Doctor Who: Foreign Devils

Telos Doctor Who Novellas #5

by Andrew Cartmel

China, 1800, and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive at the English Trade Concession in Canton.

A supposedly harmless relic known as the Spirit Gate becomes active and whisks Jamie and Zoe into the future. The Doctor follows in the TARDIS and arrives in England, 1900, where the descendants of an English merchant from 1800 are gathering.

Among their number is a young man called Carnacki, an expert in all things mystical, and before long he is helping the Doctor investigate a series of bizarre murders in the house.

The spirits of the past have returned, and when the Doctor discovers that the house and surrounds have literally been taken out of space and time, he realises that their attacker may not be all they seem.

This is the fifth in the series of hardback novellas by Telos Publishing.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction

124 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Sean Homrig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story works well as a Carnackj ghost story, but falls a little short of being representative of "Doctor Who". This is supposed to be a Second Doctor story, but one could never tell this but for the fact it features Jamie and Zoe; in short, it's a pretty bland characterization of the Doctor. Much of the story works quite well, with a series of suspicious deaths in a turn-of-the-century English mansion (yes, I'm partial to those types of stories anyway), but the ending is baffling. As with many of Cartmel's stories, it involves things that are so fantastically illogical that the reader struggles to try and picture them. Otherwise, it's a good, quick little read.

[Euan M LLL · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a Doctor Who fan, that is also a big fan of books, I am eternally grateful of how much I and the fandom has with regards to what we can read. We have novelisations of classic TV stories and (more recently) ones of the new revival, the rare and occasional novella for when wants to read something that is original fiction but not quite the length of a full blown novel, as well as the pantheon of novels, original ones based of the classic series, new series, and spin offs based off real ones (like Torchwood), or the fictitious (ones such as Time Hunter).

I have been an avid fan of Doctor Who books since 2014, and have read pretty much everything that the medium can throw at me. I think (from what I have read in my time) that the hardest ones to do is/are (the) novellas that pop up. You almost have no already existing material to base it off of, and have an extremely limited page count (sometimes even less than 100 pages, with the likes of "The Eye of the Tiger" being only 79 pages), to work with.

You have to create something that is engaging and good with extremely limited space (or time (if we were to go down even more metaphorical routes)), and this is extremely difficult. I have read very few novellas (even outside of Doctor Who) that manage to be a good read. Quite a few of the novellas I have read (particularly telos' "Time Hunter" range) have failed to be good imo, mainly either because;

1. The ideas they have are to big to be contained within so little pagenation

2. Or they just simply fail to be anything good.

"Foreign Devils" unfortunately succeeds in falling under the category of numero 2, almost to a catastrophic level of failure.

The plot itself is paper thin, with very little beef or anything worth to note. But that isn't even my biggest problem...

My biggest one being that it felt like that Andrew Cartmel didn't even give a shit. So much so to the point where I don't think he even tried.

Now if you know me outside of Goodreads, you'll probably know that I am nuts for 1960s Doctor Who. Out of the 50 stories that were transmitted, I have experienced roughly 45 of them at least twice each. It's an era I know extremely well, and as such I am very familiar with the recurring characters (namely the tar dis teams and in tern the doctors). Now, I know Patrick Troughton's Doctor isn't exactly the easiest one in the world to re-realise, but here it seems like that no effort what-so-ever was even attempted or put into his characterisation or realisation within this book, same can be applied to Jamie and Zoe, him/they just feel like the ordinary one off supporting characters that are also featured within this novella. There is nothing at all with regards to the spark that this tardis team have, not even an attempt!

Probably the worst offending point of proof of my previous paragraph is the fact that Jamie gets sidelined in the book, and that The Doctor doesn't even seemed worried about it. Let me draw you to the clip from "The Mind Robber" episode 1, where they're in the void and both Jamie and Zoe run out of the Tardis into the nothing with the 2nd Doctor being extremely distraught and worries that they have gone against his wishes. Now, of all Doctors, I don't know about you; but this is the last one that would come to my mind for not giving a toss about his companions.

