Tea with Morbius

Why I hate Pyramids of Mars

2012-02-04T03:26:00.001-08:00

Pyramids of Mars is hailed by many fans as one of the greatest stories of the series. I dissent totally from this conclusion and would argue that it is the most overrated Doctor Who story ever and illustrates some of the failings of the Hinchliffe era. There are of course many far worse Doctor Who stories, but this one is particularly obnoxious by virtue of the praise that is lavished upon it.

When I first watched Pyramids of Mars I was expecting to really love it. Nevertheless, I found myself not enjoying it at all. What really struck me was the bleak, depressing tone of the story. There is a real lack of warmth or humour in it and only the regulars and a few extras avoid being killed off. I didn't find a lot to enjoy in this serial.

Robert Holmes' great strength was in creating interplay between interesting characters. This is completely missing in this story. Dr. Warlock and Lawrence Scarman are not given space to develop as characters and Marcus is just a zombie. Despite being a nasty stereotype, Namin had the potential to be an interesting villain, but he is killed off all too quickly. The subplot with the poacher was pointless. All these characters are introduced simply to be mummy-fodder.

This leads to something that bothers me a lot about the Hinchcliffe producership. Eric Saward's time on the show is rightly criticised for some of its excessive violence. However, sensitivity to Mary Whitehouse's assault on the show seems to blind fans to the excessive fantasy violence of the Hinchcliffe era. These stories seem to revel in death and pain, seeking to appeal to the morbid curiosity of the viewer. We see this in Pyramids of Mars. There may not be any blood or gore to look at, but there are some really horrible death scenes in this. The poacher being crushed by the mummies and Lawrence being killed by his own brother are just nasty. Did you notice how long it takes both Warlock and Namin to die? They howl in agony for ages. This stuff is really not suitable for a children's show. I think there is something utterly tasteless about both this story and the Hinchcliffe era in general.

As with many Hinchcliffe stories, Pyramids of Mars looks to horror movies for inspiration. In this case, it is all those Mummy movies, the Hammer horror version in particular. The trappings of these films in Pyramids of Mars are only superficial, however. A mummy is interesting and disturbing because it is a walking corpse, not because it is wearing bandages. A robotic mummy is just a really banal idea.

We are back in Von Daniken-land with another ancient alien. When you have aliens appearing in every other story, an ancient alien is not terribly interesting in itself. Pyramids of Mars attempts to give this a Lovecraftian twist, making Sutekh a being of god-like power. Furthermore, the story attempts to portray Sutekh as a force of nature, a force antithetical to all life. There are three problems with this.

Firstly, a totally evil god-like being like Sutekh inevitably lacks interesting motives. Simply wanting to destroy everything just for the sake of it is a bit dull. A character like this needs to play off another villain with more recognisable motives. Namin could have fulfilled this role, but he was killed off early on and replaced with Marcus the zombie puppet.

Secondly, the story is too held down by the conventions of science fiction to do a genuinely Lovecraftian turn. The story tries to portray Sutekh as a god-like being, however, he never really behaves like one. Gods don't need to build rockets or use robots. These are the things that science fiction aliens do, and that is basically what Sutekh is.

Thirdly, for all the brilliance of Gabriel Woolf's vocal performance, Sutekh is essentially a man in a mask. We are told that he has the power to destroy the universe, but we are never quite made to believe he can do this. We see Sutekh tormenting the Doctor, but otherwise there is no real demonstration of the Doctor's power. It would have been better to have shown a lot less of Sutekh and to make him more a force of nature than a personality. This is what was done with Fenric in Curse of Fenric. Fenric was very much kept in the background until the end. He was more of a conceptual evil than a villain.

Unlike a good deal of the classic series, Pyramids of Mars attempts to deal with the nature of history and time travel. This is handled in a rather clumsy way, with the Doctor apparently taking Sarah to an alternate 1980 in which the world has been devastated by Sutekh. This makes no sense, as Sutekh is not a time traveller and cannot alter history. Sarah suggests that this is a trick and I think she was right. I think the Doctor was took Sarah to one of Jupiter's moons or some desolate planet. He knew that Sutekh would fail to destroy the earth, but he had no idea what other harm Sutekh might cause, so he tricked Sarah to keep her motivated. That is my theory anyway. In any case, the idea that history can be altered in this story is actually undermined by the fact that history is fulfilled in the end by the fire burning down the priory. This seems to suggest that what will happen will happen.

To be to fair to Doctor Who fandom, many fans are quite conscious that there are problems with this story. It is acknowledged that the scene on Mars is just padding and that there are massive holes in the plot, for instance the question of why Sutekh does not build the rocket in Egypt or the puzzling nature of the alternate 1980. I just don't think there are enough 'good bits' in this story to compensate.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, by Paul Magrs (BBC novel)

2012-01-22T07:31:00.000-08:00

Mad Dogs and Englishmen is not just a funny novel, it is laugh-out loud funny. I don't think any Doctor Who novel has made me laugh as much as this one.

This novel is mostly about poking fun at popular science fiction and fantasy. There is a character who is clearly based on J.R. Tolkien, a humourless academic who has written a vast epic about elves and goblins. The central premise of the plot is that the timeline has been altered so that the epic is now about talking poodles (who are in fact real). We also get a good deal of Star Wars parody. There is an hilarious moment when the poodle princess sends a message proclaiming "you are my only hope." George Lucas also has his stand-in as a film director who loves playing with toys and who regards all the boys and girls who watch his films as his friends. He earns the enmity of a character who stands in for Ray Harryhausen by replacing the animatronic effects in his films with CGI. Yet we also have a character from the real world; Noel Coward, who has been obtained the power to travel in time with a pair of magic pinking shears.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen is wonderfully written; it so light and easy to read. The plot is remarkably complex and does not make a lot of sense, but I didn't find myself caring. This book is gloriously bonkers and revels in its own silliness.

We get a return appearance from Iris Wildthyme, who is never actually named. This time she is in an incarnation that is clearly modeled on Shirley Bassey. Perhaps her appearance in this story is a surprise given that the previous novel, Adventuress of Henrietta Street had featured the Master. At this point, the BBC novels were wanting to jettison existing continuity as a source of stories. There is a degree of inconsistency at work here, because the Doctor has no memory of Iris or other Time Lords, despite his previous encounter with the Master.

The regulars are done really well here. The Doctor comes across as knowing what is going on all the time, but keeping quiet just because he enjoys the fun of investigating. Anji is really smart, sassy and very likable here. Fitz seems determined to enjoy himself regardless of how bizarre the adventure turns out to be. There is a wonderfully insane moment when the talking poodles force the Doctor, Anji and Fitz to strip naked, wear collars and walk on all fours. When they protest they are told "Bad people!" It's a delightfully camp scene.

As with other BBC novels set after Ancestor Cell, the presence of magic is very pronounced. There is no explanation for how Noel Coward's magic pinking shears work or how the animatronic monsters are able to come to life. These things are written so well that you don't really stop to think about them or question them.

There is a little bit of excessive violence towards the end and a surprising reference to bestiality, but none of this detracts from the light-hearted tone. This is a novel that I enjoyed immensely.

Twilight of the Gods, by Mark Clapham (Bernice Summerfield novel)

2012-01-14T08:51:00.000-08:00

Twilight of the Gods was the last in the series of Bernice Summerfield novels published by Virgin. It provided a resolution of several story and character arcs within the series. Perhaps I was at something of a disadvantage in reading it, as I had only read two of the Benny novels before, Down, by Lawrence Miles and Dead Romance, also by Lawrence Miles.

I think if you read Dead Romance as part of the Faction Paradox range, as I did and therefore saw that story as a standalone, you will be massively disappointed by Twilight of the Gods. Dead Romance was simply an amazing novel, one of the best I have ever read. While it touches on Doctor Who, it is something that can stand on its own merit. I find it incredibly difficult to integrate the epic cosmic horror of Dead Romance with the very average sci-fi plot of Twilight of the Gods. They feel like two different fictional universes (though perhaps if I had read the novels in between the two books I would not feel this way).

Twilight of the Gods provides an explanation of who the gods of Dead Romance are and shows them battling for supremacy on the planet Dellah. For me this completely undermined Dead Romance. In the Miles novel, the gods were a mysterious and terrifying unseen force. Here, they are a bunch of squabbling, incompetent aliens, whose leader talks like an American television presenter.

Twilight of the Gods is for the most part a reasonably decent story, but it lacks either the celebratory mood or the epic climax necessary to conclude a lengthy series of novels. The novel also lacks the sense of cosmic apocalypse that its theme demands.

Quinnis, by Marc Platt (Big Finish Companion Chronicle)

2012-01-07T08:09:00.000-08:00

This is the first of the companion chronicles that I have heard. I found it quite easy to listen to. The narrated format probably makes for an easier listening experience than a lot of the Big Finish full-cast audio dramas.

You know what, Quinnis is the first Marc Platt story that I have ever actually enjoyed. While I am a big Seventh Doctor fan, I don't think much of Ghost Light. A lot of fans rave about Spare Parts, but that story did not impress me much at all. However, Quinnis worked fine for me. It was not a big heavy epic story, but a nice easy story with just a hint of darkness. It is also really interesting to get a pre-Unearthly Child story in which Susan and her grandfather are travelling alone.

Quinnis, located in the 'Fourth Universe' was mentioned in Edge of Destruction. Platt takes this throw-away line and builds a quite vivid world. Quinnis is wonderfully described, with a town built on a series of viaducts leading nowhere. The monstrous bird-like Shrazers feel quite nightmarish, like something from folklore. There is a real fairytale quality to this story that reflects both the First and Seventh Doctor era. The Shrazers operate as much on a level of metaphor as reality.

I am one of Susan's rare fans. A lot of fans really dislike the poor girl, but the fact that she is the Doctor's granddaughter makes her really special. For all the limitations of Carole Ann Ford's acting ability, she did give Susan a delightfully ethereal quality that suited her well. Here Carole Ann Ford does a great job of reprising her old role and also providing an adequate, if not brilliant impression of Hartnell's Doctor. Susan is characterized as desperately lonely for companionship and it is this that gets her into trouble. It is also this incident that leads the Doctor to believe that Susan needs a more structured and disciplined life (though that is a little at odds with his contempt for the school in An Unearthly Child).

Alongside Carole Ann Ford is her real-life daughter, Tara-Louise Kaye, who plays a girl that Susan befriends. This girl turns out to be more than she seems. Kaye plays this role very well, giving the character a really disturbing edge, while still allowing the listener the possibility of sympathizing with her.

While the Doctor is far from heroic in this story, he is a much more sympathetic than the sinister Machiavellian scoundrel we saw in An Unearthly Child. This is perhaps a little disappointing. On the other hand, it is lovely to hear him blustering his way out of trouble.

For me this was a lovely introduction to the Companion Chronicles and a fantastic Big Finish production.

Azshara wants a Doctor pt2

2012-01-03T12:30:00.001-08:00

The second part of my Doctor Who/ World of Warcraft crossover.

The Doctor doubted he had been in a room this size since leaving Gallifrey. It truly was magnificent. At the far end of the palace lounge, a group of scantily-clad night elves were performing a frenzied dance routine. Their gyrations were a wonder to behold.

The Doctor reclined on a couch. Azshara sat with him, with one leg positioned over his seductively. She planted a kiss on him at every opportunity. It had been a long time since anybody had been so enamoured of the Doctor.

"Tell me, Doctor, is your world as beautiful as this one?" asked the night elf queen.

"Certainly, my dear. The sky is a burnt orange and the leaves on the trees are silver. The Capitol, the great city is a wonder of glass and marble, with many picturesque spires and domes," he replied.

The Doctor was certainly enjoying Azshara's attentions. Her blue skin and long pointed ears were a little odd and her naked feet were surprisingly large, but she was was undeniably beautiful. She was clearly in love with him, though it was an odd kind of love. Her mind did not seem to be able to distinguish her desire for him and her desire for his vast knowledge and mastery of time travel. For all that Azshara was beautiful, the Doctor was convinced she was vain, self-absorbed and at least a little bit stupid. She also had a terrible dress sense with that skimpy dress and those tasteless pink jewels. No Time Lady would have worn such an outfit.

"Grandfather!" came a voice from the other side of the room. Susan skipped barefoot into the room with her usual girlish enthusiasm. Azshara silently cursed with rage at the arrival of the Doctor's wretched granddaughter.

"I've had such a wonderful time today, grandfather," said Susan. "You know I got to ride this massive Saber-toothed cat. It was rather frightening, but it was very fun once I got used to it. I also met a druid. He gave me a really interesting lesson in how magic works. This universe really is quite different to our, grandfather."

The Doctor heard nothing of what Susan said to him. He was too distracted by the shock of her outfit. His granddaughter was wearing only a leather bikini and loincloth. Most of her bottom was exposed to the world. She also wore a bracelet on her thigh.

"My child, I really don't think you ought to be wearing something that leaves so little to the imagination, especially not at your age," he managed to say.

"But all the Kaldorei girls dress like this," protested Susan.

"I noticed some of the Kaldorei ladies are dressed rather more modestly, like Queen Azshara here," said the Doctor. As he said this, he was painfully aware that Azshara's minimalist dress was barely any improvement on Susan's bikini and loincloth.

Azshara was quite amused by this exchange. She clapped her hand and a maidservant approached.

"Worthy Doctor, you have the sensibilities of a dwarf," said the queen. She turned to the maid. "Go to Lady Vashj. Instruct her to find a dress for this youngling," she instructed.

Susan made a sulking expression and followed the maid.

Glad to be rid of the girl, Azshara returned her attention to the Doctor.

"I have waited a long time to find a suitable mate, Doctor. None of the males of my own people could ever suffice. You shall give me children who have your wisdom, nobility and dignity," she said.

The Doctor was really not sure he needed any more children. His granddaughter, Susan, was a handful enough on her own.

"You must stay here and rule at my side, Doctor. You can give me the wisdom I need to purify this world and rid it of imperfection," said the queen.

"I think, my dear, there is something to be said for imperfection," said the Doctor. "Take me for instance, I'm hardly the most impressive looking specimen to grace this world? Hmmm?"

Azshara seemed surprised by this suggestion.

The Doctor continued. "Or take your dress for instance. On some worlds, that dress would be considered quite scandalous and very much imperfect. Yet here it is considered to be very much the thing to wear for ladies."

Azshara had never considered such a notion.

"I rather fear, my dear, that your notion of imperfection is people who ask too many awkward questions about your rule," said the Doctor with a smile.

As the Doctor and Susan returned to the TARDIS, Azshara followed after them.

"You cannot leave me behind here, Doctor!" pleaded Azshara. "I need your wisdom, your power, your knowledge."

"I am sorry but my destiny lies there," said the Doctor, pointing to the Well of Eternity. "Your destiny lies with your people. Do rule them sensibly, my dear."

"If you cannot stay, take me with you! I could be your companion. We could travel together through time and space! You can show me the wonders of many worlds!"

"I really don't think so," said the Doctor and closed the TARDIS door.

With a wheezing, groaning sound, the statue of Azshara disappeared, leaving the original alone in her imperfect world.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor snorted at the absurdity of Azshara's suggestion. Take a companion? Travelling with his granddaughter was company enough. The very cheek of it!

Azshara wants a Doctor Pt1

2012-01-02T05:09:00.000-08:00

A Doctor Who/ World of Warcraft crossover.

Azshara queen of the night elves uses her magic to lure a powerful being to Azeroth. But instead of Sargeras, it turns out to be the First Doctor.

Note: This is a pre-Unearthly Child story. The TARDIS is not yet stuck as a police box.

Azshara watched anxiously as the Night Elf highborne focused their magical energy onto the Well of Eternity. The portal they had created crackled and swirled with sorcerous power.

It was Azshara's plan to bring to Azeroth a great and powerful god; one who would marry her, rule at her side and rid the world of imperfection. As the magical force in the Well of Eternity intensified, she could sense the god's presence.

Azshara was startled when she heard a strange wheezing, groaning sound. It sounded quite abhorrent to her long pointed ears, but she sensed that it heralded the god's arrival.

Something began to materialise before the Well of Eternity. To her amazement, she beheld a statue of herself. It was identical to countless statues across Zin-Azshari. It was hued from the finest granite. It was dressed exactly as she was, in a sleeveless gown split at the side, exposing her shapely thigh. Its stone feet were bare.

What greater honour could the god bestow upon her but to send an image of a very form? Truly this being from beyond the cosmos had accepted her devotion!

The night elf queen was even more surprised when a door seemed to open in the statue. Two strange creatures stepped out. They both had peculiar skin in a colour that Azshara found difficult to describe. Their ears were tiny and rounded. One of them was old and wizened with white hair. He walked with the aid of a stick. The other appeared much younger and was clearly female, despite her alien appearance.

"So we've come to a different universe, grandfather?" asked the female being.

"Hmmm,yes, my child. We seem to be making a habit of it since visiting Quinnis in the Fourth Universe. This one appears to be a quite different place," replied the old one.

Azshara boldly approached the two strangers, her jewelery tinkling as she moved daintily on her bare feet.

"Greetings, great lord from beyond," said Azshara. "Welcome to this world. I am Azshara, queen of all the Kaldorei. You do me great honour in arriving in a vessel shaped in my own likeness."

The old one smiled.

"Yes, it changes shape when it arrives. I do think it does quite nicely in that one."

Despite his aged and humble-looking appearance, Azshara knew that the old one was a being with tremendous wisdom and terrific power. She felt love arising in her heart already. She had to win him and learn his secrets!

"May I ask your name, great lord?" asked the night elf queen.

"Yes, of course. I am the Doctor," he replied. He gestured to his female companion. "And this is my granddaughter, Susan."

Susan gave the night elf queen a shy smile. Azshara looked at the girl and decided she absolutely hated her. Why did the great lord Doctor have to arrive in the company of such a pathetic little girl?

"I offer you both the hospitality of my palace. You are honoured guests in my lands."

Azshara summoned her highborne to her side. They bowed low before the Doctor and Susan.

"Lady Vashj here will show your granddaughter the sights of Zin-Azshari and introduce her to suitable young companions. I am sure she will enjoy that. Then you and I can talk of great things, Doctor," said Azshara.

Susan protested. "I'd much rather stay with my grandfather, if you don't mind," she said.

"Nonsense, child," said the Doctor. "You go off and have fun. I think Azshara and I have adult things to talk about." He winked at the night elf queen.

Susan sighed and followed Lady Vashj. Azshara took the Doctor's hand and began to lead him towards the palace.

The Doctor found all this very amusing. These Kaldorei creatures seemed to think he was some sort of god. They were clearly a primitive and superstitious people. On the other hand, their queen seemed to be taking a very personal interest in him. He had absolutely no objection to that. This was looking like a very stimulating trip.

The Ultimate Treasure, by Christopher Bulis (BBC novel)

2011-12-31T03:30:00.000-08:00

Quest stories are great for lazy writers. Just give the characters an objective, an opponent, some obstacles to face and throw in a twist or two to make it interesting. It is a banal strategy, but quite often it actually makes for an enjoyable story. Doctor Who has given us a few quest stories, most notably The Keys of Marinus and The Five Doctors. Christopher Bulis manages to pull this off rather well. Admittedly, it feels like it is aimed at younger readers and it is rather slow to get going, but halfway through it is a fairly exciting, if unadventurous read.

This is a Fifth Doctor and Peri novel. That is what got me reading it, as I am quite a 5/Peri fan, even though I admit the improbability and silliness of a gap between Planet of Fire and Caves of Androzani. Both Doctor and companion are characterised very well. Bulis manages to maintain the sense that Peri is new to the business of travelling in time and space. That said, he rather fails to capture the bleak and tragic feeling of Season 21. This feels in general like a positive and upbeat book that contrasts quite a bit with the televised story that follows it. In particular, Bulis gives us a silly retcon regarding Kamelion that rather undermines the tragic narrative of Season 21.

The Ultimate Treasure has a great cast of characters. The police officer,Myra Jaharnus is notably strong, but Alpha the villain is also interesting. Dexel Dynes the reporter is a bit of a caricature, but he is still very fun. The scene in which he interviews one of the criminal goons is very amusing.

That the treasure turns out to be something other than what is expected is no surprise. This novel borrows rather obviously from The Five Doctors in it's resolution.

This is not a deep or clever novel, but it does offer an easy, fun and undemanding read.

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

2011-12-28T04:19:00.000-08:00

Another year, another Christmas special, another story that I hate.

I am a massive fan of CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. I actually write fan fiction about Jadis, my favorite character. It was naturally of some interest that the latest Christmas special takes inspiration from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Doctor Who has often thrived when borrowing influences from other stories and genres. This works best when it is done almost unconsciously; this is quite the opposite. In The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, as with the previous Christmas special, the influences are shouted out over the rooftops.

It is quite clear to me that Moffat does not have a clue what makes the Narnia books so amazing and enjoyable. For a start, the Narnia books are a parent-free zone. The Pevensie parents only make a brief appearance at the end of The Last Battle, they are absent throughout the Chronicles of Narnia. The Narnia books are all about the children having adventures on their own. In contrast, the two evacuees in this story are accompanied by their mother. Their mother enters the strange forest world and the story turns out to be all about parenthood. The last season has shown that Moffat has a peculiar fixation with the theme of fatherhood. While it is a relief to see motherhood getting a mention in this story, it jars completely with the Narnian theme. For Moffat, the idea of children existing independently of a parental relations is simply anathema. In his fictional world, children can have no real existence except within the smothering confines of parental affection. In his book, children just need their daddy and then everything is right with the world.

The second failure to appreciate the Narnia books is in the way the fictional world is presented. Narnia was fascinating because of it's strange inhabitants. The forest world of this story is undoubtedly beautiful, but it feels empty and uninteresting. In fact, it creates no sense of wonder or majesty, but quickly becomes a place of melancholy and terror. On the plus side, the wooden king and queen look amazing, with their delightful folklorish quality, but they are not sufficient to make up for the otherwise hollowness of the forest world.

It is refreshing to see some attempt to deal with the pain and loss in warfare; but this is completely undermined by the resurrection of the children's father. While it came as no surprise and made for an happy ending, it seemed hollow, and almost a denial of the reality of death. I am sure it would have been very upsetting to children watching who had lost their parents and who could expect no return of their lost loved ones. Going back to the issue of motherhood, it also seemed to undermine the attempt to present Janet as a strong capable woman. She was presented as strong and determined, but there was still the suggestion that she was lost without her husband. If you are going to praise motherhood, why not show that mothers can be strong and bring up their children after widowhood as so many mothers had to do in the Second World War?

As for the Doctor, we are served up yet again another portrayal of the Doctor as a Mary Poppins figure who makes everything right for everybody and who appears whenever people wish for him. Does anybody else miss the days when the Doctor was bad-tempered, selfish and a bit scary?

Don't get your hopes up for the next season of Doctor Who.

Earth Aid, by Ben Aaronovitch (Big Finish Lost Story)

2011-12-18T03:19:00.000-08:00

This story was built around a proposed opening scene in which Ace is unsuccessfully impersonating the captain of a starship. This premise leads on to what is essentially a parody of Star Trek: Next Generation. Making a parody of Star Trek back in 1989 would have had a caustic note. Back then Doctor Who was a struggling program, unpopular with both fans and public, while Star Trek: Next Generation was proving a massive hit.

It's a bit jarring to see Ace struggling with trying to captain a starship after reading the New Adventures. The NA Ace would have been totally at ease in that situation. It is a bit disappointing that after the strength of character shown by Ace in her two televised seasons, she is unable to summon up any confidence here. She is written as really stupid in this story. I won't go into the question of whether Ace would have actually watched Next Generation before leaving earth, as it is perfectly possible the Doctor has the DVD collection on the TARDIS. The Doctor is also made into a moron, with him breaking down as he is 'taunted to death.' We have had enough stories where the Doctor is put on a guilt trip for this to be in any way interesting. Raine is rather sidelined for much of the story. Doc Oho points out that she sounds an awful lot like Bonnie Langford in this story, which rather fits with the comic tone.

Earth Aid was a really unimpressive story. It tries to hard to be funny and ends up overdoing it. The plot is badly thought out and fails to deliver anything of interest. The idea of a sentient planet is a really interesting one, as is the charitable organisation, Earth Aid, but these ideas are never given any time or thought. It's remarkable that a writer as strong as Ben Aaronovitch would write something so bad. Does he just not care that much about Doctor Who these days?

This story has the Metatraxi cropping up once again. The way these stories are built around a central story arc, as well as the presence of a few timey-wimey moments is remarkably reminiscent of Moffat Who. It is almost like Cartmel had watched the first Moffat season and thought "Yes! That's how Doctor Who should be done!" I beg to differ.

These 'Season 27' stories have been the biggest disappointment I have ever had with Doctor Who. None of them is in the least bit inspiring. As I said in an earlier review, for me the real Season 27 was the New Adventures. Forget everything Big Finish has done with Ace, none of it is at all interesting. The New Adventures took up Ace where Survival left and did amazing things with the character. These stories have done nothing to add to the character. The addition of Raine is just candy, and its candy I don't care for much.

Vanishing Point, by Stephen Cole (BBC novel)

2011-12-09T03:38:00.000-08:00

Did Stephen Cole really co-write the underwhelming Ancestor Cell? This book is so much better!

This is not a light-hearted book. It deals with serious themes, most notably that of religious belief. It is also very violent (though some of the Virgin NAs are more graphic). All of the characters are continuously put in physical danger and they have to be ruthless and violent just to survive. This actually led me to feel really involved in the book, reading each page with worry about how the characters were going to get through. I seldom find Doctor Who novels as engaging as this.

The society depicted in Vanishing Point feels so much more real than societies in other Doctor Who stories. This is a world in which there are hospitals and police, where people get into trouble for being late for work, where low-paid women have to prostitute themselves to pay the bills, where people have affairs and where there are mentally and physically disabled people. The last point being of particular significance. We have an whole group of people with learning disabilities in this story. How often do we find disabled people in Doctor Who other than a crippled or deformed villain? The writer even departs from convention and has Fitz having sex with one of the disabled girls.

Not only does the planet in Vanishing Point feel like a real place, but the characters feel so convincing and believable. You really feel for Etty with her tragic background and fearfulness, for Nathaniel with his doubts and confusion and for Vettul with her loneliness and frustration. These are characters the reader can understand and identify with. The two companions also come across very well; with Anji contemplating belief in God and Fitz getting involved with Vettul. Whatever one thinks of his going to bed with Vettul, it is done believably.

We see the 8th Doctor in this story as we have never seen him before. Right at the start of the book, he jumps right into the action. He is hardly ever portrayed as so decisive, determined and strong. He is a Doctor who protects the vulnerable and stands for justice. He is also prepared to use violence when he has to. This is a Doctor that evildoers really would fear. One thing that is interesting is that in this novel the Doctor defends the status quo and works with the authorities, even though they are clearly quite flawed. While in stories like Happiness Patrol and The Sunmakers, the Doctor overthrows the Powers-that-be, here he attempts to uphold society.

Where the book does not do so well is in its handling of the big themes. While the discussion about faith in God is interesting, it makes the common error of thinking that faith is incompatible with proof or certainty. The Greek word for faith (pistis) means the same thing as belief. All of us believe lots of things that can be proved and which we are certain about. The New Testament would use the same word faith to refer to those beliefs. The hard science stuff about genetics comes across as rather incomprehensible. I understand the concept of 'junk DNA' is actually quite inaccurate.

Animal, by Andrew Cartmel (Big Finish Lost Story)

2011-12-03T01:57:00.000-08:00

Animal has some stinging, walking plants that are remarkably similar to John Wyndham's Triffids. Sadly, they don't play a massive role in this story, which is a shame because I think the Triffids are the creepiest science fiction monster ever.

Finally we get the return to Doctor Who of Brigadier Bambera. While she does not get to say "shame," Angela Bruce gives a great performance. She's a bit wooden, but she is playing a tough military officer. Bambera has a lovely rapport with Ace. Unfortunately, we also get the return of Dad's Army UNIT. The current membership of UNIT appears to be our lovely Brigadier plus an incompetent, mentally unstable and rather trigger-happy corporal. It is a bit disappointing.

Animal features yet another instance of the Seventh Doctor putting in place a meticulous plot and then finding it go pear-shaped. We have seen this in the New Adventures a few times, and in Big Finish. Unfortunately it is played for comedy here, but rather badly. The moment when the Doctor announces the imminent arrival of the Metatraxi to find they don't show up is incredibly painful. Did Cartmel have to subject the Doctor to that?

The alien race that sidelines the almost-Triffids is the Numlocks. Aside from having a daft name, they are pacifists and ostensibly vegetarian. They are very well realised with John Banks giving them wonderfully dull and dreary voices. They manage to come across as quite sinister.

New companion Raine does not have a lot to do in this story, but as I said in my review of Crime of the Century, I don't like her anyway. We do get an interesting seen when she discovers the implications of time travel by learning of her father's death on the Internet.

