Old Doctor Who - Part 4

[Gurke and Hare]

My season 17 has arrived. Just started to go through the PDFs, some lovely stuff in there.

[purlieu]

Mine just came too, lovely looking set as usual. I do really need to start actually watching these.

Meanwhile, in book land...


Seeing I by Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman.

Oh, thank God, a really good book at last! Two in the space of 12, what a hit rate.
A story in three parts, with two of them running concurrently. Sam spends three years on a planet run by a corporation, and helps build a village, tries to expose corruption in the system, has a few relationships and actually grows up and becomes a real character rather than a one dimension generic companion. Meanwhile, The Doctor finds himself in a prison he can't escape from, and after three years, begins to lose his will and direction. Then it all comes together with a rather more traditional alien invasion type story.

It's only the second EDA - after Alien Bodies, of course - that makes any attempt to tell a bolder and more interesting tale. The first two thirds of the book are almost entirely about the two main characters, which is really refreshing, especially given how badly they've been writing for the most part so far. Making Sam into a likeable, well rounded human being really helps, as well as giving her the maturity to have had made changes on her own, rather than just have her getting in the way of the Doctor trying to help. And she's now no longer pining over him in a lovesick manner, which is a further bonus. I also enjoyed the return of a number of Missing Adventure tropes: sentient AIs with names in allcaps, the Doctor referencing Benny's book Down Among the Dead Men, even a reference to the Time Lords being infertile.

It's not a perfect book - the final act is pretty jarring and could easily have been properly seeded, bringing some intrigue rather than "oh it was aliens all along" - but it's so much better than the previous five that I just really enjoyed it.

Next time on the Eighth Doctor Adventures... Gary Russell. I predict a return to the same anonymous Doctor and Sam, with emphasis on fanwank continuity.

[Gurke and Hare]

Mmmm, delicious BBC memos about whether/how to respond to Radio Times readers' letters about City of Death.

[M-CORP]

Mine just came too, lovely looking set as usual. I do really need to start actually watching these.

Meanwhile, in book land...


Seeing I by Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman.

Oh, thank God, a really good book at last!

Oooh, a book I've actually read. And yes, it is good, ambitious and with well-written characters. Can't remember the end though.

[Replies From View]

That version of the logo, decorated in that manner, makes me think only of the television companion.

[Deanjam]

Makes me think of these.

[purlieu]

Placebo Effect by Gary Russell.

At last! The Wirrrn vs. Foamasi story we've all been waiting for!
Well, that was alright. Thankfully the fanwank was largely kept to loads of references to comic strips that I've never read, so I didn't have to keep rolling my eyes every other page. It was a fairly fun story, fast paced and interesting without resorting to long, tedious action sequences. The humour was mixed - some really trite 'satire' on views about the EU and the royal family being low points - but overall it was at least trying to be Doctor Who, without much angst, and it skipped along much faster than most of the EDAs so far. Sam's maturity from Seeing I was partially there, although that was helped by her actually being written as a rounded human being rather than the non-entity of the earlier books. The Doctor was fine, very much a recognisable Eight, although I'm really beginning to see his fairly useless streak coming through already. The plot was convoluted but intriguing: Wirrrn making pretend performance-enhancing drugs containing their DNA to convert athletes attending the Olympics into more Wirrrn, and using the Foamasi gangs to unknowningly distribute them. There was a reference to a drug called Cake.
All of which would make for a great light-hearted novel if it weren't for one thing: Gary Russell likes to overstuff his books. The first 50 pages seemed to skip from character to character to character without ever letting us get an idea of who they all were and how they fit together, to the extent I never really had more than a vague idea of who any of the guest characters really were. Throw in numerous reveals that so-and-so is actually a Wirrrn drone, or a Foamasi in disguise, and it just became impossible to know or care who was working for who. Other aspects were just baffling: two of the Doctor's comic strip companions - Stacy and Ssard, a human and Ice Warrior - set the stage for the story by getting married on the planet where this all happened, but after a huge build up, they were simply removed from the story; there was a three page argument about evolution vs. creationism between Sam and a priest which added absolutely nothing to the story; on numerous occasions, the setting was described as being "twenty thousand years" in Sam's future, despite it being the year 3999. Even if Gary Russell has innumeracy issues, surely someone must have caught that before the book went out?

So, yes, a reasonable book with lots going for it, but too flawed to be really great. Still, by the low standards so far, that still puts it in the top five EDAs at this point.

Next time on The Eighth Doctor Adventures... oh fuck it's Bulis. I got a stack of non-Who books for Christmas, so this seems an appropriate time to read those instead. See you in a few weeks!

[A Hat Like That]

I think the next one is possibly Bulis' best.

The run of the next nine EDAs are all, iirc, solid at worst, but no greats. Well, there's a maybe early on, but I have to admit a LOT of it went over my head when I first read it.

