Doctor Who: Conundrum

Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures #22

by Steve Lyons

'Doctor, we’re talking about an old man who used to dress up in a skintight white jump suit and fly around New York catching super-villains. Don't you think there’s something just a bit unusual about that?'

A killer is stalking the streets of the village of Arandale. The victims are found one each day, drained of blood. And if that seems strange, it’s nothing compared to the town’s inhabitants.

The Doctor, Ace and Bernice think they’re investigating a murder mystery. But it’s all much more bizarre than that. And much more dangerous.

Someone has interfered with the Doctor’s past again, and he’s landed in a place he knows he once destroyed. This time there can be no escape.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Novels, Ebooks

261 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 1994

About the author

Steve Lyons is a science fiction writer, best known for writing television tie-ins of Doctor Who for BBC Books, and previously, Virgin. The earliest of these was Conundrum in 1994, and his most recent was 2005's The Stealers of Dreams. He has also written material for Star Trek tie-ins, as well as original work.

Reviews

[Jon Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite kind of book: one which lightly disguises a thoughtful approach with a ton of great jokes. Steve Lyons takes an old Who idea and refashions it for the show’s now dominant medium, cleverly playing with narrative and expectations while unfolding a well-told story and providing a sly commentary on what the New Adventures were up to. Go in unspoiled if you can and you’ll be richly rewarded.

[April Mccaffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always enjoyed Steve Lyons stories and he wrote one of my favourite Gallfirey stories so I had high expectations for his novel.

It didn't disappoint.

Doctor Who is known for breaking the fourth wall and doing wild, whacky ideas and this really did it. It was clever, witty and all about stories within stories which I loved.

I got to say, Ace did grind my gears in this one and there were times I felt like hitting her on the head a little, especially to tell her to leave Benny alone but otherwise great stuff :)

[Scurra · Rating 5 out of 5]

The central conceit of this NA is hardly original - indeed, it's not even original to Doctor Who, as it revisits the setting of a Second Doctor story (The Mind Robber) but adds a literary twist to the idea.

The idea that the book is portrayed as very clearly a novel, with the "author" making frequent asides to the "reader" works very well, especially with the occasional bouts of frustration that the "author" isn't completely in control of his own characters, let alone the interlopers from outside.

There are some genuinely fun ideas here - the Adventure Kids are wonderful (especially the running gag about the dog), and Norman the retired Superhero is very well realised and poignant. The only real flaw is that as the whole premise is based on it being a story, and this aspect is made fairly explicit fairly early, there is a lack of serious tension even if there are still quite a few surprises.

And - unlike the last book - the denouement is terrific, with the Doctor operating at his manipulative best, in the face of more and more absurd attempts to sabotage him, whilst managing to keep the reader wondering (and when it is explained, it really doesn't feel like a cheat even though it is utterly outrageous.)

And the door is left open for a return to the Land of Fiction - although it is hard to see how it could be revisited with similar originality (have the comic strips done it? It might work there.)

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably my favourite of the Virgin New Adventures. A fun story, full of references to earlier Doctor Who stories and a dozen other genres and their tropes. The central idea is really interesting and the possibilities and implications are well thought out and developed. The characters of the TARDIS crew ring true and the resolution is completely satisfying.

The only problem with it is that as its the fourth in the story arc, you have to read the first two to really get the most out of it (not complaining about book three in the series, 'The Left-handed Hummingbird' is another good one).

[Paul Flint · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books in the VNA range, brilliant author too. Really enjoyed the story, very interesting characters with some clever twists and turns. The writing style flows well and it makes the book easier to read. The town is an interesting place and the Doctor, Ace and Bernice get plenty to do in this book too. Would highly recommend this to all fans of the show.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lyons' debut introduces themes he’ll cover more effectively in later books (the occult in The Witch Hunters, kitschy unrealties in The Space Age and The Crooked World, and the power of fiction in The Stealers of Dreams) but suffers from being a bit too in love with its own premise. The excuse that “all the characters are flat and stock because they’re meant to be flat and stock” only goes so far, and the result is a slog where it’s impossible to care about what happens to anyone. 1.5.

Shoutout to the previous owner of my copy, who was so surprised/appalled by the John and Gillian cameo that they made a note of it in the back of the book.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for The Real McCoy podcast.

