Lawrence Miles on the Doctor Who Brand

Lawrence Miles' Doctor Who Thing- Sell Sec 2: "The Deadly Art of Doctor Who"

...we note that all the factors used to keep the series solvent in the 20-teens are favourites of the modern sci-fi fan. You know the ones I mean, you can count 'em off yourselves. Ratings are always a treacherous guide, but is anyone really surprised that viewing figures went back up for "Curse of the Black Spot"? Doctor Who vs Pirates vs Mermaids isn't terribly original, yet at least it puts the programme in a different space from anything else on TV. Well, until the Johnny Depp movie a few days later. An Angel-age storyline about a time-baby pregnancy, or snatches of future events that aren't designed to be comprehensible even to the dedicated viewer, are of no interest to anyone except - ironically, given recent controversies - the kind of people who care about spoilers. If the Termite Art version of television provokes the viewer into going outside and poking around to see what's there (and I still hold that this is what most good telly does, especially children's telly), then this is more like siege conditions. Branding always closes the gates. This is your product, you don't need anything else.

Anomalies Can Cry, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

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

Klein is a very cold, hard-edged character. I wanted to explore her softer, more vulnerable side. This story underlines just how tragic Klein's story is, something that is very easy to forget.


The Doctor had returned to the TARDIS, leaving her to enjoy the solitude of beach.

Klein felt deliciously cool in her light summer dress. The sun was still warm as afternoon turned to evening, but the ocean breeze was cool and refreshing. She had dispensed with her sandals and walked barefoot, feeling the fine green sand between her toes.

The scene was so beautiful. The green-sanded beach seemed to stretch for miles, framed by shiny green cliffs. The sea was golden, reflecting the magnificent golden sky above. Here and there, peculiarly shaped green rock formations jutted out of the golden waters, the waves lapping around them. Strange birds cried out in the air above (or were they flying reptiles or mammals? Klein wondered).

Klein felt her eyes moisten as she drank in the sight in her solitude. She was almost certainly the only human on this planet. Just this moment, she wished that somebody else was there to enjoy the glorious sight with her. She almost wished the Doctor had not returned to the TARDIS. 'No,' she told herself. 'Never mind the Doctor. Forget about him.'

Jonas. The name returned to her mind like lightning. Seldom did she allow herself to think of her lost lover. From her world. Her timeline. The world that was supposed to be. It seemed like eternity since Jonas had held her hand or kissed her. How she missed his strong embrace!

Jonas was gone. Erased from history, along with everything in her world. Of course, there must be a Jonas in this timeline. He had been born before the war, before the Doctor's meddling, so a version of him must still exist in this timeline. She knew, however, that this would be a different Jonas, a man who had lived a different life, with different memories. Not her Jonas. A man who had never known her, never loved her and never known her love for him.

Klein hated to think about it, but she was horribly aware that there must be a another Elizabeth Klein in this timeline. A Klein who had been born in England before the war, like her and who had gone through the same trauma of internment with her German parents by the British. Yet this Klein had never seen the victory of the Third Reich and the magnificence of its triumph across the world. This Klein would have grown up thinking that the Allies were supposed to win the war. This was the Klein who belonged in this timeline. Not her.

Klein wept with grief as she allowed herself to dwell on the enormity of her personal loss. Everyone she had known and loved had been erased from history. She was utterly alone in this unfair world.

The Doctor called her a 'temporal anomaly.' It was another way of saying she was a nobody, a non-person. She might be an anomaly, but she was a human being and she felt loss like any other. She needed the love of friends and family like any other person. The Doctor had taken all of that away from her.

Klein continued to stare out at the beautiful, but uncaring horizon, her eyes filled with tears. She realised what the Doctor was doing to her. He was manipulating her yet again. By taking her to so many beautiful locations, he was trying to soften her; to trick her into letting down her guard. Just another of his games. She was not going to let him win.

When she was a child, during the war, she had been an 'anomaly.' A child of German parents on British soil, she was deemed to be an 'enemy alien.' She and her parents had been taken from their home and interned by the British government. The Doctor was doing exactly the same thing to her. To him she was an anomaly, another enemy alien. He might like to pretend that she was his travelling companion, but in truth, it was just another form of internment. The Doctor was keeping his enemy alien under guard.

