Doctor Who_ Time and Relative - Kim Newman [44]
'They sound awful.'
'Not really. Just old ... set in their ways.'
'Not "with-it"?'
'Not at all.'
John looked at his wristwatch. 'I've got to go. I'm meeting Mum at the station.'
We said goodbye. John left.
Later –
Back in the Box, with Grandfather.
He's annoyed. On his trip to Pluto, he broke something serious. Grandfather hasn't tested it yet, but he believes the Box won't follow a course set for it.
'It will go where it wishes, at random, whimsically,' he said, grumpy.
I think the rule in Grandfather's head is broken. He won't follow any course set for him either.
'Typical,' I said.
'Nonsense, Susan. I'll have it fixed in no time.'
AFTERWORD
Elemental, My Dear Susan
Justin Richards
Despite being set before Who-proper even started, there is never any doubt that what you have just enjoyed is a Doctor Who story. There is something unique about them — something which makes Doctor Who a sub-genre in its own right. Something that, like the 'Cold' itself, almost defies analysis. Only in Doctor Who can walking snowmen be at once absurd and frightening. Only in Doctor Who is school detention as chilling as the advancing alien menace. Only in Doctor Who can your school friend's grandfather live in a police box inside a junk yard. The way the images and the imagination are layered is unique.
Time and Relative, like the series it prequels, works on many levels. It gives us something new, something informed with a modern perspective. But it is told from a viewpoint that captures and enhances the child-like, adolescent sense of awe with which many of us were introduced to the Doctor and his adventures. Like Susan, we know more than the other characters. But we are also caught up in the excitement, the tension, the fear and the wonder of it all. It's a Journey of discovery for us all.
Although the Doctor himself is scarcely featured, his presence is felt throughout. He is always there, always in control, always casting a shadow across the ice-white pages. In this sense, as in many others, Time and Relative is reminiscent of those early Who adventures.
Here too is the Doctor himself of those very first, uncertain times. He is
a background figure — an enigma even to Susan. His motives are dubious, his actions and affiliations unpredictable, lost in the swirling fog. But in this story we get the sense that for the first time he is assuming the mantle of Humanity's Champion — of the elemental force that he will become. That the fog is starting to clear a little and afford him glimpses of what he should be.
Within the context of the Universe, like Susan within the context of Coal Hill School, the Doctor is essentially a loner. He walks forever in eternity and he walks alone, lost in his own wanderlust and rocked between boundless enthusiasm and numbing ennui. Companions may come and go, but he is never close to any of them. He never talks of his inner turmoil in detail; he never unburdens himself emotionally; he never opens up whatsoever.
The only real feeling the Doctor demonstrates at all is his utter abhorrence of evil. Yet even this and his contention that life is sacred is secondary when the need arises and circumstances conspire to make it so — secondary to some higher calling which is never spelled out, a Greater Good that remains unarticulated and perhaps inarticulatable. A calling that in Kim's story he has yet to come to terms with.
At his most successful times, and here at the start of his adventures, the Doctor is a mystery. We know next to nothing of his feelings and motivations. We discover we know less than we thought about his origins and background. We find that even our trust is not immutable.
But over the years the Doctor's background and his soul have been laid bare. He has become metaphorically as well as narratively more human. And as he becomes better defined,