2016 saw the launch of Choose the Future, a new series of Doctor Who gamebooks. Well, if you can call two books a series. If nothing else, it's as many as FASA managed 30 years previously. And the series differs from Decide Your Destiny, the DW gamebook series brought out in 2007 (and restarting its numbering in 2010 to tie in with the start of the Matt Smith era) in at least one significant regard (two if you count putting the author's name on the spine as well as the cover). These books do not restrict themselves to happy endings. So, today being the 55th anniversary of the broadcast of the first ever episode, I'm putting off the next FF playthrough for a week and covering the first CYF book, Jonathan Green's Night of the Kraken.
Choose the Future is also one of those rare gamebook series that use a third person narrative, so I'm not playing a part in the story, just influencing the course of events. The Doctor (the Peter Capaldi incarnation, at this juncture travelling solo) arrives in 18th century Cornwall, and judging by the question he directs at the TARDIS, he was expecting to arrive somewhere else. It's night, so there's potentially something ominous about the unlit state of the nearby lighthouse. A more immediate concern is the horseman who's riding straight at the Doctor, and while there's no obvious reason for the rider to want to suspend the Doctor from the unoccupied gallows nearby, it does add a rather grim tone to the atmosphere.
The Doctor stands his ground and calls out to the horseman, who turns out not to have noticed him in the darkness. Reining in his horse a short distance away, the rider seems reluctant to let the Doctor see him properly, menacing him with a flintlock and demanding to know who the Doctor is and how come there's suddenly an unfamiliar structure here. The Doctor is not intimidated, and attempts to find out more about the horseman, who lets slip that he has at least an inkling of the TARDIS' capabilities.
Assuming the Doctor to know a good deal more about what is afoot than he does, the man 'advises' him to leave and not come back. The Doctor is underwhelmed by the threat, and is making clear just how impressed he isn't when he becomes aware that there's something moving behind him. It's a decomposing corpse, with enough soil on it to suggest that it was buried until quite recently. The animated cadaver seizes the Doctor, who makes a snarky quip about the rider's friend-making skills. A blow to the head temporarily silences him.
Coming round in what appears to be a cellar, the Doctor notes that he's not badly hurt or tied up, and that a man with a cape and a ponytail is close by, facing the other way, so he doesn't yet know that the Doctor is conscious. Employing the 'special technique' endorsed by his second persona ("Keeping my eyes open and my mouth shut"), the Doctor watches the man, and is interested to see that he is tinkering with a few bits of alien technology. In a nicely geeky burst of continuity references, all the items have been manufactured by species seen to have visited Earth before this point in time (the 11th, 17th and 16th centuries respectively), so there is a slim possibility that the man is neither an alien nor a time traveller, but just a collector of curios. Now might be a good time for some questions.
The weapon the man points at the Doctor comes from outside DW continuity, and Google suggests that it could be an in-joke based on one of several properties. Paying little heed to the blaster, the Doctor works out that the man is attempting to construct a sonic beacon from the devices, and decides that finding out the man's aims is more important than getting a name or establishing where he acquired the xenotech.
Deciding that the Doctor's not-of-this-era knowledge may be of help, the man reveals himself to have come from the 52nd century. He's pursued a vortex-sensitive creature known as a Kraa'Kn here, hoping to capture its spawn and sell them to warmongers in his own time zone as shock troops. However, he underestimated the number of Kraa'Kn, and needs the beacon to lure them away from the nearby village.
Being one of the ruder incarnations, the Doctor insults the man (who gives his name as Ravenwood, but still gets saddled with the epithet 'Idiot') for endangering the locals in the pursuit of profit. Still, working with him to try and resolve the situation is probably wiser than leaving him to his own devices: operating independently, the two of them are more likely to inadvertently get in each other's way. The Doctor makes it clear that his assistance is for the sake of the innocent bystanders and for the Kraa'Kn, which didn't ask to be hunted down so that their progeny could be weaponised, and then constructs the beacon.
Ravenwood explains that he intended to lure the Kraa'Kn spawn to the lighthouse. There's a bit of a tonal mismatch with the section from which I've just come, as the Doctor is more critical of the Kraa'Kn here. Still, I've seen far worse in one of the Decide Your Destiny books: once your character has made the shocking discovery that there are giant alien crabs around, it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise to subsequently be told that huge crablike beings from another planet are in the vicinity, and the later revelation that big non-terrestrial crustaceans are present ought not to be so startling either.
As we head to the lighthouse (and the Doctor neglects to name-drop bowling partner Virginia Woolf), Ravenwood reveals that he's got some more alien tech with which he intends to turn the lighthouse into a weapon with which to destroy the Kraa'Kn (and any local marine life that doesn't get eaten by the spawn will become collateral calamari). Though the Doctor has weaponised a lighthouse himself before now, on this occasion he thinks there should be another way, and Ravenwood at least pretends to go along with this.
Hurriedly cobbling together another device, the Doctor comes up with an alternate plan that has just one flaw: it'd work best with three people. Ravenwood will activate the lash-up in the lighthouse, the Doctor has technical jiggery-pokery to do in the TARDIS, and someone needs to stash the beacon in the convenient wrecked ship on the beach. Somebody will have to double up, and while Ravenwood volunteers, I don't think he's trustworthy enough.
I was right about the untrustworthiness, but having the Doctor place the beacon didn't help. It attracts a number of tentacle-headed humanoids to the wreck, but as the Doctor is heading back to the TARDIS, Ravenwood opens fire on the wreck, incinerating it and its occupants. He shows no remorse when confronted about his actions afterwards, but mockingly suggests that he and the Doctor go into business as exterminators. Advising Ravenwood to make sure their paths never cross again, the Doctor returns to his TARDIS and leaves.
A downbeat ending, but not the worst fate the book has to offer: while I haven't had a proper look at all the endings, I did see one involving death by zombie horde. Thinking about it, I never encountered an explanation for that walking dead man on this attempt. There may be one on another route, though, so I shan't call it a plot hole yet.
I'm not sure whether to mark this as a success or not on the index. The Doctor survived, and the alien menace was removed, but is there better ending in which the villagers and the Kraa'Kn are saved? Or Ravenwood gets some kind of comeuppance, or becomes a better person? This time around I only got through about 10% of the book, so I shall have to replay it a few times (probably not on the blog) before I can judge it fairly.
Additional: I wrote this post in advance, and in the time that's passed since then, I've managed to fit in several more goes at the book. There is an explanation for the zombies, and while my second attempt ended the same way as the first, that just made it all the more satisfying when the Doctor was able to save the Kraa'Kn and thwart Ravenwood's attempt to capture them on my third try. Mind you, that ending could also have been improved on: the Doctor has stern words with Ravenwood about removing the alien tech he's left in the area, but Ravenwood just vanishes off to somewhere and somewhen else (on a preposterous but stylish cyborg horse with inbuilt Vortex manipulator), so the Doctor... stomps into the TARDIS and departs, leaving behind all the otherworldly gizmos he'd just been saying needed to be removed.
Now I'm being critical again, I'll also note that the more I play the book, the more I notice the little lapses in internal continuity, most often with the Doctor showing knowledge of things he's not learned (but would have found out if a different decision had been made previously). This kind of gamebook - narrative-based, with different threads branching off and reconverging - seems particularly prone to such errors. I appreciate that the bookkeeping necessary for keeping track of what's known on which paths can be tricky, and the sort of overcompensation that leads to repeatedly making the same discovery is no less annoying, but it still mars the book.
And then I remember the Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who book perpetrated by Michael Holt back in 1986, and concede that things could be far, far, far worse.
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