The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Despite its title, this serial concerns the Dalek occupation of Earth, rather than the Dalek invasion. In this, it strikes an original note, as there are plenty of films about flying saucer invasions, but very few films about what the flying saucer people do after they've turned up and knocked down the Statue of Liberty and burned down the White House.

There is a very effective sense of bleakness about Dalek Invasion. The characters find themselves in an utterly hostile, yet not unfamiliar environment, harassed at every turn by Robomen, Daleks, flying saucers, hungry dogs, collaborators, crocodiles and spivs. The scenes of a silent London remind me of the 80s Day of the Triffids series. Indeed, the scene where Barbara drives her truck into a group of Daleks is remarkably similar to a scene in Day of the Triffids, where a truck runs over a bunch of triffids. I actually found myself looking at the credits to see if David Maloney had any involvement.

There are two things that are not so effective. The long, lumbering plot with it's grab bag of Terry Nation action sequences and the rather weak direction of Richard Martin. In the rather unworldly atmosphere of the first Dalek serial, Richard Martin worked alright. However, he was much less adept at the more realistic action drama of this story. The fight scenes are simply terrible. This is a story that simply cries out for Douglas Camfield.

The final scene of the departure of Susan is moving, especially for me, as I am one of the few fans of Susan. However, it is hard not to feel Dr. Who's actions were a bit drastic and heavy handed.

The Daleks are perhaps less interesting than they were in the first Dalek sequel. They have become a generic space conquering race, the likes of which we would see rather a lot of in Doctor Who. The obvious difference from later Daleks, however, is their reliance on satellite dishes to move about in the open (in contrast to the city-bound Daleks of the first serial). Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood offer a good explanation for this, arguing that the more familiar space Daleks adapted a number of Skaro city Daleks to boost their forces.

What do we make of the Daleks bizarre plan to turn the Earth into a spaceship? When we considered Inferno, we connected that to that story to the theory that the planet Earth is constructed on a hole in the universe and that beneath lies an entrace into the hellish Yssgaroth universe. I pointed out that in Inferno, the Primord mutants appeared to be under some kind of psychic direction. The Yssgaroth vampires were trying to break out into this universe. I would suggest that something similar is happening in this story. The Daleks are being telepathically manipulated by the Yssgaroth into drilling into the Earth's core. Their Dalek minds are being fooled into thinking that they can turn the Earth into a spaceship, when actually they are breaking out a far more terrible enemy.

Gallifrey: Intervention Earth

I listened to the first series of Big Finish's Gallifrey spin-off, but after that I had not followed this range. However, when I saw the incredible cover of this audio, with the new Romana, Ace and Omega in his original costume, I had to buy it. As it turned out, I had no problem enjoying it having heard only one Gallifrey season. I'm sure Doctor Who fans could have enjoyed it without having heard any previous releases.

In this story, we see Ace with her own TARDIS, working for the Celestial Intervention Agency. I have always like the idea of Ace becoming a Time Lord; it made sense of the way the Seventh Doctor seemed to be testing and preparing Ace for some unknown task. Ace is not a Time Lord here, but she is obviously moving in that direction. I'm not sure Sophie Aldred pulls of this massive character development, but I'm glad she's here.

The big treat here is the return of Stephen Thorne as Omega. I simply adore his bombastic vocal performance as Omega in The Three Doctors. Sadly, we don't get to here him as much as we might have hoped and he does not get quite as angry as he did the first time around (You have angered me!)

The story follows The Three Doctors quite closely in plot. This actually makes it the second attempt to re-write the Three Doctors after The Infinity Doctors. One problem is that though we go into the anti-matter universe, the sound effects do not really convey any sense of what this place is like. They could at least have given us Omega's wibbly-wobbly Gell Guards!

I really do like the new incarnation of Romana. Juliet Landau really does bring something new to the character with a much more seductive and understated performance than we got under Lalla Ward. I'm very much forward to hearing more of her. There seems to be quite a bit of debate among fans as to whether the Juliet Landau Romana, known as 'Trey' is the same as the Romana III in the BBC books. Her creator seemed to suggest she was not, despite other voices in Big Finish to the contrary. I am very much of the opinion that she is the same Romana III who becomes War Queen of Gallifrey. Her appearance clearly resembles descriptions of the character, even down to the outfit she wears on the cover. Furthermore, she has the ruthlessness and seductiveness of the novels' Romana III. Her interest in the future of Gallifrey reflects the interest of Romana III in the coming War of Heaven, though I doubt Big Finish will be exploring that continuity minefield, even if Lawrence Miles did give them permission.

I don't think this audio quite lives up to the explosive cinematic looking cover, but it is enjoyable and promises exciting things ahead. The upbeat musical score, included as a separate track, as usual, is impressive too.

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 5: Tom Baker and the Williams Years, by Phil Sandifer

When I discuss Phil Sandifer or link to posts on his blog here, I often get comments expressing disdain and contempt for Sandifer. I suspect a lot of the people who like my blog are the sort of people who can't stand Sandifer and the views he represents. I do not share such feelings at all. I very much enjoy reading his writing. Yes, I often disagree with him, but I actually agree with him just as often. I don't share his politics, but is that important? I get frustrated by the way he comes across as so angry and bitter, but I have plenty of my own faults.

Sandifer wisely decided to split the massive Fourth Doctor era in half. This book therefore covers the less well appreciated Graham Williams era, along with the brief period of Season 18, in which Tom Baker worked under John Nathan-Turner.

I criticised the previous volume on the Hinchcliffe era because I felt Sandifer allowed his love of Seasons 12-14 to cloud his judgement and overlook some of the faults of those stories. It lacked the more objective critical perspective of volume 3 on the Pertwee era. In this volume, he gets his critical perspective back. He shows a real awareness of the faults of the Williams material, yet he also shows a genuine appreciation of what is great about it. There were definite flaws to the Williams era, it's low production values, its occasional tendency to silliness and the way it became dominated by Baker as an out of control lead man, yet it was also immensely fun. I don't think Sandifer regards Season 18 as quite the high point of Doctor Who that I consider it, but he is also well aware of its depth and creativity.

