Review: DEAD ROMANCE

Post-Doctor New Adventure novel written by Lawrence Miles, 1999

Dead Romance is pretty much perfect, really, isn’t it?

Okay, some context: Dead Romance was originally part of a series of on-going adventures for the New Adventures companion Bernice Summerfield, which continued after Virgin publishing lost the licence to produce further books featuring the Doctor. It was also later republished as part of the Faction Paradox range which spun off from some of author Lawrence Miles’ Eighth Doctor novel ideas.

However, this book doesn’t feature Bernice – rather, an initially unexplained through-the-looking-glass version of her called Christine, living in a seventies London where the world has ended. It takes place on a monumentally larger canvas than any of the Bernice New Adventures, and most other Doctor Who books. And is written in a far braver style, constructed round Christine Summerfield writing a journal of events, which back-tracks and excludes things and jumps about. A format Miles uses absolutely beautifully to contrast ideas, sustain tension, get us thinking one thing, then subvert it later.

I’m not sure I’d go as far as saying Lawrence Miles is my favourite Doctor Who author – that accolade (ahem) would go more to Cartmel or Aaronovitch, for the sheer joyous quality of the writing – but as soon as I read anything by him, I remember how much I love, love, love his books. It’s the imagination that does it, which puts everyone else to shame. I’m not sure why there’s a shortage, but no-one else seems capable of cramming in the sheer amount of fascinating, intriguing concepts that Miles can. His casual reinventions and subversions of established Doctor Who concepts - his books are packed with throwaway ideas other authors’d kill for – are just so exhilarating, and fire the imagination like no other.

The explicitly Doctor Who elements of Dead Romance are so much more powerful for not being tied down to constant name-dropping of Gallifrey, Rassilon, Shada, the Eye of Harmony (although all these things are mentioned) – it’s amazing in fact how much more impressive the ideas become when not linked to these over-familiar terms. I wish more people’d adopt this approach. Considering that people debate whether the man with the rosette in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street is the Master or not (!), just because he’s not explicitly named as such, it clearly does make things far more fluid and less mundanely explicit; I can think of plenty of books that could have done with some fuzziness, rather than a straightforward overload of continuity references.

Miles’ ability to make over-familiar ideas huge and grand and awe-inspiring is literally stunning; the Time Lords (‘Great Houses,’ as I was reading the Mad Norwegian version this time round) have never, ever been this massive and impressive before, and in all honestly, probably never will again. They stitch machines into their skin; alter their agents into bipedal tanks; walk through the sky into London; rip up the buildings with machines “the size of the Isle of Wight,” make their own cities out of the rubble, and turn the sky orange. All in an afternoon!

(It has to be said, a lot of Russell T Davies’ ideas regarding the Time War do seem to be lifted from Lawrence Miles – I have no idea whether this is coincidental, but not least the arrival of the Time Lords on earth in The End of Time, Part Two does come across as a bargain-basement version of what happens here. Fandom is very taken with the Time War concept (no wonder, as it amounts to the Doctor, the Master, Rassilon, and Davros bunged into a situation together), but unfortunately the idea of the Time Lords going to war – and its repercussions – has already been nailed with far more breadth and imagination in books like this and Alien Bodies. It is only in throwaway references to “the Couldhavebeen King and his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres,” “the Skaro Degradations” and “the Hordes of Travesty” that Davies alludes to a scope comparable to Miles’ ‘time war’.)

It seems to be a patented technique of Miles’ to expand on and make even the weakest of Doctor Who concepts fascinating (ie, the Krotons in Alien Bodies – who are still meant to be a bit rubbish, but nevertheless get an interesting backstory, and sense of scale), and come up with a mind-boggling array of involving concepts – but then to only suggest them: universes within bottles within bottles; machine men; clockwork/flesh machines.

I think also, unlike the vast majority of Doctor Who authors, he doesn’t render his ideas mundane by presenting them through straight sci-fi concepts: everything is couched in mythic, almost fairytale terms (enabled by Christine’s inexpert testimony); the time travellers use magic, machines are ‘stitched’ into skin, potions alter the earth’s population, the ‘sky opens up’ – rather than a space/time portal (etc) appearing. Which – as all the usual technobabble is bollocks anyway – I find far more satisfying, as well as ramping up the scale.

I’m not sure Doctor Who deserves anything this good. Certainly, very little else lives up to this book. It can only go downhill from here. Even with the Time Lords alone, Miles keeps them (very effectively) at a distance, and they truly become giants – then, in the Faction Paradox series (arguably playing with Lawrence Miles’ Lego set), Lance Parkin comes along and gives us an old man in a habit. Great, cheers.

Similarly, I haven’t read a great deal of the Benny New Adventures’ ‘Gods’ arc (though The Mary-Sue Extrusion is gorgeous!), but it almost seems absurd that they even bothered trying to follow up something this earth-shattering – both fictively, and in terms of the approach.

How can you go back from this to St Oscar’s and Justin Richards… Surely that’s all a bit mundane (not to say, superseded) now? I know Chris Cwej turns up again, but the events of Dead Romance are so huge (even just the ways in which he’s used by the Time Lords: he’s been ritually murdering young women, and is presumably on his way to becoming a bulldozer with a face, like Khiste), yet I’ve read that a Time Lord monk later turns up to help him regenerate. Wow. If that does justice to the concepts here then I’m Lauren Bacall.

Cwej seems far too expansive and interesting a character to turn up in a ‘normal’ book now. Dull Dellah and even (sorry!) dear old Bernice are going to seem a bit flat after Dead Romance came along and blew the series out of the water. (You can tell Miles must’ve pitched this out of nowhere, the way it’s presented as just another novel in the range. Maybe it’s a good thing Virgin didn’t try to jump on the bandwagon of Miles’ ideas though, seeing how spectacularly (or not) the BBC Eighth Doctor books fumbled the War in Heaven…)

I’m aware that it probably sounds like I’m blowing this novel out of all proportion, but even from a stringently critical viewpoint I really think it’s quite a stunning achievement. It’s full of surprising, shocking, and magical scenes which there’s no point in me recounting; all I can really do is urge you to track a copy down.