Cartmel himself admits that this story is full of his tropes- animal experimentation, environmental issues and secret military technology. It's all interesting stuff, but there are a lot of ideas here that never quite gel into a unified whole. It's hard to see exactly what Cartmel is trying to say in this story.

As with the two previous stories in this series, I found myself getting rather bored. These stories really don't do a good job of keeping my attention. So far these 'Season 27' stories have not impressed me at all. Doc Oho makes the interesting suggestion that this series reveals that John Nathan-Turner may have had more to do with the strengths of the McCoy era than he is generally given credit for.

The Infinity Doctors, by Lance Parkin (BBC novel)

2011-11-28T07:44:00.000-08:00

'The Doctor closed his eyes. This was her, there was no possible cause to doubt that now. She had lived so much longer than him, lived at his Family home for countless generations. She had tutored his grandfather and his father. She had been there at his birth. She had nursed him, taught him, danced with him, loved him, borne his children.'

Aesthetically, I rather wish this had been the last Doctor Who novel ever written. This novel shows us the Doctor on his own planet, shows him choosing wandering over a contented life on that planet, it shows the Doctor's great strengths and desire for justice, yet it also shows us the woman he loves who bore his children; it is the ultimate glimpse into his personal life. This is a Doctor that we can relate to and also a Doctor that we can celebrate and delight in.

The Infinity Doctors is unique among Doctor Who novels in that it is never made clear which Doctor is the protagonist. His close-cropped hair sets him apart from all of the Doctors except Ecclestone. His dialogue suggests the Eighth Doctor, but his oval-shaped face could suggest a younger Hartnell Doctor. I personally dislike the notion that the Morbius faces were pre-Hartnell incarnations so I don't accept the notion that this is an unknown older incarnation. It has been suggested that this is novel is set on a resurrected Gallifrey after the closure of the BBC novels, but the presence of Hedin and the apparent friendship between the Doctor and the Master (the Magistrate) does not support this idea. I prefer to see this Doctor as a pre-Unearthly Child First Doctor before his exile from Gallifrey. This Doctor is not the rebellious student some have imagined, but rather a respected academic who serves on the High Council.

One of the clever feats of this book is the way it puts together everything we have ever been told about the Time Lords. Every Time Lord story is referenced in some way. Lance Parkin admitted that a consequence of this was that inevitably these details contradict different stories in different ways. The story of the Time Lords was never written with continuity in mind and this book does not try to give us a story that fits into any watertight continuity. It is tempting to see this as an 'Elseworld' or 'Unbound Adventure' in which the Doctor has given up travelling and gone home to Gallifrey, but this was not Parkin's intention and I think this detracts from the beauty of what The Infinity Doctors achieves. The Doctor in this novel really is the Doctor.

One of the things I love about this novel is the way it restores grandeur and nobility to Gallifrey. The Gallifrey we see here is an imperfect society (we see crime and squalor in Low Town), but it is not the cynical totalitarian regime of The Deadly Assasin. This Gallifrey is a place of beauty and grandeur, but even more importantly, it is a place in which the Doctor is respected and loved. This actually fits in better with what we know of the Doctor then the Holmseian vision. The Hartnell Doctor really did hope to return home to his world of silver trees and burnt orange skies. He would never have wanted to return to the degeneracy and corruption of the Deadly Assassin Gallifrey. Readers know how much I detest the BBC Wales series, but one of the things they did right was to throw out the Holmes cynicism and to make Gallifrey seem like a wonderful place that was tragically lost. The Time Lords of this Gallifrey are not he god-like figures of The War Games or the Lawrence Miles books. They are also conscious of their own temporality. They are well aware that Gallifrey will not last for all eternity.

The plot of The Infinity Doctors is not the strongest we have read, but it is exciting. Incredibly, this novel offers us a reworking of The Three Doctors that is much better than the original. How this incident fits in with the Pertwee story I can't say, but it's very good. We also get to learn a good deal about the history of the Sontaran/ Rutan war, with the Doctor involved in negotiations between the two races. We are promised that one day the two peoples will be at peace.

She was wearing a loose-flowing gown in ivory silk and lace, with bare shoulders, gathered at the waist by a wide belt. Her long blonde hair was held up by a gold clasp, and swept down to the small of her back. She wore a necklace of white flowers, and held a feather fan. She was his height, a little taller as her feet were bare, and he was wearing shoes.

In this novel we meet the Doctor's wife, not the TARDIS and not that cardboard tart River Song, but the woman who bore his children. This is the same character as Patience who Parkin introduced in Cold Fusion. She was shot dead, but brought back to life in Omega's universe. This lady is definitely somebody we can imagine being the Doctor's wife. She is mysterious and ethereal, like a woman in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. That the Doctor had several children supports the notion that he might have had more than one grandchild, hence the possibility of John and Gillian being canon. It is difficult not to suspect that Parkin has something of a foot fetish; the Doctor's wife is barefoot and the other female character, Larna is barefoot for most of the book.

This is a book that blew me away with its beauty, its depth and by its delight in the details of the show. If you read any Doctor Who novel, read this one.

Set Piece, by Kate Orman (Virgin New Adventure)

2011-11-25T02:57:00.000-08:00

I found Kate Orman's Left-Handed Humming Bird a little on the heavy-going side, so I was a bit worried about this one. Nevertheless, as it is Ace's departure story (one of them...), it was pretty essential reading. I was pleased to find that it is a much easier read than Left-Handed Humming Bird and much more enjoyable, while still having all the Hurt/ Comfort elements that Kate Orman seems to love so much (amusingly she actually entitles one chapter Hurt/ Comfort!).

The opening chapter is remarkably disturbing. A woman is forced to participate in brutal surgical procedures against her will, along with other humans. For three weeks she has been participating in the torture of an escape-prone prisoner who turns out to be... have a guess. As with Kate Orman's previous novel, Set Piece is a novel that deals with real physical, as well as emotional pain.

Set Piece sees the return of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, the very likable character introduced in Transit. She is effectively re-introduced without tedious exposition. She comes across as an highly-intelligent, but also a very dangerous character. She has now mastered time travel, with terrible consequences.

Kate Orman clearly loved the character of Ace and in this novel she gives her depths that have not been matched in any other New Adventure novel. This is a truly mature Ace. She is not the confused teenager, but neither is she the thuggish and mentally scarred veteran that we see in previous New Adventures. Set Piece has Ace stranded in ancient Egypt and adapting to new circumstances, while at the same time having a profound self-consciousness about her role in them. Finally, she becomes a sort of Time's Champion, protecting earth from menaces created by rifts in time. It might have been nice to have seen Ace become a Time Lady, as was originally planned, but this is a strong departure for her too.

My favorite part of the book was the parts set in ancient Egypt and Ace's interaction with that culture. It felt very authentic, much more than the attempts of some other writers to do ancient Egypt. The stuff with the Paris Commune was also interesting, even if my conservative instincts are irritated by Ace siding with the revolutionaries. I was a bit irritated by the presence of a number of dream sequences. They are quite well done, but dream sequences in the Virgin books have been done to death. It is very much an NA cliche.

The Doctor is very well written here. Kate Orman very much goes for the NA Time's Champion interpretation. Accordingly, she makes him quite god-like, yet at the same time quite vulnerable. With the presence of Kadiatu and the focus on Ace, Benny still manages to have an interesting part to play in the book. She is perhaps less irritating than in other novels, but I still dislike her overconfidence.

The plot about metallic ants taking advantage of time rifts is very much secondary to the character studies going on. The plot is simply there to develop the relationship between the Doctor and companions. Regrettably, the threat is apparently to the whole of time itself (a very Moffaty trope). I really dislike stories in which the entire universe is threatened. It just reduces the scale of the Doctor Who universe and is never really believable. We might also ask why the Time Lords don't deal with a threat to 'time itself.'

This is a novel about history. It is about how history is paved with suffering and tragedy and so often feels futile. It is about how individuals relate to history, playing their part and ultimately being unable to alter its course. Yet the novel urges the notion that every struggle, every battle, every tear shed really does mean something whatever the outcome.

Set Piece was a massive improvement on Left-Handed Humming Bird and is a great example of how angst can be done really well.

Suggested soundtrack: Nocturnus- The Key

Crime of the Century, by Andrew Cartmel (Big Finish Lost Story)

2011-11-19T06:52:00.000-08:00

This is the second part of the lost Season 27. Despite keeping Ace on board, contrary to the original design, it sees the arrival of new companion Raine Creevy (Beth Chalmers), as well as the Samurai-like insect aliens, the Metatraxi.

One interesting stylistic feature of Cartmel's novel Cat's Cradle: Warhead was the minimal dialogue. The characters frequently said nothing to each other. This was clearly a good thing as Cartmel serves up some really appalling dialogue in this audio, most notably Ace's shockingly bad line "Come back and fight, you sexist Metatraxi!" This really does not fill me with confidence in Cartmel as a script writer. Maybe he was better at editing the scripts than writing them.

The new companion Raine seems to have proved popular with reviewers, but I'm afraid I don't care for her. She is sassy and confident, but that is not exactly unusual in modern science fiction. A posh cat burglar is a bit too much of an obvious television trope. Maybe I am a bit of an old fashioned moralist, but somehow I really do have a problem with 'good characters' who are thieves. I mean, stealing is actually wrong, is it not?

I agree with another reviewer, who points out that the tone of this story is rather uneven. It is very dark in places, yet the Metatraxi speaking like surfer dudes as a result of a translator malfunction is incredibly comic. Even more problematic, many elements of the plot do not really fit together, such as the revelation that the recession that ruined Raine's father was engineered by the Russians. Apparently, this is the 'crime of the century' in the title, which is odd given that the story is about alien weaponry. At the conclusion, we are treated to another revelation that seems even more pointless and irrelevant to the plot.

This is on the face of it, remarkably similar to the story that preceded it. A Soviet setting, war-like aliens and a struggle between different factions for alien technology. This is even more disappointing given how much that story owed its plot to Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis. I can't help feeling that Cartmel is a bit short on ideas, which is ironic given how he has criticised much of classic Doctor Who plotting for being formulaic.

Placebo Effect, by Gary Russell (BBC novel)

2011-11-18T04:39:00.000-08:00

Placebo Effect has Kleptons in it. Those aliens from the first ever Doctor Who comic strip; the ones that look like Greedo the Rodian. You know what that means? If Placebo Effect is canon, then so are the TV Comic strips. The Doctor really did have two grandchildren called John and Gillian, really did meet Santa Claus and really did call himself Dr. Who. That Gary Russell references the TV Comic without trying to exclude it from the canon (as Steve Lyons did in Conundrum and Head Games) makes me quite favourably disposed towards this novel.

Although this novel is not highly regarded among fans, I mostly enjoyed it. It's very light-hearted and packed with continuity references. Russell brings back Stacy and Ssard, who appeared in an 8th Doctor comic strip in the Radio Times not that long after the TV Movie. This novel offers some explanation as to how that strip fits into continuity.

Russell claims he originally proposed to write a novel about Nimons vs Macra, but what he gives us here is a novel about Foamasi and Wirrn. Russell does rather a better job with the Foamasi than he does with the Wirrn. His Wirrn lack sufficient body horror to be really disturbing. He does make his Fomasi quite interesting, however. He gives them plenty of character and explains how their disguises work. In a quite disturbing moment, a human realises that the woman he has been sleeping with was really a Foamasi in disguise.

The Doctor is very well characterised. He is dreadfully nice; always remembering the needs of his companions and doing his utmost to look after them. This is perhaps a little strange given that this is the same person who never went back for Sarah and seemed to forget about his own granddaughter. I suppose he has matured, but it makes it even stranger that he has still refrained from paying Sarah a visit. Russell is perhaps a little less successful with Sam, but then it is difficult to avoid having a teenage character coming off as anything other than mouthy and irritating.

Sam gets involved in an interesting debate between creation and evolution. This is not resolved, which makes a nice contrast with the materialistic tendency of the show. I am no longer a Six-Day Creationist, but I am not completely convinced by the theory of evolution. The actual arguments used against evolution are not all that impressive, but at least there is some acknowledgment that the not everybody is convinced by Darwin.

I really liked the Duchess of Auckland. She was a really fun character, even if a parody of the royal family. I thought it was a bit of a shame that Russell killed her off. Why do writers have to kill characters so easily?

Despite its reputation, Placebo Effect is a reasonably decent novel. The cover is good too; especially with its subtle reference to the V series.

Thin Ice, by Marc Plattt (Big Finish Lost Story)

2011-11-13T05:26:00.000-08:00

It's a real tragedy that Season 27 was prevented by the show's cancellation in 1989. Script editor Andrew Cartmel had a clear idea where he wanted to go and Doctor Who had a strong set of leads in Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred. Given the presence of a clear design for Season 27, it makes a lot of sense for Big Finish to create this lost era on audio. The big problem with this project is that we already have a Season 27 in the Virgin New Adventures. Those books carried on where the show left us in 1989 and to some extent continued the vision that Andrew Cartmel had set for the show. Cartmel himself contributed to these novels, most importantly with Cat's Cradle: Warhead. Not only do we have a Season 27 in the Virgin novels, but we also have a Season 26B in the Big Finish audios set in between Survival and Timewyrm: Genesys.

This story was intended to see the departure of Ace to train to become a Time Lord, an idea which has a lot of merit and which makes sense of the way the Doctor was continually manipulating her. Big Finish opted not to abandon the continuity of the New Adventures and altered the premise of the story so that Ace is rejected by the Prydonian Academy. Thus, Ace remains through 'Season 27' and an even bigger gap between Survival and Timewyrm: Genesys is created. I am going to speak as somebody who loves the Virgin New Adventures from the bottom of my heart. I have a real problem with Big Finish when it comes to Ace. For me the New Adventures defined how Ace would develop after Survival. We see a progress in them from Ace as an immature teenager to Ace as a hardened, brutalised war veteran (the Ace that everybody hates except me). I refuse to accept that the gap between Survival and Timewyrm: Genesys lasts longer than a couple of weeks. I see the New Adventures as following on directly from Season 26 and being the real Season 27. Big Finish have almost killed this notion by filling up a non-existent gap with audios featuring a pre-NA Ace. We are now saddled with a pointless set of continuity where Ace starts calling herself 'Dorothy McShane' and is then joined by a bloke called Hex. I like Colditz just because it introduced the delightful Elizabeth Klein, who is the most wonderful companion ever, but otherwise I hate it because it detracts from the NA story. The Ace in the early New Adventures is not a young woman who has had a tonne of different adventures and more mature than the t.v. version. The Ace in the early NAs is the same immature teenage Ace at the end of Survival. I refuse to believe otherwise.

Given that Ace does not end up departing the Doctor to go to Gallifrey, one has to ask what the point was in including the subplot about her being tested by the Time Lords. It all feels rather pointless and it just ends up being another example of Ace getting mad at the Doctor for manipulating her and the Doctor promising to be nicer next time (yeah, right..).

Re-locating the original story to Soviet Russia in the Sixties was a nice idea that could have worked well, but somehow the audio does not use this setting to any great effect. The claustrophobic cold war atmosphere fails to register with the listener and it just sounds like any old place with a lot of people speaking in foreign accents. One odd feature of this audio, as pointed out by another reviewer is just how quiet the audio is. There is a real lack of any significant background noise. There are parades going on commemorating the October Revolution, yet we don't hear any military music whatsoever. They should have thrown in the Russian anthem and at least one Red Army marching tune. John Nathan-Turner would have killed for the budget to re-create a Red Army parade as television spectacle. We could at least hear what it sounds like. That said, I do like the musical score with its strong percussion.

The plot is not that unlike Silver Nemesis or Remembrance of the Daleks, with factions competing over alien technology. This time the main aliens are the Ice Warriors. Nicholas Briggs does a great job with the Ice Warrior voices, but many fans have had problems with the way they are portrayed. These are revisionist Ice Warriors who have been living peacefully on Earth and who eat fish fingers. Yes, fish fingers. This could be a reference to The Eleventh Hour. I quite liked these Ice Warriors, but I understand why they will bother some listeners.

This was an interesting audio, but came across as rather dull for the most part and just a little bit pointless. Quite a disappointment on the whole.

The Gallifrey Chronicles, by Lance Parkin (BBC novel)

2011-11-12T04:19:00.000-08:00

"My dear, one of the things you'll learn is that it's all real. Every word of every novel is real, every frame of every movie, every panel of every comic strip."

This novel was the last in the series of BBC Eighth Doctor novels. Lance Parkin was given the Herculean task of providing a conclusion to the various mind-boggling story arcs of this series. How Parkin did this is quite surprising. Rather than giving us a big epic event novel as one might have expected, he wrote a light and slightly fluffy novel with a very easy-going plot.

The result of the lighter tone means that the BBC novel series is able to end on an upbeat celebratory note. In every way, The Gallifrey Chronicles celebrates Doctor Who. There is a real sense of magic in the way that the Doctor appears to bring the dead back to life and reunite families with their apparently deceased loved ones. Likewise, the cliffhangar ending, with the Doctor leaping into action to deal with the monsters, for all its uncertainty is a celebration of just what the show is about.

There is a good deal of meta-textuality going on in this story, with the reference to John Peel's goof about Ace being in Paradise Towers, the Doctor being sent to sleep by reading about Gallifrey and the glorious line about every spin-off being true. This very much fits with the agenda of the book being about celebrating Doctor Who. There are also hints in the book of Parkin's frustration at the complexities and problems of continuity. If he it is true that 'every panel in every comic strip' is real, it would have been nice of Parkin to include the TV Comic stories in his majestic AHistory. It seemed a bit mean to me to include the DWM comics but leave out all those wonderful Sixties adventures with John and Gillian.

In Marnal, Parkin offers a really interesting character. Like the Doctor, he has been exiled to earth. Yet unlike the Doctor he feels only contempt for humanity and is obsessed with returning to Gallifrey. There is a strong touch of William Hartnell's Doctor about him and in his attitude and methods he does resemble the Doctor in An Unearthly Child. Marnal is the Doctor as he could have been. He ends up being paired with an human companion, his nurse Rachel. Rachel is well characterised and it was surprising that she did not become a new companion at the end.

The BBC range had already given us the disastrous Ancestor Cell and Parkin had to tie up the loose ends created by that book. The Gallifrey Chronicles provides a flashback to the Doctor destroying Gallifrey. This flashback is a much stronger scene than anything that occurred in The Ancestor Cell. The Gallifrey Chronicles offers the possibility of Gallifrey and its inhabitants being restored (only to be destroyed in the Time War, if you believe the BBC Wales series).

The alien menace, the Vore are oddly incidental to the plot, despite appearing to wipe out much of the Earth's population. They are rather scary and what they do is quite disturbing, but their main role is simply to show the Doctor shine at what he does best. As I said above, the way the Doctor appears to bring back the dead is just magical.

We are also treated to a scene on Gallifrey which features the Doctor's parents. Yes, the Doctor's parents. Those who had read The Infinity Doctors will be already aware of Ulysses and Penelope, the Doctor's mother and father. I'm not at all happy with the idea of the Doctor having a human mother, but as the idea has been done, I feel I might as well accept this admittedly rather intriguing couple as the Doctor's parents.

The Doctor's companions Fitz and Trix form a relationship in this story. This is quite believably done, if a little sudden. There is, however, a note of sadness to this as revealed by Fitz's song 'Contains Spoilers.' The Gallifrey Chronicles does not give any answers to Trix's past. We know she is wanted for murder, but did she do it? This is just a small fault I have with the novel.

The Gallifrey Chronicles is a lovely upbeat conclusion to the 8th Doctor novels.

The Kingmaker, by Nev Fountain (Big Finish audio)

2011-11-04T03:50:00.000-07:00

To my mind, the 5/Peri/Erimem series is among the strongest of Big Finish developments. The stories that this team have been given have a real sense of fun and excitement that makes a strong contrast with not only the televised stories of the Fifth Doctor era, but also other Fifth Doctor audios released by Big Finish. The Kingmaker is the most comedic of Peter Davison stories. This is not just funny; in places this audio is roll around the floor funny. Davison does not attempt to be overtly comic as Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy do in The One Doctor and Bang-Bang-a-Boom-Boom, but plays it straight. His dry performance adds a lot to the fun of this hilarious script.

There is a slightly new series feel to this story. It's Bill and Ted theme park view of history reflects how the new series approaches historical stories. To be honest, I was very irritated by the anachronistic modern dialogue used by the characters, though the setting has been more carefully researched and thought out than it would be in a new series story. In a hilarious nod to BBC Wales, Richard III, played by Stephen Beckett sounds remarkably like Christopher Ecclestone, so much so that I actually had to check the CD case to make sure it was not the man himself. Beckett uses all the vocal mannerisms of the 9th Doctor and even says 'fantastic!'

Despite the nods to the new series, The Kingmaker is very nostalgic. A laser-wielding robot from the far future demands that the Doctor completes a series of children's books before they miss the publisher's deadline. These are in fact a real series of books that attempted to cash-in on the series back in the Seventies. We are treated to a brilliant impersonation of Tom Baker courtesy of Jon Culshaw from Dead Ringers.

The plot is extremely complex, being set in different time periods and involving multiple twists. While it is very gripping and full of surprises, I can't help agreeing with people that it does try to be just a little too clever. While nobody would have expected the conclusion, it does feel just a little too bizarre to be true. That said, the writing and the script are of a really high standard. It would be wonderful to see this kind of quality on the televised show.

As mentioned above, Stephen Beckett's Richard III has a strong vocal resemblance to the 9th Doctor. I'm not sure this was entirely for comic purposes, or just because he was a northerner. There is something of a similarity in that both characters have a strong sense of world weariness, but also a hardness and sense of purpose. This Richard III is very far from Shakespeare's version and has real depth. Not a villain, but a man who is prepared to be ruthless. I found it amusing that he is used to getting time travelling visitors. Apparently each of them offered an opinion on whether he should kill the princes in the tower, even before the situation had arisen. Thus, he is a man who knows his own fate in advance. It is interesting to ponder whether other historical characters in the Whoniverse might have had a similar experience.

Together, Caroline Morris and Nicola Bryant deliver one of their best double acts as Peri and Erimem in this story. These girls are great; completely different in their cultural background yet as close and as argumentative as sisters. Peri acts really stupid throughout this story and Erimem amusingly gets annoyed by her idiocy. That's the real charm of Peri for British fans; she comes across exactly as how we would like to imagine American girls- spoiled and a bit thick, but essentially benign and very cute. Not that real life American girls conform to this stereotype at all. There is a touch of Leela to Erimem in this story. In a very impressive moment, she suggests to Peri that the two should kill each other to prevent history being altered. When Peri is absolutely terrified by the suggestion, Erimem claims to be joking, but had in fact been serious.

The Kingmaker is not quite a perfect audio play, but it is one of the strongest audios they have done; hilarious, innovative and distinctive with a real affection for the history of the show.

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, by Lawrence Miles (BBC novel)

2011-10-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

The book in which the Doctor gets married, but not to River Song or the TARDIS!

The same day I began reading The Adventuress of Henrietta Street I re-watched Spearhead from Space, a story I first saw when I was eleven. It's strange to think that 19 years after that innocent Doctor Who experience I would be reading a Doctor Who novel partially set in a brothel which makes Tantric Sex a major theme.

Miles departs from all convention by writing this novel as a biographical account. All of the speech is reported, leaving very little dialogue. The identity of the narrator and biographer is never given and as with Dead Romance, there is the suggestion that he is not altogether reliable. This peculiar choice of style makes for a very distinctive experience of reading a Doctor Who novel, but it does make the whole story a lot more difficult. The reader has to work a lot harder to understand what is going on.

As surprising as it might seem, we see hints of the Moffat era in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. In The Wedding of River Song, we had the Doctor getting married, a marriage that had cosmic significance in that it repaired a breach in space and time. In The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, we have the Doctor getting married in order to establish a cosmic connection with Earth and it's fate. Scarlette, the woman that the Doctor marries has been compared to Iris Wildthyme, but she actually reminds me of River Song much more. Sadly, her character fails in exactly the same way that River Song fails. Both characters are portrayed as strong and intelligent, with a very blazen sexuality. Both characters seem to be created to appear an equal match for the Doctor. Yet in the end neither character quite lives up to the promise. We expect them to be amazing, but they end up just joining a list of strong, intelligent female characters. In fairness to Lawrence Miles, Scarlette does not fail nearly as badly as River Song because she is just a one-off character in a novel. Moffat made disaster inevitable by deciding to centre the last season around the character of River Song. Miles also wisely keeps Scarlette fairly mysterious. Moffat on the other hand, kept dangling hints about the identity of River and then deliver a big revelation that most of the viewers had already guessed. If you want to find out where Moffat got his ideas, you really need to read this book, along with Alien Bodies. Then you will see just what a mess he made of his influences.

The other main character introduced in the novel, Sabbath also has a similar problem to Scarlette. Miles seems to want to present him as this really amazing interesting character, but with the limitations of the biographical narrative, he never quite succeeds in showing this.I can't help thinking that making Sabbath so much like a James Bond villain renders him a little silly. His only outstanding moment is when he steals the Doctor's second heart, something no villain has ever done before. This development bothered a lot of fans, as it renders the Doctor a good deal more human.

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street is set after the destruction of Gallifrey in The Ancestor Cell. Miles presents the notion that the Time Lords have not simply been destroyed, but removed from history altogether, a notion that seems rather problematic to me. Despite their loss, a good deal of the book is spent presenting Miles' brilliant conception of the Time Lords as cosmic forces or elemental beings. The Doctor and his two companions are continually described by the other characters as 'elementals.' It's a quite fascinating idea and you do see hints of this in the new series. As with other Lawrence Miles books the removal of the Time Lords to an higher plane of existence and their remoteness from the action makes them a far more impressive force, as they had been in The War Games. The Doctor provides a wonderful description of the Time Lords as being like a steady rock in the middle of a river, around which the rest of the universe flows; the consequence of the removal of this 'rock' being complete chaos.

This novel takes Doctor Who about as far away from science fiction as it can go. Like Survival, it is all about the mysticism of female sexuality and menstrual cycles, hence the suggestion that the Doctor's success in 'summoning' his companions resulted from the fact that the prostitutes in the brothel were in their period. The Doctor had initially planned to marry a teenager called Juliette as there was power tied up in her virginity. His plans of course changed and he eventually marries Scarlette. It seems to be the case that the loss of the Time Lords has resulted in the universe becoming more chaotic, allowing magical and irrational forces to take root. In this world, the Doctor is a force of good and order, yet at the same time a sort of god and his companions spiritual beings themselves. Miles does an absolutely fantastic job of portraying the Doctor in this way. In this story he must turn his back on the old order of Time Lord dominance and unite his elemental power with humanity through marriage to a human woman.

The magical arrival of Fitz and Anji is the most enjoyable moment of the book. They just appear out of nowhere and are at once taken by the inhabitants of the brothel to be elemental spirits. Like the Terminator, they arrive stark naked which adds to the amusement of this scene. Despite their glorious arrival, Fitz and Anji get almost nothing to do in the book. Fitz offers some welcome comic relief and Anji gets to do some sulking and complaining. Miles is on record for his dislike of the character of Anji, but he does alright writing for her in this book.

The monstrous apes are really disturbing. They are summoned through Tantric rituals, which seems to connect them to the sensual side of human nature. The way they appear everywhere is very similar to the Sphinxes in Dead Romance. The Kingdom of the Beasts to which they belong is a really creepy place. There is a very Lovecraftian feel to this side of the book.

The Master appears in this book, in the form of the Man with the Rosette. He makes a very clever comment about how the universe has changed so that his struggle to the death against the Doctor is no longer significant at all. On the subject of rosettes, one minor quibble I have is with the politics of the period. The Whigs are identified in this book as defenders of democracy. While the Whigs were closer to this than the Tories, I don't think they would have seen their ideology in exactly those terms. They would probably have seen themselves as the defenders of Parliament and Protestantism, but not democracy as such.

This is a novel that does some really radical things. As with other Lawrence Miles books, it is not so much interesting for the story itself as it is for the way it presents and develops the Doctor Who cosmos. Like every other book by this author (except perhaps This Town Will Never Let Us Go) it is about grand cosmic themes. It's not his best written or most enjoyable novel, but it is one the most daring.

The Crusade

2011-10-29T04:30:00.000-07:00

The novelisation of this story, Dr. Who and the Crusaders was in my school library. I really enjoyed reading it at the age of ten, though it was a little more difficult to understand than other Target novels, for instance The Horns of Nimon. As with so many children, a story about knights had instant appeal. The novelisation contained an interesting piece of dialogue, in which the Doctor explained that the TARDIS crew can never change history. Once they land, they are instantly involved in the flow of history. This is how I understand time in Doctor Who. Whatever planet the TARDIS lands on, it's crew don't work against history but perform their allotted role. So when the Doctor goes to Terra Alpha, in The Happiness Patrol, he does not alter history by overthrowing Helen A. The downfall of Helen A was a part of history, the Doctor simply took his place in the tide of history and brought it about. This does not mean that there is no free-will. The Doctor's knowledge of the future is not exhaustive, so he simply does what seems right in the situation, knowing that history will play itself out. That's not how most fans and Doctor Who writers view history in Doctor Who, but I think this makes sense of a lot of stories. As regards The Crusade, if history were not immutable, then the Doctor would surely have been concerned that his involvement in the politics of the court of Richard the Lionheart could alter history. However, he knows that history is immutable and so nothing he does will alter the outcome of history.