Sandifer begins the book with contemporary culture, looking at the Sex Pistols and the Punk movement. He later relates this to The Sunmakers, seeing that serial as the strongest expression of the Punk aesthetic in Doctor Who. I remember in the blog comments when he was covering this period, Sandifer got quite a bit of criticism for his use of Punk as a paradigm for understanding the Williams era. I think the criticism is to some extent fair. One can perhaps vaguely see something punkish about that story, but otherwise, Punk does not register at all in Doctor Who until the Seventh Doctor stories. I remember somebody arguing that intellectuals and writers tend to overemphasise the importance of Punk as a cultural movement. Heavy Metal was much more popular with the working classes in the late Seventies and early Eighties and intellectuals generally despise Metal.

Coming into the first story of the Williams era, The Horror of Fang Rock, Sandifer discusses the common view that this is essentially a Hinchliffe type story. Sandifer points out that Horror of Fang Rock lacks the grandeur of Hinchcliffe stories, offering a far more mundane setting. Where an Hincliffe adversary would be a cosmic threat, the adversary here is just a lone alien scout. The stakes are lower. There is also the suggestion of the story as being in some way a critique of the Hinchliffe era, with the enormous body count and the sheer callousness of the Doctor's reaction to the carnage.

Unsurprisingly, our author identifies The Invisible Enemy as the first bad story of the Williams era. He sees it as being let down primarily by its poor designs, as well as the more general faults of Bob Baker and David Martin. Sandifer is not overly impressed by Image of the Fendahl, arguing that it's use of Von Daniken's ideas are clumsy and problematic.

Leaving Doctor Who to address the appearance of Star Wars on the scene, Sandifer takes a well deserved swipe at Joseph Campbell. He also points out that the new trick of George Lucas was to tell fantastic adventure stories using the visual trappings of science fiction, without the hard Sci-Fi concepts that had previously been the bread and butter of science fiction. Inevitably, discussion of Star Wars leads on to an examination of the Underworld, which like almost everybody else, he regards as a failure. He points out that Bob Baker and Dave Martin's work is effective when backed up impressive visuals from the production team and in this story, the visual effects are a massive letdown. The author praises The Invasion of Time for treating the viewers as intelligent people, with its apparent subversion of the Doctor as moral centre of the story. He sees the story falling down in the way it treats the Sontarans as another race of pointlessly returning monsters and the Time Lords as utterly pathetic.

In contrast to Underworld, Sandifer sees The Ribos Operation as the story that truly gets the new paradigm of Star Wars right in Doctor Who. The grand cosmic drama is shifted to a rather more small scale story about inter-planetary fraud, yet is used to frame this narrative. Graham Williams' bonkers idea about cosmic dualism is subverted by Robert Holmes with the portrayal of the White Guardian as just another colonial master and the Doctor visibly rejecting the notion of subordination to him. Answering Lawrence Miles criticism that Mary Tamm does not take her role seriously, Sandifer argues that she is not supposed to; Romana is there to mock and ridicule the Doctor and the very premise of the story. In a separate essay on whether the Guardians can be regarded as a legitimate part of the Doctor Who canon, he points out some inconsistencies between the Guardians in Season 16 and in the Davison era.

Regarding Pirate Planet, Sandifer defends this story, arguing that its genius lies in fooling the viewer into complacency. It seems like a light-hearted story, but it turns out to be a tale of genocide on a monstrous scale. I was overjoyed by his positive evaluation of The Stones of Blood, as this rather maligned serial is one of my favorites. He writes:

"It's a genuinely enjoyable subversion of the by now standbys of the Hinchcliffe era that goes into some of the most fun Doctor Who has ever had at being anti-authoritarian, and with a new sort of authority figure. We haven#t seen the Doctor do the legal system in a while. It's also another nice step in the larger anti-epic, thanks to the Megara. The Megara are, after all, keepers of justice, and what is justice if not maintaining fairness and balance? And of course, the Megara are shown to be ridiculously blinkered and silly, striking another blow against the basic assumptions of the Key to Time."

He also acknowledges The Androids of Tara as a well made and enjoyable story, if lacking the coneptual depth of The Ribos Operation. Power of Kroll he views as a cynical hack-job, handed in by the usually brilliant Robert Holmes because he was fed up with the show. He also unsurprisingly treats the Key to Time finale, Armageddon Factor as a disappointment, while recognising that at its conclusion, it brings itself in line with Robert Holmes in subverting the premise of the story arc. He takes a brief look at The Auntie Matter, viewing it as a sad, but enjoyable piece of nostalgia, like much of Big Finish's output.

Sandifer moves from Season 16 to talking about Margaret Thatcher and the Winter of Discontent. I'm afraid our author comes across as quite hysterical when he talks about Thatcher, viewing her as the 'raw embodiment of all evil.' He says this description was initially a joke, but he seems to seriously paint Margaret Thatcher as the politial equivalent of Voldemort. I find his attitude rather disappointing. One might expect that it is the mark of an intelligent adult that they can disagree with the policies and view of a political leader while according them some basic respect. I'm not quite sure, however, that Sandifer really understands the concept of respectful disagreement, at least not when it touches anything vaguely political. His attacks on the late Baroness Thatcher, along with his comparing the late Mary Whitehouse to a school bully he once encountered show something of a lack of maturity and perspective.

Fans have endlessly criticised Romana's regeneration scene in Destiny of the Daleks, including Lawrence Miles in About Time. Sandifer offers a great response to this:

"I mean what, does Miles just want Lalla Ward to put on a Mary Tamm wig and roll over before Davros enters and shouts 'Leave the man, it's the girl I want?' Say what you want about the opening scene, and I'm certainly not going to pretend it's the shows finest hour, but there is a job to be done and it gets it done with a minimum fuss."

Personally, I quite like that scene and it is positive prove that Time Lords don't have to have white skin after regenerating. Moffat should have remembered that scene and given us a black or Asian Doctor after Matt Smith. Sandifer appreciates the sheer glee that Lalla Ward brought to the show. Mary Tamm's difficulty taking the stories seriously worked in its own way in the Key to Time, but Lalla's insistence on taking the stories deadly seriously is quite welcome. As might be expected, Sandifer is unimpressed on the whole with Destiny and it's return to Dan Dare style space adventure.

