Frayed
OCTOBER 2003
Have you seen Rock & Chips?
I approached the feature-length Only Fools and Horses prequel
tentatively, desperately trying to suppress the colossal expectations that
such an audacious enterprise inevitably provoked in me. How could they ever hope
to breathe life into Del and Rodney’s almost-legendary mother, let alone
charge a young actor with the unenviable task of stepping into David Jason’s shoes? Fortunately, John
Sullivan managed to hit the nail right on the head with his humorous, edgy
script, and as prequels go, Rock & Chips was something of an
unlikely
triumph.
And then I read Frayed – the earliest Doctor Who prequel,
save for a select smattering of short stories and flashbacks. Unlike
Rock & Chips, the pseudonymous Tara Samms’ tale chose not to explore
and extend its parent series’ mythology, instead providing us with a
superficially traditional (but occasionally very indulgent) base under siege
story. And unlike
Rock & Chips, I found it to be something of a
disappointment.
In
fairness, of course, no-one could ever write a bona fide prequel to
Doctor Who; not unless they were prepared to run the gauntlet and risk laying waste to the intrigue surrounding the Doctor’s origins, that
is. Kim Newman pushed the envelope as far as it was safe to do so
with his stunning piece Time and Relative, but to go one step
further and present us with an essentially traditional story but starring
a thoroughly unheroic Doctor seemed a little wanton, and inevitably leads to
a measured softening of the character ‘early’, at odds with how he is
portrayed in Time and Relative and indeed in An Unearthly Child.
Tamms’ initial portrayal of the “old man” in Frayed is frank and
suitably detached – all he wants to do is find his granddaughter and escape –
but as the story progresses he softens to the point where, by its end, he
is waxing lyrical about humanity’s positive traits and even planning a
trip to Earth to carry out “further study”. Worse still, this novella sees
the “old man” first adopt the title of “Doctor”, and his granddaughter the
name “Susan”, again flying in the face of what had
been established previously and, perhaps even more importantly, clashing with the
book’s otherwise overwhelmingly murky theme.
Had Samms wanted to write an ‘alternative’ prequel to the series,
then in
my view he should have gone the whole hog made it much
more alternative, à
la The Infinity Doctors. However, he may have
been better advised
not to make this story a prequel at all as what
really sets Frayed apart
from most Doctor Who stories is not its prequel status but its
tone. Prolific spin-off scribe Stephen Cole’s adoption of his Tara Samms
pseudonym for this piece suggested that it was going to be outside the
box, but it is actually probably
more accurate to describe it as being both
inside and outside the
box simultaneously. The novella is divided up into
chapters and counter-chapters, numbered, for example, ‘Seven’ and ‘VII’
respectively. The traditionally-numbered chapters deal with the story’s
action and drive the plot forwards, whilst those headed by roman
numerals
usually take the form of reflective - and often exceptionally horrific - interludes. Whilst Frayed might leave a lot to be
desired, images of maggot-ridden babies and lips falling away from characters’ faces only to lay
like red slugs on the
ground really linger.
Taking everything into account then, Frayed certainly has its
merits, but they are eclipsed
by the crushing disillusionment caused by
this title failing so spectacularly to live up to its prequel billing. Had Samms poured some of these deliciously grotesque ideas into a
‘later’
novel, then I suspect that this review would read very differently indeed.
As it is, I would much rather see Time and Relative sat at the
beginning of the canon, but I suppose them’s the breaks.
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