Old Doctor Who - Part 4

[Midas]

The Mervyn Haisman estate are allegedly in the process of taking legal action for IP infringement against BBV. "Ball Bagg Vidiots" had previously been granted permission to produce EU material featuring Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart , but the Haisman estate rescinded rights of use last year after discovering BBV had hired a known predator to perform in one of their productions. It appears BBV had "ingeniously" attempted to circumnavigate this setback by relaunching the non-award-winning "The Brigadier Adventures" writtenbybillbaggsperformedbybillbaggs as a non-copyright-infringing series simply titled "Brigadier". Oh, no, it's not the Brigadier, honestly officer.

Interested to see if anything happens with this.

[Replies From View]

Looking forward to a further series called Brigadiers

just creaming myself out here at the thought of all the many Brigadiers there could be!!

[Gurke and Hare]

I'd be interested to see the basis on which they originally gave permission. If there were something in writing, I'd be surprised if there were a clause saying "This contract can be unilaterally terminated by sending a DM on Twitter".

[purlieu]

Return to the Fractured Planet by Dave Stone

Hmmm. Dave Stone back again, with probably his darkest book to date. It still manages to be funny at times - very much so, in fact - but without that element of whimsy undercutting the main plot, the grotesque elements just become... well, grotesque.

The narrator of The Mary-Sue Extrusion is back, this time working for Benny and Braxiatel to find the murderer of a fellow A.P.E. they had employed to try and keep the influence of the Gods at bay. There's also a prequel story tied in. Unfortunately, the bulk of the plot involves the unnamed protagonist and one female companion or another running around attacking or escaping from hideous mutated creatures. There are a lot of vivid descriptions in a body horror manner - this may well be the only book to include the phrase "it felt precisely as if my brain was being injected with semen" or indeed the concept - but after while it just gets a bit... much. Furthermore, the meta aspects of the narrative device, with the protagonist happily pointing out coincidences and moments where reality differs from fiction, are no different to the ones we had three books ago, and thus feel tired and nowhere near as clever.

Benny is cured of her imminent death, the villain is an escaped God gone insane, Chris is back on his feet, we find out a little about the spread of the Gods' influence in the galaxy and there's even a nice reference to Prince Jimbo, so it's fine as a way to connect the dots, but ultimately frustrating and unsatisfying as a book.

Next time on Doctor Who... the somewhat epic Interference begins with Book One - Shock Tactic.

[samadriel]

Can't wait for your eventual take on the whole of Interference, it's been a long time since I heard anyone else talk about it, and I'm curious as to whether anyone else will like it the way I did.

[purlieu]

Almost finished the first book, I'll probably review the pair together I think. My initial response is it's not remotely what I was expecting. It also puts paid to any ideas that Lawrence Miles hasn't got a sense of humour, as it's probably the funniest Who book I've read in ages.

[A Hat Like That]

I read a lot of the preceding books out of some sense of duty. There's some slogs in the run up to Unnatural History and Interference. After Interference, it feels like the lids been blown off (for a bit). My favourite books in the range are all in the next few arcs.

It all goes horribly wrong, several times, but we've got that to look forwards to.

[purlieu]

Interference by Lawrence Miles

There's too much to talk about here. I doubt I'll even come close to covering the books or my thoughts on them.

First off, this is by far the closest to the new series that the books have felt. The bulk of the 1996 plot, with Sam, Sarah Jane and K9 investigating a group of aliens acting as arms dealers at a not-very-secret "security" conference near London feels so much like a RTD era story. The overall thing, full of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey continuity heavy Doctor-changing stuff is pure Moffat. This doesn't feel remotely like anything that would happen in classic Who. Even the Third Doctor plot is intentionally written in that manner, with him being utterly baffled and appalled at what's happening, and worrying about what his life will be like several regenerations down the line. This is very clearly a comment on how the franchise has changed, and how some people are unable to accept that, and is one of many, many meta aspects of the books.

It's all very 'clever', really. Sections are written as script, portrayed as a semi-fictional media version of both reality and Sam's thoughts. They're pretty funny - Rassilon is played by Brian Blessed - but overall exist to play into of the story's underlying themes, that of the power of both good and bad that the media can have, and how much it influences our lives, culture and beliefs. The other main issue is tied in with the arms sales side of things, and is very angry. Miles points out that at least some of the plot points are based on real things he's researched, although he can't say which. Little of it would surprise me, and his anger comes through loud and clear. On one level, the books are a call to arms to reshape society, by showing people what they are capable of by themselves. It's all rather admirable, although the Doctor being quizzed why he's willing to get involved in alien political matters but not those on Earth comes across as tedious, largely because there isn't actually a good answer beyond 'the writers can't - and shouldn't - tell those kinds of stories, as Chris Chibnall has proven'.