Anyway, enough about that. What about the televised serial?

If any story deserved to survive the great wipe-out, The Crusade definitely did. Possibly of all the lost episodes, I think I would most like to see the episodes 2 and 4 of this one rediscovered. The two surviving episodes of this serial reveal just how strong it was, both visually and in the performances. Douglas Camfield is rightly regarded as one of the greatest of Doctor Who directors and in The Crusade he is at his strongest. The Crusade does not attempt to mimic a big movie production, instead what we get is a very theatrical, stagey production that relies on first class acting and exquisite dialogue. It's a very 'talky' story (which is why the audio recordings of the lost episodes work so well without narration), but with such a superb script this works fine. The Crusade tries to hard to be a Shakespeare play and succeeds.

I am a fan who rather likes The Web Planet, yet even I will admit the enormous contrast in quality between this serial and the story prior to it. Perhaps the comparison is not altogether fair. The Crusade was working with familiar historical territory and had access to stock costumes, while The Web Planet required the realisation of an utterly alien world from scratch. Yet one can imagine that Douglas Camfield would have injected some much stronger direction into that serial. The Web Planet suffers not just from the difficulties of realisation, but also from some very clumsy scenes and rather lacklustre performances (though I will always love Roslyn De Winter's plummy voice!).

The Crusade has some remarkably adult features. The regulars are put through some quite terrifying experiences! It's quite disturbing to see Barbara threatened with rape and torture. It must have been quite traumatic for her, having one bloke after another wanting to molest her. It's interesting that younger companions in Doctor Who are never faced with the same level of physical violence that Barbara was so often faced with. One cannot imagine Jo Grant or Zoe ever being threatened with rape. I suppose this is due to those characters being child-identification figures. Maybe the loss of a mature companion, along with the historicals resulted in a certain lack of realism in Doctor Who.

While the villain is an Arab and the Doctor, Ian and Vicky join with the Crusaders, the story avoids taking sides. Richard the Lionheart is not portrayed as a saint and Saladin is given a sympathetic treatment. The Crusades genuinely come across in this serial as the brutal affair that they were.

Together, Julian Glover as Richard and Jean Marsh as Joanna give an absolutely brilliant performance. There is a real subtlety to their work and there is a definite hint of incest in their brother and sister relationship. Odd that Jean Marsh would go on to play Morgaine who also had a dodgy relationship with her brother. The regulars also give some great performances, especially Hartnell, who delivers his delightful lines with such passion. Jacqueline Hill is just so adorable. Perhaps Ian's part in the story is a little dull. Ian does come across here, even more so than other stories, as a bit of a square-jawed hero type.

I have no doubt that if The Crusade were recovered it would go down as one of the greatest of Doctor Who stories.

Down, by Lawrence Miles (Bernice Summerfield novel)

2011-10-28T03:47:00.000-07:00

Despite loving the Virgin Doctor Who novels, I really dislike Bernice Summerfield. She has always come across to me as too clever and confident, as well as horribly self-righteous. That tends to keep me from taking much interest in the vast range of Benny Summerfield spin-offs released by both Virgin and Big Finish. It does seem that unlike me, Lawrence Miles likes Benny. He writes well for her, though it did not make me like the character any more.

This is of course Lawrence Miles' second novel. He had not yet become the legend that we know. In Down we see Miles' enthusiasm for world-building, his love of deconstructing tropes, playfulness with language and flirtation with intellectual concepts. Yet he has not started his career of shaking fictional universes to the core and rebuilding them in twisted form. That would be seen in his second Benny novel, Dead Romance, which would be re-released as a supplement to the Faction Paradox series.

Down is not as accessible to the new reader as Dead Romance. Down is far more closely tied to the continuity of the other Bernice Summerfield books. In particular, Down is part of a story arc regarding a super-advanced race inhabiting a Dyson Sphere called 'The People.' The parts of the book that deal with this arc are perhaps the least interesting aspect of the novel.

Down offers two likable supporting characters in the persons of Benny's two student's, Ash and Lucretia. While these are great creations, I don't get reviewers who say that Miles' other books lack interesting characters. Christina Summerfield in Dead Romance is just as strong, as is Homunculette in Alien Bodies. The action hero Mr Misnomer is amusing, particular in his discussion of his own character guidance notes! I am not at all keen on comedy Nazis, but Miles a reasonably good job with the Neo-Nazi character Katastrophen.

Unusually for a Miles novel, this is an action adventure. Of course, it is all a big send-up of all the cliches and tropes of pulp science fiction and fantasy. We get a hollow planet inhabited by an ecosystem with Dinosaurs, ape men and Yetis. I am a little reminded of Terry Pratchett's books. It has the humour, the playfulness with language, the mocking of tropes, the likable characters and the hard science fiction concepts. Like Terry Pratchett books it all gets a bit confusing towards the end.

As with all Miles books, there is a strong postmodern streak running through the narrative. Much of the story is told through the recollections of Benny as she is interrogated. Given the inconsistencies in the story and the impossibility of her having access to the interior thoughts of the other characters described there is a huge question over the reliability of the whole story. We are even give the perspective of a criminal psychologist who offers his commentary on Benny's account. Alongside the usual postmodern literary theory on display, Miles' favorite intellectual concept in this novel seems to be Jung's theory of Archetypes.

I like the handling of the subject of transmat technology, with Lucretia's conviction that she dies during the process of molecular dispersal. Miles makes a brilliant statement:

"The machines could easily copy you without killing the original, but they were programed to slaughter you first, because the hardware companies didn't want to rock the economy by letting people know you could produce exact copies of valuable objects out of thin air."

I have never found the idea of matter transporter technology very believable, mainly because the idea that you can create an entire living, breathing, conscious human being. Even if the same matter is used the process of putting all the parts together must be impossible. If you can do that, you can do anything. You could instantly manufacture any piece of machinery, no matter how complex. Hunger would no longer be a problem as you could produce entire herds of livestock. Species would no longer become extinct, because you could always replicate new members of the species. I know they have replicators in Star Trek, yet the characters always complain that replicator food does not taste the same as real food. If Worf or Picard coming out of the transporter is the same as the Worf or Picard that went into it, they could surely replicate food that tastes exactly like the original.

Down is not one of Lawrence Miles' grand cosmic operas, but it is a deep and intelligent novel.

The Underwater Menace

2011-10-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

"Blimey! Look at him! He ain't normal!"

Animated recon courtesy of DrWhoAnimator.

I read the novelization of this when I was nine or ten years old. It was the hardback edition from WH Allen. The local library had a whole collection of these hardback Doctor Who novels with beautiful covers. It made a huge impression on me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Many years later I was to discover that The Underwater Menace is considered one of the worst Doctor Who serials ever, a reputation which I think is entirely undeserved.

Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood point out in About Time that this is the Doctor Who story that comes closest to what was going on in the 60s TV Comic strip, with lots of insane plots, a cranky Second Doctor and mad scientists. The resemblance is even stronger when we notice that the Doctor signs his name as Dr. W, providing yet more confirmation that he really is called Dr. Who. Perhaps my affection for the TV Comic helps to make me sympathetic to this story or just my fond memories of the Target novel.

In many ways The Underwater Menace is cartoonish and silly. It's plot is utterly ludicrous, it has many derivative elements and the most outrageous mad scientist ever. Yet so much science fiction really is like this. You can find elements of this story in Jules Vernes and H. Rider Haggard. There are plenty of B-Movies that are pretty similar to this serial, the sort they always show at 2:00 PM. I really do not see how The Underwater Menace is really all that sillier than Invasion of the Dinosaurs (possibly the most bonkers Doctor Who plot ever) or even The Green Death (toxic sludge that makes maggots become bullet proof).

The plot is full of holes and is a bit of a runaround, with lots of getting captured and escaping again (hardly unique in Doctor Who). It is full of action, however. It is not a story that will send one to sleep. It's difficult to judge the quality of the final scenes of Atlantis being flooded, but you can't fault the ambition displayed. The surviving episode reveals some really horrible direction and some appallingly sloppy fight scenes. On the other hand, the scene at the end of episode one, with Polly menaced by surgeons about to turn her into a Fish Person is quite chilling and effective.

It might be supposed that the Fish People have been thrown in just because somebody thought the story needed a monster. They are, however, quite interesting visually, especially with their balletic swimming. The concept behind them is very reminiscent of the Cybermen, as is their appearance. The notion of being surgically altered is quite a frightening one and is captured quite well here.

It is not just the Fish People that look good; most of the sets are very well designed, despite being pathetically small. There is a real sense of a distinct and alien world, a bit like what we got in Gerry Anderson's Stingray show. The costumes are also very creative and make a strong visual impact. Polly looks glorious after replacing her hospital gown with an Atlantean seashell dress! The musical score is also very atmospheric, with the spooky organ music giving it a really dark mood.

Professor Zaroff is certainly the most bonkers of bonkers Teutonic scientists. Can anyone believe that somebody would attempt to destroy the world just for the sake of doing it? You might have thought that turning people into fish was a big enough achievement in itself. It is as though a character from a children's' cartoon had suddenly been given an extra dimension. That said, he is awfully entertaining. You can't watch it without all joining in with the immortal line "Nothink in ze vurld can stop me now!" It's not like we haven't recently seen any motiveless camp villains on Doctor Who recently. Anybody who dismisses The Underwater Menace while praising episodes featuring the eyepatch-wearing Kovarian is an hypocrite. The servant girl Ara, played by Catherine Howe, was a pretty good non-regular character. She had the potential to become a companion (probably a better one than Victoria), though with three companions on the TARDIS at this point that was not going to happen.

Troughton is great as Dr. Who in this story. He is so wild and eccentric and he looks hilarious in his gypsy outfit. I really wish writers had continued to have Dr. Who dressing up in disguises as the Second Doctor was prone to do at this stage. There is something delightfully anarchic about the Second Doctor in Season 4 that was lost in the next two seasons.

Ben is fantastic in this story, along with The Macra Terror (where he becomes a Daily Mail reading fascist) he is at his best. Polly does not fare so well and does an awful lot of whimpering. It's remarkable how Polly alternates so frequently between being plucky and resourceful to being completely pathetic. Still, being threatened with monstrous surgery must be pretty traumatic. Jamie fails to make much impact in his first story as companion proper, but it's always tricky for writers to manage three companions.

Anybody who likes Indiana Jones or James Bond films ought to be able to recognise the entertainment value of The Underwater Menace. To my mind this is much more fun than The Moonbase or The Ice Warriors. Season 4 is definitely the most interesting phase of the Troughton era. It is such a shame that fun stuff like this was replaced by routine stories about returning monsters and bases under siege.

The Smugglers

2011-10-22T07:25:00.000-07:00

The Doctor : "You are now travelling through time and space."

Ben : "Yes, well, make sure I get back by tea-time!"

Animated reconstruction courtesy of DrWhoAnimator.

Perhaps a good deal of charm in watching this story today is that they don't make anything resembling this these days. Historical adventures are pretty much a dead genre. There are historical dramas with lots of emotion and serious themes, but historical adventures with lots of swashbuckling, black-hearted villains and hidden treasure are a thing of the past. I have never actually seen any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but the impression I get is that they are more in the realm of fantasy than historical action adventure. Perhaps it is a little surprising that this jolly pirate story was followed in the same season by The Highlanders, which is essentially another pirate story. While this story is on the surface a more light-hearted story than The Highlanders, it is apparent that the Troughton story is treated as more of a comedy, particularly in the lead actor's performance. While The Highlanders is enjoyable, the comedy feels out of place in such a dark story, while in The Smugglers, is able to tell an exciting adventure, not quite a comedy, but with a keen sense of fun.

The most obvious difference between The Smugglers and The Highlanders is that the latter provides a swashbuckling pirate adventure that arises from its historical setting, while the former makes no real use of it's historical location (other than the frequency of smuggling in that era). The Smugglers would not have looked out of place in the Colin Baker, with a change of setting to a far future space colony and the pirates as thuggish Sawardian types. It has to be said that the 17th century offers an awful lot of missed potential for historical stories, with events like the Civil War, the Monmouth Rebellion and the Glorious Revolution. One of the really sad things today is the lack of awareness of this period. Our schools teach kids about the Nazis and Henry VIII, but seem to miss out on this much more fascinating period of English history. Likewise film and television producers are fixated with the Tudors and seem to forget about the far more interesting Stuarts.

Obviously we don't know quite what this looked like, as no episodes survive. Nevertheless, given the BBC's talent for producing great historical drama, we can imagine that this looked quite fantastic. Judging from the audio recordings, most of the performances are pretty impressive.

This is the first story with Ben and Polly as companions proper. I love the way that the Doctor explodes with rage when he finds them aboard; there is something adorable about the way the Furst Doctor lost his temper. After they have left the TARDIS it becomes clear that he is coming to accept the arrival of young strays as routine.

Ben and Polly are a glorious companion team. It's tragic that they have only one completed story in the archives. Ben is tough and heroic, but not in the rather stiff Dan Dare mode of Ian Chesterton. As much as I love the original TARDIS team of Season 1, the cockney sailor is a good deal more fun than Ian. Polly is simply delightful. Her Received Pronunciation makes her seem as though she is from another world. Oh for the days when middle class girls spoke properly! Regrettably, the writers were never very consistent in their portrayal of Polly, even within the same story. One moment she is bold, confident and resourceful; another moment she is whimpering at the sight of a rat, as she does here.

One difficulty of this story is how little Ben and Polly seem to take it seriously. They adjust remarkably easily to the realisation that they have been transported to the 17th century. Then when locked in a dungeon, having been accused of murder, Polly talks about how much fun she is having! We could look to the philosopher Baudrillard and say something very postmodern about this. We might suppose that if a person from the Sixties who was used to watching swashbuckling ITC historical adventures were to be transported to the 17th century and placed in the midst of vicious pirates, she might indeed treat this as only a virtual reality equivalent of what she was used to seeing on the television or in the cinema.

There is no complex characterisation here, but we do get a wonderful cast of characters, the vicious Cherub, Longbottom, the creepy church warden, the corrupt squire and the remarkably heroic taxman, Blake. These people are so colourful!

This is not deep and educational like The Massacre or full of emotional drama like The Aztecs, but it is a wonderfully fun escapist adventure story. I doubt that any future Doctor Who producer will ever make anything like this.

Gallifrey: Weapon of Choice (Big Finish Audio)

2011-10-21T04:07:00.000-07:00

In his infamous 2002 interview, Lawrence Miles said of Big Finish:

"SOME HAVE SEEN THE NEW RANGE OF BIG FINISH AUDIOS AS THE RETURN OF REAL DOCTOR WHO". Yeah, sure. Never mind the fact that some of us have been doing everything we can to build up a next generation fanbase. Just get a couple of has-been character actors to do the voices, and suddenly that's real. For f**k's sake... When Doctor Who finally dies... and it will die, because now the newcomers are going to start turning away again, and you're going to be left with this dwindling audience of fifty-year-olds who just buy the CDs because they've got Peter Davison's picture on the front...

For all the harshness of this comment, it does hit a certain truth. I'll admit I am a sucker who bought the first season of the Gallifrey spin-off just because it had Louise Jameson and Lalla Ward in it, not to mention Lynda Bellingham. The folks that created Big Finish are smart people; they realise how much we fans love these 'has-been character actors' and they are making capital of this pool of human resources. Just yesterday I went into ecstasy with excitement on hearing about the forthcoming Big Finish spin-off, Counter-Measures. Just the thought of hearing Pamela Salem reprising her role as the delightful Rachel Jensen made me giddy. It is incredible that there are people like me who will shell out fifty quid just to hear a bunch of obscure actors reprising roles from just one story broadcast over twenty years ago.

So it's got Louise Jameson and Lalla Ward in it, but is it actually any good?

A series about Time Lords on Gallifrey is an obvious option for a Doctor Who spin-off series, but that does not mean it is a good idea. In 2004, Doctor Who writers really ought to have learned to move past this sort of thing. Stories like Invasion of Time (as story for which I have a degree of fondness) and Arc of Infinity killed the Time Lords. The idea of the Time Lords as gods of history is a fascinating one, but it is an idea that cannot easily be presented on television. Hence stories about the Time Lords ended up being about a rather mundane society of bureaucrats and technologically advanced Oxford dons. The BBC books and our beloved Lawrence Miles helped to correct this and restored a sense of awe and wonder to the Time Lords. The writers of the Gallifrey series have not learned from this development in the slightest and what we get in Weapon of Choice is a political thriller set in a technologically advanced society. Potentially entertaining, but yet another nail in the coffin of the idea of the Time Lords as an ethereal race of beings who uphold the universe.

The intrigue of Weapon of Choice revolves around a weapon called a Timonic Fusion Device. It's basically just a big bomb that blows up time, barely a step away from the Daleks' 'Time Destructor.' The Book of the War in the Faction Paradox range revealed all kinds of surreal conceptual weapons used by the Time Lords, sorry Great Houses, and their opponents. The Timonic Fusion Device just feels like any old Doctor Who McGuffin.

The plot of Weapon of Choice is quite complex. I listened to Weapon of Choice late in the evening before going to bed. This did not help me to make sense of the complex plot, but I found it extraordinarily relaxing to have it on and just let the atmosphere wash over me. I listened to the rest of the Gallifrey Season 1 this way. These audios are absolutely great for nodding off to.

One obvious question is how old Leela is at this time. Taking into account other aspects of Doctor Who continuity, considerable time must have passed between Invasion of Time and Romana's presidency. Is she being kept alive artificially using Time Lord technology? This question becomes even more pressing in the next story when Leela becomes an exotic dancer!

For all the deficiencies of this story, the cast are absolutely great and make it worth listening to. I had not heard Irving Braxiatel in the Bernice Summerfield audios, but he certainly is great here, mysterious, a bit self-serving and manipulative but quite decent at heart(s).

Weapon of Choice has contemporary relevance in its concern for issues of refugees and asylum seekers. The Enclave of Gryben captures the misery of places inhabited by people stuck in transition. I also love the Gallifrey theme tune. This story may have similarities to American science fiction shows like Star Trek, but the cool, industrial-sounding theme tune indicates that we are in a different league.

If you want something relaxing to listen to before you go to sleep, Weapon of Choice and the rest of the first season of Gallifrey is worth buying.

The Savages

2011-10-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

Animated recon courtesy of DrWhoAnimator.

It would not be unfair to call The Savages a rather obscure story. No episodes exist in the archive and unlike some missing stories, such as Marco Polo or The Massacre, it has no great reputation. Perhaps its lack of a monster has caused it to drop from the collective memory of fandom. Its main significance is seen to lie in the departure of Steven.

Doctor Who began in An Unearthly Child with a story about cavemen. Here we get another First Doctor story featuring cave people, yet the change in the Doctor's attitude and values is enormous. Back in his first adventure, he showed complete contempt for the lives of the primitive humans he encountered. Here he values the savage humans as equals and is outraged by the injustices perpetrated against them. It is great to listen to the Doctor's condemnation of Jano's regime.

This is the First Doctor's third visit to the very far future, the others being The Web Planet (humanity has made its presence known in another galaxy) and The Ark. The Hartnell era seems particularly suited to dealing with the very far future, as it gave these stories a somewhat ethereal, dreamy atmosphere. We are no longer in the era of spaceships and robots, but an era in which humanity is living on an altogether, higher almost mythic plane of existence.

Delightfully, this is a story in which nobody dies. Sadly, there are altogether too many Doctor Who stories with high body counts. There is something ugly about the way writers would inject large numbers of onscreen deaths into stories. Despite the sadness of Steven's departure, the ending of The Savages is very upbeat and positive. There is the promise of peace and new hopes. Like The Ark, two groups previously hostile are forced to come together and live with each other. other. It is remarkable how little we see of this in later stories. In future, the villains would tend to die grisly deaths and the monsters would all be blown up. This Doctor is not fighting against terrible things that have bred in dark corners, but is knocking together the heads of warring parties and teaching them a better way.

For the first time, we see the Doctor acquiring a reputation outside of his own people. The inhabitants of the city know of the Doctor's travels, though not his name. This is quite interesting in terms of background. The Elders seem unaware that the Doctor would be against their activities, so it suggests that the Doctor had been travelling in this time before he was joined by Susan, before he called himself the Doctor and before his attitude mellowed in Season 1. Contrary to this notion, we are told in Carnival of Monsters that the Doctor had campaigned against miniscopes before his travels, a fact that sits awkwardly with the coolness of the Doctor in Season 1. I like to imagine that the youthful Doctor went on his crusade against miniscopes to impress a girl.

One thing that makes little sense is the lack of concern by the Elders about the welfare of the Savages. I know that the Elders think the Savages are subhuman scum, but they do depend on them to propel their civilization. Given the way the Savages are treated, their is the possibility that these people could end up dying out in the wilderness. I would have expected the Elders to show more concern about maintaining their feeding stock.

As with An Unearthly Child, we get a cave girl skipping about in her bare feet. As I have suggested before, it would have been more realistic for Leela to have gone barefoot. Even in the Middle Ages, Leela's boots would have stood out as exceptionally well made.

It's hard to judge the quality of The Savages by what is left of it, but I would have been happier had Doctor Who writers had stuck more closely to the values and spirit of this story. You don't need a scary monster to make a beautiful science fantasy story.

Faction Paradox: Of the City of the Saved..., by Philip Purser-Hallard

2011-10-15T03:16:00.000-07:00

The City of the Saved is a vast city the size of a spiral galaxy. It exists in a pocket universe situated after the destruction of this universe. Its vast population is made up of the resurrected bodies of every human being that has ever lived. Obviously, this is massive high concept science fiction.

A lot of fans who read Faction Paradox: The Book of the War hated the idea of the City of the Saved, as it smacked of a religious notion of an afterlife. This is actually deceptive. As somebody points out in an introductory chapter to Of the City of the Saved..., the word 'saved' can have the meaning of data being restored onto a computer. It is a delicious play on words. Their is an ambiguity as to whether the resurrected humans are the genuine persons they pertain to be or manufactured facsimiles.

I am an evangelical Christian who believes in the resurrection of believers to eternal life and the unbelieving to eternal destruction, so naturally a novel about life after a sort of secular resurrection was of great interest to me. I have heard preachers say that if God were to let sinners into heaven, they would spoil the place. Reading Of the City of the Saved... certainly confirmed this idea in my mind. The City of the Saved might be inhabited by immortal resurrected humans, but it is certainly not the heavenly New Jerusalem. On the contrary, it is a hive of scum and villainy. The resurrected humans have brought with them every shade of depravity and nastiness of this life with them. The City of the Saved is a dystopia, with poverty, organised crime, prostitution, drug addiction and every thing else that makes life miserable, with the only difference being the inability of the city's inhabitants to harm or kill each other.

Having enjoyed This Town will Never Let Us Go enormously, I found myself wishing that Of the City of the Saved... was a Lawrence Miles book. Purser-Hallard does not quite have Miles' talent for entertaining high concept madness. I found it a little dense and a bit too violent for my taste in places. Compassion did not come across as that interesting a character, being another one of those moody, 'don't mess with me on a bad day' detective types. As with the 8th Doctor books, Compassion never quite lives up to her potential. At least in the 8th Doctor books, her abrasiveness was contrasted with the mild-mannered Doctor and the easy going Fitz. Without them she seems just a little uninteresting.

Nevertheless, this novel is not without some nice touches. Purser-Hallard's complex prose does a wonderful job of juxtaposing a surreal, dream-like atmosphere with the harshness and gritty realism of an urban environment. Of the City of the Saved... is an incredible experiment in world-building and the writer definitely manages to pull it off. The author wisely avoids the cliche of populating his afterlife with famous historical figures. Instead we get a cast that is far more varied. We are given the impression that the majority of the inhabitants of the city are quite different people to you and I. This is a humanity that has diverged in countless different evolutionary directions. If humanity is to last for millions of years into the future, as is clear in the Doctor Who universe, we can expect those from distant eons into the future to outnumber those from the past.

I was a little disappointed by the explanation for the city's origins when it was revealed towards the end. Without giving it away, it is not that different to some things we have seen in the Virgin New Adventure books. It came across as just a little unoriginal. The talking statue was cool, however.

A Time Lord, sorry Houseworlder, appears in this novel. One of the great ideas of Lawrence Miles was to inject mystery into the Time Lords by keeping them at a distance. That worked so well that when we get a Time Lord in this book, there is a real sense of a nature that is alien and remote from humanity. We are far away from Invasion of Time/ Arc of Infinity territory. There are other references to Doctor Who in this book, the half-Androgum character is an especially nice touch.

Of the City of the Saved... is not the easiest of books to read and is a little grim in parts, but is not without some great ideas.

The Myth Makers

2011-10-10T06:51:00.000-07:00

"If you take notice of them, I think you'll find they're doing more talking than fighting."

Animated reconstruction courtesy of DrWhoAnimator.

To say that The Myth Makers is irreverent would be a bit of an understatement. This serial is a complete send-up of the ancient story of the fall of Troy. The heroes of the ancient legend are made into a laughing stock and to cap it all, it has the Doctor providing Odysseus with the plan of building a wooden horse. The Myth Makers is hilariously funny. It is blessed with one of the wittiest scripts in Doctor Who, with almost every line getting a laugh from me, especially the continued ridicule of Cassandra ("Oh go and feed the sacred snakes or something"). Comedy stories in Doctor Who are always a little problematic because you have to believe in the fictional world you are watching. If you can't take it seriously, you can't believe in it. Perhaps it is difficult to imagine both The Myth Makers and The Massacre taking place in the same universe, even if the two stories are separated by over two thousand years. Nevertheless, there is enough violence and brutality in this story to remind one that this is history, even if it is being handled in a less than serious fashion.

Cassandra, by Evelyn De Morgan

The non-regulars give some very enjoyable performances in this story, of particularly note is the cynical King Priam and the thuggish Odysseus. Everyone seems to be really enjoying the story. Perhaps the big letdown is Adrienne Hill as Katarina. For somebody who is about to be introduced as a companion, she makes no impact whatsoever.

The Doctor is used highly effectively in this story. Here he is ensnared by his own cleverness, pretending to be Zeus, then finding himself unable to prove his own credentials. His protracted rage against his captor and tormentor Odysseus is quite amusing. Steven also gets a few good moments, particularly his hilarious interplay with Paris.

Maureen O'Brien is especially strong in this story. I have never really liked her performances; there was always a sense that she was not taking the stories all that seriously. That this is a comedy enables her to offer a characteristically knowing performance. Her relationship with Troilus is not at all convincing and is a typically rushed Doctor Who romance, but I don't think it is meant to be taken all that seriously.

Interestingly, the Doctor has no concern that Vicky will be unable to communicate with Troilus after the departure of the TARDIS. This would indicate that, contrary to the BBC Wales series, the ability of the Doctor and companions to communicate with non-English speakers has nothing to do with any 'TARDIS translation circuit." It would seem that it is an almost supernatural ability that the Doctor bestows on his companions and is acquired permanently, not temporarily.

It is quite tragic that so little footage of The Myth Makers is available.

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve

2011-10-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

"And now, they're all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan. Or Vicki. And as for Barbara and Chatterton - Chesterton - they were all too impatient to get back to their own time. And now, Steven. Perhaps I should go home. Back to my own planet. But I can't... I can't..."

As with The Highlanders, I used the YouTube recon of DrWhoAnimator. These animations are not very good quality, but this person has gone to the trouble of animating all the lost stories, which deserves respect. So far 2Entertain have only given us one DVD featuring animated lost episodes, with one forthcoming.

If the producers of Doctor Who had continued to make serials like The Massacre into the Troughton era and beyond it is safe to say that the public image and reputation of Doctor Who would be completely different. It would not be thought of as a show about tinfoil or bubblewrap monsters, but a much more sophisticated and intelligent show. The Massacre is utterly removed from the silliness of the last two seasons, so far that it is practically a different show. In the unlikely event that Moffat or a future producer decided to make a proper historical, it would be very different to The Massacre. It would no doubt be set in a well known historical setting like the reign of Henry VIII and it would be a comedy.

The Massacre was made for a more historically literate generation than ours. Back then, a lot of school children would have been taught about the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve at school, instead of sitting through endless pointless lessons about the Third Reich. The Massacre assumes that its viewers have a certain basic knowledge of history and also presumes that they are willing to learn a good deal more. History is presented in its full depth and not treated as a Bill and Ted style theme park in the manner of the BBC Wales series. Of course, this means that the viewer has to make a bit of effort and concentrate when watching this serial. It is not easy to keep up to speed with the large cast of characters and the intricacies of the political machinations that are discussed in the dialogue. Clearly the writer of this story expected just a bit more from his audience.

