Dr Who Books and Audios Read and Heard, Part 9!

In the Neverending Stooooooory, of BlackberryJuniper’s Dr Who reading/ listening marathon, I give you books and audios from the following Doctors: 1^st, 2^nd, 5^th, 7^th, 6^th and 8^th.

Note on Reading Order:

Target Originals – each Doctor’s adventures read in order.  I read all Doctors simultaneously, depending on what mood I’m in. So each Doc will be consecutive for his own stories; but we’ll jump about with which Doc we’re reading.

Virgin New Adventures for Sylvester – read in order.

Virgin Missing Adventures for all Docs – read in whatever order I like, as they are mostly stand alones.

BBC 8^th Doctor Adventures – read in order.

BBC Past Doctors Adventures – again, read however I like, as stand alones.

The Readathon has expanded to include Big Finish audios and short story collections, and Telos novellas, Decalogs etc.  I am drawing the line at annuals and comics.  Mostly ‘cos I have to draw it somewhere, but also ‘cos I like to imagine the pictures for myself.

INDISCRIMINATE SPOILERS FOR EVERYTHING HERE – BEWARE!

1. Doctor Who: The Longest Day, by Michael Collier (BBC 8^th Doctor Series)
   (This books premise – that of a planet used as a dump for rebels, and other crap, and broken into different time zones, all of which are slowly breaking down for more than one reason, reminded me strongly of a fond idea I have been cruelly  - yet practically – nurturing for some time.  Which is that instead of testing drugs on animals, we should always test them on humans; notably, humans who are in prison for life for very violent offences.  It should be part of the punishment, that you have this to look forward to and that you might die in agony, being useful to society despite yourself.  Now, like my penchant for thinking we should still have capital punishment – which Stanley is always painstakingly talking me out of – and I ALWAYS see his point of view at the time, but then revert to my own when made upset by something on the news…this book made me think twice about my testing policy.  Its not that testing was a large part of this plot; nope, it was a very minor subplot in some ways, though leading to  large character development [Nashad: “Look!  I’ve got metal legs!”] – but seeing the effects of my idea…well, it makes you think with more than just your emotions. [I think a lot of us confuse our emotions with thoughts – when they create thoughts, they aren’t of themselves thoughts.  And we could all try and have more thoughts that aren’t emotion led alone, and some calmer decisions might be made.] 
   
   Notable here: Some nightmarish time lapse effects, e.g. George and all those echoes flowing out behind him forever aging, forever the same, in a loop so small but so never ending – what a form of torture, to be so broken up and yet held together…there were several moments like that, the other notably being the young and old religious men, undergoing their ‘test’ in a loop – that was quite grisly, and had a sense of the oddest real unreality. These bits were very well written.
   
   This was one of those books where almost everyone you meet dies, except one character: Anstaar, who abandons ship at the end.  It actually ends on an almost sullen downer – Sam, the companion, is lost and the Doctor must go and find her.  He lost her for most of the story – and indeed, most of the story was about her.  Despite her being a bit of a troublesome character so far, I really felt for her in this story.  She had to make far too many moral decisions in this endless day of the planet winding down.  Too many decisions for one person; and she did her best.  The biggest, of course, wasn’t the one where she ends up clubbing herself with a rifle butt rather than kill 2 other people; but the one where she chooses to spare a truly sadistic cow called Fettal, who is then pragmatically and coldly sacrificed by 2 other characters Sam is with later on. 
   
   This incident teaches her a lot about hero worship [see the unsaid but obviously relevant parallel with her relationship to the Doctor there].  Tanhith, the tired freedom fighter, sacrifices Fettal to save Sam…but what Sam sees is the coldness of the action.  It leads Tanhith, who has been through much for many years, to ask her tiredly whether she wants an actual man, or just an ideal.  There’s no answer, of course.  Tanhith’s tired pragmatism is well contrasted with the most grasping character in the story: Felbaac, a freedom fighter simply intent on his own glory at the expense of all else.  His actions in the plot cause so much death and needless destruction – all in an attempt to make himself look good.  And also notable is the character Yast, who is with Felbaac simply because he has a great gift of spin gab, and can make the men go along with whatever Felbaac says: its pragmatism shorn of idealism to the max – Yast believes in nothing but self preservation.  He hates himself for it and has no illusions about Felbaac, but will do anything to live and sees Felbaac as his best chance.
   