While both books are incredibly funny when they want to be, they're also exceptionally bleak. The Eighth Doctor spends most of the story being aimlessly tortured in a Saudi Arabian prison, the Third Doctor is utterly out of his depth and, of course, gets shot, regenerating too early. Fitz gets the worst deal of all, abandoned by everyone, becoming part of the Faction Paradox, and ultimately ageing thousands of years, ending the book as a bitter, crippled soldier who wants to kill the Doctor. We met him in the Benny NA Dead Romance, suggesting that there's no happy end for him. But, of course, another version of him created by Faction Paradox offshoot The Remote is on board the TARDIS and living as normal. Speaking of Dead Romance, the bottle universe and the fact that the Time Lords are unable to be involved in this story all comes from the ongoing Gods story from the Benny books, which really surprised me. I thought there might be a couple of Easter egg-style hints about the books co-existing, so this level of interconnectedness was truly unexpected.

The women get off lightly, with Sam's story reaching a satisfying conclusion for her departure, and Sarah Jane (plus K9) being an absolute joy. Sam feels like she's come into her own in her last few books, shedding the worst parts of her personality and even having them given some sort of explanation. I'm almost sad to see her leave. Her replacement here, Compassion, starts off as a villain, and is fairly likeable in a Seven of Nine kind of way. I suppose we'll see how she develops.

Interference is clearly designed to push its readers' buttons, from the endless continuity references, to the really horrible retconning of the Third Doctor's death, to leaving things open with a not-quite-Fitz and a recently-a-villain Compassion as companions at the end, to the hint that the Time Lords - once the Gods have fucked off - seem to be going to war with Earth, not to mention the Foreman's World plot supposedly happening mid-way through a later adventure. These, combined with the meta elements and the very strong political ideas strewn throughout, could easily be a complete mess. Thankfully, Lawrence Miles's writing is utterly captivating throughout, meaning even the bits that could so quickly turn boring or smug are a real joy to read. Even Sam using the movie's tag line "he's back, and it's about time," is wonderfully undercut.

It's a little bit too long, and once more the Eighth Doctor doesn't actually do much - the plot seems to be driven by just about every other character apart from him - but otherwise I thought it was brilliant. Perhaps with the hindsight of modern TV and the Moffat era, it doesn't feel so shocking, but I'm surprised at just how many people seem to have loathed it on release.

edit: I forgot to mention that the Doctor is now infected with Faction Paradox... stuff, that will make him come around to their beliefs at some point in the future. Testament to just how much is happening that that huge reveal slipped my mind.

Next time on Doctor Who... let's see if Paul Magrs can impress me more this time around.

[Alberon]

Rassilon is played by Brian Blessed

Though, of course, in reality he's Omega.

[A Hat Like That]

8th Doctor time-travelling by writing out reality changing equations using his own blood and viscera.

Learning that most Ogron speech is subsonic, and thus inaudible to human ears;
Also, "how do you punch someone with just enough weight to knock them out?", Ogron shrugs "it's a talent".

Re-read early in lockdown and it is an absolute barnstormer.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

The Interference duology really are an incredibly dense couple of books, reading that summary I'd honestly forgotten how much stuff happens in them. I'd love to attempt a full re-read of all his books at some point...if I ever get the time.

Also a good reminder of what an honestly great writer Miles was at this point, leagues above anyone else who was writing for BBC Books at the time and he clearly knew it too. It's shame his mental health issues - and his habit of burning bridges with anyone who might've been interested in offering him more work - have meant his output has all but dried up. We get one more from him down the line in the BBC range, which he admitted in an interview he only did has he needed the money to buy some new Star Wars Lego, hah.

Compassion is a character who I've always felt was served poorly by her arc in subsequent books, it ends up being a bit of a wasted opportunity to do something really interesting and different with a companion. And also her replacement is unmemorably dull.

[Malcy]

Double post this forum is fucked after update etc

[Malcy]

Though, of course, in reality he's Omega.

