Old Doctor Who - Part 4

[purlieu]

I've still only managed to watch The Invasion, animation-wise. Decided I'll just wait for the BluRay box sets, there are already some stories I've triple-dipped on (Weng-Chiang, Arc in Space) and I've got enough Who to keep me going in the meantime.

Speaking of which...


Vampire Science by Jonathan Blum and Hate Kate Orman

The Eighth Doctor is getting off to a very bumpy start. The movie wasn't great, the novelisation did little to improve it, and then the first of the EDAs was appalling. Sam was introduced in such a half-arsed way that the main thing I was hoping to get from this book was getting to know her and how she's introduced to life aboard the TARDIS.
And it turns out this is two years after The Eight Doctors. They've been travelling together that long, meaning they're a comfortable team referring back to adventures they've previously had. I had to stop and check this was actually the right book in the right place a couple of times. In this time, the Doctor also disappeared for a whole year (his time; he arrived back just after he'd left), which is a nice bit of continuity to allow The Dying Days to properly exist (as well as those Telos novellas), but it does mean that basically the Eighth Doctor has been around for three years now, and this is only the second book in the EDA line. Why?! It just feels so utterly awkward and difficult to settle into. It doesn't help that Sam is utterly obnoxious. She's got elements of Rose and Clara at their worst: arrogant, unpleasantly self-assured, smug, only with added "look I'm all PC!" elements. Her seemingly random rants about her own worldview are so unsubtle they could have come from a Chibnall episode. And then she's barely in the second half of the book at all.

What else? Oh, yes.

Ok, so dragons fall into a similar category as vampires for me: mythical beings I truly cannot be arsed with.

Vampires are fucking boring. Even in a story which has a prominent 'good' vampire, trying to find a food substitute so they don't have to go around killing people, there's so little there to hold my interest. They've got fangs, they go out at night and drink blood, they turn other people into vampires. The whole Gallifreyan wars with vampires gave the subject some vaguely intriguing sci-fi edge, but there's none of that here, just a bunch of blood sucking idiots and a couple of blood sucking reasonable characters. The idea of them growing more apathetic as they age was intriguing, and could have lead to a more interesting novel.

It's my first experience of Jonathan Blum, but Kate Orman is usually good quality, and the writing here was snappy and fun. The Doctor was utterly convincing from the start, which was at least refreshing. I could imagine McGann performing almost every line, although a couple were McCoy-ish. On top of the Dying Days continuity, the writers also managed to throw in references to NAs The Also People and SLEEPY, managing to un-press that big EDA reset button already, which I appreciated.

Not exactly a bad book, but disappointing, given Orman's general high quality, and definitely not one for me.

And that cover. Christ, the BBC books have mostly terrible covers, but what is that about? "Look it's set in America and there are bats in it." (The only bats are a couple that live in the TARDIS library.) The artist must have read the blurb and designed it based on that. And the font really does make it look like it says Hate Orman.


Next time on Doctor Who... The Bluetones.

[Poison To The Mind]

re the Norton quote: Consider the audience - he's not saying "these things cobbled together by myself and a few other English BBC staffers and freelancers with no animation experience are absolutely up there with the greatest modern tellycartooning has to offer!", he's trying to explain to some of the most "if all you have is a hammer" TV viewers in the history of the world that they're trying to make something slightly less boring than an assemblage of still photos of 1960s actors with new hats and beards photoshopped on.

[Bad Ambassador]

I've updated my big long list of all Who and Who-related audios - now 17 pages of triple columns, for those who might want it.

[purlieu]

The Bodysnatchers by Mark Morris

Lifefoot peered dubiously into the tunnel, sniffed, then pulled a face. "Incredible as these cases always turn out to be, Doctor, why is it that somewhere along the way there is invariably a sewer pipe involved?"

"We're just lucky, I suppose," said the Doctor solemnly, then stepped up and heaved himself into the pipe.

