Doctor Who - The Glamour Chase
Aug. 12th, 2010 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcShame. I enjoyed the book while I was reading it, but I hadn't even closed it when the Fridge Logic kicked in. (In fact, I started flicking back through the last couple of chapters, in case there was a huge wodge of explanations I missed somewhere. If there was, I missed it again.)
1) First off, the Tahn's plan. They want to access the Weave's spaceship, which is buried under a tor in the village of Shalford Heights. But they don't know that; they only know the general area. So obviously, the plan is to invade a nearby village, traumatise a young man into acting as a psychic homing signal, and then leave. Meanwhile, their mole on the Weave ship disgiuses himself as the Shalford Heights landowner, Nathaniel Porter, psychically encourages everyone in the village to leave, disposes of his wife and mind-controls[1] an archeologist into marrying him, then encourages her to dig up the tor - timing this exactly for when the Tahn invasion force returns.
Now, it's an extraordinary stroke of luck that their beacon just happened to be a friend of the first Mrs Porter, and got taken to the right place (the Doctor blathers that "eventually" someone would see the beacon and take it to the ship, but at this point he doesn't even know that Tahn!Porter is a Tahn ... and anyway, Olly got taken to Shalford Heights while Mrs Porter was still around, which means before Nathaniel Porter got replaced).
In fact, since the Weave seem powerless to stop him, why doesn't Tahn!Porter just dig up the tor himself - he'd do it a lot faster than someone who's carefully excavating what she thinks is a Bronze Age burial mound.
2) But the Weave themselves seem equally incapable of any direct action that might help their cause. They carefully sedate and replace a member of the dig, a farmhand, the local librarian and Amy ... and then proceed to do absolutely nothing to stop the dig, to the point where the Doctor thinks they're manipulating events to ensure Enola digs their ship up. It apparently doesn't occur to them to sedate and replace Enola herself, or indeed even express any anti-dig sentiments until right at the end. Instead they try to send cryptic messages to the Doctor and Rory by alluding to the "real history" of the village and the first Mrs Porter's disappearance, and drawing surrealist pictures.
Also, if the Weave copies access their originals' minds while they're sedated, why is Weave!Amy so rubbish? Yes, Amy deliberately told the Weave that the Doctor was from Mars, but a quick rummage through her memories should have revealed that she was fibbing, surely?
3)The Glamour is a "Whatever The Plot Demands" device on a massive scale. It's a reality warping field, which could sort out the plot in a matter of seconds, except it can't be used by the Weave themselves at the moment because they're damaged, so when the ship gets broken open it seeks out ... a damaged mind, Olly (this almost makes sense, Olly's got the strongest desire for reality to be different). After Olly's sorted out the plot in a matter of seconds, the next step is getting the Glamour away from him. This is done by terrifying a member of the dig, so that (I assume, again this isn't actually explained) they will wish even more strongly that reality is different, and attract the Weave back to the ship, where it decides that instead of granting the archologist's desires, it'll go back to the ship it just left. For some reason. Oh, and remember how the Weave couldn't use it until they were fixed, and couldn't get fixed without using it? Well, that's a shame, because the book was sort of hoping you wouldn't.
And is there any particular reason it made Old John immortal?
4)In addition there's a lot of Clues, which are presented as such and then never resolved, not even by the Doctor dismissing them as red herrings.
a)The church. Or rather the lack of one. This is presented as a Really Odd Thing, and then never dealt with. Tahn!Porter says the Manse was named a hundred years ago as a joke, because there wasn't a church, and his first wife was buried elsewhere because there's no consecrated ground in the village. Old John says the church burnt down twenty years ago and never got rebuilt. Okay, Tahn!Porter is the bad guy and therefore most likely to be lying, but the Doctor doesn't even seem to notice the discrepency, never mind find out why he's lying.
b)The first Mrs Porter. Quite apart from her mysterious disappearance (which does get resolved) there's a lot else mysterious about her that doesn't. In the library, Rory notices that the bound copies of the local paper barely mention her, even in the announcement of Tahn!Porter's marriage to Enola. This never gets explained[2]. In addition, there's a sort of Rebecca thing going on where no-one ever mentions her first name - although unlike in Rebecca, this doesn't seem to signify anything much, even though Rory also flags this as weird and A Clue, especially when a portrait of her in Olly's fantasy world still just calls her "MRS PORTER".
c)The willow tree. We just keep getting told it's important, and we never get told how or why or anything. Rory thinks that's A Clue as well, but if so then, like Mrs Porter's name, it's not a clue to anything in this story.
So yeah. It's a clever concept and has some good moments, but the minute you think about things it ... unravels.
[1]At least, I assume he does. Given the rest of the plan, it's always possible he just vaguely hopes an archeologist will want to marry him, and one conveniently does. The only hint of mind-control is that Enola Porter's diary is very vague about the exact circumstances of the wedding.
