Rough notes on Set Piece

Are you sitting comfortably? What do you think is the moral of the story? Sun Tzu turns up again and again (p53, 130, 146, 171, 192, 232). Ace kind of gets it and I think I do too.

We get a lot of dead fathers: Benny's (p34, 182, 204), Ace's (p120, 151, 230), and Kadiatu's (p178). The latter two see the Doctor as a father figure. With all this going on, you could get the feminist message of the novel mixed up, but the concreteness of everything stops it getting needlessly symbolic.

(As near as I can work out, Ace was just a troubled teen who hated her mum until Love and War, when we suddenly discover she has an absent dad and her mum sees other men while she's away; in Lucifer Rising we discover her dad died shortly before she got whisked away by the time storm.)

Like Benny, I hate Jungian stuff, but I don't think that's where we are in this novel's four dreams (p88, 111, 132, 136). The key figure is Pain, who is an empathetic/experiential/existential god; nothing essential here. She gets created on p208 of Timewyrm: Revelation, incidentally - Ah well, pain it was.

I have always loved the idea of the TARDIS crew turning up in each other's dreams. The TARDIS links them: the promise of travel. (The TARDIS is drawn to Ace, in a reversal of Survival, p228).

Did he only exist because so many people dreamed about him? cf Transit.

Benny's dream is a tour de force of retroactive continuity/misprision, rewriting Battlefield, Timewyrm: Genesys, Nightshade, and (paired with Ace's p120 contemplation) Lucifer Rising.

Rereading this novel, I was surprised at how much I remembered. Scene after small scene is written extremely vividly. Too many authors try to paint pictures, but I'm not very good with remembering what characters or settings are supposed to look like. Orman deals with words. She knows how to pick the punchiest details to let you know what things smell and feel like. There's texture and scar tissue. There's what it's like to be there.

Two scenes stand out: p60 - She wondered if the little machines in her blood would let her get pregnant. A line that sent chills down my spine when I read it, and that I still find upsetting. This scene cuts right to the heart of feminism. p82 - For women there are only two boxes. Right? They're labelled WIFE and WHORE. And this startling scene helped me on a path I am still walking down.

In 1995 it wasn't surprising to have a feminist Doctor Who novel. The New Adventures were that great. (This one's also a meditation on history and a genuine deconstruction of chaos.) Though, back then, I thought there were aimless expanses where nothing happened, but I just didn't know how to pay attention.

I didn't like the structure, back in 1995, but now I think it's fine. I enjoy how the explosive opening breaks up and fades away like a dream. How, just when Ace takes consolation in the thought that Benny's probably having a worse time, we cut to find her having a great time. How, just when Ace accepts that the Doctor is dead, we cut to find he isn't. The pairing up of characters. How it all comes together.

In 1995 I was spoiled by my fannish knowing that Ace wasn't going to die. In 2007, I know Ace isn't going to die, but still the tension built as I got towards the end. I cried on p230. Orman's writing is an experience.

I still don't like the disoriented Doctor mistaking Kadiatu for Ruby Duvall (p65). I know it's one of those Doctor mistakes Ace for Sarah scenes (or as Dave Stone has Benny call them in Sky Pirates! - his Musical bloody Companion routine), but it leaves a definite bad taste. On the other hand, Kadiatu/Ruby confusion helps build the comparisons with Ace (p219 - Click your heels together). Other variations of Ace played by Kadiatu are the Doctor's apprentice and sci-fi killer. Interestingly, Kadiatu also plays a variation of the Doctor, turning up in France during a revolution on one of her early trips. This is her The Highest Science, the novel where she gets written by someone other than her creator, and, as with Benny, there's some violence, but I think there's also a lot of justice.

p197 - That's what faith is for. Faith in Time, faith that things will work out the way they're supposed to. Time's Champion. And the Darvill-Evans spin on p120 and 147. My favourite view of history is on p119/120 regarding The Farm and Nirvana. And the Doctor Who motto on p232 - I don't want to change it, I just want to be part of it. Which goes nicely with the Doctor's advice to Genevieve who doesn't think she earned the right to be free (p188/189) - Do something now.

On p237 there is talk of saving Manisha, as there was talk of saving Jan in No Future earlier, and Guy and Joan in Human Nature later.

Finally, on p238, the wave of history finally breaks, again.