The Huguenot on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, by Millais

The Massacre offers some serious historical drama with a lot of tension and excitement. It is also a Doctor-lite story. The Doctor remains absent for much of the story and we are left to wonder what he is up to. Could the Abbot of Amboise really be the Doctor in disguise? Often removing the Doctor from the action reinforces the power of the Doctor as a force. With the absence of the Doctor, Steven is driven to the centre of the action as a man bewildered, out of his time and hopelessly entangled in the complexities of a society he does not really understand. Peter Purves delivers a really powerful performance. While this is Peter Purves' story, Hartnell does not fail to impress. By taking on the extra role as the Abbot, he proves that he really could act. Perhaps it is a little disappointing that the Abbot did not get a few more scenes. What is interesting is how both the Doctor and the Abbot both make themselves absent from their associates and work behind the scenes. They are similar not only in their appearance, but in their mysterious roles in this serial.

This is one of the bleaker Doctor Who stories. Not only do we see the inescapable climax with the start of a massacre, but the unwillingness of the Doctor to interfere and to save one life. Yet Doctor Who should always offer some sense of hope or optimism, as with Curse of Fenric, where Ace's mother is saved from death as a baby. One of the failings, in my judgment, of Pyramids of Mars is the lack of any upbeat element in that story. In this story, we get the introduction of a bright and cheerful new companion (I know some fans dislike Dodo, but I think she is lovely) who offers the hope that she is descended from Anne Chaplet. There is the fan theory that Steven and Anne made love during this story and Dodo is in fact a descendant of Steven. This has a certain romantic appeal and should not be discarded, despite the obstacles that Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood point out in the About Time guide.

Like the cruelly maligned Warriors of the Deep, The Massacre is one of those stories that makes you curse the Doctor. The Hartnell Doctor was always a good deal less cuddly than other Doctors, but here the viewer is disturbed by his callous disregard for the safety of Anne. The Doctor is alien to us; it is always a mistake to get too comfortable with his character. The Doctor has seen many horrible and violent events in history; the death of one young woman will not trouble him in the way it troubles Steven. Yet after Steven's angry departure we are made to sympathize with the Doctor, left alone for the first time in the series.

The Massacre is significant in terms of continuity. As improbable as it might seem, the First Doctor stories in the TV Comic most likely take place during Steven's brief departure from the TARDIS. The Doctor tells us that he cannot go back to his own planet, so where does he go? I believe he goes to find his two other grandchildren, John and Gillian and before returning for Steven has a number of adventures with him, including battling Kleptons and meeting the Pied Piper and Santa Claus. Well I think they're canon, even if nobody else does.

As a Protestant Christian I see the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve as an important part of my heritage and am glad that Doctor Who used this as a source of inspiration. This is story is a brilliant example of just how sophisticated and intelligent Doctor Who could get.

The Highlanders

2011-10-08T06:37:00.000-07:00

I watched this animated recon of The Highlanders on YouTube. It's pretty poor animation, but it's better than staring at still photographs. The similarity to the Captain Pugwash cartoons is rather appropriate given that this is a pirate story.

I fondly remember reading the novelisation of The Highlanders when I was nine years old. Unlike Jamie, I liked Redcoats a lot, so it had natural appeal. A year later, I persuaded my parents to take me on holiday to Inverness, so I could see Culloden and Loch Ness (for Terror of the Zygons). I had a copy of Travel Without the TARDIS at the time (remember that book?).

It is unfortunate that so much Season 4 was lost because it is a much more interesting season than Seasons 5 and 6. At this point, the Troughton era had not yet turned into a routine of monsters and bases under siege. There is a diversity to this season that was entirely missing from the next, made up for only partially by the James Bond experiment of Enemy of the World. Making some more historicals in Seasons 5 and 6 would have injected some much needed variety into the Troughton era.

Rather than giving us a story about the battle of Culloden itself (which would have looked pretty awful with four Redcoats and four Highland rebels), The Highlanders serves up a good old-fashioned pirate story with swashbuckling and keelhauling. Everybody loves a jolly pirate story; it's perfect for light entertainment. The Highlanders delivers exactly the right mix of historical adventure and comedy. It is also a perfect story to showcase Troughton's broad range of acting ability by having him put on various disguises. It is rather a shame that the Doctor so rarely gets to operate like this, because it is quite hilarious. Of course, this is early Troughton, with him not quite settling on the persona that would see him through the next seasons, but he is a wild and anarchic figure who never fails to bewilder his opponents and entertain the viewer.

Both Ben and Polly are served well by this story. Ben is highly entertaining doing his cockney sailor routine amongst a bunch of Scots. This is perhaps Polly's strongest story, with her showing initiative and daring in capturing and blackmailing Ffinch. It is unfortunate that in other stories she is left to whimper at monsters or serve coffee. She has a great rapport with Kirsty. Kirsty is hilariously dumb and one actually sympathizes with Polly when she calls the girl a 'stupid peasant.' Polly's received pronunciation is quite delightful to listen to. Wouldn't it be nice if middle class girls spoke properly like her these days? According to a transcript, Polly has trouble running in her heeled shoes and kicks them off to go barefoot, like Romana 1 in Stones of Blood. You can't tell this from the audio or the photographs, so it might not be correct, though she did the same thing in the novel The Murder Game. Polly and Romana 1 are unusual companions in having footwear trouble. Tegan, Peri and Jo never had any trouble running or climbing in heels. The BBC Wales costume designers seem to be sensitive to this and always put female companions in sensible footwear (as well as some of the most boring and unimaginative costumes ever).

A lot of the guest cast slip into standard historical tropes and stereotypes, but that is what you expect in a light-hearted historical drama. With a pirate story, you need a wretched scurvy seadog captain like Trask and a gentlemanly officer figure like Ffinch. The production values for this story on the whole appear pretty high, with some enchanting location filming and studio sets that look pretty decent. It is tragic that this was the last proper historical, as it is a great example of the strengths of the genre.

Ice Cream with Howard, by Matthew Clarke (fan fiction)

2011-10-07T02:28:00.000-07:00

In the novel, The Taking of Planet 5, we learned that the Doctor had been friends with H.P. Lovecraft and had shared a mutual love of ice cream.

I decided that our Howard would have been friends with the Seventh Doctor, as he was the most American of the Doctors, with his fondness for jazz music, not to mention his habit of tangling with cosmic evil...

The origin of the Great Old Ones is taken from the novels Millennial Rites and All- Consuming Fire.

New York, 1917

The Doctor and Howard sat in an ice cream parlor, enjoying their frozen delights. The Doctor had left Mel on her own to go and explore New York. The young woman had been so excited at the prospect of seeing the city in the early twentieth century. The Doctor knew that his time with Mel was drawing to a close. He had fearful plans that needed to be set in motion and terrible evils to face. He would need to do these things without Mel. The red-haired young woman could never be a part of the darkness that was to engulf him in this regeneration.

Like Mel, Howard also seemed to be excited to be in the city. Who would have guessed that in later years he would come to despise New York so passionately?

The war was raging fiercely in Europe, but here in New York, life was giddy, gay and energetic, with the fruits of prosperity still in much abundance.

Howard was clearly loving his ice cream. The Doctor had introduced him to the delights of ice cream on his last visit. In this time, ice cream was not a domestic product, but a rare treat to be enjoyed on special occasions. It seemed ironic to the Doctor that the man loved a frozen delicacy so much given his hatred and terror of cold weather.

Howard scooped up another spoonful of vanilla ice cream, drenched in toffee sauce.

"Doctor, on your last visit, you spoke of beings called the Great Old Ones. Would you care to tell me a bit more about them?"

The Doctor looked thoughtful. So yet again history was taking it's shape around him. Time was so like a waterfall; once one entered into history, one was carried along with it's course. Howard was just beginning his writing career and now he was about to receive inspiration for so many of his writings. The Doctor had entered the history of American literature and now he was called to play his part in that history, shaping the direction of Howard's writing. He could tell Howard all about the Great Old Ones and inspire the man to write a whole series of stories. Alternatively, he could change the subject and talk about cats. Howard loved cats and so did the Doctor. It did not matter; Howard would go on to write Call of Cthulhu and At the Mountains of Madness whatever the Doctor said to him. You can't change history, not one line.

The Doctor decided to enlighten Howard.

"Howard, imagine, if you will, that somewhere in this universe that there are an whole race of gods. Not gods as you will read about in religions like Christianity, nor the kind of gods in ancient mythology, though the gods of Greek or Norse myth might be a little closer. Somewhere in this universe are a race who are true lords of time. These Time Lords were one of the first races to emerge in this universe. They were here when the universe was young, when it was filled with chaos."

"History owes it's birth to the Time Lords. They decided how the universe should work, what kind of life forms could be permitted to evolve and in what direction history should go. They are the true centre of time; it flows around them like water flowing around a great rock."

Howard interrupted. "Creatures that are mortal like us, yet which have achieved mastery over the cosmos?"

"Indeed," affirmed the Doctor. "You can compare them with Prometheus if you like, or Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. But suppose that this race encountered a race who had a better claim to be gods?"

The Doctor continued.

"You may think that the cosmos is everything, that the universe is the full extent of reality, yet in truth there are many universes. There are a multitude of cosmoses floating in the colossal sea of Ur-Cosmos. Before the birth of time and space, there was another cosmos. This universe was very different to ours, with physical laws utterly opposed to those of this one. Yet it had one similarity to ours; this universe had a race of beings who had lifted themselves to godhood and had gained mastery of time and space. The time lords of this universe were able to survive the death of their universe and enter into our cosmos at its very birth."

"Such beings would be seen as gods!" exclaimed Howard.

"As these beings were more ancient than our universe, they came to be called the Great Old Ones, beings older than the dawn of time. As you said, in this universe, they were like gods, with tremendous powers. As you might imagine, they came to be worshiped on countless worlds by mortals who understood little about their nature."

"Now the Time Lords were determined to be masters of this universe. History had to be ordered to their design. They believed that the cosmos needed to operate by fixed laws. The Old Ones, being from another universe and possessing powers not governed by physical laws were utterly abhorrent to the Time Lords. The Old Ones could be seen as nothing but a force of chaos and an obstacle to their ascendancy over time."

"The Time Lords and the Old Ones fought a terrible war, a war that lasted so long that it became known as the Eternal War. The Time Lords won this war, but after it was over they were utterly sickened by violence. They were determined never to fight again. They sealed and fortified their homeworld against the outside universe, making themselves an impregnable bulwark against the forces of change. In defeating the Old Ones, the Time Lords had enthroned themselves as the true gods of the universe."

Howard seemed absolutely fascinated.

"It reminds me of the myth of the Greek gods fighting their primordial war against the Titans," said Howard.

"Yes," agreed the Doctor. "Perhaps it is the origin of that myth. You could make the comparison in two different ways. You could view the Time Lords as the forces of order fighting against the Titans of chaos. Alternatively, you could view the Time Lords as upstart Titans fighting against the gods. Only these Titans won against the gods. It is all a lot like Wagner, the Supermen and the Giants and so forth."

"You must understand, Howard, that it was not just the Old Ones who fought against the Time Lords. There were other forces of chaos at work in the universe. The Time Lords had carried out incredible experiments in order to gain control of time. They created holes in the very fabric of the cosmos, allowing other things to enter in. The Yssgaroth were the most terrible of these, hideous winged serpent-like creatures from another universe. They swarmed through the universe creating vast armies of terrible giant bats and vampires. They bled whole worlds dry."

Howard shivered as the Doctor spoke of the horrors of the Great Vampires that the Time Lords had fought in the Eternal War.

"There was also the Hoothi, super-intelligent fungus that was able to animate whole armies of walking corpses. There was also the spider-like Racnoss. Never forget the Racnoss.."

Howard was clearly most fascinated by the Old Ones.

"Doctor, what happened to the Old Ones? Were they destroyed by the Time Lords?"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed.

"Oh no, they could not be destroyed so easily. They escaped into the darker places of the universe, biding their time for a return. The most terrible of them lies in the time-vortex, the barrier between dimensions. He is Nylarthotep, the crawling chaos. I have never faced him before and I dread the day that I do."

"There was also Yog-Sothoth, known as the Great Intelligence. He was the Old Ones' strategist. He used the most bizarre and complicated plots. I fought against him twice, though that's a couple of decades away."

Howard looked puzzled. The concept of time travel was still unfamiliar to him.

"Shub-Niggurath is dead. She died giving birth to a Thousand Young. This offspring became known as the Nestene Consciousness. They rule a great empire in the stars. The one called Cthulhu is already here on this planet, imprisoned in its depths. He was worshiped by the reptilian race that once ruled the Earth."

"Mankind was not the first intelligence in this world?" asked an amazed Howard.

"By no means, but that story is for another time," replied the Doctor. "Through time and space I have battled these entities. Entities like the Gods of Ragnorak, who delight in nothing so much as the destruction of life. They watched countless beings go to their deaths for their entertainment." The Doctor snarled with anger at the thought.

"Among the most evil of the Old Ones was Hastur the Unspeakable. Some people call him Fenric. I defeated him a long time ago and imprisoned him. I know that one day I will have to face him again. Hastur did some terrible things..."

At the mention of Hastur, the Doctor seemed to become even angrier, yet this receded into what appeared to be sadness. Howard realised that the Doctor had ventured onto a subject deeply personal to him, as though Hastur was connected to some tragedy in his past. Howard knew that it would be futile to question the Doctor regarding it. He had his secrets.

"There are many cults, even on this world, that adore the Old Ones," said the Doctor. "There have always been foolish men who would try to gain power through things they do not understand. Evil from before the dawn of time is not to be trifled with."

"Doctor, you speak of the Old Ones as being evil. Yet I wonder if such categories of good and evil are appropriate," said Howard. "I would imagine that such an ancient being, from another cosmos would be so powerful that it would be indifferent to human beings and be beyond morality."

"You think that ultimately morality has no cosmic significance?" asked the Doctor.

"No, I do not. I believe that there is no real meaning to this cosmos. Good and evil are merely human trifles. Humanity will pass away into nothingness as is the way of all things. There is no grand purpose in the universe," said Howard.

"I understand your belief, but I have travelled in time and space and I have come to see that a higher purpose can be found when you seek it out. Perhaps in time you will see that," said the Doctor.

"I rather doubt it," said Howard. "I must thank you , Doctor for this treat. It is wonderful to talk about the wonders of the universe over ice cream. The universe is becoming a larger place for me."

The Doctor smiled at Howard. He was saddened by his pessimistic attitude, but he understood perfectly why Howard felt that way. He had seen how dark and savage the cosmos really was. With such unfeasibly monstrous beings as the Old Ones and the Yssgaroth, who could fail to be horrified at the apparent chaos and bleakness? Yet while there was evil from before the dawn of time, there was also a power of good. For all the darkness of his pilgrimage, the Doctor had seen that power at work amongst those he travelled with and in the lives of those he helped. The universe was not so lacking in purpose as Howard believed.

The Wedding of River Song

2011-10-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

The First Doctor: You can't change history, my dear.

Barbara: Why not?

The First Doctor: Because this is a fixed point. If you change this, the entire universe will descend into chaos, with Romans frolicking with Pteradons and that irritating twit Churchill running everything.

Barbara: How can you know that?

The First Doctor: Because I'm the Doctor and I know everything. Do you need to ask?

(Taken from the unmade story "The Incas," written by Charles Dickens)

I was expecting this episode to be absolute garbage. It was, but my big surprise was how few surprises were thrown in and how predictable the whole thing was. It had all the banal trappings of a Moffat season finale, a roller-coaster ride of action, special effects wizardry, alternate timeline nonsense, an old monster thrown in for good measure and lots of references to previous Moffat stories to remind everyone that the man thinks he's George Lucas. More than this, the key puzzle elements that everyone was wrapped up in turned out to be rather obvious. It was a Teselecta robot that got killed. It was either going to be that or a Ganger. No surprise there. Even if you haven't watched the episode you don't need me to tell you what the big question was.

As for the big bad villainness, Lady Kovarian with the eyepatch, we still have no motivation or explanation about who she is or what she was up to. She is rather easily disposed of. Admittedly, this happens in an erased timeline, so perhaps we will see her again. I'm a little in two minds about Amy killing Kovarian in cold blood. It is frustrating when characters find it impossible to kill the villain, when in real life the truth is that people find it all too easy to kill in the heat of the moment. I have no problem with the Fourth Doctor blowing up the Graf Vynda-K or killing Solon with poison gas when necessity demanded it. It made a nice contrast with other heroes who would endanger everybody by refusing to kill at a crucial moment. But seeing Amy kill Kovarian when she was helpless was a bit nasty. Maybe I feel strongly because Kovarian is a woman. I am always disturbed by violence against women. At least she felt remorse over it later.

This whole thing about a fixed point in time is just silly. Why is one point in time fixed but not another? Given all the alterations to the timeline we have seen since decided to abandon the Hartnell era notion that history is fixed, it is odd that one small moment of the Doctor getting killed should throw all reality into chaos. It's like the whole universe revolves around the Doctor. As for a world in which all history happens at the same time, this is an impossible and absurd notion that has been used simply to justify impressive but ultimately unimaginative visuals. I'm really tired of these supercosmic stories in which the entire universe is re-booted. Having the entire universe destroyed and then re-created in The Big Bang was bad enough. The destruction of the universe has now become a rather banal concept.

What has happened to Alex Kingston's acting? Her performances were one of the few strong points of this series, but in this finale her performance was really lacklustre and unconvincing. I did predict that River Song would be killed off a while ago. I was wrong. I'm sure we will see some more of her. Perhaps the writers will get the chance to give her a personality, but I won't get my hopes up.

A lot of reviewers have heaped praise on the reference to the death of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, describing it as a 'beautiful tribute' to Nicholas Courtney. I thought it was painfully sentimental. Nicholas Courtney was a great actor and all of us fans have mourned his passing. However, a throwaway piece of dialogue to justify a stupid plot manoeuvre does not make for a fitting tribute. Besides the Doctor has lived for centuries. As alien as it may be for us, the death of one human being, no matter how close to him is probably not going to affect him so strongly. He may well have had news of the death of other people close to him such as Jo Grant, Dodo or Ben and Polly, or he at least knows they will die.

As for the question of who the Doctor is, just re-watch Silver Nemesis. Lady Peinforte made a big deal out of what an astounding secret the Doctor's name was, but was the Doctor bothered?

The Wedding of River Song is a predictably bad conclusion to really awful season. Who knows what will come next.

The Indestructible Man, by Simon Messingham ( BBC novel)

2011-09-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

The Indestructible Man is very much a novel that I am in two minds about. Simon Messingham does something very clever and innovative in this book, yet at the same time there are some things about it which I really do not like.

As with Sky Pirates! the cover picture is very misleading. Having read the blurb on the back and seen a smiling Zoe wearing a purple wig, we expect a light-hearted pastiche of Gerry Anderson's various shows. While there is an element of parody in the book, what we actually get is a complete deconstruction of the world in which those shows are set. Instead of being filled with fun and humour, we get one of the bleakest and most depressing novels ever. Messingham turns the world of Gerry Anderson into a dark, violence-filled nightmare. To an extent this is only a step from what we find in the Supermarionation shows. The war of nerves with an unknown enemy in Captain Scarlet is a terrifying premise and for all its goofiness, Stingray is a very militaristic show about a savage undersea war. There is enormous scope for writing dark, adult-orientated fan fiction about the Anderson shows.

Messingham creates a very convincing and detailed world in The Indestructible Man. This world is so brutal and bleak that it makes the future society of Transit seem like quite a nice place. Though I have to admit, with the recent economic problems, the world of Transit actually does not seem that much worse than the real world. For all its miseries it still had stable governments and a welfare state. The Indestructible Man presents a world that has descended into utter chaos.

Although Messingham references a lot of Troughton stories, when it comes to continuity, Messingham is a law unto himself. What we get in this novel simply cannot be harmonised with other Doctor Who novels set in this period. For instance, Messingham has Africa with a decimated population, while Aaronovitch in Transit has rising superpowers in several parts of Africa. The book is also difficult to tie with many televised stories, such as Warriors of the Deep. To cap it all, Messingham puts Wheel in Space in the 22nd century, after this novel. Not only does this ignore the strong arguments that Wheel is set in the 21st century, but it becomes absurd that Zoe has no awareness of any of the events mentioned in the story. This stuff really does bother me. I like to see Doctor Who as a consistent mythos and I don't like authors playing fast and loose with continuity.

It is somewhat frustrating that the book is filled with bitter, cynical characters. Practically every non-regular character is like this. It does remove a lot of colour from the novel. Grant Matthews, who is based on Captain Scarlet seems to be the only character who has any life or holds any interest. Though not a speaking character, Captain Taylor is brilliantly portrayed. A terrible zombie-like figure, he captures the grim demeanour of Captain Black in Anderson's show.

The Myloki are an intelligent creation. Like the Mysterons of Captain Scarlet, we learn little about them. This makes them much more interesting and terrifying than your average alien race. I must admit, throughout the book, I was looking for hints that they might be connected to some other alien race in Doctor Who. It seemed that the Doctor hinted this was the case. I was irritated by the last chapter with its dream sequence. The Virgin novels did dream-like realities to death. It felt rather cliched seeing one here, complete with deceased relatives.

Messingham has a habit of putting his characters through an awful lot of physical and emotional pain. Jamie and Zoe have a really horrible time in this book, undergoing serious psychological trauma. This contrasts massively with the happy-go-lucky child-like pair that we see in Season 6. It's something likely to bother traditionalist fans and possibly even me. I think it's pointless for past Doctor novels to simply recreate an era in print; it's good to do things that could not have been done on television with past TARDIS crews. On the other hand, I don't quite feel able to believe the level of trauma that Messingham inflicts upon Jamie and Zoe. It's a huge leap of credibility to believe that all this happened to the pair somewhere between The Invasion and The Krotons. These are experiences that make or break people. It's impossible to watch Seeds of Death and believe that Jamie and Zoe went through the trauma of The Indestructible Man. On the other hand, Zoe's thoughts about the friendship between herself, Jamie and the Doctor being indestructible is very touching.

I would definitely suggest that readers find a copy of this and have a go. It's a grim and depressing book, but it is quite innovative in its approach, though definitely not without problems.

Great Post from SPDK1

2011-09-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

An American View of British Science Fiction: Is Doctor Who Anti-Religious?

'Another motif that has clumsily popped up in Doctor Who a few times, and about 70 billion times in the original Star Trek, is the “people worship what they don’t understand” trope. In Star Trek we had the episode where the civilization worshipped the U.S. Constitution, The episode where the kids worshipped some guy in a mumu, the one where people worshipped a computer…and so on…Planet of Fire showed this when we find out that people are worshipping an empty spacesuit and the Face Of Evil did the same thing with an evil computer, there must have been a run on god-like evil computers somewhere.

These more-clumsy episodes paint religion as the total antithesis to science, something that uncivilized morons take part in. This is not the norm for the show however, as much of Doctor Who is a lot more “nice” with religious imagery and concepts, even bordering on painting the Doctor himself as a “space Jesus” of some sort. For me Meglos was simply a fluke, if anything Doctor Who teaches us that we should question authority when reasonable, something that actually chimes with my Gnostic worldview, does this mean that I feel that the show is made in that regard, NO, but just like many atheists I can see what I want as well.'

Are Invasion Stories Rubbish?

2011-09-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

I rather hastily suggested in a comment that Doctor Who invasion stories are mostly rubbish. Is that true? Let's have a look.

I'm only counting stories where an alien race seeks to take control of the Earth. That rules out The Dominators (not on Earth), The Dalek Invasion (Daleks already in control) and Remembrance of the Daleks (the Daleks aren't trying to conquer Earth).

I'm not bothering with any BBC Wales stories. Incomplete stories are left unrated.

The Tenth Planet- ?/?

The Cybermen are great, some of the acting is not so great and the Doctor is out of the action for most of the story.

The Moonbase- ?/?

A little too similar to The Tenth Planet for comfort.

The Faceless Ones- ?/?

Enjoyable despite the plot being a little over-padded.

The Invasion- ?/?

This one is pretty good. Nice introduction for UNIT, great direction from Douglas Camfield, great guest performance from Kevin Stony and great work from the regulars. The only problem is that the Cybermen are a bit rubbish.

The Seeds of Death- 9/10

A superb story with an interesting premise, beautiful direction and a strong script.

Spearhead from Space- 8/10

Things start to go wrong with the invasion theme in this story. Writers start to get attached to the notion of the invaders with the gimmicky infiltration tactic. This is a really nicely produced story, but the poor plotting shows the difficulties of the stealth invasion format.

Terror of the Autons- 5/10

This is when the rot really sets in. The invaders are basically relying on a series of gimmicky ways of killing people. It makes for a very uninteresting story.

The Claws of Axos- 6/10

I quite like this story. Visually great, but the plot is a bit of a mess.

The Sontaran Experiment- 2/10

Mercifully short.

Terror of the Zygons 8/10

A strong story with a genuinely menacing atmosphere despite the glove puppet Loch Ness Monster. Perhaps this story feels a little unoriginal and UNIT are not used all that effectively here.

The Android Invasion- 2/10

A really story. Utterly generic drivel from Terry Nation.

Horror of Fang Rock- 9/10

A triumph of amazing script writing over minimal budgets and time pressure.

The Visitation- 3/10

Some fans like this, but I hate it. Lots of running around and getting captured, plus yet another alien strategy involving bio-warfare.

Earthshock- 9/10

The Troughton era is recycled 80s style. Very enjoyable.

Conclusion

While my definition of 'invasion' is rather narrow, the shortness of this list does demonstrate that alien invasions are only a small part of the heritage of classic Doctor Who.

Clearly, there are both good and bad invasion stories. I do think that some of the poorer invasion stories are those that rely on a very generic format of infiltration by stealth.

Hilarious Comment

2011-09-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

An anonymous person posted this hilarious comment on my review of The God Complex:

I'll never cease to be amazed that there are Doctor Who fans who are both conservative and religious... The show has continually rallied against everything you stand for, and you seem to hate every new episode, and yet you still watch. I'm willing to bet you have quite a collection of whips and handcuffs hidden in your closet, because you just have to be a masochist.

Closing Time

2011-09-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

Yet another story built on the premise that a Yeti in a loo is a good idea. Unfortunately, it's a terrible idea. A Yeti in a loo is not scary; it just looks stupid. Likewise Cybermen in a department store look even more stupid. One of the consistent failings of this season has been the inability to recognise that if you want things to come across as scary and menacing, you have to tone down the comedy.

Closing Time gives us the return of the Cybermen. As with their last appearance, they are big clunky, stupid robotic things. At no point in the episode do they provide any sense of menace. If you thought the Cybermen being vulnerable to bullets in Attack of the Cybermen was annoying, just watch them being defeated by 'the power of love.' We also see the return of the Cybermats, who are equally silly.

James Corden also makes a return appearance. He is dreadfully annoying. A lot of reviewers point out the fact he has a lot of chemistry with Matt Smith. I don't care. He's not the sort of character I want Dr. Who to have chemistry with.

Moffat seems to be a bit obsessed with fatherhood. We get another story sentimentalizing fatherhood and its trials. It is starting to get a bit annoying. We don't have any exploration of motherhood to counter-balance it all; Amy's concern about her daughter is always fleeting and seems to be a bit half-hearted. Themes of fatherhood tend to point in a conservative direction and one can see a decidedly middle-class flavour to the Moffat producership. Doctor Who these days is no longer about people who are outsiders and on the fringes of society, like Ace and Dodo, but about middle-class people. Notice the Doctor's comments to baby Alfie about human life; he talks about mortgage payments and working 9-5. Middle class existence is now the default position for human life in Doctor Who. People who can't get mortgages are outside of the scope of the current series. At times it seems as though Moffat and Co. are singing from the same hymn sheet as David Cameron. I'm an active Conservative party member who believes our prime minister is a decent chap, but I'm not sure I like Doctor Who preaching the message of 'Broken Britain' and the 'Big Society.'

Having seen the departure of Amy and Rory last week, it was very irritating to see them making a cameo in the very next episode. It turns out that Amy has now found fame and fortune in the gold-paved capitalist wonderland that this show now celebrates. This is the same Amy who grew up without parents, was receiving psychiatric treatment and doing a job that would put her ouside of respectable society. The show seems to be out of touch with the realities faced by people outside of a comfortable middle-class existence.

The ending with Mrs Kovarian, the Eyepatch Lady is dreadful. I love camp, bitchy female villains, but this was the stuff of childrens' cartoons. There was also a clear lack of narrative development. There is no sense that the events relating to River Song are moving of themselves, but are being put into place according to script. We are practically being told "now this bit happens next."

