A review by brnineworms
Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

2.5

So concludes the Timewyrm arc.

I don’t actually have much to say because so much of Timewyrm: Revelation is inconsequential, seemingly designed to be clever or interesting then discarded as soon as the point has been made, rendering it pointless.

Saul is an interesting idea: a disembodied consciousness appropriated by the Christians who couldn’t exorcise him. Cool. But once that backstory is explained, Saul’s kind of just there. He isn’t given much to do, and he isn’t given much characterisation. Cornell simply presents the reader with a sentient church then moves on to the next thing.

Like Apocalypse, Revelation is a big pile of ideas. Yes, the ideas here are more innovative, but in a way that makes the lack of development even more frustrating. Apocalypse’s tropes were well-worn and familiar. Contrast that with Revelation, whose concepts require more explaining, and are intriguing enough to make me wonder what happens next. But there’s nothing. It’s just stuff, bouncing between half a dozen POVs like a DVD logo.

How does this arc end? Specifically, what is the Timewyrm’s fate at the end of this story? Well,

after two hundred pages of surreal mindscape nonsense, the Doctor is able to implant the Timewyrm into a human baby, which he names Ishtar. Except it isn’t really the Timewyrm any more since he removed all memory and personality and left only “bare life.” Okay. I get that this rebirth, as it were, is symbolically the opposite of the death she fled from and the destruction she wrought. Is this supposed to be a second chance for Ishtar, parallel to Boyle’s chance at a normal life? That worked well in the Ninth Doctor episode “Boom Town,” where Blon/Margaret was shown to be capable of kindness and mercy, but couldn’t undo the harm she’d done or let go of her killer instincts – the Doctor gave her a fresh start and a chance to “live her life from scratch.” But in the Timewyrm’s case the return to infancy seems to be purely symbolic, not representing any real opportunity for redemption. If her entire self has been erased, is she not functionally dead? Why not just kill her off? That would follow on from Apocalypse’s message that death is inevitable and ought to be accepted.

At least the Timewyrm actually does something in this novel,

even if she mostly acts through Boyle. Though that blue dragon form with steel claws just makes me think of Dragoon from Beyblade lmao

I do want to shout out the queerness baked into Ace’s characterisation in this book. It resonated with me quite a bit. Her caginess when asked about crushes, the awkwardness of her stereotypically feminine persona as a teen, the emphasis on her chosen name representing her true self and the way she’d become “used to fighting for her name.” I liked these quotes: “She could suffer pain and rejection and guilt as Ace, or she could slip away into the crowd of words and become nothing, floating loved in nowhere.” and “There were words you couldn’t say. There were films you couldn’t see, there were people you couldn’t know, there were ideas you couldn’t think. Not if you wanted to fit in, not if you wanted to be part of the world.”

I really wanted to like this book because there are some great elements. Until now, the Timewyrm books have more or matched their reputations; Genesys was bad, Exodus was fairly good, and Apocalypse was forgettable. Timewyrm: Revelation is well liked in the fandom, but I don’t think it lives up to the hype at all.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

dereality/surreality, existentialism, death, murder, violence, lots of blood, some body horror, child abuse, racism