Unfortunately, although the twists of this narrative fit together staggeringly well, and the novel (yes, not just book) definitely holds up to repeated reading, perhaps inevitably it looses some of its grandeur when approached by someone knowing what transpires. (Although I admit I couldn’t quite remember how Christine fitted in with Cwej.) However, despite this, simply for the sublimeness of its concepts (from small details like the dragon ships, or the wormy, multi-jointed sphinxes – the New Adventure cover is gorgeous, and gets them exactly right, as far as I’m concerned – to the reimagining of the Time Lords as monumental, faceless magician-warriors), it is among the best story – in any medium – that Doctor Who has to offer.

"Can't shoot me unless you’ve filled in all the forms, is that it?"

Review: INFERNO
Written by Don Houghton, directed by Douglas Camfield, 1970

Happening to watch this after The Invasion, I was surprised – even given that story’s influence on the season seven format – how unprecedented Inferno feels. The earth-exile concept is understandably taken for granted now, but given the relatively few contemporary-set sixties stories, in the context of what had gone before it’s quite a departure.

In fact, it’s almost like an alternative Doctor, or a reboot: a TARDIS-less, earth-bound kung fu dandy with a car and a whole military organisation backing him up. It couldn’t be much further from the distrustful old man in his junkyard, could it? (Given all the changes in format, it seems strange that the recognisable police box prop has been removed from the equation, rather than using it as a reminder that, no, you’re not watching the wrong program.)

Despite this gear change, I’m torn between whether season seven feels different from what’s gone before… or just the same, but in colour. There’s probably an argument for both views, but I think things are confused by the fact that there are precedents to season seven: The War Machines, The Web of Fear, The Invasion have similarities of style and approach – but weren’t representative of the contemporaneous norm. What’s different is tone: the year before this, Pat was battling Quarks on an alien planet; now it’s zombies and fascist versions of his friends in a bleak industrial complex.

It’s a cliché to say that season seven is grittier, more adult, etc, but it’s hard to avoid – the infected humans’ grey-blue Romero-zombie pallor is much more visceral than anything prior, especially without the light comedy relief of a character like Jamie taking the edge off. (It’s certainly not the plots per se that have changed – Inferno as a story is your basic scientific research gone wrong – but it is elevated by its execution.)

There is a big perceived division within fandom between the sixties and the rest of the series, which is only really attributable to the transition from black and white to colour (there seems to be a lot of people who’d happily watch season seven onward, but not touch anything from the sixties). Apart from the fatuousness of this opinion, it’s ironic how much cheaper and less attractive the programme looks in colour (especially emphasising the location/studio difference). It’s probably the advent of colour that really makes this division seem a big deal (imagine if Troughton’s last season had been in colour – the sixties-seventies/Second-Third Doctor division would seem a lot less absolute).

Another thing that does make Pertwee’s era seem tacky: unrealistic scientific establishments. I know nothing about drilling, but this is so obviously unrealistic, with its hall-of-mirrors walls… I suppose that ‘near future’ thing can answer for a lot. (I like the way they get a handyman on a bike in to fix the hi-tech drillhead.) This probably isn’t much different to Fury from the Deep, etc, but the run of season seven’s relative realism makes it more apparent. On the other hand, the power station location work is rather handsome.

The Doctor himself almost doesn’t feel like a continuation of the Doctor we know, and having him already established in a setting feels odd. However, by comparison to Doctors One and Two, he works excellently – a bastard, yes, but a cheery, breezy one. Love his opera cape, too. In fact, the simplicity of his ‘Sunday best’ (or rather, relative simplicity, compared to later purple-silk-lined checked hunting capes) is appropriately iconic – only a slight but effective variation on the First and Second’s costumes. (Given later contrasts, it’s surprising how similar they all are – essentially the same ‘Edwardian’ outfit of black jacket, cravat or bowtie, just the formal, hobo and dandy versions.)

Pertwee himself is a weird one – from the heights of the programme’s seventies popularity, he is one of the ‘most classic’ of the classic Doctors, but one who’s experienced a backlash over his chauvinism and authoritarian arrogance… Whereas Tom (charisma, humour, danger – all at once!) is still perfectly acceptable to a modern audience, Pertwee has fallen out of favour. Unfortunately, this is one of those bits of fan ‘wisdom’ which I’ve been swayed by – a shame, cos I love Pertwee, and the Third Doctor – so it’s great to see him holding his own in such a brutal and unforgiving story. (He’s brilliant playing it straight, isn’t he?) And – he does KUNG FU! (He even threatens to permanently paralyse Stahlmann…)

I’ve always loved Liz, too: capable but long-suffering – and generally fab! (I like her little curtsey when the Doctor sonics the door open for her.) She’s such a leap from the younger, more comic and less realistically-grounded Zoe and Jamie (although it’s arguable that this is exactly one of the things which diminished this season’s ratings – god forbid everything isn’t as accessible as possible! Nothing changes, does it?). She’s even an equal to the Brigadier in a way Jo or Sarah never are – he even calls her by her first name.

Anyway – I absolutely love Doctor Who played straight, and it really doesn’t get much grimmer than this, Androzani being an obvious exception (although Inferno has the advantage of being set in a recognisable world (or two)); everything feels similarly inexorable here. It’s also refreshing to have Doctor Who go fully apocalyptic, when understandably it’s normally part of the programme’s makeup for the Doctor to save the day (otherwise resulting in cop-outs like Last of the Time Lords).

Intercutting the doomed world with ‘our’ world makes everything all the more horrific. The final cut from now-familiar characters, threatened by lava, to the Doctor lying on the floor in silence is particularly shocking because of what it doesn’t spell out: all those characters have died horribly. And, despite helping the Doctor get back to save our world, they would have died anyway, so their deaths feel surprisingly nihilistic and meaningless. (The Fires of Pompeii notwithstanding – where all the sympathetic characters survive – Russell T would never have gone this far.)

Whether it’s really different from what went before, or more of the same with a fresh lick of paint, this story is great – it certainly feels fresh and different, despite being a long-established part of the Doctor Who story.

"How did the nasty men bring you back from the so very, very dead?"

