Doctor Who: The Lovecraft Invasion

The Doctor Who spinoff media has done H.P. Lovecraft before. Back in the early '90s, some of the tie-in novels used his Mythos quite extensively and there's the obvious pastiche Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge from Big Finish themselves. Here, however, they are taking aim directly, not just at Lovecraft's writings, but at the man himself. The result, I think it's fair to say, is somewhat mixed.

The premise is that the Doctor is in pursuit of a mind parasite that can infect a person and bring their darkest imaginings to life to wreak havoc. Which, when it picks on Lovecraft in 1937 Providence, has the potential to create a lot of havoc indeed. The resulting story is full of references to his work, with several of his creations and characters making an appearance. It's implied early on that Flip is going to be the one delivering the exposition - she supposedly has a better knowledge of the Mythos than the Doctor - but it doesn't turn out that way with the Doctor remembering far more detail of the stories than she does.

Against this, we also have the examination of Lovecraft's life. Some of this is good, linking things in, for example, to his parents' tragedy. However, the elephant in the room is Lovecraft's racism. It's not an issue that can be ignored, but the repeated hammering on the point is overdone to the point of being intrusive. Honestly, he gets a worse time of it than Krasko did in Rosa and he was a mass murderer. (Lovecraft does use a racial slur at one point and rightly gets called on it, but that's the extent of what we see him do or say, making the extreme criticism come across as over-the-top).

Sure, perhaps it's deserved, but, in this sort of story, I don't think we need quite so many speeches as it gives us. Indeed, if Valentine felt he had to paint him as quite so awful, he probably shouldn't have picked him as a semi-protagonist. If you're coming into this as a Lovecraft fan, you're probably not going to enjoy it - not least because his fans also come in for an implicit bashing when we're told you should never separate an artist from their work and his should therefore be unreadable.

Yes, some of this needed to be said, but not quite so heavy-handedly as it is. A pity; if they'd got the balance better on this one issue, this would have been a good story that I'm sure I would really have enjoyed.