis to help make his vision of the future a reality. That vision is of an army of cyborgs at his command shaping history and ruling the universe. That's something the Doctor will probably have to stop.
  Silver makes an interesting villain, as someone who appears to be the benefactor of the local civilization, but as the story progresses you get flashes of his true nature and that leads to the ultimate showdown between Silver and the Doctor.
• 
  Richard Harrison

  Still not 100% on the new version of the Eighth Doctor, he just never feels quite right to me. Which may be part of the point. This version is missing a heart, a good chunk of his memories and his home planet and there was probably an editorial mandate for this one to be different. That difference seems to vary between writers but almost always includes a coldness and a greater moral flexibility than is normal for the Doctor. I like the commitment to this version as it's not a short-term experiment, this continues for some time.
  
  The story is a bit standard but not in a bad way. I liked how the antagonist initially played nicely before revealing his true colours and the setting was really vivid and well-developed
• 
  Rea Perrson

  A rather good adventure. This was written by one of the co-authors of Taking of Planet 5. A lot of this story is based around worldbuilding and characters.
  The world of Endpoint is one that I am glad that I shall probably never visit - a world of acid seas, a vaguely toxic atmosphere. In the city of Hope, there is a lack of the namesake (and titular) feeling. Life is almost completely ruled by the casino of Silver - the most opulent point within Hope. Life is grim - with death by cybernetically enhanced cultist or evil scientists being common.
  I've read this at least twice and enjoyed it each time.
• 
  Jamie

  Not sure about this book. It got better, but certainly not the greatest
• 
  Daniel Kukwa

  It gets off to a slow start, but this turns out to be an extremely effective novel of the far future, mixing high concept science fiction with some Terminator-inspired cyborg action. It also manages to fit into established television continuity very well...a surprising feat, considering the near-end of the universe it portrays ties in very well to the 10th Doctor episode "Utopia", which itself is an episode written for a series that hadn't yet been envisioned when the novel was written. A very moody, very classy piece of storytelling.