Doctor Who: Strange England

Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures #29

by Simon Messingham

'The more the Doctor dreams,' the Quack said, 'the more real I become. He has not yet dreamed me fully, but he will.'

When the TARDIS lands in the idyllic gardens of a Victorian country house, Ace knows that something terrible is bound to happen. The Doctor disagrees. Sometimes things really are as perfect as they seem.

Then they discover a young girl whose body has been possessed by a beautiful but lethal insect. And they meet the people of the House: innocents who have never known age, pain, or death -- until now.

Now their rural paradise is turning into a world of nightmare. A world in which the familiar is being twisted into something evil and strange. A world ruled by the Quack, whose patent medicines are deadly poisons and whose aim is the total destruction of the Doctor.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction

282 pages, Paperback

First published August 18, 1994

Reviews

[Linnea Gelland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deeply creepy with a great sense of something being slightly off at the beginning. I really like the way everything seems to be just a bit too sweet and beautiful, and how it all leaves a sort of sticky taste in your mouth. Like eating too much sugar-coated cake and custard. Or let me put it this way: Umbridge would have absolutely thrived in this world.

Bernice contributes to the story by often being the most sensible person around, while Ace is either losing control due to temper, or punching people perfectly calmly, and the Doctor of course being his usual not-gonna-tell-ya'-even-if-I-know-what's-going-on self. It's a nice little trio, that.

We also get to meet a large gallery of soon-to-be-dead characters, many pretty interesting. They all start out as walking cliches - which is exactly what they're supposed to be - but the more they see, the more they change into multi-faceted people with conflicting emotions. I especially liked the butler Garvey and his calm demeanor in the face of fear. Most characters get introduced through a mini horror story of their own, which I really enjoyed too.

Then there is the coincidence (?) of there suddenly being two Scottish doctors. Certainly quite confusing.

Despite liking most of the book, I must say I was a bit disappointed with the ending and the turn the story took in the last act. It sort of worked, and the solution also presented many interesting existential questions, the best one being: "Are we right to assume that we always know what's good and what's bad?"

It started out as such a neat ghost story and it kept on building from there, hinting at a bigger picture, but still sticking to the happy dream turned horrible nightmare-theme. I was chewing my lips, not knowing what the rules were and being terrified along with the characters involved. Then the story jumped out of that world and tried to explain it all through... well, I'm not sure how, actually. I appreciate the idea of good infecting good with the evil it has seen, and I thought that aspect of the solution did work very well. But it all turned into more of a space-opera for a while, and then there was supposed to be a grand finale in the shape of a battle. But there wasn't. Not really. Suddenly it all just sort of - ended.

Anyway, I did quite like that it turned out to be a happy ending, after all. That definitely isn't always the case. And this time it did kind of bookend (difficult to end a book with anything but a bookend, but still) the whole thing, considering it started out with a false happily-ever-after, and ended with something similar, except real.

[April Mccaffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a TRIP. Literally.

If you want something along the lines of Inception/Stephen King/Weird time travel then this is for you.

For Simon's first novel, I'm impressed. It usually takes me longer to read VNAS but somehow, no matter how weird or dark this book got, I still found myself intrigued. This book is hella dark and like in the Timewyrm novels met with a version of 'Hell' but not 'Hell'.

It also reminded me of Time's Crucible with the TARDIS related to it.

I enjoyed Charlotte and Richard's characters and the twisted events that played out and it was nice having Benny and Ace work together and being friends in this novel and nice to see more of Ace showing compassion.

The Seventh Doctor is not mysterious. He just really hates explaining things and that’s a mood.

[Christopher M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one starts out well in an apparently perfect but gently unsettling Victorian country house, like Jane Eyre directed by Tim Burton, and ends with an explanation that is an intriguing sci-fi idea for a short story. But 100 pages of gory attacks by a variety of creepy crawlies are clearly padding and tested my patience.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another new to me VNA and one I had heard of as poor. So I was surprised when I really liked this.