If I had to compare this book to any TV story, I'd say "The Talons of Weng Chiang", not only because of the very oriental setting, but because of how racist it can be. In the prologue a character (A) is trying to do a deal with a Chinese man (B) with regards to opium, and it's described that A is thinking of B as being a; "slippery yellow customer". Yikes.

Overall;

Congratulations Andrew Cartmel. You've managed to shit out possibly the most effortless (in the worst way possible) Doctor Who story I have ever experienced. Easy contender for one of the worst Doctor Who sixties stories and Doctor Who books I have ever read.

2-3/10

[Frank Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. It didn't really feel too out of place for a Doctor Two story, apart from a few gory descriptions. I didn't think it was a very interesting adventure and it wasn't particularly well written. Jamie and Zoe were essentially unrecognisable, but there were some more subtle traces of familiarity for The Doctor.

[Joe Stevens · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a swath of original Doctor Who books that don't work because they barely feature Doctor Who and his companions or they feature imposters who are unrecognizable from the TV series. This is a bit of both, The Doctor believes in the supernatural, not the scientific, and Zoe is generic while Jamie simply vanishes for most of the book. Clearly the historical magical mystery that the author chose to tell didn't need anyone from the Doctor Who universe, but since he needed to use the Doctor Who range to get published, he had to force Doctor Who and Zoe into a lead roles written for someone else and dispose of Jamie.

As for the book itself, it is moderately entertaining but has been written at least a thousand times before by at least nine hundred better authors. Unless you are reading through all the books in the Whovian Universe, give it a miss.

[Cameron Turnbull · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t think Cartmel can write well for the Second Doctor nor his companions. The Second Doctor never at any point felt whimsical and had no sense of agency that he tends to have when his friends are in mortal danger. He’s too callous, reminding me of the Seventh Doctor. There was only ever one moment that reminded me he was meant to be the Second Doctor, and that’s when he fixed Carnacki’s machine

Jamie is basically a non-entity in this book. He’s there at the start and the end but for 90% of the Novella’s length is nowhere to be seen.

Zoe gets a little bit to do but still feels underutilised. There’s also a lot of sexualised language thrown at Zoe throughout the novel by almost every male side character to the point I felt really uncomfortable continuing. Especially the stuff with Thor (not the Norse one). She also barely reads like Zoe. This is more like an amalgamation of Mel and Ace (fitting with the Seventh Doctor-like Second Doctor)

Carnacki gets a good amount of stuff done. I’ve never read any of the mystery novels featuring him but this feels like somebody getting acquainted with solving mysteries, which is well done.

The story itself is a bit awful though. There’s an interesting idea but it’s lost in the execution. It feels very disjointed and all of the pieces of the puzzle aren’t there. There’s meant to be a murder mystery which also has a lot of great ideas but again fails to materialise. It’s like Cartmel had fantastic ideas but didn’t bother to expand the plot in any worthwhile way.

The prose is not very good too. There’s a lot of people having an item needed for the plot to continue but no explanation as to how they got it. Characters are now wearing clothes that they weren’t before and some items that seem very important aren’t brought up again for the entire novel. Not to mention the dialogue. Most of the time it’s all in once paragraph. It’s so disjointed and half of the time I didn’t realise who was speaking.

Overall I didn’t enjoy this book. The only thing that kept me going was ‘there has to be a good twist in here somewhere’. But there isn’t. So many good ideas underrepresented in this novella.

[Mars G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been venturing to read all of the Second Doctor novels recently. Some have been excellent, and some have been... um... well...

This, unfortunately, falls into the latter category. The title squicked me first. The opening chapter was like, oof, really? The only - and I mean ONLY redeeming quality to this one was the Caranacki character which I found to be quite interesting and he's originally from another work of fiction.

The plot was predictable and tropey and NOT in a good way. An ancient Chinese curse? Really? Leave that $&%* in the 60s where it belongs.

Anyway, if you're venturing to read all of the Telos novels or all of the Second Doctor novels, I ... guess you can read this one if you can find it online free somewhere. Even if you're a completionist like I am, well... save your money, folks.