[Christopher M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd heard that this was one of the better New Adventures, but maybe because I came to it already knowing the twist it seemed a bit pointless to me as it didn't really matter what happened to any of the characters. I'm also not a fan of the TARDIS team hating each other. So this was a bit of a chore.

[Jacob Licklider · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once upon a time there was a Doctor Who fan, and this Doctor Who fan had one of his earliest classic serials be the Patrick Troughton story The Mind Robber. The Mind Robber quickly became one of the stories he would return to as it was a fanciful dive into another dimension where every fictional character was real and reality could be altered by the uttering of words and the power of the mind. And over this land ruled its Master, a human as humans create the best stories and he was eventually set free by the brave Doctor and his companions never to return to that land. The End, or so he thought as on a cold winter’s night that fan opened a book starring the good Doctor and two companions this time five incarnations after the initial visit that returned to this Land with new companions to face the stories a second time, but this time everything was changed.



This mystical land was now under new management from a human child who knows how to write stories and acting as the fan’s narrator through the story, as events were manipulated in what the fan thought was a unique twist on the standard third-person narrative. The masterful scribe of this story put it in with perfect aplomb the fan discussed as he progressed through the pages, holding on to every word that the master scribe Steve Lyons placed on the pages of the shortened novel. Master Lyons was dutiful in allowing for the comedy in the Land as the absurdities of this new Master of the Land takes out his largest words in fight against the good Doctor and the empowered Dorothy and the cynical Bernice as they investigate the murders committed in the snowy and quaint village of Arandale. Master Lyons worked his hardest on crafting the masterful mystery to keep the novel moving and of course the good Doctor succeeds in the end and the Doctor Who fan had been satisfied. The End.



Ok, I’m going back to normal prose as I can’t integrate everything I’d like to say without having to break the fourth wall several more times. So as the tale that opened this review I am a big fan of the story The Mind Robber and when I heard that Conundrum was a sequel to The Mind Robber, I was slightly apprehensive. As I haven’t heard anything about Steve Lyons as this is his debut novel I was a bit apprehensive as how this story would go over. Again in the tale that opened the review I admit I was wrong in my apprehension as Conundrum is one of the best Virgin New Adventures and continues the streak of high quality. The story that the Master of the Land of Fiction has concocted for the Doctor to solve is great at revealing enough and not enough to keep it going strong as you question exactly how much you are missing. This is considering that Lyons has the Master withhold pieces of information from the reader just enough so that you can figure out what the Doctor already knows. The plot is very comic book like as there is a superhero powered by a radiation which is basically magic who has to defeat his arch-nemesis aptly called Doctor Nemesis who is evil for evil’s sake. These characters are obvious pastiches of the Batman television series with Adam West smashed together with an evil vampire-like murder mystery. Of course it isn’t vampires as they already exist in the Doctor Who Universe.



What Lyons gets down best are the characters of Ace and Benny as they both have to figure out where they are as they interact with the fictional characters. This is especially great as you get some intentionally forgettable characters as Lyons refuses to describe them in any detail and Ace and Benny fill in the details. This allows for some great comedy as the Doctor reveals how they don’t know many people here. I also feel that Lyons was thorough in connecting the story down to the arc as we are left with clues to who is behind the manipulation and who led the TARDIS back into the Land of Fiction. Honestly this book is nearly perfect with no real flaws that I can see. 10/10

[Adam James · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only reason why I bought Conundrum is because it was the cheapest classic Doctor Who book in my friendly neighborhood's used book store.

There's absolutely NO way that any of these ridiculous 80's and 90's paperback sci-fi books could ever garner a 5 star rating from anyone...except this one.

Conundrum's author Steve Lyons takes concepts whispered from "The Mind Robber" and screams them - expertly detaching Doctor Who from its narrative and dissects its characters, its cliches, its tropes, and its core concept.

Ace coming to terms with her own contrived character conventions? The notion that Doctor Who itself is just a creation of The Land of Fiction?