As Klein treaded softly back to the TARDIS, her bare feet still enjoying the soft green sand, her heart burned with the desire to get even. The Doctor would regret manipulating her.

St. Anthony's Fire, by Mark Gatiss (Virgin New Adventure)

This post got removed during last week's blogger problem.



The Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice meet reptilian genocidal religious fanatics and human genocidal religious fanatics.

Mark Gatiss is really not a good writer at all. He seems to either come up with unimaginatively traditional Doctor Who stories like Nightshade or else 'everything but the bathroom sink' jumbles like Victory of the Daleks. St. Anthony's Fire, is very much in the former, like his previous New Adventure.

The biggest problem with St. Anthony's Fire, apart from the very standard Whoish plot, is the all-out assault on religion. This novel seems to suggest that everybody who has faith is a deluded fool and all religion causes terrible atrocities. The Betrushian religion is built on a misunderstanding about an alien race's activity and leads to genocide. The Chapter of St. Anthony's Fire kidnap people, brainwash them, force them to endure terrible suffering for no reason and commit genocide. There is not the slightest suggestion in the book that some religions might 1) be true, 2) be believed by intelligent people, 3) not commit terrible atrocities, 4) Do acts of kindness and benevolence. Obviously, there are lots of oppressive religious groups in the world, but the kind of one-sided attack on religion in this novel is clumsy and unpleasant.

Even as a critique of religion, St. Anthony's Fire fails because it does not portray any appealing side to religion. An intelligent critique of religious belief and activity has to address the fact that religion does appeal to people. The Chapter of St. Anthony (how they came to centre their religion on a minor saint makes no real sense) are so horrible and brutal that nobody would ever want to join them. Hence, they have to brainwash their converts. Yong, the Chapter's leader is a cartoonish character who tortures kittens. He is a sort of religious version of Fu Manchu.

Gatiss is okay at writing for the Seventh Doctor, Bernice and Ace. The problem is that he does not do anything interesting with the regulars. Ace only joins the Chapter because she has been brainwashed, so nothing much new is revealed about her through it. We get an old-fashioned companions separated from each other and the Doctor routine, just like the old days. The resolution of the book is uninteresting too. We get a very Star Trekkish technobabble-based solution to the problem.

Just wait until Mark Gatiss becomes the next producer of Doctor Who.

Conundrum, by Steve Lyons (Virgin New Adventure)

'I trusted you,' stormed Ace, waving a trembling finger in Benny's face. 'I trusted you and you grassed me up to the bloody Doctor!'

'Don't you play the injured party with me!' she snapped grabbing Ace's arm and pushing it roughly away from her. 'I've bent over backwards to accommodate you- I should have known from the start, you're nothing more than a selfish maladjusted killer!'

In my opinion, Conundrum is the best of all the New Adventures. It has an experimental style and offers a playful postmodern touch, but is also highly readable. I first read Conundrum when I was 13 and found it much more enjoyable to read than some of the other Virgin New Adventures. I found it puzzling that the two companions seemed to be so moody and that Ace hated the Doctor so much, but I accepted that. When I later came to watch the Seventh Doctor televised stories, I was surprised to find that Ace was not as moody and aggressive as she is in this novel.

Conundrum is a sequel to The Mind Robber. I would venture to say that this sequel is actually a bit better than the original story, which had a rather weak plot. Lyons creates a very English provincial town in a rural backwater and populates it with a weird collection of cliched characters from different literary genres. The plot seems to shift from murder mystery, children's' adventure, superhero comic and horror until we discover the nature of this world. Cleverly, the story is narrated by the Master of the Land of Fiction and so we get a narrator who interacts with the characters he is describing. One of the most hilarious moments is the narrator's amazement at the Doctor's ability to come up with a scientific explanation for a superhero gaining his powers.