It's nice to see Lynda Baron being used again, but it's a shame it is in such a terrible story. It is remarkable to see how much continuity has been brought up in this half of the series. Right at the beginning, we get the Smith referencing Troughton in The Five Doctors and later Tom Baker in Revenge of the Cybermen. This is only a week after we had a reference to the Nimon. As we know from many 80s stories, lots of continuity references do not make a bad story good.

You came to the right place

2011-09-24T06:39:00.000-07:00

Somebody came to this blog from Bing.com when searching for "unpopular opinions in Doctor Who fandom."

Terror of the Autons

2011-09-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

"I refuse to be worried by a renegade like the Master. He's an unimaginative plodder."

It is unfortunate that script editors in various eras of the show did not share the opinion expressed above. If they had, we would have been spared endless tedious stories about the Master coming up with yet more ludicrous and uninteresting schemes. As I have said before, giving the Doctor an evil opposite number was an all-round bad idea. It made for lazy script writing, it gave us really uninteresting stories like Time Flight and it removed any ambiguity from the Doctor's character by making him into the knight in shining armour.

While the Master is deeply enjoyable in Terror of the Autons, the problem with this character is apparent. He lacks any convincing motivation for his actions and his scheme seems half-thought out. The Doctor points out the flaw in his scheme at the end and he immediately changes sides. A lot more of this sort of thing was on its way.

This story marks big changes to the UNIT format- the change of the uniforms, the introduction of the hopelessly drippy Captain Yates and the transition of the Brigadier to comic opera buffoon. These changes were very much for the worse. The harsh and bleak realist vibe of Season Seven was squeezed out in favour of a much lighter tone, but without any reduction in the horribly high body counts. It began to look like Dad's Army, except with people actually getting killed.

The departure of Liz Shaw and her replacement by Jo Grant was also one of the changes introduced in this story. Liz Shaw was never well developed as a character and the miniskirts she was dressed in did not serve her well, nevertheless her departure is saddening. I am one of those that despise Jo Grant;s character. The way she comes across as so child-like is incredibly annoying.

The Third Doctor was arrogant in Season 7, but in this story he becomes particularly obnoxious. Particularly, as he is given a stupid young woman that he can constantly patronise. It also turns out that the Doctor is a patrician who attends private clubs with government ministers. I'm a Tory myself, but I don't particularly care for the Doctor being an establishment figure, regardless of my own politics. It has been suggested that Holmes did not really intend this to be the case; the Doctor was supposed to be making up that nonsense about knowing the minister, but Pertwee misunderstood this and played it as sincere.

Terror of the Autons is not blessed with a strong plot. It feels like a move from one set piece to another. The way it delights in one clever form of killing after another feels gimmicky. It is unfortunate that the creators of the BBC Wales series felt this was the way to do Doctor Who, hence such absurdities as robot Santas and Sat-Navs that kill people. It has been argued that there is a form of satire going on in Terror of the Autons, with the tastelessness of plastic consumer products being shown up. This would be rather more meaningful if it were people that bought plastic products being killed by them, but the plastic chair kills a man who thinks it looks tacky and the troll doll kills a man who thinks it looks hideous.

I'm not sure the Nestenes needed a return after Spearhead from Space. As I argued with regard to that story, the Nestenes don't quite feel believable. Everything about them seems tailored for invading Twentieth Century Britain. It is impossible to imagine the Nestenes having an existence independently of a UNIT story. They are a plot device for writing gimmicky stories.

On the positive side, Michael Wisher gives an impressive performance as the young factory director. His relationship with the charismatic Master is very well accomplished.

A lot of fans regard Terror of the Autons very highly, but I'm afraid it's really not my cup of tea.

The God Complex

2011-09-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

Another rubbish episode, another wave of positive reviews. Why do people like these awful stories so much?

A story about fears coming to life in a surreal nightmarish setting comes across as a bit rich so soon after Night Terrrors. I suppose these kind of stories are much cheaper to make than stories about alien worlds and space ships. The big problem with these kind of surrealistic,'virtual reality' stories is that you can't really believe in them. The terrifying things in the rooms have no capacity to terrify because you know they are not real. The God Complex tries really hard to be scary by throwing in as many stock scary images as possible, but we know what they are trying to do, so it doesen't work. It's all too knowing and all the humour that is thrown in runs counter to it. I pretty much said the same thing about Night Terrors.

The God Complex features some of the worst acting we have seen in the current series. The guest performances are just so dismal. It's a good job that Rita was not intended as a new companion. She would have been even more unbearable than Amy.

This episode takes influences from many past stories- Paradise Towers (the last Yellow Kang dying at the beginning), The Mind Robber, The Horns of Nimon and The Curse of Fenric. The last one is most significant because of the contrast between the two attempts at causing a companion to lose her faith. When the Seventh Doctor sneered at Ace's faults, we really did feel for a moment that he really meant it. It was cold and brutal. It felt right. I fail to see anything in what the Eleventh Doctor said to Amy that would cause her to lose her faith in him. With that awful Murray-Gold music in the background, he might as well have been saying "I'm the Doctor, believe in me!"

I hate comedy aliens. If you are going to create an alien race, why not create one which is believable and which is treated seriously? It's so annoying when an alien wear's contemporary western clothes and talks like somebody from modern Britain. As for his people's chances of survival, Daleks, Cybermen, Nimon and Dominators don't seem terribly merciful to the races they conquer, do they?

I did like the monster. It captured the bestiality of the Destroyer in Battlefield. Finding out that it was a distant cousin of the Nimon was cool. That rather torpedos the theory that the Nimon's immobile heads were helmets or masks. The idea that the creature wanted to die was a bit banal, however.

It was great to see the departure of Amy. Good riddance. though we can be sure that she will be back. Yet again, Amy and Rory don't seem terribly bothered about finding their daughter. I suppose the story arc is so bizarre that nobody really knows how to make it work.

I really don't get what people like so much about this episode. As for all the discussion about what was in the Doctor's room, has nobody watched The Mind of Evil? Don't they know the Doctor is terrified of Koquillion?

Morgaine Strip Searched (my fan fiction)

2011-09-14T01:39:00.000-07:00

Another story about Morgaine's perpetual imprisonment after Battlefield.

Ganymede Correctional Facility 2192

Vraxoin had been found in the prison. Vraxoin was of course the most dangerous drug known to humanity. Those who consumed it quickly became addicted, an addiction which invariably brought death. The discovery of Vraxoin in the prison was always a cause for alarm. Inmates were selected at random to have their cell, clothes and bodies searched for the substance.

This time Morgaine had been chosen to be searched. She had been taken to the dry room after guards had rifled through her cell and she stood before a guard. The guard was in her early twenties with dark skin. Probably of African descent, but as humanity spread into space, people were getting more and more racially mixed.

"Okay, Morgaine, time to strip off," said the guard.

Morgaine stepped out of her flip flops and removed her yellow inmate pyjamas.

Since she had been sent to Holloway prison in 1999, strip searches had become part of her life. After being Battle Queen of the Thirteen Worlds of the S'rax, it had been a new and humiliating experience for her, but she had grown used to it.

Morgaine held no embarassment about her naked body. She was proud of her muscular form and large breasts. When she had been queen of her realm, she had shared her bed chamber with her handmaidens and bathed with them in chrystal clear lakes. It had been death for any man who had dared to behold Morgaine bathing with her ladies.

In the prisons in which she had been held, they were civilized enough to have female guards carry out searches. Of course, plenty of female guards had taken pleasure in the experience. Morgaine knew she would have enjoyed it had the roles been reversed.

"I'm sending your clothes to the lab. I'll give you a new set of PJs when we're done," said the guard.

"Do you really think you are going to find drugs on me? In two centuries of captivity in this miserable cosmos, I have never used drugs. Is this really necessary, Miss?" asked Morgaine.

"Look, I don't decide who to search. We need to get on with this."

"Alright, Miss," the sorceress replied.

Morgaine did not hold a high opinion of prison guards. In her kingdom, the guards of her dungeons had been the lowest of the lowborn. In this world, it seemed that prison guards were also taken from the lower classes; men and women whose education was limited and for whom opportunities were few. The sorceress felt sorry for them at having been led into such an ignoble occupation. It seemed only fair that they should enjoy what little power they had.

The guard looked up and down Morgaine's body. She seemed somewhat disinterested in the way she looked at the prisoner. Morgaine suspected that the woman had little interest in female flesh.

In this century it was possible for bio-scanners to detect Vraxoin without clothing being removed. However, such scanners were not infallible. Vraxoin could be wrapped in material, mixed with undetectable chemicals or shoved deep into orifices.

The guard then began ruffling through Morgaine's long red hair. Her hair was very thick, so it took her some time.

"Your hair is lovely," said the guard.

"Thank you, Miss," the sorceress replied.

She then lifted one of Morgaine's legs and began looking through her toes.

"Open wide." The guard shone a small light into Morgaine's mouth.

"Okay, we need to go a bit deeper now," said the guard.

This was the bit Morgaine always hated. Having her lower regions examined was probably the worst part of being in prison. Did they do that in the dungeons back in her world? She had no idea. She had never bothered to find out how her dismal prison was run.

Morgaine had experienced a few sadistic guards who made intimate searches as uncomfortable as possible. Of course, she had also had experienced a few who made the experience pleasurable. Morgaine enjoyed the touch of other women when it was gentle.

This guard did not seem to care for this job much either. She got it done quickly.

"Okay, Morgaine. You're clean. Put these fresh pyjamas on and you can go back to your cell."

"Thank you, Miss," she replied gratefully.

Morgaine tried to imagine Merlin submitting to a full body search. She could not do it. Merlin would never have submitted to the indignity.

In her world, Merlin had been imprisoned in many a dungeon. Sometimes by her, sometimes by other lords. He had always escaped after a few minutes. He had even been imprisoned by one of the fairies once. He had no trouble escaping from imprisonment in Fairyland. She began to wonder whether his eternal imprisonment in the ice caves would really have lasted. She felt a certain regret that he would not be going through any intimate body searches in the ice caves.

Merlin lacked spirit. His character was weak. He was unable to stay imprisoned for five minutes while she had submitted to two centuries of imprisonment and humiliation. She could do what Merlin could never do. She would prove to him the depths of her humility.

The Girl Who Waited

2011-09-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

A lot of fan reviewers have made some odd comparisons with this story, referencing Paradise Towers and Happiness Patrol. It seems obvious to me that this episode looks to Warriors' Gate for inspiration. The story involves time jumping, has sinister robots, blank spaces and Gothic gardens and is not a little confusing. Of course, these similarities are purely superficial. The Girl Who Waited is a fundamentally different kind of story to Warriors' Gate. The most obvious difference is the lack of a guest cast. Warrior's Gate was a story about history, empires and slavery. The Girl Who Waited is fundamentally about the regulars and their relationships. To my mind, focusing on the regulars is a bad idea. Personally, I don't find them terribly interesting or enjoyable. Amy has no real personality or believability and is not a particularly nice person either. Rory is easier to like, but he is too wrapped around Amy to be interesting in himself. This particular Doctor has not been developed with any sophistication or care. The Girl Who Waited does not tell us anything new about Amy and Rory; we are just reminded yet again that they really love each other, which we already knew. Rather problematically, neither of them mention their daughter in this episode. These story arcs might be stupid, but using them and forgetting about them for an episode is even worse. Surely Amy's daughter is going to have some relevance to her actions regarding being stuck in the quarantine facility?

While Karen Gillen's performance is impressive in two roles, the older Amy does not convince on a visual level. A woman who has spent the last 36 years struggling to stay alive would be a good deal slimmer than what we see. This detail is especially odd given that she appears to be wearing the same trousers. She also has her hair at the same length and her boots have not worn out despite doing a lot of running and jumping. Her bitter attitude is also odd given that the same thing happened to Rory in The Doctor's Wife and he had previously waited 2000 years for her.

It must be said that this story is the sort of thing that happens nearly all the time in shows like SG-1 and Star Trek: Voyager. The problem with a regular character like Amy becoming old is you know that it won't last beyond the episode. There will always be a reset before the end. Of course, they make it complicated by putting the two Amies together, but we all know the old Amy is a red shirt. Her death is absolutely no surprise. Whatever emotion the episode tries to generate is blocked by our awareness that we have seen this scenario before in American shows where it always gets resolved before the end credits.

It's a bit tiresome to see yet another story about divergent time streams. Given that past Doctor Who stories have avoided temporal complexities, it just seems odd that we are getting so much of this now. The show has never shown a consistent approach to how time works and what we see in this episode sits uncomfortably with the temporal mechanics of other stories. There is a school of thought amonst fans that holds that if time is altered, a parallel universe is created and so if young Amy is freed, old Amy would not cease to exist, but would remain trapped. Evidently the writer does not take this view. My own view is that history is generally immutable in Doctor Who. I am thus very uncomfortable with seeing time re-written as in this episode. If the Doctor can save Amy from being trapped for 36 years, why can't he save Katarina or Adric from death? Using time travel to solve problems just makes everything too easy.

On the positive side, it was nice to see Dr. Who being harsh, ruthless and manipulative, but it is unfortunate that in other stories his character has been less effectively handled. The Girl Who Waited has received many postive reviews and I think it does come close in places to being a good story, but on the whole it left me unimpressed.

Sky Pirates! by Dave Stone (Virgin New Adventure)

2011-09-09T05:58:00.000-07:00

Leaving aside the Seventh Doctor's apparent resemblance to Ken Dodd, the cover of Sky Pirates! is very misleading, as is the blurb on the back. Sky Pirates! holds out the promise of a light-hearted and funny adventure about pirates. While the book is filled with humour, it is actually a really dark, bleak book about genocide, with very creepy pirates, hideous monsters and some of the most graphic violence and gore in Doctor Who.

The influence of Terry Pratchett on Dave Stone's writing style is very apparent. There is a clear difference in tone, however. Pratchett's novels contain a lot of cynicism, but they still have a warm, gentle fondness for humanity. Sky Pirates! takes a much bleaker view of life, with much less likable characters, even if it does highlight how people in the most miserable situations thrive on hope.A definite similarity to Pratchett is the way everything becomes a bit chaotic and confusing somewhere after the halfway point; the difference being that Stone's novel is pretty confusing throughout. The style is very verbose and the dry humour can sometimes get in the way of understanding what is going on. Some of the endless footnotes become irritating and the silly appendices are pointless. Nevertheless, it does generate plenty of laughs here and there. It is one of the longest of the Virgin New Adventures. I think it could definitely have done with being edited down to size a bit.

The monstrous Sloathes are one of the novels' highlights. These monsters could comes across as rather generic shape-shifting slimeballs if written by anybody else, but Stone gives them a very colourful character.As a story about a parallel universe, Sky Pirates! is highly effective. It creates a vivid, but bizarre world long before you realise that it is not the normal universe. There is a real sense of location and history about the places and peoples in this novel. Dave Stone definitely shares Lawrence Miles' talent for world-building.

Chris and Roz had only just be introduced in the previous book, Original Sin. The author does a great job of helping the reader to get to know these characters better. Benny also does well out of this book, her relationship with the Doctor having matured considerably at this point.As regards the Doctor, Dave Stone provides the most shocking portrayal of the Doctor since Cat's Cradle: Warhead. If you hate the idea of the Doctor being a god-like figure, then you will hate this novel! Not only does the Doctor manipulate nearly everything that happens in the book, but he produces all kinds of objects from nowhere and his clothes in a pristine condition throughout. At the climax, he grows in size and becomes his other other self, a sort of cosmic being.

I found Sky Pirates! quite a difficult novel, but I certainly did find it enjoyable in places.

Night Terrors

2011-09-04T05:47:00.001-07:00

This is one of those Eleventh Doctor stories where reviewers are likely to bandy the words 'dark fairytale.' However, this story fails to really understand how fairy tales work. Most fairy tales are about how the young protagonist is isolated and alone, yet learns to be independent. Fairy tales are about the protagonist being empowered. While the protagonist may be assisted by a friendly gnome or a fairy (clearly the role intended for the Doctor), this assistance empowers the protagonist and in the case of Rumpelstiltskin, the fairy helper actually becomes the problem. Contrast this with George in Night Terrors- he is simply there to be rescued by the Doctor and in the end is saved by the love of his adopted father. Protagonists in fairy tales usually don't have a father who is around to save them; they have to learn to rely on themselves. I don't think Night Terrors (or any other Eleventh Doctor story) is a fairy tale in any meaningful sense.

Given that Doctor Who is a children's' program, the absence of child actors in the long history of the show is very notable. There was always an appreciation that children are not very interesting, especially to child viewers. This is particularly merciful as child actors tend not to be very talented. George in Night Terrors is not much fun to watch really. I have no idea why Moffat thinks it is necessary to throw so many children into the program. It's not necessary all that fairytaleish, as a lot of fairy tales have young adults or teenagers as their protagonists anyway.

Taking heavy influence from horror movies, Night Terrors tries hard to be scary. Unfortunately this largely fails. The heavy dose of humour does not help. Things that are funny tend not to be terribly scary and the episode ends up pastiching its horror influences rather than reworking them into something genuinely chilling. Night Terrors is yet another reminder that putting a Yeti in a loo does not always make for terrifying television. We have to really believe that a Yet is likely to be there; otherwise it turns into comedy.

The portrayal of the Doctor here becomes especially irritating. He has become a figure who is just too kind, too paternal, too saintly. There is no sense that this Doctor has any flaws or selfish tendencies. It's impossible to imagine the First or Seventh Doctor being so concerned about child's anxiety about monsters. The First Doctor wouldn't have cared a jot and the Seventh Doctor would be too busy fighting cosmic evil from before the dawn of time.

In The Unquiet Dead, Gatiss made some uncomfortable noises on the subject of immigration. It looks like he may have put his foot in it again. Daily POP points out his insensitivity in handling the subject of adoption, portraying it as something unnatural, alien and frightening.

The ending, with Alex affirming his paternal love for George comes across as horribly mawkish. As conservative as my own values are, I do feel that Doctor Who needs to give us something just a bit more radical and subversive than the message we get from Disney movies. The Doctor exists in a dark and menacing universe in which not everybody does have a loving dad to affirm them. The last couple of seasons have seen Doctor Who offering a very shallow middle-class perspective on life.

Night Terrors is yet another disappointment from the current series of Doctor Who and yet another uninteresting and uninspired Gatiss offering.

The Council of Nicaea, by Caroline Symcox (Big Finish audio)

2011-09-01T05:06:00.000-07:00

A Doctor Who story about Christian theology!

Caroline Symcox, wife of Paul Cornell did a great job collaborating with her husband on Seasons of Fear. In this audio, she outdoes their joint effort by great lengths. The Council of Nicaea is a beautifully crafted historical drama and one of the finest Big Finish releases.

Mrs. Cornell holds a doctorate in theology and is in Anglican ministry. Proving that it is always a good idea to write about what you know about; she gives us a story about one of the most important moments in the history of Christianity, the Council of Nicaea. For those unfamiliar with church history, it was at the Council of Nicaea that the divinity of our Lord became the official teaching of Christianity and those who rejected it were condemned. Christ was declared to be of 'the same substance as the Father.'

Religion tends to get looked at in a negative light in Doctor Who. High priests and other religious leaders frequently tend to be used as baddies and supporting characters who question religious dogma are often portrayed heroically. The Council of Nicaea departs from this tendency quite radically. Firstly, while the religious conflict is shown to be fearful and menacing, the issues are not dismissed by the Doctor as unimportant. The Doctor says that he 'keeps an open mind' on the question of the divinity of Christ. It is almost as though the Doctor allows the possibility of Christianity and the divinity of Christ to be true. The whole subject of Christian belief is treated as something worthy of respect. Secondly, for once we find out the religious background of a companion. Peri turns out to have been raised a Baptist and refers to her pastor back home (though I despair at the thought that somebody raised as a Baptist would be unaware of the Nicene Creed and the importance of the divinity of Christ!). Religion is seen as something that plays a meaningful part in peoples' lives. We have moved a long way from The Face of Evil and St. Anthony's Fire. That said, I am uncomfortable with the portrayal of Athanasius as the bad guy and all the sympathy being given to the heretic Arius. As an orthodox Protestant, I regard Athanasius as one of the great heroes of the Christian faith who defended and established the doctrine of the Trinity. I suspect that Caroline Symcox is a little more liberal in her theology than I am.

The Council of Nicaea is very thankfully a pure historical. No alien monsters or interfering time travellers this time. The new series has shown the limitations of the pseudo-historical genre. I think a lot of fans would agree with me that the demise of pure historicals in the Sixties was a great loss for the show. While I hold a doctorate in theology, like the writer, I am sure a lot of listeners came to this story with very little knowledge of the Council of Nicaea or Constantine. Pure historicals have a wonderful potential to educate.

This audio takes us back to that thorny old question of 'Can you change history?' that was first explored in The Aztecs, all those years ago. Once again, the answer is 'oh no you can't.' It's good to be reminded of this. While I adore the timeline-hopping Klein trilogy, I think Big Finish have gone rather to far with stories about alternate timelines. Colditz makes it look as though you can alter history just by getting out of the TARDIS, a notion that would shake apart many past Doctor Who serials. I am much more comfortable with the Sixties Doctor Who premise that history is immutable. In this story, Erimem makes the old mistake of Barbara in thinking that she can rewrite history to a fashion that suits her taste. Like her she fails spectacularly.

The Council of Nicaea does a great job of portraying a society in which every citizen is caught up in theological disputes and riots occur over such matters. Symcox avoids it all getting dry by showing it's relation to the Machiavellian politics of the Roman court. This is helped by some strong guest performances. David Bamber is wonderful as the Emperor Constantine. I love the way his character is explored, with Erimem condemning him as a tyrant and the Doctor defending the integrity of his character. Constantine is very much shown to be a 'grey' character, a man who must be harsh, but not necessarily for the wrong reasons. Claire Carroll is also great as the camp and bitchy Fausta. The scene where she gets Peri drunk is delightful. We could perhaps have done with a little more exploration of her character.

I am convinced that the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem are the best TARDIS crew in Big Finish and arguably the best TARDIS crew since Season 1. Peri and Erimem have such a beautifully strong bond that it's fracturing in this story works incredibly well dramatically. Nicola Bryant powerfully portrays a young woman torn between what she knows is right and the emotional appeal of her best friend. Caroline Morris is so powerful in the role of a passionate and idealistic girl. This is perhaps her strongest performance in the role of Erimem. I have some doubts whether this character would identify Constantine as a tyrant (would that concept be all that meaningful to a Pharaoh of Egypt?) and I might expect her to be more sympathetic to the need to exercise restraint over religious divisions, but it still comes across well dramatically. Peter Davison does not disappoint at all as the Doctor. He seems so much stronger when placed in an historical story than he does when on alien planets or Blakes-7 space stories.

The Council of Nicaea is in my judgement one of the finest Big Finish stories and I especially recommend it to Doctor Who fans who are Christians.

Let's Kill Hitler

2011-08-31T07:46:00.000-07:00

I can't remember ever wanting the Doctor to die before. On Saturday evening I found myself wishing that the Doctor would just die. There he was dying. I'm sure we have been there before. I began to wish that this would be for real. Moffat clearly wants to write a show about River Song. How about just killing off the Doctor and getting on with it? River can be the new Dr. Who; no need to change the name of the show. That way I wouldn't need to waste my time watching this program any more.

As with every other episode of the current season, there are people giving this positive reviews despite it's total lack of intelligent storytelling. There also seem to be a lot of people saying "I was enjoying this season until now," as though the faults in Moffat's writing and producership have somehow escaped them so far.

Giving a historical character like Richard Nixon about two minutes of screen time was bad, but Adolf Hitler gets even less. Just what was the point of writing a story set in the Third Reich in which Hitler has no relevance? What history lesson have children watching this learned?

It is not only Hitler and the Nazis that get sidelined in this story. We also get a time-travelling Justice Department who go completely unexplored and unexplained. No attempt is made to flesh out why they do what they do or the characters of those involved. Let's Kill Hitler is not about anything except Dr.Who and River Song. The writer does not care about Nazis or time travelling judges. Dr. Who is the most important person in the universe and River Song is apparently the most evil person ever because she kills him.

Moffat introduces a new character, Mels who went to school with Amy and Rory. This young woman turns out to be River Song after she regenerates. It's hard not to suspect that Moffat is making up all this background for River Song as he goes along. Alex Kingston does a wonderful job of portraying the newly regenerated Mels, the only worthy part of this episode. We learn that River is a weapon that exists only to kill the Doctor, but then strangely she has a change of heart and sacrifices her remaining regenerations to save him. This character simply has no believability. She completely lacks any personality or motivation. Moffat simply adds a new element to River any time the plot needs to go somewhere. It feels utterly shallow and false.

The Doctor does nothing of any interest whatsoever in this story. Matt Smith has at times shown himself to be pretty good as Dr. Who. Nevertheless, he is utterly unused and uninteresting here. Rory and Amy aren't much more interesting either. They are in the unusual position of having a daughter who is visibly older than they are and who turns out to have been one of their schoolmates. Just how are they supposed to react in that situation. It's quite obvious that poor Karen Gillen and Arthur Darvill have not got a clue how they should play this bizarre role. I'm certainly not sure as a viewer how I am supposed to identify with them.

It feels like this series gets worse with every new episode.

Lawrence Miles on 'Let's Kill Hitler'

2011-08-30T07:16:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Miles' Doctor Who Thing: "Gee, Mr. Hitler..."

'You know how I keep pointing out that Moffat's idea of "How to Do Drama" is basically an Indiana Jones movie? All I'm saying is, this would be a lot neater if Michael Sheard were still around.'

A Different Klein, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

2011-08-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

At the end of Architects of History, we meet a different Klein who worked for UNIT. I see no reason for doubting that this is the 'proper' Klein who always existed in our timeline.

This chronology of this story presupposes that the UNIT stories are set in the 1980s. It also presupposes that Klein was born about 1935.

I apologise to fans of Liz Shaw for Klein's harsh comments. UNIT Klein hating Liz's guts is my weird idea. Characters in fictional worlds should not always like each other. Whatever personal connection Ace and Barbara Wright might have through the Doctor, the reality is that if they met, they would never become friends.

Rachel Jensen appeared in Remembrance of the Daleks. I just adore her character and Pamela Salem's performance. There are two conflicting accounts of what happened to her. Who Killed Kennedy says that she retired incredibly early, as she suggested in Remembrance. On the other hand, Craig Hinton's novel Millennial Rites states that she became Scientific Advisor to the Cabinet. I am going with the latter account.

Miss Hilda Winters appeared in Robot. I am almost as in love with her as I am with Klein! According to the Sarah Jane audios, she spent fifteen years in prison after Robot.

Surrey, 1997

The Doctor received many invitations to dinner, but given the complexities of travelling in time and space, it was not always that easy to accept them. Just for once, during his many visits to Twentieth-century England, he had managed to make a dinner invitation at the home of Elizabeth Klein.

This was not the Klein who had travelled with him in the TARDIS during his seventh incarnation. It was a different Klein, one who had witnessed the Allies win the war and believed that was the correct version of history. A Klein who had worked as a scientific consultant for UNIT. He had met this version of Klein before, after mopping up the temporal chaos caused by the alternate, Nazi version of Klein.

Klein lived in a small house in a leafy town in Surrey. It was an attractive location. Evidently Klein's scientific work had enabled her to enjoy a comfortable retirement.

The doorbell was answered by a woman in her early sixties. The Doctor immediately recognised her as his one-time companion and enemy, Elizabeth Klein.

This Klein was ten years older than the Klein he had known. Her blond hair was fading to white. Yet it was not just her age that was different. Something about her face was different. Perhaps it was the fact that this version of Klein spoke German a good deal less often. His Klein had been bilingual and had used German regularly in daily life. This Klein might also be bilingual, but he doubted she had used German so much working in UNIT. There was still something else that was different about her face. There was none of the hardness in her countenance that he had seen in the Klein who travelled with him. This Klein seemed altogether a much kinder, gentler person.

This Klein was certainly an attractive woman, despite her age. She wore a dark green dress and was in her stocking feet.

"Doctor, you have changed since I saw you last! You seem very handsome- in a Gothic sort of way," said Klein.

The Doctor smiled in amusement. The Nazi Klein had encountered his Eighth incarnation before and had described him in exactly the same way. He noticed, however, that this Klein spoke in a perfect English accent. The other Klein sounded more English than German, but her voice was still noticeably Teutonic.

"It's really delightful of you to invite me, Elizabeth," said the Doctor. "I wish we could have seen each other more often when you were still working for UNIT. Sadly, travelling in time and space tends to keep me at a distance."

He had called her Elizabeth. He had always addressed the other Klein as 'Klein.'

As he stepped into the house, Klein looked down at his feet.

"Would you mind taking your shoes off, Doctor?"