You don't need me to tell you that Sandifer thinks City of Death is a good story. The Creature from the Pit, however, is more contested ground. Sandifer sees a strong political message in this story (which was perhaps lost in the direction), with Lady Adrasta representing the same ruthless capitalism as Thatcher. Moving on to Nightmare of Eden, our author brings up an interesting fact; that Bob Baker has written three Oscar-winning films, namely the Wallace and Gromit animated features. He sees in this the fact that Bob Baker (and his former writing partner, Dave Martin) were at their best when producing stories that were structured around visual events rather than dialogue. This means that the writing duo were quite ill-suited to the William years, with the centrality of Tom Baker's comic dialogue and the generally unpolished visuals. Sandifer agrees with Lawrence Miles that Horns of Nimon is, like Underworld, a failure to understand how to use the epic scope of mythology in science fiction. A large part of this is the budgetary constraints and the disappointing visual aspects of the production. He argues that this accounts for Robert Holmes demoralisation and disenchantment with the program. On the lost story Shada, Sandifer comments "So Shada is at once better than the manifestations of it that we have and clearly inferior to the heavenly ideal that some have made of it." He offers some very interesting discussion of the different variations of Shada, including among them, Douglas Adam's DIRK Gently's Holisitc Detective Agency, which was essentially a reworking of the story. After a discussion of Gareth Roberts' novel The Well Mannered War, we get an interview with the man himself, which offers some insights into Williams-era appreciation.

In a commissioned essay, Sandifer addresses the question of whether it makes sense to talk about a 'JNT era.' Given the considerable differences in style between the script editors employed by John Nathan-Turner, it is difficult to identify a unifying theme for 80s Doctor Who. He finds a paradox in JNT's desire to tone down the humour of the Williams years, while seeing Doctor Who primarily in the paradigm of light entertainment. He finds something of a resemblance between the work of JNT and RT Davies, in that both men treated Doctor Who as 'event television' working the stories into the broader picture of television broadcasting.

Taking a look at other science fiction shows of the late 70s/ early 80s, our author is unimpressed by Quatermass (1979), sadly describing it as 'one hundred minutes of Nigel Kneale yelling at the damn kids to get off his lawn." On the other hand, he admires David Maloney's adaptation of Day of the Triffids. He also has much praise for Sapphire and Steel and suggests David McCallum's performance as Steel was an inspiration for McCoy's Doctor.

The Leisure Hive is viewed as the start of JNT's new 'event television' approach. Sandifer points out that in every way, the serial broadcasts the fact that Doctor Who has re-branded and reinvented itself. He connects this to the new relationship between JNT and fandom, what he cleverly calls 'the fan-industrial complex.' On Meglos, his most interesting comments relate to the way that the Chronic Hysteresis works as a kind of magic. He views the introduction of Waterhouse's Adric in Full Circle as a spectacularly bad casting decision. Nevertheless, he acknowledges both the dramatic strength of Full Circle and Bidmead's new aesthetic vision for the show. He feels that State of Decay has some great ideas, particularly its reinvention of Time Lord mythology, but it is let down by a less than impressive production. Personally, I think State of Decay reaches a pretty high standard, but perhaps I'm not the best television critic.

We get an enjoyable diversion by way of a look at 2000 AD, one of the better known British comics. At the heart of this comic was Judge Dredd, the future law-enforcer with his perpetually humourless expression and huge gun. Sandifer says of it:

"But what's interesting about Judge Dredd is that underneath the extravagant violence there is a rather wicked bit of intelligent satire. The entire premise of it rapidly becomes that the audience is rooting for a character who is obviously a bad guy, while the villains are often perfectly sympathetic characters. In the first major storyline, Dredd violently puts down a rebellion of robots who are shown to have free will, and who are rebelling against conditions that are clearly slavery- a rebellion that would, in any normal sci-fi story, treat them as the good guys."

Examining Warriors' Gate, Sandifer asks what Bidmead really understood by magic and science. He suggests that what Bidmead objected to was plots in which the Doctor wins simply because he's the Doctor. Instead, he wanted to see the Doctor winning the day through the rules and structure of the narrative worlds he enters. This essentially fitted with the original vision of David Whittaker and with the first two Doctors. However, the brash and bold showmen Doctors of the Seventies were incompatible with this paradigm, hence the need for Tom Baker's departure. In the departure of Romana, Sandifer sees the resolution of his 'Problem of Susan;' we finally have a companion who outgrows her role and becomes a potential protagonist on her own. Sandifer argues that The Keeper of the Traken is structured like a Shakespearean comedy, but subverted into a tragedy at the end by the death of Tremas. When we finally get to Logopolis, our author gives us one of his experimental pieces. The Logopolis essay is written as a 'choose your own adventure.' It is written in beautiful poetic language, but it's one of those occasions when I largely fail to understand exactly what he is trying to say.

Finally, in his overall summary, Sandifer praises the sense of fun in the Graham Williams era. For all that he appreciates the dark and epic stories, he cannot fail to enjoy City of Death or Androids of Tara. He suggests that even the weakest stories of this period, such as Nightmare of Eden are enjoyable to watch with friends and snack food.

Inferno

A lot of Doctor Who stories are padded out to fill extra episodes, but Inferno takes padding to a completely different level. The orginal story about a drilling station and green slime turning people into werewolves would have needed padding to fill out four episodes, but this serial had to stretch to an impossible seven episodes. The ever resourceful Terrance Dicks came up with the idea of filling this out by taking the Doctor to a 'mirror universe' version of the same setting, with Fascist versions of the main characters. Conveniently, this removed the need for new sets and hiring new actors. All it required was a slightly higher costume budget and Nicholas Courtney to spend a bit longer in the make-up chair.

A lot of fans think the idea of the 'mirror universe' is a fantastically clever one. I don't. As Phil Sandifer points out (there is very little in his Inferno essay that I disagree with), the idea of a mirror universe is one that television writers continually turn to. It's a very standard trope. It's not used in a particularly creative way in Inferno. The Doctor's witnessing of the destruction of the mirror Earth does not give him any new insight that enables him to save the regular Earth. It simply feels like a way to draw the story out and we are denied the pleasure of seeing the Fascist characters meeting their other selves.

That is not to say that the Inferno-verse is not fun to watch at times. The actors are clearly enjoying the chance to be evil for a while. Nicholas Courtney is particulary memorable as the sneering Brigade Leader. This is possibly a problem for Caroline John's Liz Shaw. Liz never really had much personality or character development. It is actually only when she becomes a Fascist that she appears to be an interesting character who we want to watch. Furthermore, the Fascist world is never really explored. It never really offers more than a fleeting glimpse of what this world is like. It seems perhaps a little surprising that the royal family were executed in this world. In our world, the British Union of Fascists supported the monarchy and our royal family were hardly left of centre in their views. Perhaps the mirror universe regime is closer to Communism than Fascism. Or more accurately, given the Terrance Dicks input, they are a British version of those nasty foreign bureacratic types that we British patriots all hate and UKIP imagine are running the European Union.