Review: HORNETS' NEST
Series of audios written by Paul Magrs, directed by Kate Thomas, 2009

I was slow to get excited about the Hornets’ Nest series. Much as I love Tom, I’ve never idolised him to an hysterical extent, so I was relatively cautious about these audios… but nevertheless ended up listening to the first instalment the day after release (what can I say; the pre-order was cheap).

I’m slightly ambivalent about the series at large because though The Stuff of Nightmares especially is rather glorious, the following stories quickly become repetitious. In fact, originally this review was just about The Stuff of Nightmares, but it’s actually applicable to all five stories – it’s just that the repetition and continued lack of resolution does grate (there’s only so many times you can have the Doctor realising yet another character is infested by the hornets). (I was reminded of the way the Lemony Snicket books failed to live up to their initial potential by sticking to a very tight, limiting format.)

There is still a lot to love, not least because Paul Magrs so deliberately eschews the flashiness of modern TV Doctor Who; it’s a relief not to find the Fourth Doctor pressganged into Russell T Davies’ London in any of these stories. In fact, not only is it not modern, it is fastidiously old fashioned, in a very specifically quaint, ‘English’ way; all genteel cottages, housekeepers, sherry and almond slices. There’s an archness to this approach which extends to even the Ben Willsher/Anthony Dry artwork (which is a pleasing contrast of a very graphicsy approach and ‘ironic’ Target nostalgia – and considerably more stylish than the vast majority of design associated with DW) and the music, which is redolent of British sixties horror. Brass! Strings! All shimmering menace, and rather wonderfully cinematic. The relatively simple sound design is also a bonus; the narration isn’t swamped with sound effects demonstrating events that have just been narrated.

I’m very grateful the present day sections of Hornets’ Nest are almost unrecognisably 2009, as juxtaposing the Fourth Doctor with a lazy roll call of Twitter and Heat and Cheryl Cole would have been ridiculous and desperate – especially considering the cultural equivalents of these things weren’t deemed worthy of particular recognition by the series in the seventies, so there wouldn’t even have been any symmetry there. It’s equally pleasing for the stories to eschew spacey, futuristic settings in favour of a range of period settings.

The plays’ old-fashionedness extends to their wordiness; they are written with a rich, gloriously unfashionable verbosity – which sounds negative, but really isn’t. They also benefit – like Big Finish’s Companion Chronicles – from being mainly based around narration, rather than a straight ‘drama’ approach. (The sleeve notes describe them as multi-voice adventures, which is an accurate if uninspiring description.) This approach also makes for a more controlled approach from Paul Magrs, compared to his sometimes indulgent past work.

It should go without saying that Tom Baker relishes every fruity sentence of these scripts. There’s relatively little to say about Baker; the main reason I find him less interesting than everyone else seems to is precisely because, during a long and varied era, he was very effective on screen – making him far less interesting to revisit, compared to Doctors whose eras were more lacking in certain areas. He is essentially unchanged; so much so that the moments when he does sound his age are almost disquieting, and that during the opening instalment it took me a while to stop imagining Tom as he is now within the narrative. As the story progressed though, the years fell away and it was very definitely the Fourth Doctor that I was picturing.

It makes me feel very old to say it – and I’m not even (quite) 25 – but compared to the all-conquering Davies juggernaut, it’s a relief to have a grandiloquent, sexless and bona fide eccentric Doctor back, even if it proves to be only temporarily. Equally, it would have also been inappropriate and facile to lumber this vintage Doctor with the new series’ maudlin introspection, so I’m glad Magrs avoided this.

While the Doctor might appear relatively unchanged from his heyday, the Avengers-like blend of the offbeat and menacing which characterises Magrs’ plots has, I would suggest, more in common with a conception of how outré and gothic the show was during its popularly-considered seventies heyday, rather than a representative recreation per se. While the reanimation of taxidermed animals – though partially cribbed from Ghost Light – possessed dolls and haunted ballet slippers are suitably ‘Hinchcliffeian,’ the concept of a Doctor living with his housekeeper in a quaint cottage is a slightly mischievous idea, in a fannish way, verging into a knowing postmodernity.

However, considering how apparent Magrs’ avowed admiration of Angela Carter is in the series, I can’t say I’m complaining that Hornets' Nest isn’t a more stringently accurate recreation of its era. In fact, I can’t think of anything more tedious; however much some people might like to pretend otherwise, this is the twenty-first century, and while it’s wonderful being able to unexpectedly enjoy new Fourth Doctor stories, an exact recreation of his era would benefit no-one. Rather, it’s wonderful having a more self-aware approach to what (in terms of the Doctors’ post-TV afterlives) has been a long-dead incarnation.

There are definitely archetypal moments included here which could come from any era of the show, but they’re written with an awareness of their status as genre trappings (humans fighting alien possession, etc). (The Doctor cheerfully acknowledges genre conventions like imprisonment by dim-witted lackeys in rooms with inferior locks.) Also, there are pleasingly arch, fannish jokes and references throughout (which fortunately avoid veering into Gary Russell territory); the Doctor professes to have taken several “short trips and sidesteps,” and namechecks Pescatons, Trods and The Star Beast’s Wrarth Warriors.

I was expecting something much more perfunctory than this (not least because of the perceived opportunism of the BBC muscling in on Big Finish’s area) – more, ‘Look, we bagged Tom Baker!’… but that’s not what we’ve got. It could have been so by-numbers; as I say, either a totally generic set of basic Tom-era stories, or the Fourth Doctor pasted into a new series-alike milieu of council estates and Harry Sullivan’s extended family. But this isn’t as obvious as that, and all credit to the BBC for not simply ticking boxes.

Even the choice of Mike Yates is a (pleasingly) unusual choice of companion – not only as a recurring figure, but because he’s an old ex-soldier, not a generic new dozy/spunky Young Female Assistant. Even given how much as I love, say, Leela and the Romanas, it seems entirely appropriate for the production to have used a new pairing; a recreation of a pre-existing team would have been what Big Finish do. It feels right, for such an overdue return to the role, that this is an entirely new subset within the Fourth Doctor’s era.