[Billy Martel · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my heart this is a 4 star book. But the fact that this is clearly a 7th Doctor book disguised as a 2nd Doctor Book, and the racism that is unfortunately present in the plot, took off a star for me.

However aside from that I greatly enjoyed having the Doctor be present for a cracking Carnaki pastiche. Very fun.

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

A reasonable novella if a little unsurprising

[Denis Southall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 1 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1167423.html

This Telos novella is another of those attempts to marry the Whoniverse with detective fiction and occult forces, which can be done brilliantly (All-Consuming Fire, where the Doctor meets Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu mythos), tolerably well (The Unicorn and the Wasp, where the Doctor meets Agatha Christie), or not so well, as in this case, where Andrew Cartmel attempts to channel William Hope Hodgson. I haven't read any of Hodgson's stories featuring his mystical detective Carnacki; Hodgson inserts him here into a country-house murder mystery which turns out to be the result of enraged Asians using mystical powers against their colonial masters. As I have said elsewhere, one has to ask whether this is such a bad thing? As it is, the book is a pretty egregious example of what we now call cultural appropriation fail. It's not even a particularly compelling portrayal of the Second Doctor and Zoe (Jamie spends most of the story unconscious). Once again, I feel Telos have discharged their editorial responsibilities rather too lightly.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1167423.html[return][return]This Telos novella is another of those attempts to marry the Whoniverse with detective fiction and occult forces, which can be done brilliantly (All-Consuming Fire, where the Doctor meets Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu mythos), tolerably well (The Unicorn and the Wasp, where the Doctor meets Agatha Christie), or not so well, as in this case, where Andrew Cartmel attempts to channel William Hope Hodgson. I haven't read any of Hodgson's stories featuring his mystical detective Carnacki; Hodgson inserts him here into a country-house murder mystery which turns out to be the result of enraged Asians using mystical powers against their colonial masters. As I have said elsewhere, one has to ask whether this is such a bad thing? As it is, the book is a pretty egregious example of what we now call cultural appropriation fail. It's not even a particularly compelling portrayal of the Second Doctor and Zoe (Jamie spends most of the story unconscious). Once again, I feel Telos have discharged their editorial responsibilities rather too lightly.

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Former script editor Cartmel has indulged his penchant for mixing the supernatural with science fiction. "Foreign Devils" is "Doctor Who" in the weird fiction mode of Lovecraft, Derleth, Machen, etc., but mostly of William Hope Hodgson. The story involves the second Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie meeting Hodgson's ghost hunter character, Thomas Carnacki. The story involves a Chinese curse, an isolated mansion on a winter's night, assorted sordid characters, a spiritual medium, and a mysterious other-dimensional gateway. As if in response to all those stories that have the female companion out of the main action, this time Jamie spends most of the story in drug-induced sleep. Even so, Zoe is not particularly effective, spending most of the story fending off upper-class perverts and wondering what the Doctor is doing. One's enjoyment of this novella really depends upon how much one likes the weird fiction genre. I am not much a fan of it myself, so this novella just was not all that interesting to me.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm rather surprised that Cartmel, who worked on the original series and generated the so-called Cartmel Masterplan, does such a terrible job here of capturing the essence of the Second doctor, never mind Zoe (who spends half of her time in the story as the lust object of various crude characters.) Jamie, Two's other companion in this latter period of his run, is barely present at all -- he gets disappeared early on, and only reappears at the end. On top of that, William Hope Hodgson's occult detective, Carnacki, comes off as feeble and bland, rendering the rather thinly stretched murder mystery quite dull.

[Leela42 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Telos novella with the second Doctor, Zoe, and not much Jamie. A mystery with supernatural elements. Most of it breezes right along, but for much of the climax it's clunky and unsatisfying, then suddenly it clicks again. Fans of Zoe will probably hate it, as she's such a wet blanket and so unnecessarily dumb you wonder why the author didn't put BOTH companions on ice.

[James Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A crossover adventure with the Second Doctor meeting occult detective Carnacki early in his career. Not a long or complex tale (it is only a novella, after all), but it's intriguing, with some memorable images such as the transformed medium and the manor floating in space.

[Numa Parrott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A shockingly deep plot for a Doctor Who novella.