Of course, Inferno has some great direction, thanks to Douglas Camfield, with Barry Letts filling in when the director became ill. This story has some enjoyable moments, but for me it is just too long and bores me. This is not a classic by any stretch.

It has been said that the first four episodes of a new Doctor's run follow a pattern. The first story is a frenzied runaround (Spearhead from Space- not much plot going on), the second story is one more suited to the previous Doctor (Dr Who and the Silurians- the old base under siege) and the third story an experimental new kind of story that is not really repeated (Ambassadors of Death- realistic elements at the forefront and science fiction elements kept in the background). It is the fourth story that defines the new era. With its theme of industrial research, energy sources, green slime, Venusian Akido and pointless car chases, Inferno sets up the Third Doctor era perfectly. All that is missing is Jo Grant and the riotous colours that came in with Claws of Axos.



It does seem remarkable given all the massive historical differences between our universe and the Inferno-verse, that all the main characters are all together in an almost identical scientificc installation. The novel Timewyrm: Revelation offers a handy explanation that this universe has been artificially constructed. I did come up with my own theory as to the nature of the Inferno-verse. In The Chase, the Doctor conjectures that the TARDIS had entered a realm formed from human fears. It seems surprising that the Doctor would suppose that such a psychological world existed and that the TARDIS could take one there, but perhaps the Inferno-verse is this 'land of fears?' Could the Inferno-verse be a sort of projection of the Doctor's own fears about the drilling project? It occurred to me that the Republic Security Force represent the Doctor's anxieties about working with a military organisation. It's worth noting that the Brigade Leader is not that far removed from the Brigadier in personality. Notice the scene in Inferno where the real Brigadier rants at Benton and orders him to act like a bully and to coerce Stahlman. Of course, this theory contradicts the novels in which the Inferno-verse is a real place.


So what is going on with all that green slime? Some of the New Adventure novels hint at the idea, championed by Lawrence Miles, that the Earth is an artificial planet. After the Time Lords first experimented with Time Travel, they unleashed the vampiric Yssgaroth from a hellish other-universe. After Rassilon defeated the Yssgaroth, he fixed up the holes in the universe with artificial planets, Earth being one of these. Thus, the weird green slime that seems to defy the laws of physics is matter from another universe. This is supported by Planet of Evil, in which material from another universe has a similar effect in turning people into werewolves.

I think the Yssgaroth/ Hollow Earth theory fits Inferno perfectly. The very title of this serial captures the idea of hell being underground. The drilling station is not simply causing an ecological disaster, but is awakening demonic forces. Notice that the Primords and Stahlman in particular act like they are under the control of some unseen force. They are being controlled the Yssgaroth, who want to escape and unleash havoc on the universe (no pun intended).

Galaxy Four (revisited)

I reviewed Galaxy Four quite a long time ago, but having watched the rediscovered episode three and the new reconstrution on the Aztecs DVD, I thought I ought to write something about it.

The reconstruction on the DVD is very impressive, despite the scarcity of material. It's better than the Loose Canon recon and better than many other recons with far more available photographic material.

I am struck how much this is a story aimed at the kids. Not in the way that today's show aims stuff at children, with dumb laughs and non-stop action, but with a simple plot and simple morals. As I said in my previous review, there is an element of fairytale (not the Disney or Moffat style) in these Hartnell stories.

The recovered episode demonstrates that Stephanie Bidmead's performance as Maaga is less than impressive. As Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood say, she comes across as a "slightly irked school dinner lady," rather than a villain with true menace.

I think the Drahvins are a future offshoot of humanity. Maaga strongly imples that she (unlike her soldiers) is human. That means that this story, like a number of other Hartnell stories is set far into the future. For some reason, the First Doctor seems to end up in the far, far future far more often than his later incarnations.

I think this story would have worked well as a Graham Williams era story. Romana would have been able to fight Maaga, K9 could make Computer Love to the Chumblies and Tom Baker's Doctor would have been completely dismissive of the whole story. Quite a few Graham Williams stories feel like send-ups of the Hartnell era.

I still feel very sorry for the Drahvins who are left to perish with the dying planet. I wish Dr. Who could have found a way to save them.

An Adventure in Space and Time

I think we can all accept that this is not a factual documentary. There are things in this drama that are not accurate or realistic. For instance, I'm pretty sure that Verity Lambert was a lot more confident and not nearly as timid as she appears in this, as Lawrence Miles pointed out the other day. This is a tender and affectionate tribute and celebration of the birth of Doctor Who.

I was a bit worried about this, as I regard Mark Gatiss as one of the less impressive Doctor Who writers. He has written some very second-rate stories. However, it turned out to be both moving and enjoyable. This is probably the best thing Gatiss has written. It tells the story that all of us Who fans know by heart, but brings it to life in a way that is accessible for the newer viewer.

David Bradley is incredible in the role of Hartnell. He seems so true to the part, much more so than Richard Hurndall was in The Five Doctors. The other cast do a great job too, though the stand-in for Troughton does not look much like the man at all. He looked more like somebody doing a cosplay of the Second Doctor at a convention.

Long term readers of this blog will know I obsess over Received Pronunciation and lament the inability of many modern actors to speak in proper RP. I was dreadfully worried that Verity Lambert was going to sound like Tony Blair or a BBC newsreader, but thankfully Jessica Raine sounded RP most of the time. Some of the actors ought to have sounded a little posher, but never mind.

While at times there was a touch of sentimentality in An Adventure, it succeeded in being moving. Some of the tenderest moments were when we saw Hartnell with his family. It was so lovely when Hartnell was crying over the fireplace on knowing his time when the show was over, that Heather Hartnell said "I'll make a nice cup of tea."

The drama was not, however, perfect. A lot of the people most involved in the early success of the show were glossed over, such as Terry Nation, Ray Cusick, Delia Derybshire and the Radiophonic Workshop. Unsurprisingly, Gatiss made the decision to play safe and barely acknowledge Hartnell's tendency to bigoted opinions, something that genuinely impacted his relationship with others, including Waris Hussein. The appearance at the end of Matt Smith was quite unnecessary, as were some of the in-jokes, most especially the reference to one of Gatiss' novels.