I don’t have any great feelings for Mike on TV, but that’s what makes him interesting – this Doctor was always effective, so it’s no surprise that he continues to be here, whereas Mike… Apart from anything else, after all this time, he’s an unknown quantity (unlike the Brigadier, who he is replacing; much as I love Nick Courtney, I can’t help but think that might be a fortuitous occurrence – however, eg, in discussions of the characters’ long association, the replacement does become obvious). Unfortunately, Mike isn’t really developed over the course of these stories as much as I initially hoped, and though quite charming as a harmless old duffer and a good, likeable foil to the “mild eccentricity” of the Doctor, there isn’t too much to say about Richard Franklin’s performance. The use of the character’s latent insecurities in Hive of Horror has potential, but it seems a waste that it is only in the last story that he actually becomes involved in a hands-on sense.

The lack of predictability of the Doctor’s ally extends even to the story’s structure, such as it is. Even considering it as part of a linked series, The Stuff of Nightmares is surprisingly lacking in resolution - though this isn’t disappointing until it becomes clear this will be equally true of the subsequent instalments. However, audio does at least feel like this story’s most natural and appropriate medium – rather than it being something than could be tweaked to fit novel, comic strip, or TV formats. It does also make a great deal of difference that Magrs has a great eye/ear for evocative description (you can imagine being in Nest cottage, with its low ceilings, wood fire and tiled kitchen floor), but is poetic enough – combined with its multiple-narrator style – to avoid tediously straightforward radio exposition.

The five stories are very much episodes of an overall story, and though I appreciate their linked format, I almost wish they had been allowed to be more standalone. I enjoyed them all (though in retrospect The Dead Shoes and The Circus of Doom are perhaps the least involving), but given Magrs’ prodigious imagination, a bit more variety would have been appreciated. Compared to the best of Magrs’ work, despite being full of examples of his wonderfully idiosyncratic imagination, overall the series felt strangely flat, which is disappointing as the stories-within-stories structure could have lent itself to his characteristic metatextuality. Also, while the broad strokes with which Magrs paints his characters and situations are mainly successful, there are points at which the locations seem too slight – as in A Sting in the Tale, where the story is split between a mediaeval convent and the interior of the TARDIS, leading to the marginalisation of the former environment.

There may also be some inconsistencies (Mike seemingly forgets things he’s previously been told, for the purpose of recapping to the audience, while whiskey is discovered to be inimical to the hornets, but comes to nothing), but the larger-than-life grotesqueness of characters like the craven Mr Noggins and sour Mrs Wibbsey (“Go boil your head”) is a nice antidote to Davies-style pseudo-realism and all-too-neat character arcs and Emotional Moments. The housekeeper, Mrs Wibbsey, is particularly brilliant as a reluctant companion in the last part, acerbic and pessimistic, and the idea of a miniaturised expedition into the hive’s nest within the skull of a taxidermed zebra is brilliantly whimsical, but also rendered surprisingly atmospheric.

Although Amazon isn’t perhaps the best place for incisive commentary (ha!), I accidentally ended up reading reviewers’ comments there and was really surprised how many one-star ‘I was expecting an exciting adventure full of special effects’ and ‘not as good as Big Finish’ comments and calls for ‘proper’ Fourth Doctor audio adventures there were. Which just shows how bigoted fandom can be, and how unable to accept anything other than same-old same-old. And, basically, how stupid many fans seem to be. Presumably these are the kind of people who turn off films in disgust for having subtitles.

Ironically, despite the fannish approach, the Hornets’ Nest series feels a lot more universally accessible to me than the few straightforward Big Finish plays I’ve heard. Maybe because though the Fourth Doctor and Mike are established characters, this is a completely new set-up and doesn’t need to adhere to a pre-existing period, it certainly feels noticeably different to BF. Its one-night-only holiday special feel helps.

I may have reservations about this series, and am somewhat ambivalent about the very closely-linked format, but, overall, I can’t help but find it massively laudable that this just isn’t transparently commercial in the way we’ve become used to. Instead of Kylie Minogue in a soft-porn maid’s outfit we get an old man assisting the Doctor, in an old-fashioned – yet postmodern – narrated drama. It’s very heartening and welcome to see Doctor Who alive and kicking in a resolutely separate form to the new series, and I feel the richness of the writing will ensure these plays repay repeated listens.

"Good grief, it's a triceratops!"

Review: INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS
Written by Malcolm Hulk, directed by Paddy Russell, 1974

Despite the perceived failings of its effects, Invasion of the Dinosaurs has none of the shoddiness, sense of laziness, lapses of internal logic, or lack of conviction among its extras which plague ‘mid-era’ Pertwees like, say, The Three Doctors. The Pertwee era, to my mind, is – god love it – particularly shoddy, and, worse than that, just a bit… dull, really. It’s great that this story, with its awful reputation, belies that.

It’s particularly great seeing the Third Doctor not simply in a contemporaneous setting – obviously there’s no great shortage of them in his stories – but one which is actually grounded in real life; much like seeing the First take taxis and so on in The War Machines, it is pleasingly novel to see the Third in Tube stations and urban parks and streets, rather than the usual cavalcade of laboratories and power stations. I have to admit feeling a little thrill at seeing the Doctor in the underground, which I’ve only just stopped going to work on. This is a really solid story, literally: even the Golden Agers’ ex-government underground base seems more realistic than, say, the Wenley Moor facility.

Visually, the story is, yes, let down by the dinosaurs themselves, but, come on, if we were that bothered about facile special effects, we wouldn’t be here! Paddy Russell’s atmospheric direction more than compensates, as far as I’m concerned. There are so many great visual touches here: the sweeping helicopter PoV shots; the crashed cars and litter in the abandoned London; even the kids’ drawings on the walls of UNIT’s impromptu HQ.

In fact, the models are actually brill; it’s the CSO they’re let down by. Yes, the T-rex is unfortunately the crappest model, but they look great – almost stylised – on their detailed miniature sets. Also, the decision to mainly CSO people onto these sets is much more effective than placing the creatures into real locations. Personally, I think the effects will look great simply cleaned up for the (probably far-off) DVD.

Story-wise, at first I was perfectly happy to let the atmospheric direction and lighting mask the absurdity of the plot – I mean, it is absurd, but I was pleased to be proved wrong when the plot addressed my major gripe (namely, why bother with the spaceship, beyond its effectiveness as a twist?).