One of the things I really enjoyed in this story was the soap opera drama between the Doctor, Ace and Benny. This was the high point of the NA angsty phase, but it was Steve Lyons who really made this drama fun. Many people love the New Adventures for introducing Bernice, but hate the way they handled Ace. I am the opposite. I don't like Bernice at all, but I love the NA version of Ace. Lyons manages to show the nasty side of Bernice, presenting her as a self-righteous, hypocritical and manipulative bitch. I find Bernice too overconfident and too clever for her own good. I find it impossible to identify with her. NA Ace on the other hand, is a loser. She is a talentless failure who blames everybody else for her problems and just wants to lash out. That is a terrible attitude to have, but it's easy to empathize with her. There is something of Ace in most of us who aren't lucky enough to be as confident and clever as Bernice.

I am not entirely happy with the suggestion that John and Gillian were not really companions. I suspect that back in the 90s, Doctor Who fans were a bit more closed-minded about what could be considered canon. These days, many fans would be more open to seeing the TV Comic as canon. Of course, that Conundrum is canon need not rule the TV Comic out of the canon. The Doctor never actually denies having two grandchildren called John and Gillian, he just does not recognise the Land of Fiction duo as being them.

The revelation that the Land of Fiction was originally created by the Gods of Rrrragnarok is cool.

Conundrum is the best of the Virgin New Adventure novel and should be essential reading for any fan.

Lawrence Miles' response to The Doctor's Wife

Lawrence Miles' Doctor Who Thing: Oh, All Right

'To be honest, it's not atypical for Neil Gaiman to take something innately complex and shape it into something incredibly crass and attention-grabbing: if you can turn Death into a goth pin-up, then the TARDIS isn't going to stand a chance. The obvious thing to say at this point is that in a phase of the series where the only impressive thing the Doctor can do is flirt, and where every scene has the emotional depth and maturity of Han Solo saying "I know" before being pushed into the carbonite, the TARDIS was inevitably going to become the latest in a line of inflatable dolls posing as female characters.'

Also, don't miss his great comment about spoilers:

'Possibly, just possibly, the best way to deal with "spoilers" is to make stories that remain watchable even if you know what's going to happen. Rather than, say, stories that depend on relentless story-arc twists and idiotic clues as to what's going to be at the end of the season. Y'know. Just a thought. From someone who knew the ending of "Genesis of the Daleks" several years before he actually saw it.'

The Doctor's Wife

Before reading my review, I recommend reading a great review on The Daily POP. It makes some excellent points about the faults of this story.


I have not read a huge amount by Neil Gaiman. He strikes me as the sort of writer who is just a bit too cool for his own good. He is certainly a very popular writer and this story has been massively overhyped. The Doctor's Wife is certainly better than the boring and tedious two-part story that opened the season and the half-hearted pirate romp last week, but that is not saying an awful lot.

Unsurprisingly, given the similar titles, The Doctor's Wife shares some of the main faults of The Doctor's Daughter. Both stories give us a relation of the Doctor who is not really any such thing. The idea of the TARDIS being the Doctor's wife is admittedly more interesting than an artificially created daughter, but the execution is not much better. Both Jenny and Idris turn out to be likable, but generally uninteresting characters. Both stories had the potential to radically shake-up the format of the show to make it more interesting. Imagine how fantastic it would have been for the fourth BBC Wales season to have gone back to the format of the first season, with the TARDIS being a family again, with the Doctor being a kind and protective father as he was to Susan and Donna taking on a motherly role, as Barbara had so beautifully done. It would have made the fourth season so much stronger. Likewise, having the TARDIS taking on a permanently humanoid form would have been a really interesting development in the show. Of course, watching both stories you are absolutely certain that the producer is not going to be bold enough to do those things (and if a new permanent character was going to be introduced, you would probably have already heard about it). Hence, watching The Doctor's Daughter you know that Jenny will be killed off at the end and watching The Doctor's Wife, you know that Idris is doomed. Both stories feel like Star Trek episodes where everything is returned to normal at the end.

Neil Gaiman tries to do far much in this story. He wants to deal with the Doctor's relationship with the Time Lords, he wants to bring back an old monster, he wants to explore the TARDIS, he wants to examine the Doctor's relationship with his ship, he wants to introduce the kind of freaky gothic characters that inhabit all his stories, he wants to bring in lots of continuity references (the snake tattoo is a subtle one), he wants to revisit Edge of Destruction and, like every other current Doctor Who writer, he wants to kill Rory. The episode suffocates under the weight of all that Gaiman is attempting to squeeze into it.

