It is clear from the beginning of the book, that Craig Hinton loves Doctor Who and knows where it fails. Fortunately, he also knows how to fix it. The re-characterisation of Mel is superb. Turning her from being a frustratingly annoying character to one that is at least likeable and at best understandable is a difficult task, but Hinton relishes the opportunity. It is on page 9 that this transformation begins. Mel is in attendance at a University reunion, and she sees her “old” friends. Well, they are old for them, but for Mel, they are not a day older. This is once of the consequences of Time Travel. This, among other things, really helps to see Mel as more than a screaming red-head and more of a person, a human being.
Millennial Rites is an unusual narrative style in that the book is essentially focussed on two very different strands of storytelling. (Here I must stress the importance of reading this review after having first read the book in order for certain plot elements to remain unspoiled. This book is truly one of the greatest Doctor Who items written in any media, and I would hate to spoil some of the surprising twists. This is your one and only warning. Now read the book. You’ve read it? Good, then I can continue.) The first half of the book revolves around a plot about computers and Anne Traver’s fear of the Great Intelligence returning to Earth. It is a very earthbound aspect of the narrative. The remainder of the book is about a parallel universe where magic is real and the Doctor’s fear of transforming into the Valeyard. This approach to narrative storytelling has almost never been used before in this way. Inferno is the closest example, with it’s parallel world. Such a way of achieving this leads to a felling that the writer has chosen to use the best of both worlds that the Doctor finds himself in (ie; Earthbound and space travel). The reader, much like the writer, is thrilled to read such an interesting and fascinating novel. It wouldn’t be half so absorbing had the characters that Hinton uses are themselves so deeply interesting.
Two of the most predominant examples of this within the novel are the characters of Louise and Barry. They are two of the few characters used within the novel that are entirely from Hinton’s imagination. They are utterly fascinating characters, and over the novel, we grow to view them as part of our own family and, perhaps more importantly, real human beings. They cease to be aspects of Hinton’s mind and become characters that we can identify. This is an interesting point, on a sidestep, because in this novel our viewpoint is not the companion, but Louise and Barry. Mel is too difficult a companion to possibly become our viewpoint. Readers (and television viewers) fail to identify with a screamer who is a computer programmer from Pease Pottage. For any strange and wonderful series to work, viewers MUST have an audience viewpoint. While Mel is hard to identify with, Barry and Louise are perfect as the reader viewpoint. Barry and Lousie are workers who smoke and have grown closer to those which they work with. This is seen no more clearly than when Barry is inconsolable as he loses, not his job but the friends which he has made at this seemingly dead end job. Louise is also a normal person with normal problems. She loves her child despite her girl’s disorder, she can see past that. It leaves readers unprepared and ready to sympathise as Barry and Louise’s world is changed forever.
The Doctor is one of the books greatest achievements. His television incarnation was a failure (as stated earlier). He was a hothead, a Doctor that would lose his temper at the drop of a hat. He was a Doctor that, not only could audiences not relate to, he was a Doctor that wasn’t even likeable. While the Sixth Doctor has now been changed into one of the most likeable and cuddly of all Doctors, such a renaissance was yet to occur when Millennial Rites was written. Time Of Your Life is the closest readers had got to experiencing a softer Sixth Doctor. But Millennial Rites takes that one better. This Doctor is fun. He’s having a ball of a time, pushing away computer personnel and having Italian cuisine with Anne Travers. The Doctor that appears in the second-half of the book is very different indeed. London has been changed into a place where magic is real and tangible. Every character that audiences have met earlier have been changed into something completely different. Mel becomes Melaphyre the Technomancer, worshipping the Lady TARDIS. Ashley Chapel (bad guy) becomes the Archimage who worships Yog-Sogoth. Anne Travers becomes the Hierophant who worships the Great Intelligence. Barry (now Bartholomew) and Louise (Louella) become court Jester and Chancellor, respectively. And the Doctor… Well, he at first seems unaffected by the manipulation of the world. But as the novel goes on, events soon become clear, the Doctor was affected and he is transforming into the Valeyard!
Such a twist did not come as a major surprise to this reviewer due to the utterly superb cover. What surprised me more was the Valeyard comes very close to murdering a child. Your valiant reviewer was convinced that the Doctor/Valeyard was going to do the deed. Does he? Well, no. It doesn’t stop that scene from being the scariest in the whole novel.
There is one more aspect which I have yet to mention. That is the world-building that occurs here. Readers truly get a hold as to what this world is actually like and how it is run. This reader drew several detailed diagrams and maps as to how this worked. Every character gets about three names and they each have their own race and their own corner of the universe. We are notified of this quite early on due to the fact that the Doctor sees three different colours of building: gold (the Archimage), blue (the Technomancer) and grey (the Hierophant). This is probably the best example of world-building I am yet to read about.