Despite the plot’s absurdity, it’s pleasing to feel this story is something of a return to a ‘harder’ approach, more typical of season seven than the majority of Barry Letts’ producership. (Ie, the gory aftermath of the looter’s car crash; even some of the riot footage in the ‘Reminder Room’ is quite full-on.)

People always talk about Malcolm Hulke’s trademark ethical ambiguity, and it’s true that it adds to the slightly more adult tone than, say, The Time Warrior (much as I love it), or Planet of the Spiders. Whitaker, Grover, Finch and Butler (and even Mike) make an interesting and atypically large collection of villains, and therefore things seem much less straightforward than is usual – especially given the gradually revealed nature of their relationship to one another.

In fact, the sense of dishonesty pervading this story is hugely in its favour – it really does feel like no-one can be trusted, which is unusual for Doctor Who (which doesn’t really do conspiracy that much, or at least not subtly enough for it to really mean anything). There’s a feeling, in fact, that the normal status quo doesn’t apply here (which can only be a plus when dealing with the ‘cosy’ UNIT family); the Doctor is arrested by the Brigadier! Benton is threatened with court martial! Yates points a gun at Benton and the Brigadier – he actually is a traitor!

Enough of the boys though – Sarah is fab here! I mean, everyone knows Sarah is fab, but I’ve always been doubtful of the slightly tedious certainties within fandom (The Eighties Were Crap; Tom Baker Is The Best Doctor, Hands-Down; The Sixties Are Boring; gah, give me a break!), but it’s great to actually see how much of a star Lis Sladen always was. It really is in the little details with her, isn’t it? I much prefer efficient short-haired season eleven Sarah to the dippier non-Pertwee version though (“I’ll say whatever I like! There’s nothing wrong with MY mind!”). It’s particularly interesting now – given The Sarah Jane Adventures and her most recent substantial return, in The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End – relating Sarah 1974 to the current version. I try to maintain a healthy cynicism about new Doctor Who, in the face of the unremitting hype, but it actually is a joy that Lis is still part of the family.

Actually, everyone gets to shine here: the Brigadier is a bit of shadow of his former self (and why doesn’t messing around in the underground make him recall The Web of Fear, hmmmmm??), but at least he confounds his perceived buffoonery. Even Benton, who I’ve always felt pretty apathetic to, gets some good lines (tussling with Finch whilst contritely apologising for insubordination and smacking his gun-hand against a desk).

As an aside though, what the hell is with the inexplicably horrible Fortieth Anniversary clip-show at the beginning of the video?! (Yes, yes, I’m a bit behind the times…)

Who chose these clips to represent the show?! Keith Barron sipping sherry! Anthony Ainley with sparkles! Wow, what a jamboree of a celebration. Even worse – the shots of Nicola Bryant’s tits from Planet of Fire, coupled with the abyssal ‘disco’ version of the theme tune is so obviously crying out, ‘Look, Doctor Who is cool!’. There’s nothing less cool than being so desperate.

Doctor Who will never be ‘cool,’ in a conventional sense – its popularity with kids at the moment notwithstanding. And thank God! I’d rather be in love with a show where a bouffanted 50-year-old dandy fights a rubber pterodactyl. In the underground. With a mop.

Review: LOVE AND WAR

New Adventure novel written by Paul Cornell, 1992

Love and War’s a weird one for me, because I’ve never really understood why people gush so much about Paul Cornell.

Reading it for the second time, I can see why people like his books – they’re neatly constructed, and Human Nature especially benefits from having a really strong Doctor Who premise – but, personally, I just don’t think Cornell’s prose is that strong. Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, for example, blow Cornell out of the water in terms of the quality of their writing, but because their stories maybe don’t conform to what people think Doctor Who ‘should’ be like, they don’t get the same sort of recognition.

Love and War has a very conventional plot, and aside from some neat twists and the presence of the manipulative Seventh Doctor, there isn’t anything particularly original going on. People say there’s some amazing characterisation here, but, although it’s nice to get a bit of insight into the Doctor and Ace’s relationship, pretty much everyone else is quite colourless (barely even differentiated by description). There’s a bit more to Bernice (and, in retrospect, it’s surprising how many of what will become the staples of her character are established here), but I still wouldn’t say she’s three-dimensional. Everything’s a bit flat, really.

To my mind, this novel is a traditional Doctor Who plot with some added emotional manipulation. I’m not dissing it, but whilst reading it this time I was very aware of the buttons that were being pushed (although I’m fairly sure it wasn’t written this cynically). I did enjoy it, and, while I understand that when it was published the level of emotional involvement would have felt very fresh, now, with not only so many other excellent Doctor Who novels published subsequently, but also the increased emotional content of the new series, the emotional additions to Love and War’s slim plot almost feel like a very self-conscious choice. Though well-drawn at times, Ace’s doomed love affair mostly gives rise to quite a mawkish sensibility, where I imagine Cornell was attempting something more penetrating and honest.

I guess this novel is good Doctor Who – it ticks the right boxes, has some nice ideas (the Hoothi are genuinely repellent, but fascinating – brilliant name too, even if it was misheard from The Brain of Morbius) – but the concept of ‘good Doctor Who’ all too often comes down to an idealised version of the seventies series, I think, and Love and War has that feel. Personally, the books I’d rate highest are the ones that really push the limits of Doctor Who – Transit, Cartmel’s War trilogy, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, The Man in the Velvet Mask, etc. I think it’s the difference between genuinely good authors tackling Doctor Who, and okay authors creating by-numbers ‘good Doctor Who’. (If you get me.)

Where Love and War is a total success, however, is in its Doctor. Ever since I discovered the New Adevntures as a kid, the NA Seventh Doctor has been the ultimate Doctor for me (and continues to be, even in light of the new series). Here, he’s recognisably McCoy’s Doctor, but maybe slightly expanded upon, with more rage and sadness; and he’s spine-chillingly effective. There are some slightly hyperbolic lines in regards to him (of the ‘I’m what monsters have nightmares about’ variety)… but, somehow, they work. He really does seem like a force to be reckoned with, and it’s glorious. You’re fully behind this funny little man, wanting him to decimate his opponents, but at the same time you’re kind of scared of what he’ll do next…

As I say, a weird one: it’s snappily effective, but there’s something quite inorganic about it, for want of a better word; it has a kind of committee-written feel, like there were twelve Cornells in a boardroom adding touches of poetic justice or irony every now and then to strategically tug the heartstrings… Perhaps for a tragic love story it feels a bit too meticulously pieced together?