Having an ebook version, I didn't actually spot that it was a Zygon on the cover, and as I never read blurbs, I at least got a surprise from it.
The first half of The Bodysnatchers is excellent, full of vivid descriptions of Victorian London in all its squalor. A compassionate factory owner has turned into a cunt, being rude to his wife and daughter and sacking a worker who has an accident; two ne'er do wells find themselves grave robbing for a mysterious man who pays them for cadavers; strange creatures are witnessed through the pea soup fog of the industrial city. The Doctor and Sam stumble across a body and find themselves involved in a police investigation. Needing a home address, the Doctor realises that George Litefoot would be a respectable - and understanding - person to be stopping with. Eventually, the Doctor, Sam, Litefoot and the aforementioned daughter, Emmeline, find themselves descending into a living structure, not knowing whether they'll find a ship or a stomach at the bottom.
So far, so good. In fact, the first half of the book had me gripped. It's not without its flaws - despite being an established horror author, Morris's prose has a touch of the Terrence Dicks Target Novelisation about it (possibly at the editor's request), fitting with the slightly limp feel of the EDAs so far - but I felt I was onto a winner here. And then, at the exact moment it's revealed the Zygons are involved, the whole thing falls apart. It immediately turns into 'scupper the Zygons' plans, rescue the captured people, remove the Skarasen threat'. Most of the excellent atmosphere and character stuff is lost in favour of a seen-it-a-hundred-times-before runaround. The twist that the Doctor accidentally wipes the whole Zygon colony out with what he thought would be a harmless tranquilliser is pretty good, and highlights the difference between this version of the character and his previous incarnation - but on the whole it's half a book of bleh.
Still, the first half would be enough to give it a high score were it not for Sam. The Doctor isn't brilliantly characterised, but it's possible to imagine McGann performing the role; Litefoot is a pleasant throwback with some good lines; most of the the other characters are fine, if lacking depth. But Sam drags any fun out of the story. She spends half of the book worrying that she's not impressing the Doctor enough, and the rest of the book unconscious or away from the action. She actually contributes nothing to the story whatsoever: Emmeline and Litefoot fill the companion roles betterm, while Sam just follows the Doctor around and makes sarcastic remarks.
So yeah, some great stuff, totally underdeveloped.

Next time on Doctor Who... Dave Stone's first Benny novel. I'm expecting a lot of fun.

[A Hat Like That]

I think I like the fake-out-not-fake-out with Emmeline most. They're Zygons. They shapeshift.

[pigamus]

Well the covers have improved at least

[Replies From View]

I like seeing the italicised BBC font.

[purlieu]

It's ludicrous to think that the current BBC logo has been around for, what, 23, 24 years?

[JamesTC]

They've changed it recently. Not sure if the new logo is being used yet though. Just checked the Web of Fear case and that is still the old logo.

[Replies From View]

That's the first time I've learned that using an existing font in a logo requires ongoing costs to be paid to that font owner.  It makes sense but it makes it quite baffling that bespoke lettering isn't used in logo designs more often.

The fact that the letters 'BBC' in square blocks required usage of a pre-existing font that needed to be licensed is incredible to me, really.

[purlieu]

Ship of Fools by Dave Stone.

She smiled coldly. "I expect you've spent your life looking for some sign of him, any clue, any shred of evidence; waiting for the slightest chance to hunt him down."
"Yes," said Groke, in a barely perceptible undertone.
Benny became brisk. "Well, I'm afraid, I have a bit of bad news for you, Mr Groke, because the whole thing's been complete and utter bollocks, from start to finish."

Benny does a murder mystery, written by Dave Stone. Ostensibly an Agatha Christie pastiche piss-take, Benny finds herself on a luxury space liner where people are being bumped off, and things are being stolen by famed burglar the Cat's Paw. She's joined by a number of other Master Detectives, including a Poirot-a-like who gets literally everything wrong, a Marple-a-like whose telepathic powers cause everyone around her to commit murders (hence her always being in the right place at the right time), and a Charlie Chan-esque alien whose culture background leads to him insulting everyone every time he speaks, as well as the token Lestrade surrogate, and a bunch of useless coppers. Along the way, various obnoxious rich people are murdered in increasingly ludicrous ways - exploding wine, ejected out of the ship through the toilet, brain fried by sonic disco equipment - and, bizarrely, one of the detectives is shown to have a past life chasing the villainous Doctor Po around Victorian 1930s England before he has chance to unleash a disgusting book about sex on the likes of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
The reason I enjoyed this a lot more than Sky Pirates! comes down to the mix of real world and absurdity: it's reality taken to its most ridiculous extremes, with daft coincidences and other similar Adamsian stuff, but it's still all happening on a spaceship with real (and occasionally likeable) characters, unlike Sky Pirates!, which I found totally impenetrable due to it taking place in a self-sustaining system where everything works like this. Ultimately, it comes together well because of three things: a) a genuinely good mystery plot at heart, b) solid characterisation, especially Benny, who's at her best here, and c) it's mostly utterly hilarious. Ok, so Stone sometimes throws in a few too many "random items" sex jokes, but I'd say nine out of ten times his gags work, and the book's packed full of them.
Lovely stuff, my favourite Benny so far.