Revenge of the Cybermen

Revenge of the Cybermen was the first Target novel I ever read. It was my first experience of Doctor Who after reading the 1966 Dr Who Annual (how weird is that as an introduction to Doctor Who?), before watching any televised stories. I immediately followed it by reading the novelisation of Moonbase, purchased at the Doctor Who Exhibition at Longleat Safari. A few months later, I watched Revenge of the Cybermen on VHS and loved it as much as I had loved the novel. Over thirty years later, I am confronted by the fact that fan orthodoxy holds this story to be rubbish.

It is interesting how this story has become the classic example of the rubbish returning monster story. Remarkably so, given how there seem to be far worse candidates, such as The Sontaran Experiment in the same season and Death to the Daleks in the previous season. Phil Sandifer offers the interesting notion that the story is meant to be rubbish, making way for the more original returning monster-free serials of the next season. Of course, I doubt fans watching it at the time saw it that way. I'm pretty sure most viewers enjoyed watching Dr Who do battle with the Cybermen again. I'm also pretty sure people watching the it when it was the first ever VHS release must have loved it too. When considering the faults, it is worthwhile considering the fact that the celebrated Hinchliffe era was perhaps not always as perfect as fans like to think. Every Hinchliffe story has problems and weaknesses, with the possible exception of Brain of Morbius, which is the closest the era came to perfection. Ark in Space has unconvincing monsters and lacks atmosphere due to an overlit set, Genesis of the Daleks is horribly padded, Terror of the Zygons is an unoriginal working of earlier stories, Planet of Evil has a terrible script, Pyramids of Mars has a dreadful final episode and The Android Invasion is unwatchable.

The Cybermen are probably not at their best here, but they are fun. While they suffer for being in colour for the first time, they look effective in the darkness of the cave scenes. Why complain about the Cybermen's apparent anger and hands on the hip gestures? The claim that the Cybermen have no emotion at all has always been a little dubious. The creation of yet another weakness for the Cybermen seems unnecessary, but it seems a small one. We have not yet reached the point where a gold coin will kill a Cyberman; the Vogans' presumably gold bullets just bounce off their armour.

The script for this story is weak, with some really awful lines ('I sometimes think your friend is not quite right in the head' Sometimes? He's only just met him!). Yet there are still things to like about Revenge of the Cybermen. The location shooting in the caves of Wookie Hole with the use of underground river is very effective. The set designs are fantastic too. The Beacon set looks great, as do the ornate chambers of the Vogans. The special effect of the Beacon hurtling toward Voga is not great by today's standards, but I was impressed when I saw it on video in 1990. The Cybermat is clumsy, but it looks more menacing than the original Cybermat in the Sixties. While there are things in the plot that do not make a lot of sense, this is a fast paced story with plenty of tension and excitement.

I love the Vogan designs. They look distinctly non-human, yet still capture individual personalities. Kevin Stoney and David Collings do a splendid job in their roles. Michael Wisher is also good, despite being underused. His use of an handkerchief is a very nice touch.

Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles say in About Time that Vorus and Tyrum are basically another version of the Nice Sensorite and the Nasty Sensorite, or the Old Silurian and Young Silurian. This is not really true, as they are much more complex than this. Tyrum is afraid of outsiders like the Nasty Sensorite, yet he is friendly to humans when he meets them and is appalled by Kellman's murders. Vorus wants to make alliances with the outside world, yet he is hostile to humans who do not fit into his plans and has no qualms about murdering them. These are characters who are not defined by their factional politics. Despite being non-human aliens from 'the planet Zog' they feel like real people. Kellman, the human double agent also makes a great villain. I love the way he smiles as Tyrum describes how wicked he is.

Tom Baker is still settling into his new role at this point. Once or twice here he comes across as though he is not taking the story seriously, something that would become a problem in later years. Thankfully, Hinchcliffe managed to keep Tom in check most of the time after this story.

You have to love Harry Sullivan. He is so at ease with everything. The way he says 'Steady on, old chap' as a Vogan manhandles him is infinitely lovable. As somebody afflicted with dyspraxia, I can't help thinking that Harry also has 'Clumsy Child Syndrome.' It is horrible to see the Doctor being so mean to him. Sarah Jane Smith is also pretty horrible to him too. Sarah is not at her best here, mostly being used as a damsel in distress, though she is pretty resourceful, crossing the underground river in the Vogan boat. She is wearing nice pink socks too.

Revenge of the Cybermen is not the greatest of Doctor Who stories, but it is not nearly as bad as some fans make out.

The Name of the Doctor

Moffat offers yet more fuel for the claim that he is ripping off Lawrence Miles. In this episode he evokes both Alien Bodies with the future death of Dr. Who and Interference, with Dr. Who's past being rewritten. Ironically, it seems likely that the new John Hurt Doctor will be a very similar character to the Grandfather Paradox Doctor in The Ancestor Cell, but we will have to wait and see.

After this episode, Moffat deserves every accusation of sexism that STFU Moffat can throw at him. His objectification of women sinks to new lows as we discover that Clara was created for the sole purpose of saving the Doctor. She actually has no real independent existence in her own right but exists only to meet the needs of the male protagonist. It is as though Moffat thought to himself, "Those people who write STFU Moffat think I'm sexist, do they? Well they ain't seen nothing yet!" It seriously stinks.

As far as the story goes, there is not a lot to it. One of the worst things about current Doctor Who is that it is boring. I found myself continually pausing Iplayer to check my emails. Aside from the revelation about the Hurt Doctor, there is nothing of any real interest. The revelation about Clara is more depressing than interesting.

The Name of the Doctor makes much of the idea that the Doctor has lots of secrets that he is guarding. It seems an odd idea really. We have always known that the Doctor has lots of mysteries that he seldom shares. Nevertheless, he has never shown much concern about guarding them or that they have any cosmic consequence. When Lady Peinforte threatened to reveal his name, he did not seem to care. We all know that his name is Dr. Who anyway.



I have said before that these big epic season finales which threaten cosmic doom are getting mundane. There is nothing exciting about the very fabric of time and space being threatened if it happens at every season finale.