"Pah! Your puny blows are like love taps!"

Review: A COLD DAY IN HELL!
Collection of comics originally published 1987-89

I fully appreciate how miraculous it is that these strips are being cleaned up and reissued as trade paperbacks, so it pains me to say this… But only completism should compel you to buy this particular collection.

Comics are, I think, the most underrated medium of Doctor Who – but they’re one of my favourite formats because they’re the only other visually-oriented one, beside the series proper. I guess the novels are ultimately ideal, because there is the potential for so much more nuance and detail – but nothing beats being able to see a story unfold.

However, whereas the Tides of Time and Voyager collections make me want to rave (see my review of the latter), the most you could say of this is that it’s quite fun, if you’re in the right mood – but entirely disposable. In the introduction, the strip editor of the time, Richard Starkings, talks about making the strip more diverse, with self-contained and varied stories to mirror the series itself. Unfortunately, as his editorship followed Steve Parkhouse and John Ridgway’s magnificent, fantastical opuses, this is total idiocy.

By some distance the most throwaway phase of the strip (most recently rivalled by the uncertain period coinciding with series one in 2005, where DWM struggled to find a voice or tone), this collection even fails in being particularly like the series as was. Unpopular it might be, but the bold, borderline-deranged concepts of season twenty-four would lend themselves very well to the strip format; instead we get an endless juvenile obsession with robots, spaceships, and Star Trek-dull aliens (a trait continuing from the first predominantly disappointing collection, the preceding World Shapers). It’s just so dreary and flat. (And, yes, I appreciate that the series itself has its share of these things, but, at best, there’s always been more to it; this incarnation of the strip doesn’t even seem to appreciate this multilayering is possible.) I mean, robot-suited mercenaries – who ever though that’d be interesting, unless given some unique spin. Which it isn’t. It’s so very lazy and unoriginal.

I always consider the Fourth Doctor strips to be fairly basic, playing as they do with quite pulpy and often clichéd B-movie ideas (emotionally-oppressed populaces and a sci-fi Roman empire) – but, by comparison to this, they’re assured, confident, well-paced and stunningly drawn (incidentally, it’s very odd – but welcome – seeing Dave Gibbons’ recognisable Watchmen style applied to Doctor Who). They feel like proper stories, written by people who understand how to construct effective tales. Those in A Cold Day in Hell!, by contrast, are barely stories at all; more like inept, weedy vignettes, which lack enough interesting ideas to go round, even despite their brevity.

Okay, we can’t always expect the fairytale sophistication and variety of arcs like The Tides of Time or Voyager, but come on. Those were possibly the most perfect statement of what DW can be; grand, whimsical, magical… The fact that that approach was deliberately ousted for this makes it all the more tragic! Also, that Starkings specifies he wanted artists to make monsters look like rubber-suited extras absolutely beggars belief; comics effectively provide an unlimited budget for every single frame: why restrict that?!

As I said earlier, if you’re in the right mood, some of these stories have a likeably silly goofiness… I just can’t help contextualising them against their superior predecessors. These are pretty much what I imagine Doctor Who Battles or Adventures’ strips must be like; basic, pedestrian, and undemanding even to a child audience.

The incompleteness of this collection’s approach is exemplified by Planet of the Dead (no relation) – and let’s not even start on the imaginatively-barren tediousness of cramming as many past companions and Doctors into a story as possible. In fact, there isn’t even a story; those appearances are its entire raison d’être. (Compare to the later Ground Zero, where the appearance of Susan, Sarah, and Peri was gradually foreshadowed, and who warrant actual characterisation…) However, it is good to see Jamie punch Adric in the face, in any context, even in spite of Lee Sullivan’s empty backgrounds and nondescript style.

As for the art in general, though I appreciate the attempted variety, the diversity isn’t really extreme enough to be effective (instead it seems desperate; like they had to scrape each strip together with whoever they could find). (This inconsistency reminds me of The Flood, the least successful Eighth Doctor collection; a companionless Doctor jumping between unevenly varied tones and styles.)

Without a key artist holding it together, this collection ends up feeling bitty and incoherent. By contrast, the current Tenth Doctor stories get away with a diverse array of artists working in idiosyncratic styles – recently Adrian Salmon (Universal Monsters), Sean Longcroft (Mortal Beloved), Roger Langridge (Death to the Doctor!), Paul Grist (Ghosts of the Northern Line), and writer/artists Dan McDaid (Hotel Historia) and Rob Davis (The Deep Hereafter’s Dick Tracy stylings). All of these are more extreme variations from the general norm than allowed here, but they work precisely because the strip is underpinned by the incumbency of Martin Geraghty and Mike Collins as the main artists. This way there is variation, but within an overarching coherency (something helped in part by consistent lettering).

(I’m cheered whenever Geraghty appears; though he may not be groundbreaking, he is fab because of his impressive consistency and good likenesses – and is, obviously, excellent really. The DWM strip is lucky to have him, as he pisses over all of these weaker earlier images. Very noticeable, by comparison, is his stronger use of solid areas of black ink. Also, he makes me miss the complexity, sophistication and invention of the Eighth Doctor arcs: the mock regeneration and seemingly new Doctor; the Dallas-style ‘It was all a dream’ moment of the Doctor waking up in bed with Grace, and the ‘Omniversal’ varients of his life; Izzy’s transformation. Having said that, it’s really pleasing seeing a return to the arc format that characterised the Eighth Doctor’s strips, in the use of the gap year to pair the Tenth Doctor up with strip companion Majenta Pryce, in the ‘Crimson Hand’ arc.

Collins, on the other hand, is completely mediocre, with a bland, cartoonish lack of detail or good likenesses, and none of the stylistic rigour of, say, Salmon. And how many times: the Tenth Doctor wears high-top Cons, not shell-toed sneakers, goddammit!)