"Not at all," he replied and removed his shoes. One of his socks was orange, the other was green. He could well imagine the other Klein making the same request. This Klein had the same sense of orderliness. He could see that in the house; it was spotlessly clean and everything was neat and tidily organised.

The two of them sat down in Klein's lounge to enjoy a glass of sherry. However, they soon moved on to the dining room to begin the meal with some duck pate, washed down with a bottle of red wine.

"You know, after Liz Shaw resigned, I was convinced that I was the only scientist working for UNIT. I suppose I was a bit arrogant in that incarnation," said the Doctor.

"I didn't actually spend that much time at UNIT HQ while you were there. I was more of a consultant," replied Klein. "I spent most of my time at the labs in Cambridge. They used to send me special deliveries of alien debris to look at. The aftermath of all those incidents you got involved in. After you left earth, I got called in to work for UNIT more directly."

"How did you actually get recruited?" asked the Doctor.

"I worked with Rachel Jensen in the Intrusion Countermeasures Group back in the Sixties. She later recommended me to UNIT after she became Scientific Advisor to the Cabinet," replied Klein.

"I met Rachel in the Shoreditch Incident in 1963," said the Doctor. "A very intelligent lady."

"Oh, my admiration for Rachel is immense. She pushed so hard to get the extraterrestrial threat recognised. UNIT would never have been formed without her fighting tooth and nail for it all the way. She's also such a fun person to be around. You never felt uncomfortable or anxious in her company, even after she started moving in high circles," said Klein.

"I would have liked to have known her better, but it's so difficult to get the chance."

"I'm sure she would be delighted if you dropped in on her. She's finally retired now. I have no idea what she was thinking when she contemplated retiring before she was even forty. Still, she was married to a rich barrister. I'm so glad she changed her mind," said Klein.

Klein had prepared a Cassoulet for the main course.

"I always serve casseroles when I entertain, Doctor. What we don't eat, I shall save for tomorrow. It's what you do when you live alone."

"Have you ever been with somebody?" asked the Doctor.

"I did get married once. I'm sad to say it didn't last long. When I was younger you just couldn't have a scientific career and have a family if you were a woman. Things are changing, but it's still hard for women working in science. Dear old Rachel was married, but she never had children. It didn't hurt that her husband was a very wealthy man either."

They talked a little about the war and about how Klein's family had been interned.

"You know my experiences of being interned led me to become involved in fighting for the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, Doctor," said Klein. "Next week I'm going to London for a protest. I feel so angry when I read about how this country treats it's guests."

The Doctor was delighted to know that in this timeline, Klein was somebody who fought for the rights of others and for justice instead of supporting a system that violated the rights of millions.

"I wonder what your Nazi parents would have made of that," said the Doctor.

"I have no idea. My parents, like many Germans in those days, adored Hitler. The Third Reich meant so much to them, even though they did move to England. They never quite adjusted to what happened in the war. It was a subject they never liked to talk about."

The conversation moved on to various events in which UNIT had been involved.

"You dealt with the Giant Robot affair didn't you, Doctor?" asked Klein.

"Yes, that was a mad business."

"Miss Hilda Winters was one of my colleagues at Cambridge. I did like her. I visited her in prison quite a few times after the failure of her plans. She had some quite innovative ideas, but she never seemed to quite think very practically. I know it's cruel, but I can't help smiling when I think that she was going to be involved in repopulating the earth. I just can't imagine Hilda having lots of babies."

The Doctor smiled.

"You must have known my former assistant, Miss Shaw? She was at Cambridge as well."

Klein's face darkened.

"Yes, she was one of my physics students at Cambridge when I was teaching," she replied. "She was such a hussy; she seemed to be sleeping with a different young man every week. And then when she started her scientific career, she insisted on wearing miniskirts and kinky boots all the time. How was anybody supposed to take her seriously when she dressed like that? I'm afraid to say I never liked Liz at all. She always seemed to lack imagination and curiosity. No wonder she gave up being your assistant. The chance to study wonders from the other side of the galaxy and she just gave it up. She was a shallow careerist," said Klein.

The Doctor felt deeply saddened by Klein's harsh comments about Liz. While he had never been as close to Liz as he had to some of his other associates, he had trusted her deeply and counted her as a friend. Perhaps both this Klein and the Nazi Klein shared a harshness in their judgment of others.

Klein then served a dessert of Black Forest Gateau. After enjoying this, the two of them moved to the lounge for coffee.

"Elizabeth, there is something I want to talk to you about," said the Doctor. "Have you ever thought about the concept of parallel universes?"

"I'm aware of that theoretical concept, Doctor," Klein replied.

"Have you thought that in a different world, there might be another Elizabeth Klein, in many ways the same person as you, but with different experiences in life?"

Klein laughed. "I think most people have thought about that in some shape or form. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had married some of my past lovers or if my marriage hadn't been a disaster, or if I had become a mother."

"Elizabeth, when you first met me, you seemed to somehow remember me. I think I know why that was the case."

"You do?" said Klein.

"We had met before, albeit a different version of you."

"What in a parallel universe?" exclaimed Klein. "Surely that is impossible."

"Not exactly," replied the Doctor. "I once travelled to earth during the Second World War. Normally I never alter history, but this time, events took an unexpected turn and an alternate timeline was created. In this timeline, the Third Reich won the war and came to dominate the world."

"I was born before the war. I must have existed in that timeline," said Klein.

"You did. My TARDIS was captured by the Nazis in the alternate timeline. In this timeline you were also a scientist and you used it to travel from the 1960s to the Second World War."

"For what purpose?" asked Klein. She was becoming very disconcerted at the thought that there was an alternate version of herself who had lived a very different life.

"To capture me. I had been killed in the alternate timeline and your other self needed me to learn how to operate my TARDIS properly."

"I'm certainly curious about your time machine, but I can't imagine trying to capture you, Doctor."

"You were a rather more aggressive person in this timeline. You were also a fanatical Nazi."

"It seems bizarre to think about, but I suppose given my parent's attitudes I might have gone that way if things had been different."

"Your other self's intervention caused events to unravel and erased the alternate timeline. Your other self was then left stranded in the Second World War."

"This is just unbelievable," said Klein.

"We met about fifteen years later and managed to put our differences aside. We travelled together in time and space. I wanted to show your other self the wonder and beauty of the universe, to challenge your, I mean her, narrow attitudes."

Klein was starting to feel slightly jealous of her other self. This Klein had actually got to visit other planets, while she had lived all her life in England.

"Although your other self was a cold, callous and ideologically blinkered person, I saw moments when she showed compassion and a gentler side. I believed that she could come to see beyond her Nazi worldview. Things didn't quite turn out as I would have liked. I don't feel right telling you what happened to your other self, but she no longer exists. I want you to know that I'm so happy you are here and have had the chance to do some wonderful work with UNIT."

Klein found it hard to know what to say. It was such a shock to learn that she had lived an whole other life. It was so hard to take in.

The Doctor insisted on helping Klein to clear up after the meal.

Klein decided now was a time to ask the Doctor something.

"You gave the other Klein a chance to travel with you. It only seems fair you offer me the same opportunity. I'm getting old, but I would love to see another planet if the opportunity is there."

"Of course. I think we could manage a short trip, Klein." He had called her Klein. For just a moment he had forgotten this was a different Klein to the one who had been his companion.

This Town Will Never Let Us Go, by Lawrence Miles (Faction Paradox)

2011-08-14T04:08:00.000-07:00

Five minutes ago, or maybe fifteen, she was squinting at the screen and trying to work out who the celebrity guest is on this particular show. The token sacrificial human, an old, sad, beaten-looking man, evidently trying to enjoy his time with these colourful puppet-breeds but realising they represent a world he no longer understands. Kermit the Frog described it as a 'great honour' to have him in the studio. Inangela finally identified him- shakily, it's got to be said- as George Orwell. She vaguely recalls that when she first walked into the stopover, the Muppets were in the middle of a comedy re-enactment of the 101 scene from 1984, starring Rizzo the Rat. Or at least she thinks she remembers that, but she could be retro-imagining it.

On the very first page of this novel we get the most surreal idea imaginable; George Orwell apparently appearing as a celebrity guest on The Muppet Show. Only a mind like that of Lawrence Miles could have come up with something like this. It's such a gloriously colourful and bizarre notion that it just sucks you in and draws you into the rest of the novel.

Like every other Lawrence Miles novel, This Town will Never Let us Go is not blessed with a strong plot and things start to get a bit frantic towards the end as the author tries to bring the book to some sort of resolution. I suspect most people who have heard of this novel know who Lawrence Miles is and will not be reading it in the hope of reading a tightly-written , gripping adventure. That's just not the sort of book that he writes. If you don't care for Lawrence Miles' blend of surrealistic madness and intellectual analysis of everything, you may as well not bother reading this.

The most distinctive literary feature of This Town Will Never Let Us Go is the highly involved narration. The book is narrated almost conversationally, as though Lawrence Miles were sitting with you, telling you the story, along with his opinions on modern life. Miles is almost become the central character in his own novel. It is a feature which risks alienating the reader, as it is fair to say that Miles uses the novel as a platform to preach his particular take on society. Being a pro-free market conservative who supported the War on Terror, I inevitably find myself disagreeing with Miles most of the time, but I still find his views very interesting.

While This Town Will Never Let Us Go is the first novel in the Faction Paradox series, it is not really about Faction Paradox. The Faction are more of a background presence. This novel differs from other Miles books in the scale on which it operates. While his other novels deal with grand, sweeping cosmic events, this book is all about ordinary characters and how they are affected by the unseen cosmic War.

Bizarrely, Lawrence Miles continues the original educational agenda of early Doctor Who. The first companions of the Doctor were a science teacher to teach young viewers about science and a history teacher to teach them about history. Lawrence Miles' books are rather thin on school teachers, but in his inimitable way, he educates fans about postmodernity, poststructuralist literary theory and cultural anthropology. This Town Will Never Let Us Go has the influence of the French postmodern philosopher Baudrillard written all over it. Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality is explored in depth and with it the notion that events like wars have a more substantial media existence than they do an actual spatio-temporal reality. Lawrence Miles also brings up some interesting anthropological ideas about the place of rituals and symbols and how magic has an important place even in modern society.

The novel is set in a world that looks very much like ours, but is not quite the same. The town in which the story unfolds is never named. At first I wondered if the setting was meant to be Italy, but then it became apparent that this place was meant to resemble 21st century Britain. The most obvious difference from our world is that it is being affected by the mysterious War. This seems to be the same war explored and detailed in The Book of the War. This War is very obviously analogous to the War on Terror. In a postmodern spirit, it is not at all clear whether the events of the book are meant to be taken literally on their own narrative terms or whether they are intended to be treated purely on a metaphorical level. Given the highly didactic nature of the book, the latter seems rather more likely. The appearance of a literal 'Dog of War' is a nice play on metaphors.

The characters are an odd bunch. We have the ritual-obsessed Goth, Inangela. It's hard to really get a feel on her character. She comes across as very confident and having mysterious depths. Her friend Horror is very shallow best-friend type, who turns about to be rather more important to the plot than might be expected. Many reviewers have suggested that these characters have a very Buffy flavour. I found myself taking a massive dislike to Valentine, an ambulance driver who is also a fanatical revolutionary type. He shows a callous disregard to human life. As somebody who works in an accident and emergency department, I was unconvinced by the realism of his activity. There is absolutely no way an ambulance could go off on excursions with a dying girl in the back. Ambulance crews are just too closely monitored for that to happen.

The most engaging character was Tiffany Korta, one of those manufactured pop stars. It's remarkably disconcerting to see her discovery of the way her media image is being manipulating. One of the most terrifying scenes is when she is put on 'trial' by her record company executives who seem to almost wield absolute power over her very existence.

As in Alien Bodies, we get a character called the 'Black Man.' He appears remarkably similar to the one we met in that novel. He gets a very powerful and quite scary scene with Valentine. The comparison between the Black Man and the strange media witch, Miss Ruth is interesting.

I found This Town Will Never Let Us Go an immensely interesting and enjoyable read, but then I am a massive Lawrence Miles fan. It is certainly not his best novel and I suspect those who dislike his work will not be impressed.

The Murder Game, by Steve Lyons (BBC novel)

2011-08-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

"In census records from 1942 on, I found references to a Ben Jackson and a Polly Wright, born in close proximity to each other. Both in London, England, in fact. Their descendants would currently be-"

Although I don't see myself as being 'in it for the monsters,' I wanted to read this book to encounter the Selachians again. I heard the Selachians in Lyons' Architects of History, the concluding part of the brilliant Klein trilogy of audios. You don't get many genuinely aquatic monsters. The Seas Devils are more amphibious than aquatic. The Selachians are one inspired monster race. They have a convincing backstory as well as an appearance that is easily visualized. Like the Daleks, they are small, pathetic creatures beneath their armour. What is particularly interesting is that they chop their fishtails off in order to fit into their armour better. Their spacecraft is also magnificently described.

Selachians aside, is The Murder Game a decent novel? As with The Space Age, it does seem to lack the brilliance that Lyons displayed in the Virgin New Adventures. The Murder Game has it's defenders in fandom, but plenty of detractors too.

The setting in a murder mystery party tells you instantly that people are soon going to start dropping dead. It's perhaps a little predictable. While there is plenty of action in this book, the pace still feels rather slow and dull. It does not help that the cast of characters is so surprisingly boring. One does not feel like caring about any of them, except the regulars.

Like Gary Russell's Invasion of the Cat-People, this novel is set in between Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders. To my mind this is a good choice, as Jamie got plenty of screen time. This novel gives us a chance to look a bit more deeply at Ben and Polly. It does so well. The two characters are very well portrayed. We also get a hint about their future together. I like the way the novel makes Polly hilariously anxious about seeming to be out of date.

The Second Doctor is brilliantly portrayed. He has all the fun, as well as the fearfulness and the quiet heroism. There is an hilarious moment when he appears in drag! We also get a brilliant physical description of the Second Doctor- "He made a face like he was chewing a marble."

One moment that is so ill-chosen that it almost threatens to overshadow the book, is when the Second Doctor manages to steer the TARDIS to materialize on board the Selachian spacecraft. It is simply inconceivable that this could happen in the Second Doctor era. That Lyons had to resort to that to resolve his plot is a serious failing in his writing.

I have read worse novels than The Murder Game and it does have some great elements, but it really does leave one disappointed.

Let's Talk about Men, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

2011-08-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

Another story about Morgaine's perpetual imprisonment after Battlefield.

Madeleine Issigri is from the Troughton story, The Space Pirates

Ganymede Correctional Facility 2192

Morgaine turned to her cellmate, Madeleine. "Was there ever a man in your life?" she asked her.

"I had a couple of serious relationships. I was in love with a naval officer when I was in my twenties. He was nice, but a bit of an idiot. Then I fell for a lawyer when I was a bit older. He turned out to be a selfish bastard. I devoted so much of my life to building up the company that I never had much time for relationships. I dare say some of the men I met thought I was a selfish bitch."

Morgaine smiled. "Do you hope to find a husband after you have served your sentence?"

Madeleine looked thoughtful before answering. "I suppose it might be nice. Perhaps it's a bit late to become a mother, but not impossible. I'm really not altogether sure what to do when I'm free. I just hope any decent chaps won't be put off a woman who has done time in the clink."

"They would be fools if they were," said Morgaine.

"Have you ever been married?" asked Madeleine.

"No, but I have had many lovers in my life. I have won the hearts of kings, princes and many knights. I have also slept with the Lords of the Elder Folk that you would call fairies. I have even given my body up to demons and enjoyed their forbidden and terrible pleasures."

Madeleine shuddered. "I imagine making love to fairies might be nice, but I don't like the sound of sleeping with demons."

"They are not gentle lovers, though they can give pleasure of a kind," explained Morgaine. "None of the men I have loved can ever compare to my brother Arthur, by whom I bore my son Mordred."

"Sorry? You had a son with your brother?"

Morgaine raised an eyebrow, as if surprised by Madeleine's shock. "He was my half-brother. Arthur's mother was mortal, my mother was a fairy woman."

"No, that is still weird," insisted Madeleine.

"The ways of my world are not like yours," said Morgaine in protest.

"Just a bit too weird," said Madeleine. "I still think your the cutest girl in this place though."

Original Sin, by Andy Lane (Virgin New Adventure)

2011-08-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

I think Andy Lane's All Consuming Fire is a really great novel, so I had high hopes for Original Sin. I certainly did not enjoy it as much as All Consuming Fire, but I was still impressed with the fruits of his creative talents here. Original Sin has taken some criticism for being very heavy on continuity references, but they don't detract from the story. I got a little frustrated when it was revealed who the villain was. I won't spoil it for anyone who has not read the novel, but I don't see the point of bringing back an old villain just for the sake of it. I think one story was sufficient for this particular villain. Nevertheless, whatever the merits of including him, he was portrayed very effectively and came across as quite chilling.

There is plenty of humour and fun in this book. Nevertheless, there is also a lot of tragedy and suffering in it. The new reports detailing violent events at the start of every chapter are poignant and there is a strong theme of the pain of memories. The way the Hith changed their names to reflect the fate of their people has enormous pathos. Original Sin presents a very bleak future world. I don't think it is conveyed with the same realism and immediacy as Transit, but it is still a very interesting one.

Original Sin introduces new companions Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester. They are a really enjoyable pair. Of course, the naive rookie cop and the seasoned cynic are a bit of a cliche, but it still works. Bernice is portrayed pretty well too; she comes across more believably in this than in some novels.

Andy Lane really captures the manner and feel of the Seventh Doctor, but I was a little bothered by the Doctor's moral uncertainty. I would think that he would be able to give a much better moral justification than he does. The ethical debate about murder came across as a little tedious anyway. I do have a problem with the author's broad brush condemnation of empires. History shows us that successful empires have to allow a fairly high degree of tolerance and pluralism toward their subjects. Small nation-states tend to be much less tolerant of minorities than large empires. Given that All-Consuming Fire dealt with British imperialism, it is clear that Lane intended the Earth Empire to represent the British Empire and its failings. I think this is harsh. I would argue that though the British Empire could be brutal and had abuses, it was in many ways a force for good in the world.

Original Sin is not one of the best of the New Adventures, but it is a reasonably decent novel, though I don't know why the cover shows Tony Robinson wearing a safari suit.

Spearhead from Space

2011-08-01T07:19:00.000-07:00

I think I first watched Spearhead from Space when I was eleven years old. The day I watched the recently re-released DVD, I started reading The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, by Lawrence Miles, the first chapter of which features prostitutes offering Tantric sex. The variety of depth and scope in Doctor Who is just breathtaking.

The Pertwee era is definitely one of my least favorite parts of the Doctor Who legacy. Nevertheless, I can't help sharing the sense of excitement and anticipation that Spearhead from Space exudes. Coming right after the slightly repetitive format of the Troughton era, Spearhead from Space feels new and fresh. This is heightened by the fact that it was shot on entirely on location using film. This gives it a delightfully cinematic look and feel. I do wish more stories from the Pertwee era had been made this way.

The full revelation of the new Doctor is delayed for the first two episodes. In the meantime, we are re-introduced to the already familiar Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Nicholas Courtney takes to his new role as a regular wonderfully. He is entirely removed from the buffoon that he would become in later stories. He is joined by Cambridge scientist Liz Shaw. Her scepticism and reluctance makes a nice contrast with the Brigadier's familiarity with alien menaces. This makes for a kind of Mulder and Scully team that might have actually worked in the absence of the Doctor. The mistake of later writers would be to make the Brigadier into the Scully figure, which was absurd as weekly encounters with aliens ought to eradicate anybody's scepticism.

Caroline John's performance as Liz is quite excellent. She comes across as intelligent and sophisticated and her sarcastic wit is amusing. Unfortunately, her character was never given sufficient chance to develop. She was also unwisely dressed in miniskirts that seemed to detract from the seriousness of the character. Part of me rather wishes we had seen her being searched on arrival at UNIT HQ.

John Pertwee was never the strongest actor to play the role of the Doctor, yet he comes across as fairly likable in this story. Robert Holmes does seem to be writing more for Troughton and at times one can see Pertwee attempting to mimic Troughton's style. Pertwee was clearly not at ease in the role at this point, nevertheless he is enjoyable. He comes across like Mr. Toad in Wind in the Willows in the way he borrows a motorcar.

We get some great guest performances in this story. Hugh Burden is superb as the sinister Channing. John Woodnutt comes across as wonderfully oppressed as Hibbert and Derek Smee is convincingly terrified in the role of Ransome. Neil Wilson also gives an enjoyable performance as the not altogether pleasant poacher.

As regards the Nestenes and their Auton servants, I'm afraid I can't really believe in them. We are told that they have been colonising planets for a thousand million years. The Virgin New Adventures gave them a Lovecraftian twist by identifying the Nestene Consciousness as the offspring of the Great Old One Shub-Niggurath. Nevertheless, all we ever see of the Nestenes is them using various infiltration tactics involving plastic objects. They seem to be a race perfectly adapted to invading Twentieth Century Earth, but as far as we are aware, have no conceivable activity beyond that. I can imagine the Daleks burning planet after planet to cinders. I can imagine Rassilon battling giant vampire bats. I cannot, however, imagine the Nestenes doing anything other than using plastic to invade Twentieth Century Earth. It does seem to me that the Nestenes have something of a gimmicky quality to them that does not make for convincing science fiction.

While the Nestenes might not be altogether believable as an alien race and a little gimmicky, in this story they do have the capacity to terrify. The scenes of the Auton approaching the UNIT van and menacing Mrs Seely are genuinely scary. It is rather surprising that the shot of the blood on the smashed windscreen was allowed in. Personally, I feel that was a little too horrible.

The biggest failing is the plot. The various elements, the walking dummies, the attempted kidnap of the Doctor and the waxwork dummies don't quite hang together very well. The Nestene strategy does not make a huge amount of sense and there are numerous holes in the plot. The ending feels rushed, with the Doctor simply building a gadget to kill the Nestenes.

Many fans are uncomfortable with the Doctor's new role working with a military organisation. Philip Sandifer at TARDIS Eruditorum argues that the problem is not so much that the Doctor does end up working with UNIT, but that he actively seeks them out without exploring any other options. This might be explained by the fact that Lethbridge-Stewart immediately seeks out the Doctor after his regeneration. It is likely that the Doctor is influenced by the things he encounters after he regenerates, for instance, the Fifth Doctor being taken by the cricket gear in Castrovalva. I also think that there may be an unseen adventure that the Second Doctor had with the Brigadier prior to The Invasion.

Although Pertwee's gurning at the end is rather hilarious, the tentacles really do look quite impressive. Spearhead from Space is on the whole, a good start to the Pertwee and UNIT era.

Nekromanteia, by Austen Atkinson (Big Finish Audio)

2011-07-30T05:01:00.000-07:00

This audio takes us back into Eric Saward land. Blake's Seven plots, lots of violence and a very bleak future society. As with the Blake's Seven stuff, it's never made clear how far into the future this is.

It's nice to see Big Finish offering such a variety of stories, but unfortunately this audio has some of the faults of its source material. As with too much of the Saward era-material, the Doctor does not do an awful lot. The violence also becomes rather excessive. On the whole this is a rather dull story and not enormously original. I enjoy hearing Peri and Erimem, but they are a bit wasted here.

I can't decide whether the cackling and wailing of the witches is atmospheric or a bit silly in a comic book way.

God and Cosmic Evil, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

2011-07-25T08:57:00.001-07:00

Another story about Big Finish character, Elizabeth Klein. Klein is a Nazi scientist from an alternate timeline and briefly a companion of the Seventh Doctor. This story is set between A Thousand Tiny Wings and Survival of the Fittest.

As they walked through the forest, Klein asked the Doctor what planet they were on.

"Knuhm," he replied.

"Knuhm? Is that not the name of the Egyptian deity whose temple we visited in ancient Egypt, in Elephantine?"

"Indeed, Klein. Having exhausted all the Roman gods, humans went on to name planets after Egyptian gods. The original inhabitants are all extinct, so what they called it, no one can say."

Klein's memory of ancient Egypt was a little foggy. "I remember entering the temple, but I can't remember anything after that."

"Yes, you were badly affected by race memories. An effect of encountering beings from your primordial past," said the Doctor.

The pair approached a ruined temple. There was something foreboding about it, a lingering sense of rancid evil.

"Shall we go and explore?" asked the Doctor.

"That is what we are here for, Herr Doctor," replied Klein, determined not to show any trepidation.

Though the temple was partially in ruins, it became apparent that much of it was very well preserved. It was decorated with many strange statues, some of them quite disturbing. There were winged serpents with many heads and masses of eyes, as well as monstrous bat-like creatures. There were also many carvings depicted vast armies engaged in bloody warfare, disemboweled corpses and hideous dog-like creatures tearing other beings apart.

Klein was not a superstitious person, but she was convinced that there was something absolutely evil about the place. Not just any evil, but a twisted, maddening horror. She thought she could hear a voice whispering through the air, saying 'Look out! We are coming back!' The place seemed to be playing tricks on her mind. Once or twice she even thought she could see fleeting images shifting before her.

"We've seen enough," said the Doctor. He led the way out of the temple.

"Doctor, what is this place?" Klein asked.

"Billions of years ago, when the universe was still young, my people experimented with black holes in order to gain mastery over time. They unwittingly opened a gateway to another universe, allowing in creatures called the Yssgaroth."

"What kind of creatures were they, Doctor?"

"It's not clear whether they were real beings or simply a force of negative energy antithetical to this cosmos. They usually manifested themselves as monstrous winged serpents like some of the statues in that temple. They desired only to destroy and corrupt this universe."

"If these things came from another universe with different physical laws, they must have been an unstoppable force," said Klein.

"They had a weakness. As their nature was antithetical to this universe, they were unable to remain in it for long. They found a solution to that, however."

The Doctor's face snarled as he explained these things. Clearly it was a subject that troubled him deeply.

"The Yssgaroth absorbed some of the biomatter of this universe and fashioned for themselves bodies of flesh. They became terrible creatures; giant bat-like monsters that feasted on blood."

"Vampires," whispered Klein with a shiver.

"That is where the legends originally came from. Not only did the Yssgaroth create bodies for themselves, but they also transformed and corrupted the biodata of many lifeforms in this universe, turning them into vampires. My people, the Time Lords were assaulted by a vast army of monsters. The vampires had allies too."

Despite being disturbed by these tales, Klein was fascinated. There was an epic quality to these legends, like one of Wagner's operas.

"Before this universe was born, there was another universe, a very different one. Some of its inhabitants survived its destruction and made their way into the new universe. They were known as the Great Old Ones, beings with terrible power. Among them were Yog-Sothoth, known as the Great Intelligence and Hastur the Unspeakable, known as Fenric. Fenric was the first of the Old Ones to make common cause with the Yssgaroth. Those wolf-like creatures in the temple carvings were his beasts. The Time Lords were almost overthrown by such power that was assailed against them. The war they fought across space lasted so long that it was known as the Eternal War."

"The Time Lords won this war?" asked Klein.

"They did, and it changed them forever. After facing such powers they had become gods and they saw fit to shape the universe as they pleased."

"Where does the temple come in to this?"

The Doctor frowned. "The Yssgaroth spread so far across the cosmos that they came to be worshipped on many planets. The original inhabitants of Knuhm erected temples like one to the Yssgaroth. There are even hidden cults amongst humanity that seek the return of their kind. There are always foolish beings who seek power from sources far beyond them. My big worry is that the new colonists on Knuhm may take too much interest in this temple. I suspect I may have to return here."

Klein dwelt upon the things the Doctor told her about the Eternal War and the Yssgaroth. The thought of such cosmic horrors had shaken her to the core. The things worshipped in that temple were pure evil. The universe now seemed a much darker place and from what the Doctor had told her, the host of Time Lords were almost as bleak as the monsters they had fought.

There had to be a God somewhere in this dark and treacherous universe. Klein had to believe that. She had never been a religious woman, but she was no atheist. Atheism was for Communists. In her timeline, Christianity had been in decline since the Third Reich's victory over Europe, though in the Sixties it had begun a resurgence.

Klein had never given the subject of God much thought. Her parents' true religion had been National Socialism, but they had still counted themselves as good Protestants and had her baptized and taken her to church on occasions. Perhaps with such evil things inhabiting the universe, she needed to give faith some more thought.

That night, after she had put on her nightgown, before climbing into bed, she knelt down and prayed.

"Dear God," Klein prayed. "I don't think I have prayed since I was a little girl, but I thought I had better start now. I have seen such evils in this universe. I have seen such chaos. The forces of good and right must triumph somehow. God in heaven, I believe you are real. Show your power and grant me the chance to restore the Third Reich to what it should be. Let me reclaim the destiny that should belong to my race and people."

Klein got into bed and drifted into sleep, confident that God would grant her prayer.

