Written
by Mark Michalowski
For
BBC Books
Published in 2010
Shining Darkness is very
much a ‘cat and mouse’ story. It’s the Doctor with Donna, who for the most part
is without Donna. A piece of art is suddenly transmatted away with Donna, and
the Doctor for the most part of the story, is trying his hardest to catch up
with her, then when he catches up with her, he trades places with her, and so
Donna spends the other half of the time chasing after him.
The story is about two
teams of creatures, one hell bent on stopping the other, finding pieces of
another mechanical, that could unleash all kinds of madness and mayhem, and
it’s an ingenious idea and I’m still reading the novel to discover how the
Doctor is going to fix the problem, now that both he and Donna are without the
Tardis, and that Donna has the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor is
travelling with three mad men hell bent on destruction of all robots. And here
is where the problem lies, which I’m sure the Doctor has already thought about.
It’s very difficult to
work without the use of mechanicals. Robots. Droids, etc. As Donna discovered,
that it’s also difficult to explain to another creature, that she feels more
for the robot with the human face, that was attacked in the tunnels of a
planet, than she feels about Mesanth, the lizard with multiple limbs who kicked
at a mechanical door. Although she
vehemently refuses to believe she can be a racist, it’s difficult for her come
up with a reason why. Can you be racist over different types of mechanicals?
The Doctor as usual
worries for the safety of his companion, who rarely travels with him when
they’re out of the Tardis. That’s what makes the story all the more
interesting. That’s how we find out so much more about the characters of the
story. If they travelled together, how much enjoyment would we get from the
pair? Would they be bickering towards the end of the story? Would the Doctor
wish Donna had been transmatted to
another ship, to give his head some breathing space?
Donna is not my favourite
travelling companion, I’d much rather have Martha Jones travelling with the 10th,
but what I’ve come to realise, is that, when a character doesn’t really ‘do it
for me’ in a television episode, the books certainly help bring the companion
into their own, and I’m sure, just like Ianto Jones came into his own in The
Undertaker’s Gift, that I’ll feel a little more sympathy towards Donna Noble,
when I once again delve into the series with her and the 10th.
There are some interesting
quotes within the novel, some which are relevant to the world today, with the
varying differences of cultures and genders, and most coming from the Doctor to
another. When you look at it like that, it takes it away from being just a
children’s novel, to being a message for the whole of mankind.
When Donna asks the Doctor
about the Cult of the Shining Darkness, wondering if that’s the end of them, he
replies, “It’s a state of mind, more than
an organisation. There’ll be millions more like them out there. Thinking the
same, mean-spirited, tiny-minded thoughts. Scared of anything that’s different,
that they don’t understand. And they’ll always be there, ready to blame someone
else for the state of the universe.”