This episode echoes Lawrence Miles on a superficial level, but ultimately it demonstrates how Miles understood what Doctor Who is about and Moffat does not. Miles has criticised the tendency of the show to fetishise the Doctor. This episode is possibly the most glaring example of this tendency, along with the other Moffat season finales. We are shown the universe being in terrible peril and the only thing that stands between the destruction of everything is Dr. Who and his flirty pixie girl sidekick. The universe begins and ends with the demented bloke in the bowtie. The result of this is to make the universe seem small, pathetic and ultimately dull. This is exactly the opposite of what Doctor Who should be about. This is what 'Mad Larry' understood and what the people writing Doctor Who fail to understand. Doctor Who should be about exploring how big and wonderful and amazing the universe is, not turning it into a tiny fragile thing that depends on the Doctor to save it. That is why I stand by my opinion that The Rings of Akhaten, for all its faults, is the best and the only really decent Doctor Who story this season.

The Deadly Assassin

In the view of many fans, the great sin of The Deadly Assassin's is its revision of the Time Lords. The all powerful Time Lords of The War Games are replaced with a cast of senile Oxford dons and Anglican bishops. Being the first substantial portray of Dr. Who's home planet, this story must have come as something of a disappointment for many long term viewers.

As a young fan, my perception of Gallifrey was shaped by the post-Deadly Assassin stories. The Invasion of Time was one of my favorite Target novels, and The Five Doctors was the first VHS release that I watched. I was rather disappointed by the lack of Chancellory Guards and Staser guns in The War Games.

As an older fan, my enthusiasm for Chancellory Guards and Staser guns has waned. I have come to prefer the idea that the Time Lords are a god-like race with incredible power. There is a lot in The Deadly Assassin that I dislike. Yet I still find something likable about the idea of the senior Time Lords being a bunch of Oxford academics. It is also undeniable that the visual iconography established in The Deadly Assassin has become a fundamental part of the show. The genius of Lawrence Miles can be seen in the way he has combined Robert Holmes' Gormenghast Time Lords with the elemental Time Lords of the The War Games. In a clever nod to The Deadly Assasin, his Book of the War tells us that the senility of the senior Time Lords is just an act:

"their mumbling, even their occasional deafness is often quite carefully orchestrated. Nowhere on the Homeworld is there a House so ready to work its will by planting the correct whisper in the relevant ear, by making murmured suggestions so subtle that after the fact nobody remembers who spoke. While House Dvora moves with an efficient unstoppable openness, the mandarins of Lineacrux are so softly spoken, so serene, so elderly that in this brutal new War age even those who should known better rarely remember how ruthless these 'senile old men' might possibly be."

It must be pointed out that the view of the Time Lords given in The Deadly Assassin was not a sudden departure. The Three Doctors had shown them to be less than all-powerful, and Genesis of the Daleks and Brain of Morbius had shown them to have a shifty side. This development shows a considerable departure from how the Dr. Who's relationship with his people was originally conceived. The Hartnell Doctor was an exile, but from the beginning he showed a genuine desire to return to his homeworld. When Susan speaks about her planet, it is described as a beautiful place, with its burnt orange sky and silver trees. The Gallifrey of The Deadly Assassin seems such a miserable and grim place that it is hardly a surprise that Dr. Who would want to leave it. If Gallifrey is like that, there is no longer any sense that the Doctor has suffered loss or sacrificed anything in leaving it. For this reason, I very much prefer the idea that Gallifrey is a beautiful and magnificent place, whatever the faults of its ruling elite.

If this serial can be forgiven for its depiction of Gallifrey, and I'm not sure it can, it cannot be forgiven for its appallingly badly thought out plot. The Master's scheme makes no sense and the Time Lords society makes even less. Are we really expected to believe that the Time Lords have been completely unable to figure out the nature of the Rod and Sash of Rassilon and that they have no idea where their electricity comes from? I very much agree with the Prosecution case (presumably Lawrence Miles) in About Time, which castigates The Deadly Assassin's plot as utterly contrived:

"But perhaps the real trouble with "The Deadly Assassin" is that aside from the occasional snack-bite of political satire, everything here is so thoroughly contrived that it's alien in all the wrong ways. The script makes up new rules for Time Lord society minute-by-minute, so what chance does the audience have of feeling as if it's any of their concern? If the Doctor reaches a dead end then a new piece of Time Lord technology or custom can be invented to help him get to the next scene, and if characters aren't in the right places then they can be shifted around by Time Lord "traditions" which everybody knows about except the viewer."

For some reason fans seem to love episode three with the nightmare sequence in the APC Matrix. I don't understand why, as it does nothing to advance the plot and feels tediously long. I have a real dislike of dream sequences in fiction. If what the character is experiencing is not real, why should the viewer or the reader care about it? It is just a string of scary events strung together without actually going anywhere. What is more, this episode indulges the worst aspect of the Hinchcliffe era, a morbid delight in pain and cruelty. It is easy to laugh at Mary Whitehouse, but this episode pushes up the violence in the show to a level that is probably not quite appropriate for younger viewers. The BBC made a wise decision in bringing Hinchcliffe's producership to an end after this story.


What I enjoy most in this serial is Angus Mackay's performance as Borusa. Borusa is such a wonderful character, a school teacher turned into a Machiavellian politician. I love the way the schoolboyish way Dr. Who addresses him as 'sir.' There is such a deep sense of respect between the two characters, which adds to the beautiful poignancy when Davison's Doctor exclaims "What happened to you, Borusa?" in The Five Doctors.


For all its failings, The Deadly Assassin makes a bold attempt to tell a very different kind of Doctor Who story. We get to see the Doctor on his own planet, stripped of the reassurance of his scarf and without a companion to rely on. I don't like this story, but I appreciate the attempt to experiment and do what had not been done before.

Interference, by Lawrence Miles (BBC novel)

Do you remember the Nirvana song In Bloom? In that song, Kurt Cobain sneered at the listener who:

likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along and he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means
Knows not what it means

I imagine I'm probably the equivalent reader of Lawrence Miles' books. I love Lawrence Miles books and count myself a fan, but I suspect I haven't really understood what they are about. I also suspect, in the unlikely instance of Lawrence Miles ever reading this blog, that he would hate the fact that a Tory like me, who stands for everything he is against, is a fan of his work. So I'm an odd fan for Lawrence Miles, and possibly not the best person qualified to review his work.