Now this does have some obvious logical flaws at times, and the scenes between Ace and Rix seem gratuitously violent (likely intentionally) but overall this was a really great surprise. It is part of that great subgenre of an isolated setting which appears to be a gothic historical turns out to be something much more surreal and sinister.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simon Messingham's first Doctor Who novel isn't as polished or accomplished as his later contributions to the series...but I feel this one gets a bit too much flak. It's quite a trippy, engaging little story, and certainly demonstrates the promise Messignham would fulfill in other Doctor Who novels. Give it a try...

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is what Falls the Shadow should have been. Loaded with atmosphere and great characterization, the book is down right macabre and drowning in Victorian Gothic, as well as high concept. One of the best and most original New Adventures I've read.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely one of these that leans much more into the horror side of things. Still, I enjoyed it quite a lot. If I had one complaint it was that the Doctor felt slightly out of character for the Seventh at times, but it wasn't too egregious.

[Jason D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting....different but good.

[David Layton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simon Messingham's first novel is not his best. I have read others that I thought were really quite good, especially Tomb of Valdemar and The Indestructible Man. Strange England lacks the plotting and strong characterization of those novels. It is another of the bubble universe or mental landscape stories that the Virgin Doctor Who book editors seem to like. The TARDIS plops down our crew in a landscape that looks like a typical 19th-century country estate. However, the landscape and people in it are "not right" in peculiar ways. The presence of our TARDIS crew leads to a wave of violent attacks by giant insects, killer fur babies, and various hybrid creatures. Ace gets kicked into the "real world" near the house at the center of the fake world, the connecting incident being a fire that burned down the house. This real world, though, is just as pointlessly nasty and violent as the virtual one, and virtual beings in the "real" world still have both a presence and an effect. So Messingham does not have it quite clear enough what is virtual and what is real. Then, there is the violence. This novel has heaps and heaps of violence, described in graphic detail that goes on and on. It seems to be there mostly as filler, which is another disturbing quality of the book. That is, there is no reason for much of the violence in terms of plot. It seems to be there because Messingham couldn't think of something else for the characters to do. Additionally, the plot device, the key that opens the explanation, does not require that so much of the action be this violent. It could all have been handled another, cleverer, way. A last problem for me is Messingham's characterization of Doctor 7. This Doctor just hangs around "thinking" and letting everyone else get into trouble. His dialogue just did not, to me, sound like Doctor 7. All that aside, there are some very interesting bits in this novel, some ideas that could have born sweeter fruit.

[Mikey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, Strange England is a bit of a mixed bag. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would though, so that has to count for something!

There's a few cases where Messingham seems to favour using the same few turns of phrase or particular words and they crop up a lot, at least through the first hundred or so pages - I don't think this is intentional... So that can get a bit wearing. Beyond that, the story does the usual thing where 7, Ace + Benny each get a turn being injured in various ways. Hey ho. Moving on.

But, uh, yeah - definitely not one of the worst New Adventures I've read so far.

[The Bookseller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Differcult book to initially get into. Really interesting premise and curious first couple of chapters. I faltered at the 100 page mark because I was not sure where it was going. I pushed through and did end up enjoying it.

It's dark, weird and trippy. The scenes with Doctor Rix were maybe a bit too mean, and the fact that the plot about his son is left unresolved is a bit disappointing.

Overall mixed thoughts about this book.

[Arthur B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Big "first novel" energy, with uninspiring prose and a tendency towards meandering dialogue which doesn't quite capture the voice of the established characters being used. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[City Mist · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unsettling imagery abounds here, but Simon Messingham's rather basic prose and third act reliance on technobabble and Gallifreyan lore (a consistent weakness of the New Adventures) fails to summon any real tension or suspense.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again it was alright nothing to write home about

[Arcturus · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, there were some fun parts of the premise of this but I wasn't entirely sold on the execution

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Repetitive situations with graphically described horror, not for me, but one for the horror fans.