The plot of the story is incredibly predictable once the main elements have been revealed. You know that the House will chase Amy and Rory around the TARDIS corridors, you know the Doctor and Idris will get to the TARDIS with their ramshackle model and you know that Idris will defeat the House by returning to her original form (thus sealing her death warrant).

One thing that really annoys me about this story is the fast pace at which the dialogue is delivered, a problem I seem to have had with every story in this season and the last. There are probably some great lines, but I just can't catch them all as the cast speak so quickly. Remember the Kangs in Paradise Towers? They spoke so precisely and with such clarity that they were not really believable, but at least you could follow what they were saying and appreciate the cleverness of their lines.

I am not altogether convinced by Suranne Jones' performance as Idris. I have seen much more impressive madwomen in films and television. The flirting and bickering between the Doctor and his 'wife' is dreadfully unsubtle and not terribly believable. As is pointed out in The Daily POP review, it is not all clear that if the TARDIS did have a human personality, she would be at all like the flighty, manic and flirtatious Idris. One suspects she would much more like the human TARDIS that we got in the BBC books, the austere and cold redhead, Compassion. It was a great idea of the BBC books to create a humanoid TARDIS, but just like Moffat, the writers did not know what to do with her.

It was nice to finally see a little more of the TARDIS, but it must be said that what we got was very disappointing- just some very boring corridors. It looked to the uniform functionality of Castrovalva, rather than the mad array of peculiar and surreal rooms in The Invasion of Time.

This is yet another disappointing installment in the new series and yet more evidence that the writers and producer are unable to address the tired and stale format of current Doctor Who.

Justice, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

Naturally, you have to have a fight in a 'Girls in prison' series. I kept it short because I don't like violence.


Morgaine slammed her fist into the other woman, knocking her to the ground. Before her opponent could rise, she gave her another kick with her bare foot. Certain that her opponent had been felled, Morgaine stepped away from her and slipped her flip flops back on.

Ganymede Correctional Facility was a tight operation, with discipline strictly enforced. Violence was generally rare, but occasionally it happened. Mali, Morgaine's opponent had been bullying weaker inmates and taking advantage of them. This was not something that Morgaine tolerated on her watch.

Morgaine addressed the other women gathered around. "Hear me. If I hear of any other woman in here abusing others, she will answer to me, Morgaine the Sunkiller. We are sisters in captivity. We are all in this place together and we will live like sisters. Does anybody object to that?"

There were no objections from anyone. Every inmate knew that Morgaine was a strange creature, perhaps slightly mad, but they feared her prowess as a fighter and respected her sense of justice.

At that moment, prison guards burst into the recreation area, shouting for the inmates to return to the cells, while Mali was picked up and carried to the medical wing. Morgaine was harried with the other women back to the cells. She suspected that the guards could have got involved earlier, but they probably thought Mali had it coming.

Morgaine knew the prison staff would examine the video footage and that she would do time in the punishment wing. 'What does that matter?' she thought to herself. In her world she had ruled over millions, in this prison she was determined to be a leader amongst the inmates. It was her duty, as a queen, a warrior and a noblewoman.


Meanwhile in another time and another place, the Doctor thought of Morgaine. From a distance, he had kept an eye on her during her imprisonment. He knew of the kindness she had showed to other prisoners. He knew how she had fought against both prisoners and guards who had been cruel and abusive. He knew how much Morgaine had done to redeem herself.

'Can I leave her locked up forever?,' wondered the Doctor. 'Has she proved her self worthy to be released?' It was a question he had asked himself many times. He had ordered that Morgaine be locked up. She had been locked up for about two hundred years now. How many centuries would he keep her in there for? Was it just for her to stay in prison until the end of the universe? It was a question the Doctor agonised over.

