Sometimes I don't want a grey sci‑fi tale with a blue box stapled on at the edges...
Dark Progeny by Steve Emmerson
Eighth Doctor Adventures number: 48
Originally published: August 2001
The planet Ceres Alpha is being "developed". The surface crawls with gigantic city-machines that are churning and rebuilding the world, seeding it with tomorrow's vegetation so that full-scale colonisation can follow.
But Gaskill Tyran, head of the biosphere-engineering WorldCorp, is finding things more difficult than he would like. The whole project seems to be falling apart under an ever-increasing burden of mysteries.
Why has a batch of strange babies been born with telekinetic powers? Why won't the terraforming go according to plan? Why are there more and more problems with the comp systems that run the city-machines?
It seems there may be conspirators. A rival Corporation with its eye on the contract for Ceres Alpha. And Tyran's patience is now wearing thin.
But then he gets his answer. A mysterious infiltrator known only as the Doctor.
Steve Emmerson didn't want to write a Doctor Who novel.
He wanted to write a dark science‑fiction story about a mother losing her child - a bleak, angry tale about grief, exploitation, and a corrupt regime that steals babies because they might be useful weapons. You can feel that book underneath everything - the one he clearly cared about.
But hey, the contract says "Doctor Who", so he'll find a way to wedge the Timelord in amongst all the fresh new characters he’s invented.
Steve Emmerson didn't want to write a Doctor Who novel with companions either.
Among all the planned points of view, there simply wasn’t room for them. But hey, he’s been saddled with Anji and Fitz, so he'll find a way - even if it means knocking them both unconscious for two‑thirds of the book so they’re conveniently out of the picture.
Now I doubt that's how things really went when Steve sat down to write "Dark Progeny", but it's certainly how I felt after having read it. Like I’d watched two different novels wrestling for control, and the Doctor’s one kept losing.
For example, by the halfway mark, Fitz and Anji were out cold, the Doctor had appeared in maybe half a dozen brief scenes, and the plot had only just begun to appear - something about odd children and a planet with secrets. Meanwhile, we’d spent pages and pages (and pages) with colonist Veta, conflicted cop Foley, archaeologist Bains, all‑out villain Tyran (and his beloved mind probe), plus a whole supporting cast of conspirators, bureaucrats, and people making interminable video calls to each other.
Then there's the problem that what they’re covering up isn’t especially interesting - nor is it anything that hasn’t been done before, and better, in a hundred other SF novels. It’s all so generic. A villainous corporation conducting nasty experiments, a living planet fighting back against human exploitation, and grey, bulbous‑headed children straight out of every 1970s UFO sighting. The cliche-ometer was going into overdrive.
The other big issue is that the book tries to do character development, but none of it really *develops* into anything. Veta’s swings between overwhelming grief and resolute anger are believable, and she’s easily the strongest element of the book. But Bains, who starts off promisingly, simply fades into the background. Foley is conflicted, but not in a way that ever pays off. Even Tyran, for all his moustache‑twirling cruelty, never becomes more than a stock villain with a fondness for torture equipment.
As for the Doctor, well he only gets a couple of standout moments - one where he rages against a society that labels babies “evil” simply for being different, and another where he weeps over the apparent death of a child, only to realise (with genuine joy) that their connection to the planet can bring them back. Those scenes work. They feel like the Doctor. They feel like the book briefly remembered who its lead character was meant to be.
And yes, it *is* sweet that he names the children after cats from T.S. Eliot, and that they in turn name him “Old Deuteronomy.” It’s one of the few touches of whimsy in a story that otherwise feels relentlessly grey.
Which makes the abrupt appearance of giant rats in the ducting all the more baffling - seemingly there only because “it’s a Doctor Who book, so we need something scary.” As if torturing the Doctor, killing multiple characters, and severely injuring the companions weren’t enough!
Then there’s the utterly left‑field revelation, two pages from the end, that Gaskill Tyran is secretly related to another character. It serves no purpose whatsoever. It’s the kind of twist that feels added because someone, somewhere, thought the book needed one more shock.
I remember thinking Emmerson’s previous novel, "Casualties of War" was pretty good - thoughtful, psychological, and willing to examine the horrors of war it depicted. So it’s a shame that this one doesn’t live up to that promise.
It’s not a bad book. It’s just a rather dull and predictable one. A story that keeps reaching for depth but never quite finds it, and keeps reaching for "Doctor Who", but never quite commits to that either...
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