Who Reviews System Wipe by DJ Forrest

Written by Oli Smith

For BBC Books

Published 2011

A number of years ago, when Lara Croft was a video game, and was sponsored by Lucozade Sport, or some such energy drink, there was an advert, which featured a gamer pausing the game while he nipped to the toilet. In that short space of time, the characters on the screen relaxed their pose, ripped open their energy drinks and despite being enemies in the game, appeared to get along like actors taking a break between scenes. When the guy returned, they returned to their frozen battle positions and awaited the Play button.

I’m wondering if Oli Smith, writer of System Wipe saw the advert too because the story puts you in game mode as soon as the Doctor hits the Play button. But if I’m thinking correctly, Oli Smith is a gamer in real life.

In 2222 AD, it’s the End of the World, again, and the Doctor, Rory and Amy, are once again trying to stay alive – with the added misfortune of the Doctor discovering a game station still plugged in and user logged in, and joins the virtual world of Parallife, while Amy and Rory, make friends with a very large, and quite docile, robot called Daryl.

To anyone who grew up in the 80s, having an artificial life form with the name Daryl, instantly takes you back to the schmaltzy sci fi story that had many of us sobbing before the end of the film. The music was a bit cringy if you were to listen to it now, but back then, it was a great kids movie.

Back to Parallife and the Doctor discovers that not only does he have to choose a body for himself, but to achieve anything within the game, requires him to ‘kill’ a few animals along the way – power ups. Of course, not being one to kill anything if he can, it takes him a while to find his feet in the game. He teems up with a young woman called Blondie who you discover in the first opening chapter is running away from the darkness.

As you can imagine System Wipe is a computer term, and does just what it says on the tin, but the Doctor, being the Doctor, isn’t about to leap out of the game and run with Amy and Rory as a sand storm heads in their direction, along with demolition robots, ready to flatten the city that they’re currently hiding in. Oh no, the Doctor wants to save everyone in the game – even though, none of the users are plugged in, because, this is the End of the World, and nobody is there any more.

System Wipe is a quick read book and it took me a day – would have taken me less if I wasn’t working in between, however, it’s an interesting book with lots of surprising chapters and possibly one of Oli’s best novels from the Eleventh Doctor series I’ve read thus far – even though I’ve probably said that before.

If you’re a gamer, then you’ll appreciate this story, and wonder why other people haven’t latched onto this kind of idea before – or maybe they have and I just haven’t found them yet. It makes me want to dig out an old game console and play Syphon Filter again.