Shockingly thought-provoking, Steve Lyons.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one I skimmed in its day, as I impatiently waited for Paul Cornell's "No Future" to finish off the New Adventures' Alternate History story arc. Going back to it all these years later, I find much to like (the omniscient narrator, the fascinating, archetypal characters populating the village), and much that makes me uncomfortable (the tension between the TARDIS crew is laid on a bit too thick for my liking, especially compared to other NAs like "Lucifer Rising" & "The Left-Handed Hummingbird"). It's a book that manages to feel a bit derivative yet simultaneously gripping. It's full of qualities that Steve Lyons will develop even more successfully in future "Doctor Who" novels.

[Xanxa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent adventure. Great writing, plenty of fun and suspense.

The Doctor and his companions find themselves trapped in a fictional world full of cliched characters, such as comic-book superheroes and supervillains, downmarket private detectives, fake psychics and pub landlords.

The main plot at first seems to be a murder mystery, with a deranged serial killer on the loose, but that's only the surface plot. Beneath it, the Doctor and his companions have to work out what's real and what's fiction.

I love the way that this ties in with a story from the TV show. I won't say more than that because ... SPOILERS!!!

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant, funny and clever book, that makes full use of the form and Doctor Who's history to really create a unique tale. The only criticisms I would have of it are that there are perhaps a few too many nodding in-jokes for my taste and that the level of angst in the TARDIS team is at its peak (which is necessary for the completion of the arc in the sequel but is irritating here). It is for these kind of books that I remember why I enjoy reading the Virgin era.

[KP Mathislife · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, I'm not sure what I can say without giving too much away. But the whole time I was on edge trying to figure out exactly what was going on - it really pulled me in. And the last page has one of the greatest quotes ever.

[David Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steve Lyons' debut for Doctor Who is quite unlike anything else written for Doctor Who. It is both metafiction and not, humorous and dark, violent and sentimental. What makes it work is the overarching trope. He places the TARDIS crew in the Land of Fiction, from The Mind Robber. The unknown enemy of The Doctor who has been plaguing him with alternate time lines for the last four or five novels has resurrected this pocket universe and found a new Master of Stories to run it. This new master is not a bookish early twentieth-century writer of light, popular works, as was the previous master, but a boy in his late teens from the 1990s who devours fan fiction, comic books, and the like, and thus populates his fictional world with all of these late twentieth-century popular media tropes in the little town of Arandale. What makes this work is the way that Lyons tells the story. He has chosen to make the new Master of Fiction the narrator, and to have him narrate in "real time" so to speak. Thus, everything that happens is filtered through his perception, and so it is never fully clear whether the TARDIS crew are acting and speaking as they really do or as the narrator perceives or wants them to do. It's a tricky exercise in dramatic irony for the reader. There are a couple of aspects that trouble me about the book, though. One is not really Lyons' fault. He was given a brief about how his novel would fit into the ongoing story arc and how the TARDIS crew ought to behave. That means we get more of the same, tiresome, infighting that has been going on throughout the New Adventures. We get the same tired and totally untrue argument that The Doctor is just "playing games." Ace is particularly annoying. The new shoot anything that moves Ace is boring, full of herself, angry all the time for no good reason, petulant, and not in any way a pleasant person to be around. Every time she comes into the story I am begging, "Please, bring back the old Ace." The other bothersome aspect to me is Lyons' fault, and it is the amount of brutal physical violence directed at women by powerful men. The detailed accounts of these incidents are disturbing. I cannot tell what Lyons wants the reader to think about them. Is this a commentary on the type of schlock media that the Master of Fiction admires? If so, then Lyons should make that point more clearly. Is it Lyons' accidentally letting out something in himself? Hard to tell. So, two demerits, but otherwise Conundrum is the best of the early run of New Adventures.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5
Using The Land of Fiction in a prose story was a really great choice - while I found the twist pretty obvious from the outset I didn't mind so much because it genuinely works for this. Especially near the end there's a lot of fun meta stuff (does the Doctor know that he's a fictional character being read about?), plus I think the concept actually works better in a book in some ways than it does in a television serial since we get the villain narrating the story and trying to manipulate events. There was one line early on that I especially liked, when he gets annoyed at the Doctor for coming up with a scientific explanation to a nonsense phenomenon he'd completely made up. That's the main appeal to this book in my opinion: it really knows how to utilise the format in fun ways.