Next time on Doctor Who... an EDA with a title that suggests jollity and laughs all round.

[daf]

Wish Big Finish had recorded that one - it sounds great!

[purlieu]

Genocide by Paul Leonard.

State of that fucking cover. Yeah, some of the drawings of McCoy looked very much not like McCoy, but the NA covers generally had some creativity put into them. The BBC books have such a that'll do attitude, and never more than here.
It's basically Invasion of the Dinosaurs but What if it Was Aliens Behind it and They Succeeded? The Doctor and Sam arrive on Earth, only it's inhabited by horse-like aliens called Tractites who have gone back in time and stopped humanity from evolving, and thus stopped the Earth Empire from invading their planet in the future. A crazed eco-activist from the present day helps. It's all done with far more balance and ambiguity than ...Dinosaurs, though, as not only do we get an idea of the devastation done to Tractis, but also the Tractites are shown as being able to look after our planet and keep a good balance with nature. Sam ponders whether it would be right to try and revert things to their original state in what is almost some character development for the first time. So far so good. There's some stuff with cavemen that's more than a touch like An Unearthly Child. It falls apart a little by the totally pointless inclusion of Jo Grant - the majority of the 70s and 80s companions have been brought back by now - and a rather convenient plot device - the Tractites' time machine being crap and their changes resulting in the end of the multiverse - which pretty much removes the Doctor from having to consider the right path to take.
Still, a solid story without any plodding nonsense. The best EDA so far.

Next time on Doctor Who... Benny again, hurray!

[Midas]

Heh, the BBC Books covers did improve a bit later on but I'd forgotten how shoddy the early designs were. The repetitive circular motif used across all the early EDA covers doesn't do them any favours either imo.

[purlieu]

Yes, these first few in particular feel really samey, which isn't helping given that no stories so far have been dramatically memorable.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Yes, there's going to be a lot of those unmemorable by-the-numbers efforts as we progress through the EDAs, unfortunately.

On the subject of OrmanBlum, their next novel could be read as an attempt to "fix" some of the issues with Sam, I'll leave it up to you to decide how successful they were. Personally I always felt their books written together felt overstuffed, like they could've done with cutting fifty or so pages from each. Unnatural History was the best of them to my mind.

Come to think of it, Alien Bodies has an interesting take on Sam as well although I'm not sure how canonical it was considered outside of Lawrence Miles's head.

[purlieu]

Down by Lawrence Miles

"That's right," said Bernice, encouragingly. She hoped the Gug wouldn't feel patronised. "Friends. Be friends."
"Gug. Gug gug gug."
"Yes. Friends."
"Gug. Gug gug gug gug. Gug-gug. Gug. We'll be back after this short break. Gug."
Bernice's jaw dropped open.

I last met Lawrence Miles on the really quite clever but also really quite tedious headfuck of Christmas on a Rational Planet. For the most part, this book is the opposite, having what seems like a straight-forward plot and relatable characters. Benny and two students end up on a planet looking for information about a long-lost historian, who claimed to have found another world inside this one. The Inner World is found and happens to be shaped like a Dyson Sphere, and, uncoincidentally, the People are involved, on a secret mission from God. On the way, they meet a comic book character called Mr. Misnomer, a group of hapless Nazis fighting for the SSSSSSS led by Kommander Katastrophen, lots of ape people, some dinosaurs, and a reptilian flying machine.
The tone is very meta and very silly and I loved it. Tons of absurd humour on every page, but also continually evolving mysteries, some excellent characterisation (Ash and Lucretia both ticked the companion box; Mr. Misnomer and Katastrophen provided cynicism and humour), a number of great set pieces. And then, as it all came to a climax, I noticed I still had about a fifth of the book left, and Miles turned the entire book on its head. It isn't a Dave Stone book, where the daft and the unbelievable exist because Dave Stone, but every over-the-top, self-aware archetype in Down is like that for a reason. I can't say I understood it all 100%, but it was a great way to close the book, and one that felt like there was still a lot to come in future books. Very good.

Next time on Doctor Who... how will Gary Russell write a novel without being able to fill it with Who fanwank?