THIS IS MYYYYY WOOOORRRLLLDDD!

[mjwilson]

The Interference duology really are an incredibly dense couple of books, reading that summary I'd honestly forgotten how much stuff happens in them. I'd love to attempt a full re-read of all his books at some point...if I ever get the time.

Also a good reminder of what an honestly great writer Miles was at this point, leagues above anyone else who was writing for BBC Books at the time and he clearly knew it too.

I was such a Miles fanboy back in the day - probably still would be if he were writing anything longer than tweets. The problem is that his inventiveness seemed too big for the range - if you're going to go for a big Time War story it probably needed to be more central to what was going on across the range, but that would have probably needed more teamwork and collaboration than Miles really wanted to do.

[A Hat Like That]

or that the BBC were prepared for?

I can't actually find a list of who was editor of the range when but - even at the time - it was really obvious they had no grand aim or story they wished to tell at the start. There's a bit in the middle, which basically starts with Interference (the 25th book) that leads to several interlinked stories.

At the risk of spoilers, every time there was an an arc of any form, the resolution of it was pretty terrible.

Which, I think, arises because one author had a good idea, others played with it, others rejected it but the editor didn't have any particular vision. Other than when they have to completely reset everything. Anyway, guess we'll get to that in about ten books time.

Looking at the list, I only gave up properly somewhere around book 60 ... :/

[pigamus]

So what's Lawrence Miles doing nowadays, does anybody know?

[crankshaft]

or that the BBC were prepared for?

I can't actually find a list of who was editor of the range when but - even at the time - it was really obvious they had no grand aim or story they wished to tell at the start.

When the BBC took the license back from Virgin, they put the books under the editorship of Nuala Buffini at Worldwide. She didn't have the long view and sci-fi specific skills that Rebecca Levene at Virgin did, hence the first few books being, shall we say, extremely variable in quality.

Stephen Cole quickly got wind of this position and lobbied for the job - he actually took a pay cut from his previous job at WW to be the grand overseer of all things Doctor Who at Worldwide. However, he quickly realised that the workload was insane. He'd have to be on top of the VHSs, DVDs, BBC Audiobooks' output and also approve Big Finish's releases, as well as commissioning and editing 22 books a year. Oh, and writing a couple under a pen name as well. He worked out that it was doable, just, if he never actually did any editing on the books in work hours. So he committed to editing the books out of hours and tried to maintain his sanity.

The BBC eventually gave him some help in the shape of Jac Rayner before he left the BBC. The books were then handed to Justin Richards to edit and oversee as a freelancer, without the bother of having to look after everything else with the TV Movie logo on it.

Given all of this, I'm minded to be more kind to the EDAs. Under the circumstances it's a miracle many of them were as good as they were.

[Bad Ambassador]

Browsing through the list of unproduced stories on the Doctor Who wiki yielded something wonderful I'd never heard of - Destination: Bandril by Jonathan Morris and Lance Parkin, a proposed Third Doctor PDA that would be the story to which Timelash is the sequel.

[Alberon]

Prequel to Timelash?!? Only real fans would actually want to have anything new connected to Timelash.

[daf]

The BBC eventually gave him some help in the shape of Jac Rayner before he left the BBC.

One of the best writers for Big Finish!

Think she's now overseeing the Sixth Doctors range - which is a dream combination for me!

[purlieu]

I can't actually find a list of who was editor of the range when but - even at the time - it was really obvious they had no grand aim or story they wished to tell at the start. There's a bit in the middle, which basically starts with Interference (the 25th book) that leads to several interlinked stories.

It does feel like this kind of started with the arrival of Fitz in The Taint, all building up to Interference which then starts an arc of around 12 books, from what I can tell, directly followed by another arc of six. Which in itself is a lot bolder than anything the NAs did, although arguably there are a number of themes and plot strands running through most of the last fifteen or so of them.

Crikey, a Timelash prequel. When I first watched Timelash, I hadn't seen all of the Pertwee stories, so naturally assumed it was a reference to an existing story. It feels more like something Big Finish would do rather than BBC Books. I suppose that's only a matter of time, too.

[A Hat Like That]

When the BBC took the license back from Virgin, they put the books under the editorship of Nuala Buffini at Worldwide. She didn't have the long view and sci-fi specific skills that Rebecca Levene at Virgin did, hence the first few books being, shall we say, extremely variable in quality.