[Mad Medico · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m confident in calling this my favourite VNA so far - it’s lighter and more tongue in cheek than the gritty, cyberpunk-esque novels that have preceded it. The re-use of the Land of Fiction is a clever way to emphasise Seven’s ‘Time’s Champion’ arc, with his manipulation and literal re-writing of the story as it goes along, and allows plenty of room for pastiche of pulp novels in general - the cardboard cutout characters populating Arandale are varied and funny - and Who in particular (Seven’s rejection of a Pertwee-style contraption to save the day is hilarious). The Writer is so well realised as well, and ends up being strikingly pathetic by the end, feeling a bit like a meta comment on lonely fanboys playing with their action figures…

[Arthur B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, at points chilling, and above all written with great wit, and to my eyes it seems to slip in some cunning stabs at the state of the New Adventures series long the way. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[City Mist · Rating 2 out of 5]

Using a Doctor Who novel to comment on the show's multimedia legacy is a fine idea, but Steve Lyons never takes any of his ideas far enough to make an impression, and ending the story on a self aware cliffhanger is irritating.

[Jade · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing style was much better in this book than most of the other Doctor Who books I've read. The plot was decent. But gosh, it kept referencing sooooo many other events that I didn't need to know about in the book immediately prior to this. What in the world did I miss about Silurian Earth?!

[Numa Parrott · Rating 1 out of 5]

The real conundrum is why would anyone write this book.

[Reuben Herfindahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read, darn near the best book of the entire series so far.

[Finlay O'Riordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sequel to "The Mind Robber" and also part of the alternate realities arc. This is a strong VNA and very re-readable.

[Arcturus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely story! Loads of fun. Continues on the story arc of the last few books brilliantly, and makes me look forward to the ultimate conclusion even more

[David Sarkies · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Doctor returns to the Land of Fiction
25 January 2012

This is one of the books in the Alternate Universe story arc of the New Doctor Who Adventures. I believe that it is the forth of the story arcs, the first being the Timewyrm and Cat's Cradle story arcs, and then the Future History story arc. This particular story arc involves the Doctor arriving in a parallel universe where in a previous adventure the Doctor failed which resulted in a substantial change in the direction of history. I have read a few of the books from the story arc and I can refer you to the comment on Blood Heat for further information on this story arc.
In this adventure the Doctor returns to the Land of Fiction, which was supposed to have been destroyed in the TV episode the Mind Robber. However the original Master of the Land of Fiction has been replace with a man named Jason and the entire story is told from his point of view. It is not entirely clear at the beginning of the novel, but one of the things that separates TV from books is that one is able to experiment on a larger scale in books, but then again different media allows you to experiment in different ways.
The Tardis arrives in the village of Arandale and right from the start of the book it just seems that the place is really strange. It is a quiet little English village, however everything seems to be happening at the same time. There are bodies appearing that are drained of blood, a white witch believes some change is coming, and a Catholic Priest arrives to kill the witch. It almost seems as if it has been taken straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. Well, it turns out that it is supposed to be a novel because everything is happening in the Land of Fiction, and Jason is obviously out to get the Doctor. However this is one of the strange things about this story arc: the Doctor is already dead, but he is here. I guess this is one of those peculiarities of the Doctor Who universe in that he is not supposed to actually be a part of the time stream but rather separate from it, and his companions, while travelling with him, are also separate from the time stream.
I have always loved the Doctor Who universe, both as a kid and then again as an adult. It is a shame that no really decent roleplaying games were created to reflect this awesome universe. They say that these books are open to interpretation as to whether they are cannonical or not, however I will generally take the position that they are. The original Doctor Who stories were generally a family show, though I must admit that there was a lot of horror content in those series (particularly the Android Invasion), however I still loved them. The new series are pretty much that, a new series, and these books do take the universe in a new direction. I do watch the new Doctor Who TV series, however they simply do not compare to what I consider to be classic Doctor Who.

[James Barnard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Steve Lyons is, for me, one of the most consistently excellent writers of Doctor Who fiction.

With that in mind, it's interesting to go back to his first novel 20 years after it was published. Many first-time writers seem so delighted at being commissioned that they throw everything at the first book and then can't match it the next time around. Lyons, on the other hand, works tentatively with a strong central idea, but doesn't develop it anywhere near as much as my memory told me he did.