Interference is uniquely for a Doctor Who novel, published in two volumes, Shock Tactic and The Hour of the Geek. It seems very surprising that BBC books were willing to do this. This is certainly a novel written on a grand epic and cosmic scale, but it has to be said that it is overly long. The first volume is very slow moving, with the plot unfolding at a snail's pace. The Doctor in particular, spends a good deal of the first volume imprisoned in a jail cell, contributing little to events. The second volume is faster paced, but the whole novel is in much need of trimming down a bit.

While Interference is overly long and poorly paced, it is undeniably well written and of a much higher standard than a lot of Doctor Who novels. Miles switches between different genres; diary entries, movie scripts, television documentary dialogue as well as more standard novelistic prose. A couple of scenes are cleverly turned into film and television drama, with one character described as being played by Nicole Kidman and another by Wesley Snipes. In a particularly glorious chapter, the Dark Times of Gallifrey are retold as a BBC costume drama with Rassilon played by Brian Blessed!

Interference does all the things that I love about Lawrence Miles books. There is the cosmic sense of scale, the playful use of continuity and the grappling with big intellectual ideas. I think Miles does better with these things in his other novels, but I enjoyed them no less in this work.

Interference is very political. It deals with the issue of the arms trade and how British companies were selling electro-shock batons in the late nineties. While I am not against the arms trade in general (it does play a pretty big part in our economy and every country needs an air force), I think everyone ought to agree that this country should not be exporting torture equipment. Lawrence Miles deserves credit for spotlighting the issue.


The novel has generated a lot of controversy for the way it re-writes Doctor Who continuity. As a result of the intervention of Faction Paradox, the Third Doctor regenerates before his encounter with the Great One on Metebelis 3 and as a result of a gunshot wound. This is a really interesting trick, even if it falls foul of my own dislike of 'timey-wimey' (I hate that word) stuff. Whatever one's opinions of Miles subversive retcon, he does a beautiful job of portraying the Pertwee Doctor. His classic regeneration line, A tear, Sarah Jane? is made even more poignant when he follows it with This is wrong. In a typically postmodern touch, Miles has the Third Doctor observing that the story he is in does not feel like one of his typical adventures.

Miles' portrayal of the Eighth Doctor is a little more problematic. He does next to nothing in the story. He spends a major part of the first volume suffering brutal torture in a Saudi Arabian prison. I'm not quite convinced by the idea that the Doctor would be completely helpless in the situation in which he is placed. In all his adventures, has he never experienced the kind of random brutality that overwhelms him here? That sort of thing is pretty common on Earth, so I don't see why other worlds have not cottoned on to the idea of random brutality.

The Doctor's prison cell discussion is very interesting. He admits to his cellmate that he interferes on future colonies, but he never interferes on Earth without being able to give any rational reason why. I don't buy this. In my opinion, the reason the Doctor does not interfere on Earth is because he knows he can't change history, not one line. When the Doctor interferes in the future, he is not changing history, but participating in it. His knowledge of the future is not exhaustive, so he has no reason to worry about failure on his part. If he tried to overthrow Hitler in 1938, he would know his failure was inevitable. He has no idea of the fate of Terra Alpha, so he can try to overthrow Helen A without worrying about the consequences.

Sam is handled very well in this book. She is given real depth of personality. The only problem is that she ends up looking a bit stupid. Compassion suggests to Sam that if she is against electro-shock batons, she should also be against matchsticks, as they can also be used to torture people. I can't believe any intelligent person would be unable to see a logical flaw in this proposition. Strangely, Sam does a lot of running around in high heels for somebody who is not used to wearing them. I loved the use of the older Sarah Jane Smith in this story. She is given a personal life and an identity beyond her travels with the Doctor. She also interacts nicely with Sam. I am not a K9 fan, but he was great in this too.


Interference is an overly-ambitious work that has some problems, but I enjoyed it as much as any of Lawrence Miles' books. The cameo appearance of Iris Wildthyme is a nice treat too.

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 1: William Hartnell, by Phil Sandifer

You may have enjoyed reading TARDIS Eruditorum, the blog of Dr Phil Sandifer. The first two volumes of his blog archives are now available in print, covering the First Doctor and Second Doctor eras respectively. We may hope that the next volumes will soon find themselves in print.

TARDIS Eruditorum attempts to chart the development of Doctor Who as a cultural text from An Unearthly Child to the BBC Wales series. I did wonder at one time whether this project was really worthwhile after the very exhaustive About Time, by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles. However, Sandifer offers analysis of the Doctor Who stories that is a good deal more thoughtful and rather less hurried than that of the About Time books.

Sandifer began his Doctor Who project after graduating with his PhD and finding that job opportunities in his chosen field were rather scarce. I can identify with Sandifer, as I also gained a PhD and then found it to have limited currency in the employment market. Thankfully, I found an alternative career working with drug users and alcoholics.

The blog is written in a somewhat intellectual style. Occasionally, Sandifer loses me, but this tends to be when he gets into discussion with fellow intellectuals in the comment section. He also writes from a strongly left of centre position. Sometimes his socialism can be irritating, but I'm happy to read writers who don't share my conservatism.

That you can read the TARDIS Eruditorum blog for free rather raises the question of why one would want to buy a printed copy. I have no regrets about buying the book and plan to buy future volumes. The book contains some great bonus material, including fascinating essays and some reviews of spin-off material not covered on the blog.


In dealing with the Hartnell material, Sandifer charts the appearance in the show of those things that make the series Doctor Who as we know it- the Doctor's need for companions and his discovery that there are monsters that must be fought. He has a lot to say about what he calls the 'Problem of Susan' (named from the interesting but problematic short story by Neil Gaiman). By this he means textual difficulties inherent in Susan's character which ultimately resulted in her complete disappearance from the show. This ties into wider difficulties connected to the sexuality of female companions in Doctor Who.

Sandifer makes a powerful case that there are no pre-Unearthly Child adventures. He argues that the character we see in that first serial is utterly unequipped to be the Doctor. It is only his interaction with Ian and Barbara that make him into the heroic figure we see in later stories. This was argued on the blog, but is given further exploration in an essay on the Doctor's travels before Totters Lane. I tend to agree with Sandifer on this, though this is problematic for me because I view The Infinity Doctors as a pre-Unearthly Child story (and not an Unbound story). I think Sandifer's thesis of an unheroic older Hartnell is not incompatible with him being a bit more adventurous in the days when he was the younger Hartnell Doctor that I believe we see in The Infinity Doctors. Sandifer has not yet covered The Infinity Doctors, so we shall have to wait to see his view of how that story fits into the Doctor Who mythos.