[Action Fish]

Alexei Sayle mentioned in the Christmas Day edition of his podcast that he'd been recording a new commentary for Revelation with Nicola Bryant, so looks like season 22 may be on the cards soon-ish (apologies if already mentioned elsewhere).

[JamesTC]

Yeah, Colin Baker has been spotted filming in his blue coat from Revelation and the set has been listed for 14th March by a Swedish retailer.

[Replies From View]

Yeah, Colin Baker has been spotted filming in his blue coat from Revelation

Glad to hear he still fits in it.

[Norton Canes]

Forty years ago today... the best Doctor Who ever first graced our screens in part one of an exciting new adventure - Castrovalva

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

An episode which, bizarrely, went out at 3:30pm in Scotland. Luckily, my seven-year-old self caught the broadcast quite by accident. I was playing with some toys in the living room while the TV burbled away in the background. You can imagine my surprise and confusion when a new episode of Doctor Who suddenly materialised.

Does anyone know why it was shown in such a weirdly early slot that day?

[Norton Canes]

Oh hang on it's not today is it, it premiered on January 4th. Ah well, nothing like a belated celebration.

[Norton Canes]

Does anyone know why it was shown in such a weirdly early slot that day?

A prompt reply to this question on Gallifrey Base suggests there was a football match scheduled for live broadcast that evening.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I've since done some extensive research on this (I asked around on Twitter), and it was apparently bumped from its evening slot to make way for a documentary about the Highland Games - a documentary produced by the then head of BBC Scotland.

[Norton Canes]

Then Twitter > Gallifrey Base!

Ah no, wait! My prompt respondant has now edited his reply:

Scratch that, according to A Brief History of Time Travel, it was a documentary called The Heavies (which was about the Highland Games, hence why it was on BBC Scotland).

[Norton Canes]

Anyway Peter Davison, eh. Castrovalva. What a story. 

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Yep, Davison was ace (not the McCoy companion, I haven't just come up with some sort of convoluted Chibnall-esque fanwank theory).

[Replies From View]

or eaten a well-prepared meal

[daf]

EXCELLENNNNNT!!!

[Attila]

Didn't want to derail the Celebrity Death Thread too much, but here are the 8 French Doctor Who novelisations. The artwork is funky.

https://broadwcast.org/index.php/File:Novelisation_covers.JPG

I have a couple of them tucked in with my Target DW books. Liking how Tom Baker's scarf appears even with the 1st doctor, and  a pre-Picard face palm there in the Crusades cover.

(I grew up in the US, and there were a few Target books re-published for the American market, including a couple of 3rd Doctor adventures -- the latter rewritten as if it were Tom Baker's doctor. I was baffled as fuck as a kid wondering who Jo was, having no idea that there'd ever been a companion outside of Sarah Jane).

[McDead]

The cover to the Brain of Morbius seems to preempt the Paul McGann Doctor.

I like how the Dr on the cover of The Crusades is exhibiting an expression of "for fucks sake, not this shit again"

[JamesTC]

Sad to hear The Abominable Snowmen will likely be the last animated release. BBC America has pulled funding according to the Mirror (who have been reliable when reporting on Who animations).

[Replies From View]

Hmm.  Is that just for the time being?  The animations are repeatedly unfunded for a while, then other animation studios get involved with a new funding source.  If I have understood.

[JamesTC]

Hmm.  Is that just for the time being?  The animations are repeatedly unfunded for a while, then other animation studios get involved with a new funding source.  If I have understood.

All of them since Macra (aside from Web of Fear) have been majority funded by BBC America. Even The Power of the Daleks received some BBC America funding during production, which is why it started as B&W but later received a colourisation (BBC America favour full colour animation).

We might see The Underwater Menace and The Crusade tackled using the Web style, but any full story animation will need another studio to fund it. Britbox seem the only obvious contender.

[Alberon]

How much does each episode cost? Low enough to get crowdfunded? Not that the BBC would probably allow that route to be taken.

[Replies From View]

Imagine Ian Levine funding them all and then insisting on taking full creative control.

They would need to do the very opposite of not looking a gift horse in the noisy shrieking mouth.

[JamesTC]

Imagine Ian Levine funding them all and then insisting on taking full creative control.

They would need to do the very opposite of not looking a gift horse in the noisy shrieking mouth.

They did do that with Shada! Before the original DVD release in 2012, he offered his animated version to the DVD team. They looked at it and eventually decided to just re-release the VHS version. He was not happy.

[JamesTC]

How much does each episode cost? Low enough to get crowdfunded? Not that the BBC would probably allow that route to be taken.

Lower than a normal animation, but likely high enough to put it outside the crowdfunding model. And as you say, the BBC wouldn't go for it.