[2]One possible explanation is that Tahn!Porter is trying to gloss over her existence ... except the newspaper collection goes back to before he took over, and if he was doing this, why does he keep a photo of her hanging in the hallway?
1) First off, the Tahn's plan. They want to access the Weave's spaceship, which is buried under a tor in the village of Shalford Heights. But they don't know that; they only know the general area. So obviously, the plan is to invade a nearby village, traumatise a young man into acting as a psychic homing signal, and then leave. Meanwhile, their mole on the Weave ship disgiuses himself as the Shalford Heights landowner, Nathaniel Porter, psychically encourages everyone in the village to leave, disposes of his wife and mind-controls[1] an archeologist into marrying him, then encourages her to dig up the tor - timing this exactly for when the Tahn invasion force returns.
Now, it's an extraordinary stroke of luck that their beacon just happened to be a friend of the first Mrs Porter, and got taken to the right place (the Doctor blathers that "eventually" someone would see the beacon and take it to the ship, but at this point he doesn't even know that Tahn!Porter is a Tahn ... and anyway, Olly got taken to Shalford Heights while Mrs Porter was still around, which means before Nathaniel Porter got replaced).
In fact, since the Weave seem powerless to stop him, why doesn't Tahn!Porter just dig up the tor himself - he'd do it a lot faster than someone who's carefully excavating what she thinks is a Bronze Age burial mound.
2) But the Weave themselves seem equally incapable of any direct action that might help their cause. They carefully sedate and replace a member of the dig, a farmhand, the local librarian and Amy ... and then proceed to do absolutely nothing to stop the dig, to the point where the Doctor thinks they're manipulating events to ensure Enola digs their ship up. It apparently doesn't occur to them to sedate and replace Enola herself, or indeed even express any anti-dig sentiments until right at the end. Instead they try to send cryptic messages to the Doctor and Rory by alluding to the "real history" of the village and the first Mrs Porter's disappearance, and drawing surrealist pictures.
Also, if the Weave copies access their originals' minds while they're sedated, why is Weave!Amy so rubbish? Yes, Amy deliberately told the Weave that the Doctor was from Mars, but a quick rummage through her memories should have revealed that she was fibbing, surely?
3)The Glamour is a "Whatever The Plot Demands" device on a massive scale. It's a reality warping field, which could sort out the plot in a matter of seconds, except it can't be used by the Weave themselves at the moment because they're damaged, so when the ship gets broken open it seeks out ... a damaged mind, Olly (this almost makes sense, Olly's got the strongest desire for reality to be different). After Olly's sorted out the plot in a matter of seconds, the next step is getting the Glamour away from him. This is done by terrifying a member of the dig, so that (I assume, again this isn't actually explained) they will wish even more strongly that reality is different, and attract the Weave back to the ship, where it decides that instead of granting the archologist's desires, it'll go back to the ship it just left. For some reason. Oh, and remember how the Weave couldn't use it until they were fixed, and couldn't get fixed without using it? Well, that's a shame, because the book was sort of hoping you wouldn't.
And is there any particular reason it made Old John immortal?
4)In addition there's a lot of Clues, which are presented as such and then never resolved, not even by the Doctor dismissing them as red herrings.
a)The church. Or rather the lack of one. This is presented as a Really Odd Thing, and then never dealt with. Tahn!Porter says the Manse was named a hundred years ago as a joke, because there wasn't a church, and his first wife was buried elsewhere because there's no consecrated ground in the village. Old John says the church burnt down twenty years ago and never got rebuilt. Okay, Tahn!Porter is the bad guy and therefore most likely to be lying, but the Doctor doesn't even seem to notice the discrepency, never mind find out why he's lying.
b)The first Mrs Porter. Quite apart from her mysterious disappearance (which does get resolved) there's a lot else mysterious about her that doesn't. In the library, Rory notices that the bound copies of the local paper barely mention her, even in the announcement of Tahn!Porter's marriage to Enola. This never gets explained[2]. In addition, there's a sort of Rebecca thing going on where no-one ever mentions her first name - although unlike in Rebecca, this doesn't seem to signify anything much, even though Rory also flags this as weird and A Clue, especially when a portrait of her in Olly's fantasy world still just calls her "MRS PORTER".
c)The willow tree. We just keep getting told it's important, and we never get told how or why or anything. Rory thinks that's A Clue as well, but if so then, like Mrs Porter's name, it's not a clue to anything in this story.
So yeah. It's a clever concept and has some good moments, but the minute you think about things it ... unravels.
[1]At least, I assume he does. Given the rest of the plan, it's always possible he just vaguely hopes an archeologist will want to marry him, and one conveniently does. The only hint of mind-control is that Enola Porter's diary is very vague about the exact circumstances of the wedding.
[2]One possible explanation is that Tahn!Porter is trying to gloss over her existence ... except the newspaper collection goes back to before he took over, and if he was doing this, why does he keep a photo of her hanging in the hallway?