'No, I can't risk releasing her,' decided the Doctor. So many times had he pondered the quandary of Morgaine and come to that same conclusion. Morgaine was a creature of chaos. She was too unpredictable, perhaps too unstable. Even if she returned to her own universe, there was no guarantee that she would stay there. Morgaine was much safer locked up.

Isobel and the Rani, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

This story answers the question of how the Rani knew about Mel in Time and the Rani.

Isobel Watkins appeared in The Invasion. My story Celebrity Yacht Party introduces this middle-aged version of Isobel Watkins.


St. Tropez, 2003

The Rani did not care much for going to Earth. It always meant disguising herself in local costume and adopting the primitive cultural norms of the many cultures on the wretched planet. However, she needed information badly and this was the place to go.

The Doctor had made so many visits to Earth that he had become and irregular but not unfamiliar presence to its inhabitants. In the twentieth century had emerged the peculiar phenomena of Doctor-watchers, individuals who took an obsessive interest in the person of the mysterious Doctor. Few of them had any accurate information and most of them had the most improbable theories as to the Doctor's identity. Nevertheless, the individual that the Rani was consulting had an advantage over the other Doctor-watchers- she had actually met the Doctor. Isobel Watkins was one of the many humans who had been tangled up in one of the Doctor's tiresome little adventures. Over the years she had maintained contact with the Doctor and had met every one of his incarnations. Whether the Doctor was happy about it or not, she was actually working on the first ever biography of the Time Lord. TARDISes were programmed to avoid out of sequence encounters between Time Lords and so the Rani could be sure that her TARDIS had brought her to a period in which the Doctor's current incarnation had visited most recently. All she needed to do was to charm this human woman into helping her.

The Rani's heavily shoulder-padded tunic and tight trousers were never going to look right in this particular era and so she had instead opted for a red dress. It had to be expensive-looking; the moorings of St. Tropez was the haunt of rich humans who delighted in nothing but flaunting their good fortune. These humans seemed to love money as much as her own people loved power.

When she arrived at Isobel's private yacht, the Rani was met by a member of the crew who instructed her to remove her shoes before coming on board. The Rani slipped out of her stiletto sandals and padded across the gang plank in her large bare feet. She was thankful that in this regeneration she was tall enough to manage without the added lift of her heels. Humans were so precious about their worldly goods. She cared little for the state of her own TARDIS, provided it was functional and sterile.

On the deck she was met by a middle-aged woman with fair hair. She had a healthy tan from enjoying more sun than the average human on this continent. She wore a white dress and like the Rani, was barefoot.

The Rani knew she was expected. She had contacted Isobel via the Internet and had prepared a cover story. "Isobel, I'm Melody Lakeland. I'm delighted to meet you. It was very gracious of you to invite me here," said the Rani.

"The pleasure is all mine, Melody," Isobel replied. "It really is dolly to meet somebody who knows the Doctor well." The Rani was quite unable to place Isobel's nasal accent. Still, she was hardly the expert on human accents.

The Rani handed to Isobel the suitcase she had been carrying. "A present for you," she said. "The robes the Doctor wore when he was at the Prydonian academy." Of course they were no such thing. They were in fact the robes the Rani herself had worn at the academy. How was Isobel to know that the robes had been worn by a cute little girl in pigtails and not a snotty-nosed fair-haired boy? The Rani was rather glad to be rid of the robes; she had no sentiment or nostalgia for her school days.

Isobel seemed overjoyed by the gift. "Oh, that is so dolly! How can I ever thank you. To think these are clothes worn by the Doctor in his childhood. I am being a terrible hostess. You must sit down and have a glass of wine."

The two women sat down to share a bottle of wine. The Rani hated socialising, and she was starting to hate this sentimental fool of a human, but she knew this was necessary to her mission.

"So tell me, Melody," enquired Isobel. "How did you come to know the Doctor so well?"

"It's hard to explain," replied the Rani. "You could say it's a timey wimey thing. I keep bumping into him at different stages of his life. I meet his later incarnations first then I am working my way down. Eventually I will become the Doctor's wife, but this has not actually happened yet. Timey wimey, as I said."

"You become Mrs. Doctor!" exclaimed Isobel. "That is so dolly! How lucky for you! When did the two of you get hitched?"