All in all, I can’t wait for the increased Andrew Cartmel influence on the Seventh Doctor strips; I’ve had the old, horribly-colourised Mark of Mandragora collection for years; overall, it’s possibly even more pathetically shallow than Cold Day (a sobering thought), but Cartmel’s own Fellow Travellers is brilliant. It’s still slight, plot-wise – let’s say low-key – but with enough interest, depth, and characterisation to work; a simple (but adult) concept effectively realised. I can’t wait to see Arthur Ranson’s fantastically near-photorealist art without the felt-tip all over it!

Where Fellow Travellers has an authenticity perhaps due to Ace’s presence, the continuity-twisting presence of Frobisher and continued referencing of Peri in Cold Day seems misplaced. (Personally, I’d rather the strip either disassociated itself from televisual partnerships altogether, as per the Fourth to Sixth Doctor runs, or actually adhered to the televisual companions; a weird halfway-house mishmash just doesn’t work.) The New Adventure-based strips featuring New Ace and Bernice will be interesting, in that regard (though I’d rather see Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester in a visual medium, myself… Just me then? Chris’d probably never be as hot as he is in my head anyway.) Incidentally, I wonder if the completed Evening’s Empire’ll get published too.

I’m not, however, looking forward to the arrival of Absalom Daak – the concept of Doctor Who having its very own irony-free musclebound action hero is like slipping hardcore porn into CITV programming (well, probably only a matter of time). The character shows how massively the editor of this period fundamentally misapprehended DW. And it’s just so eighties. Ick.

In terms of individual Cold Day stories, The Crossroads of Time is probably my favourite story here, being visually most solid, stylish and consistent (and, coincidentally, probably the closest to Gibbons’ style, and with an almost acceptable McCoy likeness!), as well as having a fun silliness which – crucially – seems to derive from an awareness of its own absurdity (“Hmm… Roomy, yes?”). I know nothing of Death’s Head (I freely admit to not really knowing much at all about comics outside of DW), but it was nevertheless the most satisfactorily fun, with its lack of depth not feeling like a massive problem.

A Cold Day and Redemption! are depressingly blah, while the period setting of Claws of the Klathi! should be welcome – but even when venturing into the Victorian era, we still get aliens, a spaceship, and a robot! The art is quite good, but a bit sketchy and unconfident, with no real solidity or depth.

Culture Shock! is simple, but, like Crossroads of Time, works because it’s set up as a slight idea, not just an imaginatively-lacking story proper. The messy scratchiness of the art works, but once again the McCoy likeness is dreadful. Keepsake, on the other hand, boasts possibly the best art, with a good use of shadow and ‘lighting,’ and rugged, detailed faces – but the story is forgettable. Similarly, Echoes of the Mogor! includes some lovely Ridgway panels, but is still a tame Aliens rip-off; Ridgway just doesn’t seem suited here – he rose to Parkhouse’s big ideas, but comes over a bit banal when faced with mundane stories, and is crap at McCoy, who’s started to look like David Lynch regular Michael J Anderson (The Man from Another Place in Twin Peaks)...

Time and Tide is bright and bold and that’s about it (but just who is this man in the question mark jumper?!); Follow that TARDIS! isn’t quite cartoony enough to work as a comedic ‘madcap runaround’ – a style akin to the later occasional Roger Langridge-drawn light-relief stories might have worked (not that this collection really needs light relief). Finally, in Invaders from Gantac!, it appears the most underwhelmingly banal story really was saved til last.

Even the titles show up this period’s naive, dated approach. The juvenile overuse of both exclamation marks and embarrassingly crap made-up SF words like Klathi and Gantac really grates, while needlessly hyperbolic titles like ‘Crossroads of Time’ seem absurd, and just make me think of Eddie Izzard’s “Room With a View… OF HELL!” routine.

Given my appreciation of the strip in general, the underwhelmingness of these stories made me try to decide my favourite strips from the whole DWM run. Though I am affectionate about a lot (for example, nearly all those comprising the Endgame collection), bona fide favourites are relatively few and far between – and also quite predictable, I suppose. (Incidentally, I can’t help thinking what a shame it is that apart from a couple of strips in the nineties, the first three Doctors are unrepresented in strip format, apart from in wildly apocryphal TV Action strips (were they even available).)

Voyager and Once Upon a Time-Lord for their hallucinatory richness; The Curse of the Scarab (straightforward, but enlivened by Geraghty’s art and the thirties Hollywood studio setting); Endgame for its exploitation of the surreal potential of the Toymaker’s domain, and Tooth and Claw (again, no relation) for Fey and the decadence of its island setting and monkey servants; the recent Thinktwice for its technicolour excess; the inevitable Tides of Time (and Stars Fell on Stockbridge); Fellow Travellers; Happy Deathday; the Fey-only Me and My Shadow; Land of Happy Endings; Target Practise; and, inevitably, the wonderfully mythological The Cybermen.

(And, yes, there’s no IDW there; from what I’ve seen, their output embraces a distressingly gleeful approach to fanwank, and awful fan-art styles – encapsulated by the ten-Doctor spread in The Forgotten, where each incarnation looks like a 16-year-old twink version drawn by someone entirely unfamiliar with the actual actors’ appearances.)

Unfortunately, none of A Cold Day’s overarchingly simplistic and unsophisticated stories match the invention, imagination, beauty or humour of the best of the above strips. The consistently atrocious Seventh Doctor likenesses really don’t help matters either. It’s like no-one really cared enough to try that much. And, no, I refuse to believe that reflects the show at the time.

Ah, well. I think I’m just going to have to wait for the Threshold arc to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Ten Stories #1: "We're trying to beat the Daleks, not start a jumble sale!"

ON TEN STORIES

As someone who came to Doctor Who when it was off-air, I’ve never really differentiated between eras, and always watched the series piecemeal, as almost standalone stories. Perhaps because of this, I find the relationship between Doctor Who’s diverse periods completely fascinating, something that’s been emphasised by the new series’ more rigorously consecutive season structure.

This, then, is an attempt to watch one of each of the ten Doctors’ stories, preferably from as unbiased a mindset as possible – that is, ones that are new or at least unfamiliar to me. I don’t have any great goal in mind, simply to try to view the series’ various eras as a complete whole.

