But (and you just knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you?), "Scales" is not without its flaws. Getting past the frankly juvenile introduction (and, I'm sorry Gary, but bad research is not a hallmark of the TV series to be propagated... the show was occasionally sexist and racist in the Sixties too, but I wouldn't encourage portraying that in the novels either), the novel simply juggles too many balls, with the end result that none of them get the attention they deserve, and the whole thing feeling rushed and incomplete.

As far as the plot goes, "Scales" is sturdy if not particularly original. There are two primary strands. First, another Silurian shelter has reawakened beneath the Channel Islands. This one, however, is made up partly of hybrids, sterile results of Silurian/Sea Devil mating. While Auggi, the shelter leader, tries to incite her people to war against the Apes, scientist Baal performs horrible experiments on a human child to try and cure the hybrids' plight. Meanwhile, Liz Shaw finds herself becoming involved in the tangled web of intrigue amongst the various factions of C19.

"Scales" builds well from "Who Killed Kennedy", which introduced the organisations (particularly the Glasshouse) who prove important in Liz's investigations. Gary maintains the underlying menace pervasive in that book, without letting it descend too much into B-movie style conspiracy nonsense (although the number of "double agents" we encounter is perhaps a little hard to accept).In the process, he is able to employ each of the main characters -- Liz, the Brigadier, Mike Yates, Benton and many other UNIT characters we saw in the early stories -- to their full potential. Indeed, only the Doctor really seems to get short shrift; he has precious little to do until the last quarter of the book, which is a tad unusual for a Pertwee story.

Liz, of course, is the focus here, this being -- at long last -- her departure story. Gary is probably at his best in handling her character. Liz never got much time for development on TV, but here he takes the elements of the character previously in evidence, adds to and enhances them, and essentially develops Liz into a complete character by the end of the book. Her leaving then is perfectly natural, and it is hard not to gain a greater appreciation for the character over the course of "Scales".

The Brigadier, too, receives considerable attention, although there's a somewhat more routine feel to his experiences, as he sees his marriage to Fiona disintegrate. Certainly, the handling of Lethbridge-Stewart here doesn't match Marc Platt's treatment of him in "Downtime", but it's not too shabby, either. Indeed, I think the Brigadier's plight suffers most from underexposure due to the many subplots in the novel, coming down to just a few brief scenes and streams of consciousness. I don't think Gary quite accomplishes what he wanted to here; everything is simply too mundane, without any sense of drama or emotion, as though the characters were just essentially going through the motions.

The other characters receive less exposure, but aren't forgotten about. In particular, Yates gets the opportunity to show why he's captain material, and Benton has a moment to shine during the book's climactic battle with the Silurians. As for the Doctor, Russell's handling of him is good if unremarkable. This is indeed the Third Doctor as seen in Season 7, but nothing more.

Where "Scales" is less than successful, as I alluded to earlier, is the fact there is so much going on that nothing gets its proper amount of time in the spotlight. There's Auggi going to war against the humans; Baal's attempts to cure the hybrids; Liz's investigations; the discrediting of Glasshouse frontman Sir Harrington-Smythe; UNIT's investigations; the Brigadier's marital troubles; and various other minor internal conflicts amongst the characters. This leads to many of the subplots feeling very rushed; for instance, the hybrid Silurians seem to come over to the Doctor's side far too quickly and, as I said, the Brigadier's marital troubles are handled in a very laissez-faire manner. Deaths which are supposed to be poignant just happen, and revelations which I expect were supposed to be big surprises (like the pale young man's true nature) are easily spotted ages before they actually happen. Part of the problem may be Gary's decision to organize the novel into seven "episodes" (like he did for "Invasion of the Cat People"); it's not entirely successful, and I think it made the book harder to balance properly. But it's unfortunate, because while (for instance) Gary is able to shed new light on Silurian civilisation, there's a feeling that much more could and should have been done but had to be passed over.

All this left me with an unfortunately muted response to "Scales". I wanted to like it more than I did, but with nothing truly spectacular to latch onto, I came away feeling a little disappointed. There is a lot in "Scales" to almost recommend it -- certainly, Gary has planted the seeds of many excellent concepts -- but pretty much everything fails to live up to its potential. "Scales" is not a bad book; in fact, it's really pretty good and certainly rises above Gary's previous output. But it should have been so very much better.

6/10.

Back to Reviews From The Land Of Fiction