Dead Romance, by Lawrence Miles

2011-07-24T05:55:00.000-07:00

The founder of time-traveller society was a great thinker, a great scientist, a great philosopher, and a great politician. That's what the stories say, although whenever Cwej told me the stories he always got distracted and started talking about rocket-ship fights with giant vampire-beasts. But the statue in the fortress? Just a great warrior. Because warriors were what Cwej's employers needed, I suppose. Warriors were what they wanted their agents to be.... When I think about Cwej, I sometimes end up thinking about two different people. Nice Cwej, who used to snuggle up next to me and watch night-time TV in the flat. The Cwej of cuddles. And Warrior Cwej, who did whatever his employers told him to, right up until the end. The Cwej of Holy War. The Cwej of Destruction. I think I know which Cwej is going to end up on top, if his employers ever get round to writing their history of their fight agaist the Gods.

Dead Romance is Lawrence Miles' best novel ever. Alien Bodies was great, but it pales in comparison to the brilliance of Dead Romance. Furthermore, Dead Romance sets a literary standard that outshines and outclasses every single Doctor Who novel ever written. I won't say this is the best Doctor Who novel ever, as it is not altogether certain this is a Doctor Who novel, but if it was, it would be the best Doctor Who novel ever.

Dead Romance was originally published as part of Virgin's Bernice Summerfield range of novels. It was more recently republished with minor changes by Mad Norwegian Press. It is not actually part of the Faction Paradox series (they are never mentioned in it), but does provide some background to how the Faction Paradox ideas and concepts developed. It is difficult to fit Dead Romance into any sort of continuity. The bottle universe idea was Miles' way of illustrating his denial that the Virgin and BBC novels occupy the same universe. The novel is part of a story arc within the Bernice Summerfield novels, but now that it was republished independently, it is not clear that this continuity still stands. Do the revelations about the Gods in Twilight of the Gods apply to the new edition of the book? The ideas in it are similar to those in the Faction Paradox books, but are certainly not identical. It's not at all certain that the Gods in Dead Romance are the same as the Enemy in The Book of the War.

This novel is closer to being Doctor Who than the Faction Paradox books. Cwej, first introduced in the New Adventures, is one of the main characters. Bernice Summerfield does not appear, but is referred to throughout the book. The Doctor is mentioned, described as 'the Evil Renegade,' according to Cwej a sinister character who kidnaps people and makes them think they are having wonderful adventures. We also get the Time Lords, Rassilon and even the Daleks without any copyrighted names being mentioned. The clever nameless references work really well and show just how shallow a lot of the continuity referencing in some Doctor Who novels can be.

Nevertheless, this is very much a Doctorless novel. Even the darkest of Doctor Who novels still have the reassuring presence of the Doctor. Dead Romance does not. There is no Doctor to rescue everybody here. We are told right from the start that the world is going to come to an end and it does. This is a dark, bleak novel pervaded with an overall mood of pessimism. Dead Romance presents an hopeless, chaotic and futile cosmos. This is a quite different mood to what we generally get in Doctor Who.

The story is told through a first-person narrative. Cleverly, this an unreliable narrator. In a postmodern spirit, we are never quite sure how much of the cosmic picture she has grasped. She is also clearly baffled by all the alien technology she encounters and so describes it in magical terms like 'potions.' This is a refreshing change from the technobabble you get in so much Doctor Who.

The narrator, Christine Summerfield (not an ancestor or in any way a blood relative to Benny) is a typical Lawrence Miles character, a cynical drug addict with very loose morals. I find her very likable. She is a down to Earth person who is easy to identify with. I much prefer her to Bernice Summerfield. Despite my adoration of the Virgin NAs, I absolutely hate Benny. She is far too overconfident and self-righteous. Christine is a much more believable character. Cwej comes across quite differently to how he appears in other novels. Part of the tragedy of the book is seeing just how corrupted he has become. The lack of redemption for him shows just how far this is from the happy humanism of Doctor Who.

Like every other Lawrence Miles book, the plot rambles a bit. There is a bit red herring half way through. There is also a massive twist in Dead Romance towards the end. I won't give it away, but it totally changes your perspective on the story and it makes the whole thing seem even more dark than it was up to that point.

I really appreciated the lack of action in the book. It is very much a work of reflection. It is all about exactly what is going through the mind of the protagonist and narrator. In fact, the only time in the book that she does something heroic, there is an apology!

The Time Lords are brilliantly portrayed. We never meet a flesh and blood Time Lord in the book, and this distance helps to keep them god-like and ethereal. They appear utterly cold and ruthless. They are simply beyond caring about the lives of human beings. Their obsession with altering the bodies of their subjects and employees is a new idea. I suppose the Rani must have learned her tricks on Gallifrey.

Dead Romance shares some common themes with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as the sense of doom and cosmic pessimism. However, it stands above pretty much everything which is consciously written in the vein of Lovecraft. Seeing Miles manage to use the very same ideas as Lovecraft, yet avoiding the cliches of his imitators made me realise just how bad and pointless most Mythos fiction is.

Dead Romance is simply the cleverest and best written book ever to be associated with Doctor Who. It's absolute literary perfection.

Two Biochemists in Arkham, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

2011-07-24T05:27:00.000-07:00

A crossover with Batman. This is a sequel to The Rani in Arkham.

The Rani and Poison Ivy sat on a couch in the recreation room, kissing and cuddling. The two scientists had barely been able to stay away from each other since they had met in Arkham Asylum. It was not a little ironic, given that the Rani had been planning on kidnapping Ivy and using her in her biotech experiments.

Harley Quinn folded her arms and looked at the pair with disgust. She had thought she was Ivy's best girl. It felt very low.

Harley turned to Roxy Rocket who was sat nearby, trying impatiently to learn knitting.

"After all we've been through she dumps me for this dame?" she said. "Looks like I'm not crazy enough for Ivy. Obviously dating a psychopathic clown killer is not good enough. I should have been some loony who thinks she's a 'Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey' with two hearts! Why didn't I stick with Puddin?"

Poison Ivy withdrew her lips from her new lover. "Can you really turn people into trees?"

"Oh yes, darling," replied the Rani.

"I want to see you do that," said Ivy, imagining various possible subjects for such an experiment.

"When you help me break out of here, I'll show you. And you must see a Krynoid. It's a plant on a distant planet that infects animals. It turns them into a colossal vegetable monster that devours all animal life. The early stages of infection have a remarkable similarity to your own metabolism," said the Rani.

"You must help me get one!" cried Ivy.

"When we get to my TARDIS. In the meantime, you have me, my dear," said the Rani seductively.

The Space Age, by Steve Lyons (BBC novel)

2011-07-22T01:34:00.000-07:00

This is the city: a technological paradise built by an advanced race. Its glittering towers reach proudly for the stars, and its spires are looped by elevated roadways.

The people that lived here were enlightened and contented. They travelled in bubble-topped saucer cars, along moving pavements or in anti-gravity tubes. Obedient robots tended to their every whim. Disease, war, famine and pollution had been eradicated. Food machines synthesised all essential nutrients into pill form, and personal rocket ships brought the solar system within reach. The people of the city befriended Venusians and Martians alike.

The city is self-cleansing. Its systems harness solar power and static electricity. Its buildings are constructed from a metal that will never rust or tarnish. It will stand forever as a monument to the achievements of the human race.

This is Earth. The year is 2000 AD. This is your future.

Welcome to the Space Age.

That was the cover blurb on the back of The Space Age. I think it is safe to say that this is the most amazing and mind-blowing cover blurb in the history of Doctor Who books. The big problem is that no novel could possibly live up to the expectations generated by such an amazing summary. One ends up feeling rather cheated by it.

Steve Lyons is in my opinion, one of the best Doctor Who novelists ever. I can't imagine him writing a bad novel, but this one certainly does not quite live up to what I had hoped of it. The Space Age is not as bad as some readers claim. It is a fairly interesting and very readable novel.

While the cover blurb would lead us to expect a story about alternate timelines or parallel realities, what we get is a sort of sci-fi version of Lord of the Flies. A group of teenage Mods and Rockers from the Sixties were transported to an alien world and have been fighting their old battles (interlaced with family feuds) for decades. We don't get much explanation of exactly how this rather select group of people ended up stranded in this alien environment, other than the three main characters. The characters in The Space Age are not terribly likable. I imagine if you have been stranded in a strange place most of your life, you might feel a bit grim, but its hard to identify with them, especially the way they have continued their pointless battles. It seemed odd that there was absolutely no mention of sex. One might imagine that sexual politics amongst this group might be rather important, especially given the significance of a wedding in the background of the characters. I thought the Doctor Who novels were adult territory where sex was allowed to be mentioned. The setting in the futuristic city is very while described and portrayed at least.

Fitz was pretty good in this story, with his tall tales. I think more could have been made of his background as somebody from the Sixties himself. Here he is with a group of people from his own time; we might expect him to have more affinity with them than some of the other people he has met in other books. Compassion is unfortunately written out of most of the novel. She is used well, but it is annoying to see Lyons having the same problem with Compassion as other novelists. The Doctor is okay.

There is a distinct lack of humour in this book. In places, it has a slightly preachy tone. The theme of the futility of conflict does feel just a little bit old.

The Space Age is alright in my judgement, but disappointing and nowhere nearly as good as some of Lyons' other books.

Season 22

2011-07-19T01:29:00.001-07:00

It was certainly a mistake to introduce the Sixth Doctor at the end of the previous season instead of opening with his first story. It is just one of the many ways in which he was set up to fail, not least among them the hideous costume he was given.

After the grey darkness of the previous season, Season 22 has something of a more colourful look. For the most part, this is not accompanied by a more light-hearted tone. Season 22 is unrelentingly violent and full of some quite vicious characters. To my mind, the crushing of Lytton's hands in Attack of the Cybermen represents the heights of excessive violence in Doctor Who. Production values in this season are a mixed bag, with some great location work and a few good sets, but also some uninspired acting in some stories. The quality of script writing is rather underwhelming in Season 22.

There does seem to have been a genuine desire to challenge viewers and offer a fresh approach to Doctor Who, but it was too half-hearted. For all the attempt to make the Doctor scary and less clean-cut, like he had been in the Hartnell years, he was still presented as a nice guy deep down. The McCoy years would later succeed in making the Doctor seem genuinely scary and dangerous. The over reliance on past continuity, inherited from the previous seasons would also serve as a barrier to offering a fresh approach.

As with the previous season, there is a strong thematic connection between the serials of this season. There is an emphasis on consumption, lust and the body. Attack of the Cybermen has the Cybermen consuming human bodies, Vengeance on Varos has colonists who consume images of torture, Mark of the Rani has the Rani using human bodies as a source of chemicals and, of course, turning people into trees. The Two Doctors is all about eating the flesh of humans and aliens. Timelash has the Borad wanting to posses and change Peri's body. Revelation of the Daleks is about bodies being turned into food and also into Daleks. With some better writers, these scripts could have considerably enhanced the depth and strength of the stories.

Through it all, Colin Baker gave some pretty decent performances. As both the Doctor and as a real person he is very likable, but he was simply not given material that enabled him to shine. Nicola Bryant was also disadvantaged by being paired with a character with whom her character would inevitably clash. It can be fun watching the Sixth Doctor and Peri bicker, but through the whole season it became just a bit too much.

Attack of the Cybermen 3/10

Too much obsession with continuity, too much violence and shockingly weak Cybermen.

Vengeance on Varos 7/10

The makings of a great story, let down by lazy and careless script writing.

The Mark of the Rani 4/10

Why did they have to bring back the Master?

The Two Doctors 9/10

A very postmodern story that deconstructs our idea of the way the Doctor operates.

Timelash 3/10

Very silly, but still fun.

Revelation of the Daleks 9/10

Brilliantly directed with a great set of characters, but the Doctor is completely irrelevant to the plot.

The Church and the Crown, by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright (Big Finish audio)

2011-07-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

"I'm more of a leotard and shorts kind of girl."

It is really nice to see Big Finish producing so many pure historical stories. For some reason, the Fifth Doctor has been given an awful lot of them. I suppose it is easier to see the Fifth Doctor take on the role of passive bystander than the Sixth or Seventh Doctor.

The Church and the Crown very much feels like The Androids of Tara. You have scheming nobility, a royal with an uncanny resemblance to a companion and a general sense of fun. This is a good thing as I am a big fan of Androids of Tara.

There is nothing much in this story that is original. We have seen the 'uncanny likeness' idea used countless times in Doctor Who and it feels no more convincing here than it does in any other story. Nevertheless, it is still highly enjoyable.

Peter Davison is pretty good in this, though the Fifth Doctor's historical namedropping comes across more like th Third Doctor. Nicola Bryant does a fantastic job of playing two roles. While the doppelganger think might not be original, it is interesting to hear it being pulled off effectively on audio. Peri's cute friend Erimem, played by Caroline Morris is also great. While 17th century Paris is alien to her, she feels instantly at home in the court with all its nobility, religion and intrigue.

I like the way historicals offer a little education and The Church and the Crown is no exception. I like the way the Doctor challenged Peri's Dumas-influenced perceptions about Richelieu being the bad guy.

The Church and the Crown captures a sense of light-hearted fun that is missing from a lot of Doctor Who audios and novels. It's definitely worth a listen.

The Magic of Morgaine, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

2011-07-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

Another story about Morgaine's perpetual imprisonment after Battlefield.

Madeleine Issigri is from the Troughton story, The Space Pirates

Ganymede Correctional Facility 2192

As Morgaine passionately kissed her, Madeleine felt a blast of energy course through her body. The energy seemed to transform every cell in her body, bringing it into a new harmony with the cosmos. It was as though she were being thrust out of her normal course and caught up in a cosmic river. The touch of Morgaine's lips seemed to connect her to the fabric of the very universe.

As Morgaine slowly moved away from her, Madeleine felt so relaxed, so calm, as though she were at peace with the whole universe. She lay on her futon, savouring the experience.

"That feeling- that was magic, wasn't it?" she asked Morgaine.

"Yes, my pretty thing, I'm channelling all my love and joy throuhg you by magic."

"It feels so lovely." Madeleine was curious to know more about her cellmate's strange power.

"You can do that, but you can't use your other powers, can you?"

Morgaine smiled at her. "Very true, my lovely. My powers are restricted by the magic inscription on the walls of this prison," she said, pointing to the strange marks on the walls. "Yet I can still channel my feelings through magic and I can also heal minds and bodies. You know as I do how much some of the women here have needed that."

Madeleine did indeed. Her time in prison had made her realise how privileged she was with her bourgeois background. So many of the women in the prison had experienced years of drug addiction, domestic abuse and plain poverty. Morgaine's healing power had enabled them to know the comfort and beauty of a world far beyond them.

Madeleine was still curious. "So those marks on the wall. What difference do they actually make?"

Morgaine laughed and rose up from the cell floor, "Let me explain them to you. Those markings are writing in the language of the Elder Folk."

"Elder Folk?"

"You probably call them fairies," explained Morgaine.

"Right," said a bemused Madeleine. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine she would be sharing a prison cell and passionately in love with an immortal sorceress who believed in fairies. Sometimes she had to remind herself that she was in a prison and not a mental hospital.

Her girlfriend continued. "These symbols here; that is Morgaine, my name. Speaking or writing somebody's name gives you a certain power over them. Now if I only knew the real name of Merlin..."

"So what's the next set of symbols?" asked an intrigued Madeleine.

"Those symbols spell the word 'command.' You always have to include them in a magic formula. The next means 'bind' and the final word is 'forbid.' The sum of this formula is to create a magic barrier around the prison. Within it cannot use my magic powers, nor can I leave without permission."

"Is there no way to escape it?" asked Madeleine.

"Perhaps there is, but would that be either right or wise? I dare say that you could find a way to escape this prison. Would you do that? If you were caught you would be sent here again, and for much longer. Besides, you know the things you did were wrong. You accept your punishment," her cellmate replied.

"I suppose so, though I can't imagine being here as long as you have been. I have less than a year to serve."

"And I shall miss you very much when you are gone. You are another reason I do not escape now," said Morgaine with a broad grin. She settled down on the synthgrass mat on the cell floor.

"So what could you do if the barrier wasn't there? Could you turn the guards into toads?"

Morgaine raised an eyebrow. "I suppose I could. I haven't ever thought about turning somebody into a toad. It is a little more complex than you might imagine. I could do all manner of things. I can disappear and appear in another place, I can force the wills of others, I can read minds, I can create magic fire, I can turn people into dust and with the necessary formulas, I can summon demons."

"I'm glad you can't summon any demons in here right now, they sound rather frightful."

"Yes, they are rather frightful my dear," said Morgaine, wriggling her toes.

"I never believed in magic. I never imagined such things could be real."

"I am not sure if there is any magic in your universe," said Morgaine with a frown. "Merlin's kind are like gods in this world. They have shaped it since it was young. They feared things like magic, things that they could not shape and control. They removed such elements from the universe. Even the Elder Folk were banished from this universe by Merlin's race."

"I always thought of Merlin as somebody who used magic," said a puzzled Madeleine.

"In his own way, he does use magic, though he fears it like all of his kind. That is one of the reasons why he keeps me shut up in prison."

"Does everybody in your universe use magic?"

Morgaine looked disgusted at this suggestion. "Certainly not, I am of a special breed. My mother was one of the Elder Folk, a fairy. I have all of the magic of her race. I have also gained much power from the elements of my world, its sea, its air and its red earth. Though I cannot use my power, it is still a part of my very flesh and soul."

"I don't suppose you have enough power to make the food here taste any better?"

Morgaine laughed a deep rich laugh. "If only I did. That would make these long years of imprisonment much easier to bear."

The Moonbase (BBC audio)

2011-07-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

I was completely bored out of my skull listening to this audio. This story was the second novelisation I read (after Revenge of the Cybermen) when I first took an interest in Doctor Who, so I knew the story pretty well. I did not get anything out of listening to this audio recon. I really don't know why I keep buying these CDs, it just seems utterly pointless.

The Moonbase is similar in plot to The Tenth Planet, but it adds a new dimension in giving the Cybermen stealth infiltration tactics. Thus, it became the standard template for the classic base-under siege story. I imagine it was probably quite exciting the first time round, but after watching so many other variations on this story, it really is quite uninteresting.

I love Troughton and I appreciate that his era is much celebrated by fans, but for me this is the period when Doctor Who went wrong. After the wild diversity of the Hartnell era, we ended up with Doctor Who becoming a show about monsters and Body-snatcher style alien infiltration. It's only when we get into the Graham Williams years (a period with its own faults, I know) that there was a real attempt to move away from monster themes.

The Second Doctor writers gave the Doctor a new sense of direction and purpose, but it is not a particularly interesting one. Troughton's Doctor basically summed it up in this story:

There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought.

This Doctor is all about fighting monsters. The word 'bred' suggests things that by their very nature are evil. The Doctor does not explain what the things are that we are supposed to believe in, he just assumes we are all in agreement. I don't mind the Doctor using lethal force to deal with threats and danger; I don't see him as a pacifist, I just don't care for the Troughton idea of the Doctor as a wandering monster-hunter.

The Two Doctors and Warriors of the Deep can be seen in different ways as satires of the whole Moonbase approach to Doctor Who. The Two Doctors subverts and deconstructs the values of the Second Doctor. The unreflective viewer is shocked to see the Second Doctor applying his 'terrible things' logic to the humanoid and rather amusing Androgums while forgetting that we don't mind him being beastly to the alien Sontarans. Warriors of the Deep, on the other hand, subverts the structure of the base-under-siege genre. In place of the needlessly complex and padded plots that we typically get, we have an extremely linear plot. The solution to the alien menace is revealed right at the beginning making the ending obvious. Instead of focusing on how the Doctor will save the day, the emphasis is placed on the pointless and terrible carnage involved. Both stories have been savaged by traditionally minded fans.

The Cyberman voices are cool in this story, though I prefer the more human sounding Cybermen in The Tenth Planet, where interestingly, Ben feels remorse about killing one.

The Book of the War, edited by Lawrence Miles (Faction Paradox)

2011-07-10T02:57:00.001-07:00

Between the age of 11 and 14 I was massively into Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 game. This is a tabletop war game in a setting far into the future. Warhammer 40k is probably one of the most vivid and fascinating fictional universes ever created. I gave up Warhammer 40k when I was 14, but in my twenties I would actually buy the Games Workshop magazine, White Dwarf, not because I had taken it up again, but just to enjoy reading the background material. I think Warhammer 40k has gone downhill massively in recent years because of the efforts of Games Workshop editors to impose too much uniformity on their universe. They got rid of something that really made it work; the quirky sense of humour that characterised the background material in the early nineties. Reading The Book of the War reminds me of reading Warhammer 40,000 rulebooks and source books back in the early days of Warhammer 40k. It definitely has the feel of a role-playing source book, with all the elaboration on key characters and factions. It portrays a bleak and rather disturbing cosmos, yet embues that cosmos with a tongue in cheek humour. If the idea of buying a gaming book just to enjoy the source material makes any sense to you, then you are probably going to enjoy The Book of the War.

Lawrence Miles has always been much better at building worlds than coming up with effective plots. His books are always full of brilliant ideas, but tend to ramble and plod a little. This book therefore capitalises on his strengths by dispensing with any plot and just gives a A-Z guide to the various elements of the universe he effectively created out of Doctor Who. He is assisted in this by an imaginative group of writers notably including Simon Bucher-Jones and Mark Clapham, co-authors of the impressive Taking of Planet 5 within the BBC novels original War in Heaven arc.

The key elements of the War in Heaven, Faction Paradox, Celestis, humanoid TARDISes, Mictalan and the mysterious Enemy were all introduced by Miles in the BBC Doctor Who novels. Unfortunately, this stuff was too radical for the BBC range to handle properly so it was all retro-erased in The Ancestor Cell. The Book of the War undoes the destructive work of The Ancestor Cell and expands upon this new and disturbing version of the Whoniverse that we glimpsed in Alien Bodies.

For legal reasons this can't be proper Doctor Who. There are possible references to the Doctor if you look for them, but this is a book about the universe he might have inhabited rather than about the man himself. The elements created by Miles himself, such as Faction Paradox and Compassion are allowed in, as well as Cwej and the Yssgaroth with the permission of their creators. Other key Doctor Who elements have had a change of name. Hence, we get the Great Houses in place of the Time Lords and timeships for TARDISes. The War King is thought to be the Master and the Imperator is definitely Morbius.

The Time Lords, or Great Houses, as they are called in the book, are very much Lawrence Miles vision of the Time Lords. His genius is to combine the two models of the Time Lords that we get in Doctor Who; the predominant Robert Holmes idea of a corrupt and sinister society and the early War Games image of god-like beings. The Great Houses are as Machiavellian as they get, but they are also shown to be an almost all-powerful elemental presence in the universe. It is the Great Houses who have made history what it is. The War is not exactly a physical assault on Gallifrey, but an attempt to overthrow history as the Time Lords have directed it.

The Book of the War does not reveal the identity of the Enemy (would you really want it to?) but does give some elaboration of how they fit into the concepts of the War. Cleverly, a list of entries is offered relating to the Enemy with some intriguing titles, but these are purposely missing. It's a very clever way to play with the reader.

I was very glad to see the use of the Yssgaroth, courtesy of Neil Penswick. These help to tie this world to the mythos of Doctor Who. We get some great discussion about their history and relation to the Time Lords. Neil Penswick never made clear in The Pit whether the Yssgaroth are supposed to be the same as the Great Vampires in State of Decay. The Book of the War essentially treats them as the same. It also introduces the Mal'akh, humans who have been tainted by the Yssgaroth. These are identified with the Nephilim of Genesis 6 in the Old Testament.

One has to admire the sheer scope of this book. It does not simply describe characters and settings but outlines an entire cosmology. As well as the satire of popular culture that one can expect in a Miles book, we also get explorations of philosophy and temporal physics. The book often offers conflicting perspectives on the various concepts and characters, some psychological, some scientific, others theological. This leaves a certain doubt about the whole truth of the War.

In the About Time guides to Doctor Who, Miles and Wood distinguished between science fiction and fantasy by arguing that science fiction deals with humanity's relation to tools, while fantasy deals with humanity's relation to symbols. The Book of the War is totally in the latter category. It is a book about symbols and concepts. For instance Faction Paradox's 'Eleven Day Empire.' The historical change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar resulted in the loss of eleven calendar days. Rather than treating them as merely words and numbers on a paper calendar, these days are treated as having an independent existence which can be used as a stronghold for Faction Paradox. The Book of the War outlines a kind of Platonic metaphysics in which concepts have a real existence as entities. Hence a creature called a 'Memovore' can actually eat concepts! The concept of 'Biodata' does not seem radically different to Plato's concept of the 'Forms.'

One of the greatest aspects of the book is the playful use of language. Some of the titles of the entries are delightful- The Broken Remote, Production Hell, The Unkindnesses. Take the City of the Saved. A lot of readers were annoyed by that, thinking the idea of a city containing the resurrected form of every human who ever lived smacked of religion (there seems to be a big atheist contingent in fandom). Reading the word 'Saved' makes one assume that theological salvation is in mind. However, this is deconstructed in the novel Faction Paradox: Of the City of the Saved..., where somebody points out that 'saved' can refer to data being saved on to a disc or computer drive.

If you are fascinated by the Time Lords, if you enjoy exploration of the background of Doctor Who or you just love reading Lawrence Miles' leftfield ideas, you really need to read this book.

Season 21

2011-07-09T03:11:00.000-07:00

The Five Doctors was not part of either Season 20 or Season 21, but it provided a very definite introduction to the ethos of the season it preceded. The return of an whole bunch of old monsters in The Five Doctors set the scene for the return of the Eocenes in Warriors of the Deep.

In The Five Doctors, the Fifth Doctor is placed in a nightmare realm full of monsters and enemies where his very existence is threatened. When he escapes this realm, he finds that his own society is corrupt to the core and his old mentor has fallen into dark ways. One of my favorite moments in Doctor Who is when the Fifth Doctor looks with horror at the black-clad Borusa and says "What happened to you, Borusa?" His look reveals not only horror and disgust, but genuine compassion. The Five Doctors is essentially Season 21 in microcosm.

Season 21 is all about the innocence and moral purity of the Fifth Doctor struggling with a pitiless and brutal cosmos. In Warriors of the Deep, he is faced by Eocenes that want to wipe out humanity and humans are close to wiping out each other. His inability to handle this situation leads to the death of everybody in the serial. From this he moves on to Resurrection of the Daleks, where he resolves to kill Davros, but can't do it.

More than any of season, Season 21 is bound by an overarching theme. It's not a story arc, but more of an aesthetic. There is a real sense of tragedy as we see the Fifth Doctor faced with the grim realities of the universe. This climaxes with Caves of Androzani, where he is just sick of it all and cares for nothing but saving the life of Peri. This leads to his death. This tragedy is doubled by the complete alteration of his persona in his regeneration. The innocence and kindness of the Fifth Doctor are destroyed by the madness and horror of the season and we see him taken on a new form that is thoroughly unstable, violent and rather repulsive. It might have been a colossal mistake to end the season with The Twin Dilemma, but it fits the theme of the season perfectly.

Peter Davison is at his peak in this season. We saw glimpses of a more charismatic Davison in Season 20, but it's in Season 21 that we really see him come to life. Mark Strickson and Janet Fielding are also very strong here too.

Season 21 sees the introduction of a great new companion, Peri. Peri has been unfairly derided for being 'eyecandy' and lampooned for her terrible accent, but she really is a great companion. She gets on so well with the Fifth Doctor, though admittedly not so well with the Sixth.

Not all of the stories of Season 21 are brilliant, but with the exception of The Twin Dilemma, they manage to maintain a certain standard.

The Five Doctors- 5/10

It rather fails to hold all its elements together, but it is very enjoyable. Having an impersonation of Hartnell was just wrong though.

Warriors of the Deep- 7/10

Cruelly maligned by fans. It has some problems with the direction, but it is a fantastic story with some great sets and cracking performances from the regulars.

The Awakening- 6/10

Some great elements, but two episodes are not enough to make the story work.

Frontios- 8/10

Creates a real sense of bleakness and tragedy, but the temporary destruction of the TARDIS feels like an afterthought.

Resurrection of the Daleks- 6/10

Did Saward really have to kill off so many characters? Ultra-violent and grim, it looks impressive, despite having an utterly confused plot.

Planet of Fire- 7/10

Very glossy production, but the plot is a bit lacking in substance.

Caves of Androzani- 10/10

Brilliant scripting meets brilliant direction for the tragic end of the Fifth Doctor.

The Twin Dilemma- 3/10

How could they end the season on such an awful story? Peri's reaction to the new Doctor is worth watching though.

The Rani in Arkham, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

2011-07-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

A Doctor Who/ Batman crossover.

Dr. Jeremiah Arkham turned to his secretary. "Have them send that new patient to consulting room 8. I want to see her."

"The one who calls herself 'the Rani?' Her paperwork was a nightmare to complete, doctor. No real name, no date of birth, no past addresses. We don't even know her nationality."