Stephen Cole quickly got wind of this position and lobbied for the job - he actually took a pay cut from his previous job at WW to be the grand overseer of all things Doctor Who at Worldwide. However, he quickly realised that the workload was insane. He'd have to be on top of the VHSs, DVDs, BBC Audiobooks' output and also approve Big Finish's releases, as well as commissioning and editing 22 books a year. Oh, and writing a couple under a pen name as well. He worked out that it was doable, just, if he never actually did any editing on the books in work hours. So he committed to editing the books out of hours and tried to maintain his sanity.

The BBC eventually gave him some help in the shape of Jac Rayner before he left the BBC. The books were then handed to Justin Richards to edit and oversee as a freelancer, without the bother of having to look after everything else with the TV Movie logo on it.

Given all of this, I'm minded to be more kind to the EDAs. Under the circumstances it's a miracle many of them were as good as they were.

Cheers for this, really appreciated.

[A Hat Like That]

It does feel like this kind of started with the arrival of Fitz in The Taint, all building up to Interference which then starts an arc of around 12 books, from what I can tell, directly followed by another arc of six. Which in itself is a lot bolder than anything the NAs did, although arguably there are a number of themes and plot strands running through most of the last fifteen or so of them.

Crikey, a Timelash prequel. When I first watched Timelash, I hadn't seen all of the Pertwee stories, so naturally assumed it was a reference to an existing story. It feels more like something Big Finish would do rather than BBC Books. I suppose that's only a matter of time, too.

They do end up over-doing the arcs.

I've gone a bit back down the rabbit hole and seems I gave up at the resolution of the Sabbath stories. The one where they couldn't afford the characters they really wanted.

[Replies From View]

So what's Lawrence Miles doing nowadays, does anybody know?

he says nothing and you are allowed to call around for chicken right now

[purlieu]

So what's Lawrence Miles doing nowadays, does anybody know?

Since Moffat left the show he's had nothing to moan about and his blog has ceased trading.


The Blue Angel by Paul Magrs and Jeremy Hoa

'Also,' Marn went on, 'they are rumoured to be possessed of a great and mysterious power. Something to do with the very fabric of the universe. Something that lets them into the secrets that bind the whole thing together and which tells them the future.'
He was looking at the moon they were approaching with a stifled drea that even his glassy impassiveness couldn't hide. He's terrified of them, Belinda thought. She had to keep him talking.
'What is it, this mysterious power?' she asked, as the moon loomed hugely before them.
Marn shrugged and started to guide the sled towards what seemed to be a dark and hulking city on the landmass closest. 'Reports from various Valcean spies seem to suggest that their power resides in their ability to manipulate lice.'

After a major event story like the two part Interference, itself the culmination of subtle recurring plot points over several books, and the suggestion of forthcoming plots involving a Time Lord war, the Doctor becoming part of the Faction Paradox, and two companions of Faction-origin in different ways, one would imagine the following book would be smaller in scale, as an opportunity for the Doctor to regain some confidence, Fitz to begin to work out who he even is now, and a chance to get to work out what Compassion is about and how she'll fit in on the TARDIS. Instead, we get a Paul Magrs book.

Incidentally, every time I see Jeremy Hoad's name, I'm reminded of Geoff Woade from Withnail and I, and a whole different Paul McGann character ends up in my head.

After reading a Doctor Who book, I usually have a glance over at the charmingly web 1.0 Doctor Who Ratings Guide website, to read reviews of the book ranging from those written at the time of release up to today. The Blue Angel is an opinion splitter, but in an intriguing way: quite a few people seem to have completely missed the point of the book. Which isn't intended to be patronising, but is a signifier of how risky writing a postmodern novel and disguising it as a Doctor Who tie-in book is.

The Blue Angel is a novel about continuity, canon and fiction. It posits several realities, including one set in an opposite universe - the Obverse - in which the Glass Men could easily become the Daleks, and another race with a name I cannot be arsed to remember are clearly cyphers for the Time Lords, and a giant green elephant rules over all and attempts to get our universe to start an intergalactic war. There's also a reality in which the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion are part of a very thinly veiled ludicrously blunt Star Trek TOS parody. There's another reality where some very mundane women are going shopping, meet Iris Wildthyme - now in her Barbarlla incarnation - and get mixed up in the other two plots, while not really grasping the whole thing and basically just trying to get home. And there's a further reality in which the Doctor is a normal man living in a small town, with Fitz and Compassion as his lodgers, Doctors 1-4 (Magrs refusing to acknowledge '80s Who as ever) as various people he encounters, and Iris, Sarah Jane and K9 simply as friends; the rest of the book is all a story written by that version of Sarah Jane, which coincides with the Doctor's dreams. Although it's pretty much concluded in that story that it's not real, there's no hint at where or when it actually takes place, and indeed the resulting conversation is that everything is fictional.