[JamesTC]

Season 17 and Galaxy 4 listed on a Swiss DVD website with dates before the end of the year. Would be a surprise if they both come out so soon but nice to know they are on the way.

Episodic Shada please.

[Gurke and Hare]

HD Mandrels. It's the dream.

[purlieu]

Wonder how many versions of Shada will be on it.

[JamesTC]

VHS Version
2017 Animation
New Episodic Version

The flash version can be saved for the Wilderness Years set.

[Replies From View]

As long as the Ian Levine version is left off, the set won't feel horribly contaminated.


The flash version was included on the earlier DVD release of the VHS version, and it's a shame it was left off the newer animated DVD.

[daf]

The flash version was included on the earlier DVD release of the VHS version, and it's a shame it was left off the newer animated DVD.

They put it on the bonus third disc of the blu-ray steelbook. Proper version you could watch on your telly too!

[JamesTC]

Yeah. That and Power were the only steelbooks that had exclusive content so I stuck with the standard after that. Glad I got the Power steelbook as it is likely to be the only way to commercially own the colour version.

[purlieu]

Jason Kane and the Sexy Prisoners Deadfall by Gary Russell

Well, there were a fair few New Adventures back-references in there, as well as a nod to The Mind of Evil, so Gary got his fanwank in after all.

I don't mind a Doctor-lite Doctor Who novel - after all, the companions are of just as much importance - but a Benny-lite Benny novel? I'm not so sure. Possibly because I don't like Jason Kane quite enough for him to take the lead. He's decent enough, but I'm not invested in his character enough, nor does he have enough quirks, for me to be really excited by what's going on. Still, if you're going to do a fairly humour-free Benny book, removing Benny for the bulk of the plot probably helps. The lack of humour isn't the only thing that ties this to Beyond the Sun, as it also features a return of hapless student Emile, who generally spends his time getting in the way and messing things up, in the way Jason did in Eternity Weeps. Jason, here, is much more competent, which doesn't help: his character changes dramatically depending on what the particular book needs him to do. Another similarity with Beyond the Sun is the ludicrous Cybermen influence. The opening chapters of this book have a crew of scientists landing on a mysterious new tenth planet in a solar system, to a very brief retelling of Tomb... (complete with electrified doors and two of them actually being there for a very different reason). Of course, there are no Cybermen involved - I'm not expecting any TV Who monsters to appear in these books - but it went beyond homage into... well, fanwank. Throw in Russell's usual clunky dialogue that it's hard to imagine anyone actually speaking, and this book has hurdles.
Which is a shame, as it's quite a decent, fast-paced action story otherwise. Very pulpy, with some bitchy female space prisoners, an ex-colonialist military leader reminiscing on the days he could just subjugate "Johnny Native", an evil computer, a secret robot in the crew, and a mind-controlling artificial intelligence set on spreading through the galaxy, but in the hands of a better writer it could have been a really fun book. It expands heavily on the Knights of Jeneve story from Dragons' Wrath, and gives some background to what Jason's been up to, which is all a bonus as the ongoing arcs in the background of the Benny books have been intriguing so far.
And, of course, Chris bloody Cwej returns! He doesn't manage to do much here, suffering from amnesia (he's got a bit of Eighth Doctor Syndrome, evidently), but it's nice to have him back, and the book ends with him stopping with Benny and Irving on Dellah. I wasn't expecting these books to be quite so ensemble-based, but on the whole I'm glad he's here.
So yeah, good ideas, not so well executed.

Next time on Doctor Who... Daleks!

[Catalogue Trousers]

Ah, so we've got John Peel's first 8th Doctor epic next! I'll be interested to see what you make of it. I recall that when it first appeared it had a lot of outraged fanboys spitting blood

Spoiler alert

over the non-destruction of Skaro and the whole Movellan explanation

[close]

and declaring Peel the Anti-Christ, but I thought that it was an enjoyable if convoluted romp with some nice ideas.

[Replies From View]

John Peel - like the proper John Peel?

[daf]

No, it's not the DJ (I did wonder that too!)

This is he :



In his defence, Peel is his real surname, unlike the DJ, which was Ravenscroft.

[Gurke and Hare]

I always thought the Doctor Who writer John Peel was American, but you seem to have posted a photo of a farmer from Norfolk.

[Replies From View]

Just below his nipples it's just Wellington boots right down to the floor.