[David Sarkies · Rating 2 out of 5]

We Don't Understand the Truly Idyllic
24 January 2012

The Doctor, Benice Summerfield, and Ace arrive in an idyllic manor house somewhere in England, but as Ace suggests at the beginning of the book, where ever the Doctor is concerned there is never any such place as idyllic. I would change that slightly to suggest that idyllic is really only a state of mind because when one digs beneath the surface of any idyllic situation one does tend to find rot and decay. This is where it becomes clear that something is wrong because there does not seem to be any rot or decay, and everybody appears to be living a blissful existence, that is until one of the occupants of the house dies when she is bitten by an alien insect.
When they try to explain the tragedy to the other occupants of the house they do not seem to understand the concept of death, or even of change. This to me is typical Doctor Who, especially when he encounters a race of innocents, and I guess this is an idea of the world before the fall where we neither understood death or change. However because we live in a world of death and change, and have never experienced anything other than a world of death and change, it is impossible for us to truly understand an existence without it.
However, the Doctor has arrived and things begin to unravel, and is confronted by an evil scientist whose only goal is to kill the Doctor. After his investigations, as well as ignoring warnings about how curiosity killed the cat (or the Gallifreyan equivalent), the Doctor discovers that the house is in reality a Tardis that has been set up on one of the asteroids orbiting Earth, and that a time lord is attempting to get more regenerations than she is entitled.
It is suggested that this book attempts to explore the nature of good and evil, and in reality, this book never really stuck in my mind and I really cannot comment upon it. However, a Doctor Who book, while it can be a vehicle to produce philosophical treatises, it is the fact that it is a Doctor Who book that really makes any philosophical rant quite pointless.

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with stories that happen in a dream world or other virtual reality is that anything can happen and does. This is a cheap plotting device and simultaneously confusing and disaffecting for the reader. It's the case with Simon Messignham's Strange England, part of the Doctor Who New Adventures line. Good prose, some real horror, and an interesting resolution all told, but my eyes tended to glaze over around the middle there. If nothing is real, how real can the danger be? And though it turns out there IS real danger, you don't always know it. Even if you figure it out by page 40 (which I did), you're likely to forget you did by page 200 (again, as I did) as the resolution keeps us waiting. Definitely a mitigated review.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1910411.html

It was interesting to read this Seventh Doctor novel at the same time as the new Fourth Doctor audio The Renaissance Man, in that both involved Victorian-ish settings which turn out to be in some way representations of an inner space. This was apparently Messingham's first book, but it's a good combination of insect horror, worlds within worlds, and a new figure from the Doctor's Gallifreyan past which casts a new light on his motivations. Ghost Light with mind projections, perhaps. One of the more memorable ones.

[David Sidwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the very best Dr Who's I've read!

Without dipping too much into any kind of spoiler territory - The 7th Dr, Ace, Benny end up in Victorian England...or do they?

Strange things start to happen that don't seem to make much sense to the characters or the reader, and instead of the generic repeatativeness of SOME of the NAs, what follows is a truly original tale which manages to mix sci fi, fantasy, and elements of horror into one of the more original New Adventures as the trio meet an assortment of strange characters and seem to occupy a dream world that quickly becomes a nightmare.

A fantastic debut for a Dr Who author.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good beginning, clever twist at the end, and really drags in the middle.
The three leads are well written, which saves it, but this wasn't really a book length idea.

Could have made a good TV show, but as a novel you start to notice the padding.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, so despite the reviews I'd read about this, it wasn't awful. Longwinded, especially in the middle, but readable.

So there we go. "Strange England - a not awful 20 year old book". Great review. Pulitzer forthcoming, no doubt.

[Kaoru · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strange boredom.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 2 out of 5]

A first book, and sadly it shows. A very slow beginning, a plot that doesn't make sense if you think about it too much, and flat characterization.

[Mae R · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book made 0 sense. I mean. Zero. Sense. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

[Andy Stehr · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine Doctor Who story. Some very good imagery of the Quack. I liked the setting and I liked the end.