The Clean Air Act

"The air has vanished from your little patch of England."

Writer: Matthew Sweet
Format: Short Story
Released: October 2009
Printed in: The Target Storybook 04

Featuring: Third Doctor, Jo

Synopsis

Returning from a scientific conference at Tarminster University, the Doctor and Jo discover a number of people lying in the gardens of a housing estate in Oak Green. All have been inexplicably choked to death, except for a young girl named Sally Hesketh, who sits among them unharmed.

Verdict

The Clean Air Act was not a great story to continue along my reading of The Target Storybook. For all of the things that could have bene done to accompany the Third Doctor era and a specific story, I felt that this was not the best usage and a great deal more could have been done which was a big shame. I had a bad feeling right from the off when it seemed that the adventure was going to be told in the first person when we had the first extracts from Last Chance for Man. I was thankful that it wasn't going to follow that format as I really am not a fan of that in a Doctor Who story, especially if the narrator is neither the Doctor or a companion. When I realised what was happening I was glad, but then the extracts kept coming throughout the story and they just seemed to be getting in the way a little bit. That's slightly unfair of the last extract where it was penned by the Doctor as a message to Sir Charles Grover where he declined writing the foreword of his book. I thought it worked well having that in a different text format as it made it distinct and to its credit, seemed like it could be written by the Doctor. I didn't think the era of the Third Doctor was captured all that well and I definitely think it was a case of trying to fit in too much in a short amount of space. We had Yates, the Brigadier, Tarminster and even a suggestion of the Master all competing for time and part of the story which was just a bit too much. Despite that, the initial reaction when Anoushka revealed that her surname was Mastersson was undoubtedly the highlight of the story. I loved that and I actually think it would have been terrific if the Master actually was using her as a disguise. Even for him that would have been quite extraordinary. I was certainly not a fan of Mr and Mrs Hesketh and I think the author was trying to be a bit funky with the way he wrote them, but for me it just made me dislike them more and more as the story went. I didn't really care about their wine. The idea at the heart of the adventure actually had a lot of potential with the global warming issue and the concept of replenishing the Earth's atmosphere. I really didn't understand why that wasn't focused more. The vacuum was really good and something that's a big threat and the death that resulted from it was what set things in motion, but it never really seemed to get going as a whole which really did make it somewhat of a slog to read. I might be being a little harsh, but it was just a bit boring in parts. There just wasn't a great deal going on despite all the cluster and there really was just a whole lot of nothingness. Jo didn't offer much at all as companion which was a shame for her companion, but it did foreshadow the events of The Green Death and her getting accustomed with saving the planet. Again though, that would have been perfect as the central idea of the plot but that didn't seem the case at all. The loose connection with Invasion of the Dinosaurs was also good with the book extracts, but I felt they interfered too much and again should have been the focus. I think it's fair to say that I felt that there was just a bit too much going on for an adventure of just 28 pages. It seemed that everything was revolved around Sally, but then it just wasn't? Odd. It also would have been better to learn who the Heskeths had bargained with to replace the Earth's atmosphere as new. There would only be a brief pause while the old air was replaced. I liked that and could definitely work in a longer story where it was the key focus. I also didn't enjoy how rushed and slightly farfetched it was for the Doctor to go tter and get the answers regarding the perpetrators intending to steal Earth's atmosphere. It was all too quick and easy, even for the Doctor. And then he got to see the whole life events of Hesketh in something that needed much more clarity. The weed-like creature lacked explanation which was very off-putting. Overall, not the greatest of short stories sadly.

Rating: 4/10