   All these characters down on the planet (and more) are the crucible in which poor Sam is shaken and shaken and heated unbearably under the dying but burning sun.  It makes you wonder how she’ll be in the net story.  While the Doctor spent most of this story with Anstaar performing Sam’s usual companion function of asking what the hell he’s doing [he spent most of the time trying to carry one machine away from the Kusks and fix another machine], and starting to fall in love with him a bit; Sam was learning some very hard lessons.  The next story is a dalek one, so will feature in the Dalek Special – where I’m most interested to see if she’s had in increase in compassion as  result of this story, or an increase in cold ruthlessness.  She’ll be changed, for sure.
   
   Last note: I enjoyed the Doctor’s previously unseen purple VW Beetle careening about the endless corridors of the Kusk ship in this story.  It felt a bit unnecessary, but a flurry of colour and action as fun as Bessie always was. ACTUAL BOOK.)
2. Doctor Who: Winter For The Adept, by Andrew Cartmel (Big Finish, Monthly releases, no.10)
   (Ok.  A Swiss boarding school, isolated in the Alps.  The 5^th Doctor and Nyssa.  Supposed poltergeists. Telepaths, telekinetics, a gentle ghost, a religious nutter, a French person who has no other purpose explained so who must partially be the villain [and I was right], a slightly cradle robbing Older Man [who also turns out to be a villain – so there is a bit of a punishment for his culturally unacceptable actions!]…Again, many elements in this I like.  And it was very easy to picture the action – especially the piano dragging itself along.  Yet I’d only give this a rough 5/10 because it felt a bit throwaway, like a side idea the author had while writing something he thought more important – a filler story…Yet at the same time, it was a pleasant passing of an hour and a half.  ON DOWNLOAD.)
3. Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror, by Ian Marter (Target original)
   (1^st Doctor.  This one puzzled me a bit.  I felt it was one of those stories where there was quite a bit of unnecessary running back and forth, and some unnecessary situations that felt forced e.g. the Doctor need not have ended up in a chain gang were he not to have rather foolhardily insulted a random bully in a very paranoid era…I couldn’t decide if his actions were that of a stalwart man [ok, Gallifreyan!] standing on principle regardless of the results, or a silly little old man somehow thinking he could get away with being rude just because.  On the other hand, had that little incident not taken place, then my favourite bit of business in the whole book would not have happened: the clever ‘look its an eclipse’ followed by stealing and burying the lucre obsessed bully’s own money, so that the Doctor could then pretend to find it and get him doing the digging he refused to do to help his own men earlier.  And then for the Doctor to clonk him round the head, and all the prisoners get away!  Very nice ruse.  [Better than, though also notable, the ruse whereby he gets Barbara out of the prison later.]
   
   What does any of this have to do with the French Revolution?  The time, the place, the manners, and the characters you might meet?  Exactly.  Not much.  The main character you meet in this is a drunk annoying gaoler, a bully but easily duped.  Robespierre is met several times, and shown to be as paranoid as the Terror he helped create and which comes to an end at the close of the book.  The main thrust of the book is to split up all of the characters and have them try and find each other again. Ian looks for James Stirling, an English agent undercover, to give him an important message – and who turns out to be the only person he could possibly be if you thought about it for 2 seconds [thankfully I am very bad at that sort of thing and therefore was fruitfully surprised, though kicking myself].  Barbara and Susan spend most of the book in and out of prison and safe houses.  The Doctor ends up masquerading as a provincial Inspector, a Revolutionary; doing some very good Hartnell era manipulation of people. 
   