Obviously, Doctor Who has always operated in the same fundamental ways, but, aside from the fact that we’re fans and so appreciate the progression and links, it’s hard to see what really connects The Aztecs or Mawdryn Undead (as a random example) to, say, Midnight. That’s part of the show’s brilliance, obviously, but it does throw me sometimes. This, then, is my daring voyage through Doctor Who’s distinct eras...

Review: THE CHASE
Written by Terry Nation, directed by Richard Martin, 1965

Whenever I watch sixties stories, much as I love the era, I can’t help but find it bizarre that there’s any relationship between them and the twenty-first century version. But then, The Chase is such an ostentatious mess that it’s not a whole lot removed from, say, The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. In fact, there’s an OTT lack of restraint here that actually makes Davies’ magnum opus seem a clear successor to this story.

The Chase is very much an ‘adventure’ – it’s ridiculous, but unselfconsciously, so it doesn’t matter – operating under a spectacle-over-story crowd-pleasing mentality: snippets of famous historical events! Daleks! Dalekmania-milking robots! A horror genre parody! New York! An evil double! The whole thing’s an absolute treat, with about ten times the usual amount of madness. Even the plunking piano music makes me imagine some crazed cartoon pianist hammering away, shirt collar askew, sweat flying…

The inclusion of the historical scenes shown on the visualiser alone are joyfully random – especially with a rare classic series acknowledgement of pop culture thrown in, in the form of the Beatles footage (which is so unprecedented that it feels wrong, but nevertheless fits into this chaotic story). Given its bad reputation, I was amazed by how charmingly funny it is too (and not in a piss-take way); Terry Nation brings a genuine comic sensibility to proceedings, even in small details like the Doctor’s extended mumbling and gesticulating with a screwdriver at the beginning, and peeping from behind the time-space visualiser; Ian’s deadpanned, “It’s a bit far-fetched” about his Monsters from Outer Space book; the whole crew variously kicking the visualiser. There’s a tiny moment which I find almost unfeasibly funny, too, where Barbara asks Vicki what flavour space-bar the TARDIS food machine has dispensed, which Vicki answers with a nonchalant, "Guava" – which I imagine must have been impossibly exotic in 1965…

Also:
• Ian’s, “Get with it, Barbara, get with it!”
• The trail in the sand: “Probably blood” “Oh yes, it’s bound to be!”
• The Doctor sunbathing and singing: “What’s that awful noise?!” “Awful noise? I could charm the nightingales out of the trees!”
• “I have the directional instincts of a homing pigeon!”

I love seeing this (arguably, best-characterised) TARDIS crew really having fun and enjoying each other’s company; Vicki’s interaction with Ian (the ring in the sand and the story about the castle) is charming and almost unexpectedly natural (“Excalibur!”), and miles away from many companions who literally don’t do anything more than expound the plot.

Visually however, this is a particularly shoddy sixties story (compare and contrast with the following, rather beautiful Time Meddler, with its almost stylised forced-perspective sets and back-projected clouds, or the later War Machines), but still includes some unexpectedly creative visual devices (the Doctor operating the TARDIS’ controls to camera; Ian and Babs’ photomontage farewell; the comic-strip additions to the Dalek/Mechanoid battle – which actually looks quite stunning, with its frenetic cuts, close-ups, zooms, canted angles, and overlaid images).

The Daleks are actually lovingly shot from a variety of angles, and frequently framed so as to show only certain parts of them, with the focus switching between eyestalks and plungers – but nevertheless, this story is enormously hokey, with its literally 2D sets and the poorly-dubbed ‘double’. But, it just doesn’t matter. I won’t say poor effects are an intrinsic part of Doctor Who’s appeal, but the lower the budget, the less televisual it becomes and the more like a filmed play – and so its effectiveness comes down to suspension of belief. And, as Doctor Who is fundamentally ridiculous, effects just don’t matter; it’s all about believing in it.

I get the feeling the poncy interpretative-dance-schooled Aridians represent exactly what Russell T Davies has been trying to avoid with his reluctance to show alien cultures, and Mechanus (especially the Fungoids) might be a bit Mighty Boosh – but most of the story’s dodginess has more to do with the technical limitations of the camerawork and (turgid) editing than anything. (Even the painted Aridian backdrops are perfectly acceptable, and the addition of the calcified rock shapes on the sand on location is strangely effective.)

What I found most notable about this story though, was to do with the Doctor. The First Doctor is great – Hartnell is a brilliant actor, and arguably the ultimate expression of the Doctor as an unconventional hero; I love the idea of an old, Edwardian gentleman saving the world every week. However, I do appreciate that he is relatively difficult to appreciate (as opposed to, say, the more immediate Troughton), but here he does have that immediacy. He’s crotchety, yes, but also a mix of charming, funny, in control and regretful, playing much of this material surprisingly straight.

It really does feel like the end of an era here – and it’s rather a glorious send-off (despite – given the story’s reputation – evidently not being to everyone’s taste). The Doctor’s outrage at Ian and Babs’ decision to leave, and his refusal to help, is touchingly telling, and shows why I like the character of the (First) Doctor so much – he’s not always all sweetness and light and can be difficult, rather than being a perfect hero, fully and selflessly in control of his emotions.

That there isn’t an actual goodbye for Ian and Barbara (key original cast members, no less!) is interestingly effective (the very early companion departures were often a lot cleverer than people tend to give them credit for; cf Vicki’s and Victoria’s) – and probably a good thing, as it could have become mawkish and overplayed (it certainly would be now). Ian’s determination for normality makes him seem very three-dimensional, even within this pulpy story, and it’s great and surprising to see Ian and Babs on their own in London, post-Doctor (a privilege few companions are afforded; there’s also a lovely, satisfying symmetry to the Doctor and Vicki using the visualiser to watch their return). The La Jetée-style photomontage is also glorious – not least because of how charming and unprecedented a stylistic departure it is within Doctor Who, considering even basic devices like flashbacks or non-chronological plot progression weren’t used pre-2005.

The Chase – it’s a tacky piece of B-movie fluff – and yet, and yet… I actually loved this story. No other era would, could, or did produce a story as bizarrely, brazenly varied as this. I should hate its crowd-pleasing simplicity, but the Doctor Who-as-comic-strip approach is actually hugely entertaining – for one night only, at least.

"Success! Paramount success!"