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Asylum Author: Peter Darvill-Evans Review Asylum reunites a Doctor and companion that spent very little time together on screen, the fourth Doctor as played by Tom Baker and Nyssa as played by Sarah Sutton. The story doesn't fit in after the Doctor meets her in The Keeper of Traken though, but instead sees the Doctor travelling on his own and meeting Nyssa much later in life. This means that the Doctor has not yet met Nyssa, and she is more familiar with the Doctors persona as played by Peter Davison, but she was introduced to the series during Tom Bakers reign. Asylum sees the Doctor, who is travelling alone, visits Nyssa who has become a technographer researching the work of Roger Bacon but suddenly her work changes to that of a later scientist, hence the Doctors visit. They join up to travel to Oxford to investigate the time anomaly with Nyssa, who has seen too many horrors since leaving the Doctors company, trying to find peace and solitude. Bacon has joined the Franciscan order of monks but carried on working on a recepie for the Elixir of Life, something not allowed in the holy order. This is exposed, along with murders and intrigue in Oxford and the plot is eventually foiled when the perpetrator is stopped by Nyssa with a blade to the head. In essence, the premise that someone has managed to change the history of scientific advancement on Earth through the manipulation of Roger Bacon is fairly strong. Some of the execution lets it down though in my opinion. The writing is good enough, with dialogue and characterisation well executed, and with the research obviously having been carried out in detail as evidenced by the source section at the end of the book meaning it really does paint a vivid picture of the scene. All this makes the book fairly easy to read, especially given the level of detail the research went to for Oxford itself at this time. The major problem for me though is that its never really explained who and why the voices in the main perpetrators head belong to and what they really want. This really leaves the reader with more questions than answers in my opinion and does not bring about a satisfactory conclusion to the book. Really, it seems to me that there is a chapter missing at the end where the Doctor goes off to deal with the aliens trying to manipulate time in this way, but sadly this is not the case. My other major gripe about this story is the largely redundant nature of Nyssas inclusion in the main story. She goes with the Doctor to medeval England and tries to escape from all confrontation and pain in the castle. Emersing herself in the gardens, and largely fending off the amorous advances of Richard of Hockley, she becomes largely redundant in the story. True, she eventually deals with the perpetrator but this could easily have been handled by someone else. Really, I see little point in the Doctor having carted Nyssa off in the TARDIS in the first place if she were going to just deliberately stay out of the way brooding. Yes, the quiet contemplation provides a juxtaposition for the Doctor who is racing around dealing with murder, plots and intrigue, but when all Nyssa wants is peace and quiet, why would she go off with the Doctor knowing that she would never find this with him? I don't get it. Overall, Asylum is a decent, if fairly short read. It is easy to get into and keep reading as the narrative style of the author is good and uncomplicated. However, there are some plot points that leave a lot to be desired, and I was generally left feeling that I had more questions than answers about the story. If there had been another chapter where the events were taken on to the science fiction and fantasy element that Doctor Who is all about, I would probably be really acclaiming the book, but sadly I'm not. I do commend the appendix in the book though detailing the research done for the novel and how that integrates with the fictional components, most interesting! Rating:  |