I very much enjoyed Sandifer's discussion of The Web Planet, seeing it not as a disaster, but as one of the high points of the show. He sees in that serial a delightful exploration of just how weird and unearthly Doctor Who can get. He also joins the chorus of those of us who love the much maligned The Gunfighters. He finds much value in the Dalek spin-off material of the Sixties, arguing that it enables us to imagine the grandeur of the Doctor Who universe beyond the confines of the screen.

In an interesting bonus essay, Sandifer considers the question of whether William Hartnell was a bigot. He condemns two stories in particular for their racial subtext, The Ark and The Celestial Toymaker. It's hard to argue with Sandifer's condemnation of the racism of The Celestial Toymaker. He is appalled that the Celestial Toymaker has been re-used several times by Big Finish. I understand his anger, but I also understand why the character has returned. There is a such a strong sense of nostalgia about Michael Gough's Toymaker. He also cuts a very striking visual image. Yes, it might be racist to have a baddie looking like a Chinese Mandarin, but it is an undeniably impressive costume choice.

Maybe it's because I'm a right-wing bastard, but The Ark is very dear to me. I do think that The Ark can be defended against Sandifer's Post-Colonialist criticisms. Sandifer's reading rests upon the assumption that the Monoid's negative qualities are inherent in their nature and are not a result of their treatment by the humans. I think the Monoid tyranny can be seen as generated by the intolerance and stupidity of the Guardians, an hypothesis that the Doctor seems to allude to in that story. Like it or not, The Ark seems to reflect reality to some degree, as colonialism was often replaced by hideously corrupt and brutal dictatorships. I have heard people who once condemned Ian Smith as a racist bigot admit that in hindsight his opposition to majority rule in Rhodesia made sense.

Sandifer feels so strongly about The Celestial Toymaker and The Ark that he wants to exclude them from the canon of Doctor Who stories. This is unsurprising, as he has argued on his blog against the idea of a 'Whoniverse,' that is, a single unified fictional universe in which all Doctor Who stories take place. He seems to favour instead a canon in the artistic sense of an anthology of recognised texts. This is not my philosophy. Seeing Doctor Who as a unified fictional universe is an important part of how I consume and enjoy Doctor Who. I prefer a canon that is inclusive of as many texts as possible, including more problematic material like that of the Sixties TV Comic. This raises the question of what I would do with Doctor Who stories that contain racism or sexism. For me the answer to that is to regard such texts as unrealiable narrations of the events. Every story is true, but the details may not be accurate. Racially problematic materials can be seen in the same way as zips on the Silurian costumes or Ace remembering Paradise Towers.

For me, the most welcome addition in the book was the essay on whether Doctor Who is the name of the titular character. Yet I was irritated by one statement. Sandifer says "The problem is that there are no dedicated fans advocating for his name being Doctor Who." I am a dedicated fan and I have argued on this blog that his name really is Doctor Who. Maybe I should start referring to the character as such, though this could cause confusion as to whether I am referring to the character or the show.

His glorious essay on The Chase has to be read to be believed. Who could imagine that this silly story was about deconstructing the narrative essence of Doctor Who? That's much more interesting than saying it's 'silly but fun.'

I would heartily recommend Doctor Who fans to buy this book and also the second volume that is now available.

The Krotons

"The hoy brains hiv bin kiptured!"

I am sure I am not the only fan who watches The Krotons and finds himself wanting to say everything in a Kroton voice. The Krotons' mock South African accents have me in stiches for a good deal of this serial. In the unlikely event of their ever returning to the televised show, I do hope they don't change this detail!

There is a lot more to watching Doctor Who than simply enjoying silly-looking monsters, but sometimes this can be a big part of it. For me, The Krotons is a story where that basic enjoyment of silly monsters really kicks in. The Krotons are one of the silliest looking monster races ever to appear in Doctor Who. I love the way they prod and pinch Jamie with their little pincers! Nevertheless, the Krotons, despite their ridiculous appearance, are quite an imaginatively conceived alien race. They are grown from crystalline matter, which rather sets them apart. They are also very cruel and brutal, despite their silliness. This is why their return in Lawrence Miles' novel Alien Bodies worked so well. Miles was able to capture perfectly the tension between the silly appearance of the Krotons and their disturbingly violent nature. The scene in Alien Bodies where a Kroton is destroying a Dalek is a very memorable and haunting moment.


The Krotons might seem a forgettable story if not for two important facts. Firstly, it is the first Doctor Who story to be written by Robert Holmes and secondly, it features the first appearance of Philip Madoc. As a Robert Holmes script, The Krotons comes across as rather unremarkable. It certainly lacks the wit and exuberance of his later work. Some of the ideas in this story would later find their way into Mysterious Planet. Philip Madoc's appearance here has all the charm and quality of his later appearances. He injects layers of depth into his performance that are entirely lacking from the other members of the guest cast. In particular, its fascinating to watch how he reacts to the dawning realisation that it is safe to go into the wasteland.

The snake-like electronic probe is an impressive effect. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the visual designs are a good deal less impressive. The Kroton's ship is supposed to be grown from chrystalline matter, yet it looks like any old metal spaceship. It really ought to look like Omega's palace in The Three Doctors. The model shot of the Gond's village also fails to match up with the interior sets.

The regulars are on top form here and the script offers some great material for the Doctor and Zoe. We have some priceless moments between the two of them, such as their rivalry in the Hall of Learning and their pretend bickering in the Krotons' ship. Jamie is good, but he suffers for having been separated from the Doctor and Zoe.

My big problem with this serial is that the planet is too much like a typical poorly realised world. Like so many Star Trek episodes, this is a planet with a population of ten people all living within one square mile. Remarkably, the much hated Dominators actually does a much better job of realising an alien world. An easily missed piece of dialogue in The Dominators mentions fires, floods and earthquakes. For all its apparent dullness, there are natural disasters on Dulkis. It is a planet where things happen. The Krotons does not give any sense of what life is like for the Gonds beyond the story.

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

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)

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.

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

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.

Down, by Lawrence Miles (Bernice Summerfield novel)

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.