The Shadow in the Glass

Contrary to popular belief, all Doctor Who books are not flimsy and pointless. Some are rousing good adventure stories, and this book falls solidly into that category—perhaps the best example I’ve yet read. I could totally see it as a TV serial, though in true Stephen Cole fashion the end gets pretty hazy and hard to follow.

It benefits, first of all, from a strong pairing: the Sixth Doctor and the Brigadier. While I’ve grown to like Peri over the years—I’ve written her in two pieces now—the Doctor is better off here dispensing with the whining sidekick. The Brigadier is about as versatile as the Doctor; he plays off each of them wonderfully, and here he’s in his element. The Doctor favourably compares the journalist heroine of the book, Claire, to Sarah Jane, prompting me to wonder how Sarah Jane would react if ever teamed up with this Doctor. (Not to mention another pairing that occurred to me: the Brigadier having to fend off the exuberance of pre-Torchwood Captain Jack!) It’s the only DW book I know of that footnotes another one (Players) and it’s even got a historical note. Blimey!

The Brigadier, of course, gets all the best lines, as he did in “Battlefield.” By the time the Brigadier had made it halfway down the stairs he could see that the battered, blue police box had come together in his hallway. ‘Wonder which one I’ll get,’ he murmured happily. (Though the Sixth Doctor was one of the few not to have TV adventures with the Brig, it appears they have met before this book.) ‘Just for once, Doctor, could you try uttering a sentence that made some kind of sense?’ I love him! I like that he gets to act all Bond-like here, what with the War intrigue, the jet to Russia, etc, but he’s still the slightly older Brigadier, as he was in “Battlefield”: ‘Old habits die hard?’ the Doctor said softly. . . . ‘Like old soldiers,’ replied the Brigadier, ‘they don’t die at all.’ I’ll never be happy until UNIT comes back, as it would be great to see Nicholas Courtney on screen again.

Reading this book made me realize how much fun I think I would have (completely platonic, I assure you) hanging out with the Sixth Doctor. He’s great! His pomposity is hilarious—here he insults a Churchill aide: ‘Frankly, sir, I suspect your intelligence [information] is most dubious.’ ‘Your own is practically non-existent!’ the Doctor countered furiously. ‘Sir!’ I also love it when an author dares to reveal a more profound side to this brash specimen: She felt instinctively there was . . . a kind of sorrow about him. With her bargain basement psychology hat on she decided anyone dressing like that, so blatantly scorning conformity, secretly hoped that one day they’d find somewhere they’d fit in.

As with the Ninth Doctor and his ears, the Sixth Doctor has something of a delightful hang up about his weight. At a dinner party with Hitler he shovels food onto his plate, and like me he loves his biscuits. I once said I couldn’t imagine anyone waking Ancelyn and Winifred Bambera with as much childish glee as the Seventh Doctor does by popping a paper bag in their faces, but I think this guy tops it: The Doctor picked up the empty cocoa-pan and a wooden spoon and marched upstairs [to wake Claire up]. And despite his reputation as a violence-monger, the Doctor is all seriousness: People were going to die. The Doctor closed his eyes. Hundreds of thousands of people died during this war. He could hardly go back and save them all.
Oh, the English obsession with the Nazis. No matter—it makes for a fascinating, Indiana Jones-like romp through Hitler’s last days, doubles, poisonings, Eva Braun’s unborn child, cults (why the guys in robes have to “Orientals” is beyond me), aliens, cover ups, and conspiracy theories. For being thought up in two days, the plot is pretty damn good—I was honestly excited to find out what happened next. Also, before the purpose of the “imps” is known, I found them really scary—so much so I could barely bear to turn off the lights the night I started reading the book. I kept picturing the incubus from Fuseli’s Night Mare. I feel things unravelled a bit toward the end, but the first 50 pages were excellent in creating suspense.

The incidental characters were basically functional, though I think that did not excuse Claire’s completely unnecessary death—even Robert Holmes would have disapproved. I’m not much of a WWII enthusiast myself, but the details seemed convincingly in period to me. Justin Richards—for whom this period seems to be a favourite—teams quite well with Stephen Cole here. I wonder how the actual writing process was conducted.