"It has not actually happened yet. It is part of his timestream, however. You could say we have a non-linear relationship," explained the Rani.

Isobel seemed completely baffled by this, but she was clearly quite excited about it all. This was entirely the Rani's intention. She felt quite pleased with herself for duping Isobel into believing this absurd story. 'Timey wimey non-linear relationship' indeed!

The Rani moved on to the subject of Isobel's biographical research. "Tell me about the book you are writing, Isobel."

"Yes, my biography of the Doctor. I have met all of the Doctor's incarnations- so far, I think. I have spent time with all of them. I have photos, I have interviewed some of the main people he knew on Earth. It is going to be a quite fantastic read. Some of the UNIT stuff was difficult to research, with it being a top secret security organisation. But I had a lot of help on that front from my dolly husband, Dmitri. He used to be a KGB agent, you know," said Isobel.

"I mentioned to you that I was interested in finding out a bit more about the Doctor's current incarnation. The loud one who wears that awful coat. You have met him, I trust?" asked the Rani.

"Yes, I have met him alright. I find him rather dolly. He seems to enjoy attention more than the last one, and I am only too happy to oblige. He seemed quite delighted when I told him about the biography project."

The Rani smiled at this. "I have not met this Doctor yet. I have met all the others. The thing is that I always have to tread carefully when it comes to his fellow travellers. I don't want to make them jealous. I have to keep them on side. It would really help if I could find out as much as possible about who he is travelling with currently."

"Of course. You mentioned to me that this is what you wanted and after you gave me those robes, how could I refuse? I have had several holidays with this Doctor and I spent almost a week with him and his dolly assistant Mel in Paris. I took so many photographs and videos. You can have copies."

Once the material was in the Rani's hands, she wasted little more time. After offering Isobel some pleasantries, she made a quick get-away from the boat and grabbed her shoes.

When she had returned to her TARDIS, the Rani pored over the materials. Contrary to her lies to Isobel, she could only ever meet the Doctor in linear succession. It was the built into the very nature of the Time Lord's travel machines. The last companion to come to Earth would be the one the Doctor was currently with. This Mel creature. The Rani noted her hair, her features and the clothes she wore.

In front of her audio-visual monitor, the Rani imitated the energetic power-walk of Mel. In front of her mirror, she practiced the beaming grin. Again and again she attempted to master the high-pitched nasal voice. Even alone in her TARDIS, it felt humiliating, but nobody could master time and space without tears.

On my other Blog

Shoes Off at the Door, Please: Hey, Buddhists take their Shoes Off!

I mention Doctor Who on my other blog.

Seasons of Fear, by Paul Cornell and Caroline Symcox (Big Finish Audio)

I’m the original discriminating buffalo man
And I’ll do what’s wrong as long as I can

You can't go wrong with Paul Cornell, and Mrs. Cornell also proves to be a pretty fine writer (just listen to her brilliant historical The Council of Nicaea).

Seasons of Fear has been described as a 'road story' in the model of The Keys of Marinus and The Chase. The episodes move from one historical location to another, yet are united by a single plot. This works reasonably well. We also get a touch of The Space Museum thrown in, with the revelation that the Doctor will be killed in the future by the villain.

Sebastien Grayle is one of the best conceived Doctor Who villains ever. He has been granted near immortality and so we are able to see him at different stages of his prolonged existence. This echoes the common theme of Doctor Who, that 'immortality is a curse. not a blessing.' Over the centuries, Grayle descends into increasing madness and depravity. The real tragedy of his character is that this course of villainy began simply with bitterness over a simple matter of land inheritance. Paul McGann's Doctor reacts in abject horror at the idea of this long and bitter existence over a course of life apparently longer than his own.

This story offers us the return of a sadly neglected monster. They don't appear until they end, but they fit the story very well, especially with their catchphrase about a certain journey. I can't help laughing when I hear their voices.

I don't think it was really necessary to imply that Edward the Confessor was an homosexual. I also think the two Georgian characters were not very believable, but these are minor complaints.

India Fisher's Charley comes across well, though this was the first audio I hear with her. This is an audio that is definitely worth getting hold of.