Jeremiah Arkham narrowed his eyes. "She claims to be an alien from another planet. And a time traveller to boot."

"I did see her medical report. I could hardly believe she has two hearts and not a drop of human blood!" said his secretary.

"I would remind you that Pamela Islee has vegetable soup for blood. And our Waylon Jones is barely human. No, Tina, this is just another case of a mutant with a personality complex," he replied.

As Jeremiah made his way through the harshly lit corridors of Arkham Asylum, he looked through glass doors at the many men and women held there. Nearly all of them eccentrics who had put on costumes and committed bizarre crimes. They were becoming so common that psychologists were talking about 'Gotham Syndrome,' a condition that caused people to develop colourful alter egos and to style themselves as super-crooks. It was his thankless task to awaken these deluded freaks to the real world.

Consulting room 8 was a sparse room with a high barred window. It was furnished with just two chairs. There was no table; Jeremiah needed to observe the posture of his patients when he interviewed them.

The Rani was dragged in by two female nurses and placed unceremoniously in a chair. Her arms were bound up in a straitjacket, beneath which she was shaking with rage.

"Get this thing off me," howled the Rani, struggling with her straitjacket.

"I can, if you promise not to give me any trouble," said Jeremiah. At once, one of the nurses cautiously began to unstrap the patient. "If you do give me trouble, the jacket goes on again and you go into a padded cell under heavy sedation. Is that clear?"

The Rani nodded glumly. She was an attractive woman with a heart-shaped face and long brown hair. He guessed she might be in her late thirties, but with her abnormal physiology, it was impossible to say. She had something of a haughty arrogant look in her eyes. Like the other patients at Arkham Asylum, she had been dressed in green pyjamas and soft foam slippers. She had an ID tag on her wrist.

"I understand you claim to be of a race called the Time Lords and to come from the planet Gallifrey. That is quite an extraordinary claim, Ms. Rani," said Jeremiah.

"You put me throught the humiliation of a medical examination. It should be rather obvious to you that I am not human," she replied.

Jeremiah smiled. "We have a lot of patients hear who have physical abnormalities. Mutations, freaks of nature. It's a leading cause of what is known as 'Gotham Syndrome,' by which people develop delusions of grandeur and don costumes to commit bizarre crimes. Might I suggest that being born with this very distinctive cardiovascular system of yours led you to become convinced that you were an alien from another world?"

"Nonsense. I can assure you that I was born on Gallifrey and have travelled to this world through time and space," insisted the Rani.

This was not getting anywhere. Jeremiah was going to have to shift the focus of this interview.

"If you are from another world, another time, what brought you to Gotham City? I'm sure there were a lot of other times and places you could go," he said.

"Not for pleasure, I can assure you. I came because of one of your former patients, Pamela Islee, better known as Poison Ivy."

"Ah, Pamela," said Jeremiah. "And what is your interest in that most unusual lady?"

"I came across historical records referring to her. Somehow this human came to obtain one of the most unusual physiologies I have come across. She is a stable fusion of plant and mammal biology. The crude tinkering that you would call scientific research somehow created this biochemical oddity. Her value to my own research is immense. Such a biological fusion could mean incredible breakthroughs in bio-engineering. Not that those in your time would have any understanding of such possibilities," said the Rani.

"So you are a scientist, then? How interesting," said Jeremiah. He made a mental note of this. Scientists these days were constantly having freak accidents and turning into monsters and supercrooks. If this woman was indeed a scientist, it only confirmed his suspicion that her abnormalities were a mutation.

"So did you contact Miss Islee?" he asked.

The Rani sneered. "I doubt she would have agreed to come onboard my timeship and become a willing subject of my research. No, I needed to capture her. I did some research. I trawled through the squalor of Gotham's filthiest bars, talking to the lowest dregs of your society."

Jeremiah made a sour expression. "That can't have been a pleasant experience."

The Rani continued. "It discovered that the criminal classes of your city were expecting Poison Ivy to make a move. An English artist, Amelia Ducat was holding an exhibition in Gotham City's art gallery."

Jeremiah nodded. "Ah, yes. Amelia Ducat. Renowned for her paintings of flowers. I can imagine that would peak Miss Islee's interest."

"Everyone who knew Poison Ivy expected her to try to steal the paintings. Some of the near-apes I talked to were hoping that Ivy might be looking for hired help. Others were wary. They expected the mysterious vigilante known as the Batman to try and stop Ivy," explained the Rani.

"He does tend to do that," said Jeremiah.

"A plan formed in my mind. I guessed that if this supposedly amazing crime fighter did intervene, Ivy might be vulnerable after the struggle. I decided to lie in wait at Gotham's art gallery every night, until Ivy made her move and the Batman tried to stop her. I have hunted some of my the most fearsome beasts in the cosmos. I know about stealth tactics."

"Did you encounter Ivy?"

The Rani snarled. "That wretched Batman somehow got wind of my night vigils and got to me first. It was incredible. A black shadow just appeared as if from nowhere. Before I could put up a fight, I was handcuffed to the railing with a note for the police left at my side. Then they brought me here."

"It seems to me that they sent you to the right place. While you are here you will receive a course of therapy for your criminally insane delusions."

"I'm not deluded!" wailed the Rani.

Jeremiah ignored her. "In case you are wondering, the Batman had Poison Ivy brought in here as well after he caught her. Perhaps the two of you will get on."

The Rani jumped up and was about to pounce on the doctor, when the two nurses grabbed her and pulled the straitjacket back on.

"Take her to the rubber room," ordered Jeremiah. "Give her a heavy sedation. She needs it." The Rani was duly dragged away.

"How did you get on with the new patient?" asked Jeremiah's secretary when he returned to his office.

"Quite delusional. Turns out she tried to take on both Poison Ivy and the Batman. These supervillains are getting crazier by the dozen," he said. "What was she wearing when they brought her in?"

"Oh, a red tunic with massive shoulder pads, tight red trousers and big spike-heeled boots," replied his secretary.

"Typical super-crook outfit. And 'the Rani?' What a strange pseudonym. She didn't even look Indian. I am quite sure she will be in our care for a very long time."

Eye of the Scorpion, by Ian McLaughlin (Big Finish Audio)

2011-07-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

Ancient Egypt is an historical setting that has not been used terribly often in Doctor Who, so it is rather nice to have the place in this audio. Ian McLaughlin has given us a pretty interesting plot regarding the historically unrecorded Pharaoh Erimem, so it would have been nice for this to have been done as a pure historical. Unfortunately, he took the easy way out and gave us an additional plot about alien parasites that does not feel terribly original.

The Egyptian setting genuinely feels like a real place. One small detail did really irritate me and I felt it compromised the authenticity of the drama. That was the clacking sound of the footsteps. I know loud footsteps work best on audio, but it does not fit the historical background. For the most part Egyptians went barefoot, even Pharaohs and noblemen. When Egyptians did wear shoes, they wore reed sandals, a bit like flip flops. These would not have made the loud clacking noises in the sound effects. In an historical, details like this matter.

I'm a big fan of the Fifth Doctor/ Peri line-up. They work wonderfully well together. In this audio, Big Finish introduce a new regular character to interact with this team. This is the female Egyptian Pharaoh, Erimem, played by Caroline Morris. Erimem is an extremely interesting character and very well conceived, even if she does use anachronistic words like 'parasite' and hold sceptical beliefs that are not altogether convincing. Erimem quickly develops a wonderful relationship with Peri that continues to flourish in the following audios. Peri and Erimem seem to be a godsend for femslash writers who have offered some speculation about their relationship. After having to put up with the rather unsexy Evelyn Smythe, listeners may be glad to have two cute girls in the TARDIS.

Peter Davison gives the best audio performance that I have heard from him so far. Rather disappointingly, he is largely written out of one episode. Perhaps Ian McLaughlin was trying to capture the feel of an Hartnell historical. Nicola Bryant is also on top form and sounds rather like she is enjoying every minute of it.

Despite the irritation of the inauthentic footsteps and the deja vu of the sci-fi component, I found this audio massively enjoyable.

Nice Try, Klein, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

2011-07-04T06:17:00.000-07:00

Another story about Big Finish character, Elizabeth Klein. Klein is a Nazi scientist from an alternate timeline and briefly a companion of the Seventh Doctor. This story is set between A Thousand Tiny Wings and Survival of the Fittest.

Klein crept out of bed and tiptoed down the TARDIS corridor, barefoot and in her nightdress. The lights of the TARDIS were dimmed. Time was meaningless inside the ship, yet it had its own artificial cycle of day and night.

Silently, Klein entered the console room.

At last, she had the controls all to herself. She had watched the Doctor so closely. She had seen him guide its journeys countless times. Every move he made, every switch he pushed had not gone unobserved.

Now was her chance to recapture her destiny. She worked the coordinates into the machine, setting it for 1940s Germany. If she could get back to the Third Reich, she could hand over the ship, hand over the Doctor as prisoner and enable the full restoration of her timeline. The victory of the Allies could be erased from history.

The time rota began to rise and fall in a slow rhythm.

The door opened and in walked the Doctor. Did that infuriating little man never sleep?

"Klein, what are you doing at this hour? Rather late, don't you think?"

"I was having trouble sleeping, Herr Doctor."

The Doctor smiled. "You wouldn't by any chance be setting the TARDIS for the Second World War, would you?"

Klein couldn't be bothered to lie. "And if I am? You know what I want, Doctor."

"Why don't we see where we have got to, Klein?" The Doctor studied the hexagonal console.

"Ah, we have arrived on Pluto, Earth year 1975. If you want to put on an environment suit, we can have a look around. Or would you rather try and get some more sleep first?"

"Very well, Doctor. I'll go back to bed, then we explore Pluto in the morning."

Klein padded softly back to her room. She had missed her destination, but she was not far off. She was in the Twentieth Century and she was in Earth's solar system. Just a little more study and she would be equal to the Doctor in her knowledge of the ship.

'Soon, Herr Doctor. Soon we will be even,' she thought to herself.

The Ancestor Cell, by Stephen Cole and Peter Anghelides (BBC Novel)

2011-07-03T05:37:00.000-07:00

"Romana gave an apologetic little cough, and dangled her shoes on the tips of her outstretched toes. She was studying the tattoo on her bare ankle as though it were the most fascinating thing in the whole room."

As this book concludes a story arc begun by Lawrence Miles, I recommend reading his review of this novel before reading mine. Be warned, he does use some strong language.

As an individual novel, I have read many that are much poorer in style and which are much less interesting to read. Nevertheless, The Ancestor Cell cannot simply be treated as an individual novel. Not only does it conclude a story arc, but it introduces a massive change to the Doctor Who universe within the BBC novel line, namely the apparent destruction of Gallifrey.

It has been suggested by some fans that the War in Heaven was such a big whopping story arc that any resolution to it would have been disappointing. My question to those fans would be whether the War arc really needed resolving at all. Obviously, the character arc of Compassion needed to be resolved, but ironically, The Ancestor Cell actually fails to do that. Given that the war between the Time Lords and the unknown Enemy takes place in the Doctor's future, why not just leave the whole thing hanging in the air? If we go back to the Seventh Doctor era, one of the great things about the "Cartmel Masterplan" was that it was not actually a masterplan at all, but just a lot of hints and ideas that were never developed fully enough to cause any massive continuity problems. That all changed when Virgin allowed Marc Platt to turn the "Masterplan" into a real live story arc in Lungbarrow and come up with a disappointing and uninteresting backstory for the Doctor. To my mind, the real mistake of BBC editors was to take the delightfully imaginative elements in Alien Bodies and turn them into a big narrative arc. What would have worked far better would have been to follow the lead of Cartmel and occasionally drop in some hints about what was going to happen in the future war of the Time Lords.

The clumsy solution to the whole War arc is simple. The Doctor pulls a lever and blows up Gallifrey. No Gallifrey, no future war. It seems hard to imagine the Doctor actually doing this, however troubled he may be about the war. Of course, by altering future history this way, he is in fact creating a temporal paradox. Given all the trouble he has had with Faction Paradox re-writing his past, it seems bonkers that he would do this.

Faction Paradox are murdered by this story. In Alien Bodies, they were a seductive cult with a real sense of fun. In Ancestor Cell, they are turned into a bunch of shambling grotesques who nobody would dream of joining. Moving away from cultish or criminal activities, they become a standard set of Doctor Who bad guys and carry out a military invasion of Gallifrey.

The book offers us a half-hearted attempt to reveal the identity of the Enemy. It is suggested in a massive info-dump, that the Enemy are some of weird life form that would have come to dominate the universe had it not been for the Time Lords. This is a massively disappointing idea. Of course, this is not necessarily gospel, as it is a bad guy who claims all this and he could just be wrong. Lawrence Miles tells us this is definitely not his idea of who they are.

The Ancestor Cell gives us a glimpse of a Time Lord society that is utterly corrupt and devious. We already knew the Time Lords were like that. Lawrence Miles moved us on from that idea by combining the Holmsian model of the Time Lords as Machiavellian schemers with the original idea of the Time Lords as gods or elemental forces. The Ancestor Cell ends up making the Time Lords mundane again by populating Gallifrey with bored rich kids and starving homeless people. One thing that really damages the believability of this book is the idea that Castellan Vorzati would suffer prejudice because of a youthful looking regeneration. The Time Lords must have seen countless examples of regeneration to a more youthful body. It is absurd that they should so take appearances into account.

As I said, the one part of the arc that needed resolution was Compassion. At the end of this novel, she makes her escape, taking a Gallifreyan technician as captive. For most of the book, however, she is written out of the action. This is one of the most disappointing things in the BBC books. They gave us a really interesting character and then allowed lame, unimaginative writers to just ignore her.

Romana III, introduced in Shadows of Avalon, is one of the few entertaining elements in this story. She is the campest and bitchiest of camp bitchy characters. Her approach to carpet care is odd though. She complains about characters shuffling about on her carpet, but she walks about on it with high heels. If she really wanted to look after her carpet, she would take off the stiletto heels and ask everybody to remove their shoes. But then science fiction writers never think about that sort of thing.

Parasite, by Jim Mortimore (Virgin New Adventure)

2011-07-02T04:16:00.000-07:00

Parasite is not one of the most popular of the Virgin novels. It's certainly not one of my favorites, but I can't say I was particularly disappointed with Jim Mortimore's work here.

As might be expected from a novel entitled 'Parasite' there is an immense sense of visceral horror, with various forms of body infestation described. The sense of body invasion certainly gets under one's skin when reading. I am faintly reminded of Neal Asher's 'The Skinner,' which also creates a similarly vivid alien ecosystem.

The Artifact is beautifully described. The sense of a totally alien environment is a little reminiscent of Arthur C Clarke's Rama novels. The notion of mountains, oceans and jungles floating in a vast zero gravity environment is quite breathtaking. While the world-building is excellent, the plot did tend to meander a little too much.

As with Blood Heat, Mortimore puts the characters through an immense amount of physical and psychological trauma. He does this in an intelligent way, however, and avoids the gratuitous pain that Simon Messingham inflicted on his characters in Strange England. The author does, however, make the mistake of too many New Adventure novels in killing off too many characters. Sometimes it is nice to see characters survive rather than die miserable deaths.

The Doctor's role in the plot is underplayed; the attention is given to Ace and Bernice, though I think this book captures the Seventh Doctor well. It seems clear to me that Mortimore was very keen on the NA portrayal of Ace as a violent thug. The Ace we see in this novel is very much an aggressive person who has been conditioned by her intense military experience. As perverse as it is, I really do tend to prefer this NA portrayal of Ace to the rather uneven performances that we got from Sophie Aldred in Seasons 25 and 26.

Parasite is in my judgment a reasonably good Doctor Who novel.

Gifts for Morgaine, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

2011-07-01T04:20:00.000-07:00

Ganymede Correctional Facility, 2192

The Doctor was shown to a table in the visiting area of the prison. At the table was sat a woman dressed in the yellow prison uniform. She had long red hair and eyes that burned with a jade fire. Her face was somehow ageless; at first glance she appeared to be a young woman, at the next glance she appeared incredibly old.

Seeing the Doctor, the woman gave a broad smile. "Merlin!" she greeted.

"Morgaine, it's nice to see you again since that business with the Yssgaroth," he replied and sat down. His smile changed to a frown.

"I heard you have been on the punishment wing for beating another inmate," the Doctor said.

"That woman had been abusing othe inmates. The violent bitch got what she deserved," explained Morgaine.

"Am I the only one who ever tries to find a non-violent solution?" complained the Doctor.

"There is no shame in violence," said Morgaine. "The strong must protect the weak. I will not suffer my fellow prisoners to be abused."

"I understand your sentiments, though I'm not sure how consistent you were with them when you were ruling as queen. I haven't come to lecture you, Morgaine. I've brought you some presents."

Morgaine seemed delighted. "How kind of you, Merlin!"

"I have no idea when your birthday is, but I know it's a bit grim in here, so I thought some things might brighten up your day. I did check them with the prison reception. They're all permitted within prison regulations," the Doctor said.

He produced a large shopping bag. From this he took out a pair of gold flip flops and passed them across the table to Morgaine. She smiled with delight, then hastily slipped off her orange prison-issue flip flops to put on the new pair.

"I would have got you some other clothes, but I understand you have to wear those yellow pyjamas. You can at least wear some nicer flip flops."

"How thoughtful, Merlin. These are very nice," Morgaine said.

The Doctor then pulled out a tin of hot dog sausages and a loaf of bread. "You can make yourself some sausage sandwiches." This was followed by a leather-bound book.

" A copy of Emma signed by Jane Austen herself. She told me she was delighted to contribute to the reform and refinement of women in gaol."

"I'm sure I shall be very refined after I have read it, Merlin. Do thank her for me when you next see her."

The next gift was a magazine. The Doctor tried to avert his gaze from the scantily-clad woman on the cover as he passed it to Morgaine. "I know you like this sort of thing, but I was a little embarrassed to buy it."

"Ah, that old lack of spirit in you again," said Morgaine.

"I hope you are not feeling too miserable here?" asked the Doctor

"I do my best to keep my spirits up. My cellmate is good company. Will you let me out some time soon? Prison is alright, but after two hundred years, it is getting a bit old."

The Doctor sighed. He knew he was going to have to remain firm.

"I'm afraid you should have thought about that before you invaded this universe, killed several military personnel, summoned a demon, threatened to launch a nuclear holocaust, not to mention imprisoned my future self in the ice caves for all eternity. Can't do the time? Don't do the crime. Ask me again in five thousand years time."

'Sometimes that little man could be quite insufferable,' thought Morgaine.

The Caves of Androzani

2011-06-27T04:13:00.000-07:00

Stotz: You better turn this ship around Doctor!
The Doctor: Why?
Stotz: Because I'll kill you if you don't!
The Doctor: Not a very convincing argument actually, Stotz, because I'm going to die soon anyway, unless of course —
Stotz: I'll give you to the count of three!
The Doctor: Unless of course I can find the antidote… I owe it to my young friend to try because I got her into this —
Stotz: One,
The Doctor: So you see —
Stotz: Two,
The Doctor: I'm not going to let you stop me now!
Stotz: Three!

Is Caves of Androzani the greatest ever Doctor Who story? Perhaps in evaluating that claim one should consider the rivals. Genesis of the Daleks is sometimes suggested as the best Doctor Who story. Genesis is certainly a popular story with some well remembered moments and great performances. Nevertheless, that serial had significant flaws in it's plot and is regarded by a minority of fans (including myself) as rather overrated. Another contender is City of Death. I suspect those who advocate City of Death as the greatest Doctor Who story feel that Caves of Androzani is a bit bleak and lacks the light-hearted feel that has so often been a part of the show. City of Death is certainly a serial that is hard to fault, but I don't think it quite smacks one in the face with its brilliance in the way that Caves of Androzani does.

In Caves of Androzani, we see the meeting of two assets; the inspired script writing of Robert Holmes and the strong artistic flair of director Graeme Harper. It is really unfortunate that Harper only went on to direct one more story in the classic series, Revelation of the Daleks. Not only does Harper bring to life a very realistic glimpse of a future society, but he brings a strong aesthetic sense to the production with the evocative score, the classy sets, the Kabuki-look of Sharaz Jek and his very aesthetic, almost statuesque death in the arms of his faithful android Salateen.

Robert Holmes was by no means a writer who could do no wrong. Even some of his more highly regarded scripts such as Spearhead from Space and Talons of Weng-Chiang show signs of padding. In Caves of Androzani, however, Holmes crafted one of the tightest plots in the history of Doctor Who. Caves of Androzani has something of the same feel as a tragedy like Romeo and Juliet, where a series of closely connected events seem to conspire against the characters.

One complaint about Caves of Androzani is that the Doctor is not very proactive. He does everything he can to save Peri, yet he shows no concern for dealing with the bad guys and improving the situation on Androzani Major. This contrasts quite radically with the Seventh Doctor, who always had an agenda, secret or revealed. Nevertheless, surprisingly this does not diminish the awesomeness of this Doctor. In fact it seems to increase the potency of his figure. In Caves of Androzani, the Doctor manages to be an 'Oncoming Storm' without even intending it. By simply arriving on a planet he sets off a chain reaction which causes a series of planet-shaking events.

Season 21 had been all about how the noble figure of the Doctor was confronted by the stark brutality of the cosmos. Here the Doctor meets an assortment of vicious and self-serving characters. The most sympathetic character in the story, Chellak is prepared to send his own men on a suicide mission just to protect his career. Faced with such human monsters, the Doctor is able to display the height of his nobility, as well as his sense of weltschmerz or world weariness. Perhaps the most powerful scene is when Stotz threatens to kill him and the Doctor simply ignores his threats. It is as though the Doctor has spent the last year having people point guns at him and he just does not care at all. Nothing matters any more except saving Peri.

Fans generally agree that it was a colossal error of judgment for John Nathan-Turner to follow this serial with the appalling Twin Dilemma. After the glory of this story, it was such a massive come-down to watch a half-thought out B-movie with a new Doctor who was at first viewing somewhat repulsive. The tragedy of this was that Colin Baker had been set up to fail as a Doctor. Yet in another sense, The Twin Dilemma was the perfect sequel to Caves of Androzani. There is a real sense of tragic pathos in the way the brutality and malice that had characterised Season 21 overcame the gentle Fifth Doctor, forcing him to take on a new persona. It is as though the kindness, gentleness and peaceful nature of the Fifth Doctor was overthrown.

Caves of Androzani is filled with interesting characters. For me the one that stands out is Stotz. He is such a nasty piece of work! The nasty trick he plays on his unruly subordinate is wonderfully done. I love the way his relationship with Morgus is played out. We might expect Stotz to be filled with contempt and bitterness toward the pompous and devious Morgus, yet it seems to be that he genuinely likes and admires Morgus. Despite his dismissal of Morgus' claim to superiority, he sees something of himself in the industrialist, hence his comment "Your just like me, a man with a gun." I love the camaraderie that we see between the two villains at the climax.

One of the mistakes that was made in writing for the Fifth Doctor was the failure to give him enough comic lines. Having witnessed the excesses of the Graham Williams years, JNT had a suspicion of humour in Doctor Who. This was unfortunate, because Davison was great at delivering comic moments. They added to his eccentric charm, yet he did not allow them to define his Doctor as Tom Baker had. Robert Holmes had not written for the Fifth Doctor previously and so gave him a lot of lines that were more characteristic of the Fourth Doctor. These worked incredibly well with Davison and gave his character some added charisma.

Nicola Bryant has not been remembered kindly for her role as Peri. I think she is pretty good in this story. Peri's character worked much better with the Fifth Doctor than with the Sixth. His easygoing charm rubbed the edge off her moodiness. Some fans have pointed out the sense of pathos in the fact that the Fifth Doctor sacrifices his life to save somebody that he only met in the previous story. Some lament the many novels and audios that feature the Fifth Doctor/Peri team in a supposed gap between Planet of Fire and Caves of Androzani. While I sympathize with this view, I do enjoy the 5/Peri material, especially with Erimem. Peri and the Fifth Doctor are such a wonderful team that it would be a waste not to have produced that spin-off material.

It's impossible to think of a more gripping Doctor Who story than Caves of Androzani.

Jubilee, by Robert Shearman (Big Finish audio)

2011-06-26T03:13:00.000-07:00

Jubilee is something of a fan favorite. Elements from this story were used to create the first Dalek appearance in the BBC Wales series, Dalek.

I have to say I was rather disappointed by this audio. It has some strong elements; the creation of a vivid alternate history, the conversation with the American president (if you don't mind a funny accent) and the way it makes one isolated Dalek into a sinister and disturbing figure. I also really love the hilarious teaser intro, which spoofs the Dalek Empire audios. Nevertheless, I was definitely pleased to get to the end of this one.

The biggest problem with this story is the failure of editing. Robert Shearman throws far too many elements into this audio. He gives us the isolated, defeated Dalek captive that worked so effectively in Dalek. He also gives us a complex story about alternate timelines, a satire of militarism and fascism, a biting critique of Dalekmania, an exploration of Dalek identity and some attempts at camp comedy. Attempting to bring in so many elements does not really work all that well.

Jubilee does not manage to integrate camp comedy and serious drama terribly well. While I like camp villains, the president and his wife Miriam comes across as a bit too cartoonish. Miriam's pretence at being stupid is really irritating and the moment when she asks the Dalek to marry her is so awful that it is embarrassing. Other excessively silly elements in the story include the ban on contractions in speech and the requirement of women to be in bed by midnight.

The story is rather excessive in violence. We get torture, decapitation and mutilation. I know its a hobby horse of mine, but Doctor Who writers are generally not going to win me over if they put in this kind of stuff. It's just too much.

The other big problem with this story is the way it overdoes the main message and starts to sound repetitive. The whole theme about 'people can be just like Daleks' comes up again and again. We get the message. Now can we have an exciting adventure with the Daleks?

If you want to see the original idea behind Dalek and want a very different kind of Dalek story, this is one to check out, but I did warn you about the gruesomeness.

Season 20

2011-06-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

One of the things that is most often pointed out about this season is the sign of the show increasingly relying on its past continuity. The first serial of this season brings back the long forgotten Omega. The next story was a sequel to a serial in the previous season. The big story arc of the season involves the Black Guardian from Season 16 and we get an inevitable Master story at the end. When the stories are decent, its a good thing, but when they are less impressive, the reliance on the past becomes something of an irritation.

One positive aspect of this season is the complete lack of such unoriginal stock elements as bases-under-siege, returning monsters and mad scientists. I really admire the freedom with which writers in this season felt free to dispense with those, even while making heavy reliance on past continuity.

Peter Davison is rather inconsistent in this season. He is absolutely brilliant in Snakedance, but in some of the other stories shows the same blandness that characterised him in the previous season. It's nice to see Tegan back in the first story, though it is odd that we saw her leave at the end of Season 19. It is a relief, as Nyssa on her own would have been mind-numbingly boring. A change in costumes for the two companions is very welcome. Nyssa finally gets out of that awful, unflattering velvet suit; though her new outfit is not that good either. Tegan also wears something other than that purple uniform during this season.

This season is definitely not a high point in the history of the show, but it's definitely one that is worth looking into.

Arc of Infinity- 2/10

If you thought ending a season with Time-Flight was a bad idea, JNT opened the new season with Arc of Infinity. It could have been a good story, if only the cast had acted like the events really mattered.

Snakedance- 10/10

A sequel that both surpasses and complements Kinda.

Mawdryn Undead- 8/10

A refreshingly gentle story. The final episode rather lets it down.

Terminus- 2/10

A shockingly dull story.

Enlightenment- 9/10

Full of character and drama, as well as lavish visuals. Very nicely done.

The King's Demons- 3/10

A half-hearted and half-thought out attempt at a historical.

The Banquo Legacy, by Andy Lane and Justin Richards (BBC Novel)

2011-06-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

Fleeing the Time Lords on board Compassion, the human TARDIS, the Doctor and Fitz come to a Victorian house in which a number of grisly events occur.

The influence of Wilkie Collins 'Woman in White' is very pronounced in this novel, though the horror element takes that influence in rather a different direction. The style of narration has an experimental feel, with different characters narrating slightly out of sequence. These narrators are quite well characterised which aids the impact of the novel. The Banquo Legacy generally makes for an exciting read.

The elements of the story that relate to the War of Heaven story arc are very much sidelined, though the Time Lord agent is well portrayed. Compassion's interfacing with Susan is an interesting idea, but it does leave Compassion being written out of the action, as she was in too many novels. Fitz is pretty amusing in this story and the Doctor comes across as very Doctorish.

All praises aside, there is something of a lack of interesting ideas in this novel. With some of the massive developments seen since in the BBC range since Lawrence Miles penned Alien Bodies, The Banquo Legacy does come across as just a plain old horror story, as well written as it is. I also feel that we have perhaps seen a few too many Victorian era stories in Doctor Who. This novel does seem to want to flirt with the Steampunk genre, that I rather detest for its self-conscious coolness.