Honestly, it's a beautifully written piece of staggeringly imaginative postmodern fiction that's also frequently hilarious. I'm just not convinced it's necessarily at home in a range of largely pulpish books, especially near the start of a big story arc. There is a war started here, which may well end up being the war that's already been talked about, but then again it might not be. I suppose time will tell. Otherwise, I can tell why a lot of fans were disappointed and felt that the final chapter being 20 questions asking the reader to decide how they thought it ended was just the writers not being able to come up with an ending. It's also not completely clear whether the Doctor having absolutely no impact on the story is a comment on how ineffectual the character has been in recent books, or whether the Star Trek parody is intentionally bad or actually just... bad.

Anyway, I enjoyed it.


Next time on The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield... we're almost at the end.

[mjwilson]

So what's Lawrence Miles doing nowadays, does anybody know?

https://twitter.com/the_beasthouse

[Alberon]

Since Moffat left the show he's had nothing to moan about and his blog has ceased trading.

Nothing to moan about, post-Moffat?

Miles must be deranged.

[purlieu]

The Joy Device by Justin Richards

"Doesn't matter," Jason said. "The important thing is that we find out -"
"But I'd guess it was..." Braxiatel went on, oblivious to Jason's comments. He paused. "Sorry," he said.
There was silence for a while.
"So what can you tell me?" Jason asked.
"I'll tell you what I can," Braxiatel said. "Dorpfeld's Prism seems to be - I'm telling you now, what's the point... Sorry. Just got that." There was another pause. Then Braxiatel continued.

That's a snippet of an entire long distance conversation Jason and Braxiatel have with each other, struggling to get to grips with the ten second delay between speaking and getting a reply. It's that kind of a book.

The Joy Device is not what I was expecting this far into a pretty heavy going arc. It's a farcical sitcom of a novel, really. Benny, recovering from the memory loss she suffered in the previous book, has decided she wants to go to the Outer Rim of the galaxy to have an adventure. Jason, Clarence, Braxiatel and Chris are terrified she'll never come back to the safe and quiet of the Braxiatel Collection, and thus go out of their way to sabotage her holiday, by making it as safe and dull as possible. Her guide is renowned explorer Dent Harper, who spends most of the book trying to prepare Benny for danger, expecting the usual muggers and murderers around every corner. Jason and Clarence spend the book doing everything they can to make sure no crimes happen to, or in the vicinity of, Benny. Their job is made harder when Benny and Dent end up caught in the middle of a gangland robbery, with two groups of criminals after an artefact that she happens to find.

Basically, it's very silly. Apart from the titular artefact, it's not really sci-fi at all, and even that plays a comparatively small role in proceedings. More time is given over to Jason and Clarence doing everything they can to try and stop Benny and Dent going to bed together. All in all, it's the kind of book I'd generally love, but it has the issue of basically being a bit... slight. Everything present is great, but it ultimately feels less than the sum of its parts, with so little at stake and no real character work that it ended up taking me longer to read than some of the much more serious books. Still, it's nice to have something light to precede the last book in the series.

Next time on Doctor Who... Simon Bucher-Jones, so I'd imagine the current arc is going to be complicated even further.

[crankshaft]

"Tears Of The Oracle" was meant to be the final book in the series, and Justin Richards wrote it accordingly, closing with a dying Benny off to search for the fountain of youth to get cured (which we all know she will). But it sold better than expected because everyone thought it was the last book, and so Virgin gave them the budget to do three more. Unfortunately they were put together in a hurry, and it shows.

Justin Richards has said that this book should have been half the length, because the central conceit just isn't enough to sustain an NA-length novel. But Peter Darvill-Evans was desperate for a book, and he knew Justin could deliver it on time, so he suggested some additional subplots and commissioned it anyway.

[Ambient Sheep]

https://twitter.com/the_beasthouse

Some great stuff in there, thanks for that!