Maybe it's just the case that meta-fiction is much more common these days. Here, it felt like a pretty novel idea - the Doctor and companions arrive in what appears to be a sleepy village in winter, only to find that the unnamed narrator of the story is a character in his own right, a prisoner of whoever is controlling the Land of Fiction.

The memory cheats, of course. I'd also remembered the book being a lot more rip-roaringly funny than this. I should highlight that this isn't a criticism - far from it. Lyons has picked up the reputation of writing comedies. This isn't true. In terms of soul-searching responses to characters' situations, there are few to compare with him. And maybe that's the issue with 'Conundrum' - the maturity, drive and emotional intelligence which infuse his later works don't quite emerge here. But then, that may have been the point.

Still - I'm glad there were so many aspects left unresolved in this one. It meant Lyons could follow it up with 'Head Games' - a personal favourite of mine. It's a strong first novel, with a memorable theme, and it's to Lyons' credit that he's able to depict the breakdown in relationships between the TARDIS crew without it being unduly depressing or jarring.

It's always good to try and re-visit books you've read before, especially in light of future works by the author. I'm glad I re-read 'Conundrum', especially within the context of the 'Alternative Universe' cycle, which I didn't do at the time.

There is light at the end of the tunnel!

[Kaoru · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Doctor, Ace and Bernice arrive in an American town and meet real and proper super heroes and super villains and get caught up in between. A murder mystery is floating around, too. And after things get totally improbable and implausible, the place gets revealed as the Land Of Fiction, and the book as a sequel to "The Mind Robber". Heh.

Tie-in novels for TV shows or movies are rarely any good, if at all okay at best. The plots are usually lacklustre, the characters written as cardboard copies from the screen, the whole thing reads really stiff and is (in the end) rather inconsequential anyway. However there's something different about those Doctor Who ranges from the 90s and early 00s, and "Conundrum" is a good example. This isn't just some run-of-the-mill-product, there's actually a lot ambition by the writer in there, who can't wait to throw in as many off-the-wall ideas in there as possible. And while he was at it, he also toys around with form a lot. Thorughout the text you constantly get asides which brake the fourth wall... and moments in which the Doctor fights the author by rewriting the story as it happens. Toying around with cliches, using meta... all is included. Really cool and smart stuff.

Sometimes these books get criticized for being merely more than a vehicle for the authors to show off how clever they are, and too clever for their own good at that. Which is a bit unfair and somewhat missing the point. The actual intention was making the books as interesting as possible and use them as a playground for experimenting. I mean, it's certainly no coincidence that a good chunk of these writers eventually went on to bigger things.

Anyway, if I was a resident in the Land Of Fiction and a character in a tie-in novel I know which series I want to be part of.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1782656...

Steve Lyons is always interesting if not always completely successful, and this Seventh Doctor novel is a great idea which is not perfectly executed. The Tardis, with Benny and Ace, lands in an English village where mysterious things are afoot, but what appears at first to be a murder mystery turns out to be a return to a situation from the Doctor's past. This was Lyons' first Who novel (indeed, I think his first published work), and his prose style is still a tad unpolished in places with too many characters jostling for attention. But the core idea is audacious enough to make this one well worth reading.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hideously dull, tedious, and annoying story. One of the worst in the Dr. Who New Adventures series. Most of the characters were not interesting at all. I am very tired of the bickering between the Doctor, Bennie and Ace. It is a terrible dynamic for the TARDIS crew and makes the stories less appealing. Also, when are going to be done with this irritating "alternative universe/altered-past" story line? With an entire universe to explore, why are we revisiting old villains? The writing of the New Adventures, especially since the Timewyrm sequence of the first four books, has ranged from good to awful. This is definitely one of the latter.

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A massive change of pace (there's a four-color supervillain on the cover), Lyons offers a sequel of sorts to The Mind Robber (not much of a spoiler, since I guessed it within a few pages) acting as rather amusing meta-textual narrator. It's a send-up of Who fiction and yet the stakes remain high. It's the kind of thing I could see Steven Moffat pulling off in the television medium, and in fact, hits some of the same notes Silence in the Library does. A lot of fun.