   But the thing I like about the historicals is learning about the period and in this case, the 2 sides, how it affected the people involved – rich and poor.  All I really got was some middle class people who didn’t like the ‘anarchy’ of the whole thing; some poor people represented as a nasty mob on more than one occasion [after shooting Robespierre in the jaw: ‘he wrote us a letter, good thing we can’t read!’], and one impassioned speech by Barbara who fell for a bloke on the ‘wrong’ side…I felt it could all have been gone into more, even through conversation – as it was dealt with so casually and easily in Marco Polo.  This one really did feel wanting.  I want to rewrite it myself!  Quite so!  ACTUAL BOOK.)
4. Doctor Who: The Fires of Vulcan, by Steve Lyons (Big Finish Monthly audios, no.12)
   (7^th Doctor. I really liked this very strange little story.  This was the first story I think I have seen where Bonnie Langford’s Mel [who I have never had a problem with; some people genuinely are THIS CHIPPER AND PERKY and its quite nice] was written for sensitively, calmly and authoritatively.  She just was who she was, there was no hint of mocking her; and her pairing with a moody and rather sad Sylvester worked incredibly well.
   
   The setting is right before the Vesuvian eruption that covered Pompeii for centuries.  The doctor is under the odd belief that because the TARDIS is dug out of the rubble centuries later, that he must be meant to…end, here.  Mel fights this just because she is Mel and it’s not given an optimist to give up.  The Doctor later does too, but between those 2 points there’s plenty of chance to get a feel for the rivalries, manners and people of the city and time. 
   
   A priestess of the ‘old triad’ Eumachia spends most of the story scheming to get Mel put in prison [she believes her to be a servant of a rival goddess, Isis, seen as the goddess of the poor, hence a threat to more establishment goddesses taken on earlier by the Romans], and Mel stands up to her wonderfully: “You should know you don’t scare me, like you do that girl”, she retorts after being directly threatened.  The ‘that girl’ referred to is a servant girl, Aglae, played quietly and convincingly, causing Mel and by extension, the audience several uncomfortable moments confronting the realities of slavery in ancient Roman society [Steve Lyons doesn’t shy away from depicting the prostitution that was often part of the role; Sylvester early says the society isn’t as ‘civilised’ as often later portrayed].  She and Mel become friends, and their connection drives a fair bit of the narrative easily along.  Other notable characters are Murranus, a very unglamorous gladiator, played as a fool; Valeria, an innkeeper who escapes the eruption at the end – always a good woman but makes a mistake and redeems it close to the end; and Mel’s eventual suitor, Popidius Celsinus – one of those nice characters that writers use to evolve the understanding of both audience and the character himself during the story.  He is one man at the beginning; a better one by the end.
   
   This story had everything I wanted that The Reign of Terror didn’t.  Strong characters directly interacting in their situations; exploration of the religions, customs/traditions, social mores of the times; that conflict between modern understanding and an era in its own time – the Normality Gap, I have christened it!  It felt a portentous story: the Doctor feels he is hobbled by his own knowledge of history to come, his own future; whereas Mel can see many other ways of looking at it [all of which turn out to be more or less correct – there is a way out of the situation for she and the Doctor, of course].  This is placed so nicely against the fact that only the Doctor and Mel know that the city has less than 24 hours before most of its inhabitants die, many not even fleeing.  She notes the birds are gone from the skies, after one pre-emptive earthquake – the sky itself falls silent.
   
   Which leads me to noting this had a very nice sound palette too.  Alistair Lock’s music was just right; and the sounds of the city [carts, children calling etc, feet walking, market sounds, inn sounds] were all pitched just right, so that you felt a sumptuous and all encompassing audio landscape.  I give this strange small story with its odd pessimism rebuked a thorough 10/10 – not least because this is how Mel should’ve been written for all along; as a rounded person. ON DOWNLOAD.)
5. Doctor Who: And the Abominable Snowman, by Terrance Dicks (Target Original)
   (2^nd Doctor. I really enjoyed this little story.  I appreciated the complete break from the previous dalek story [which hasn’t been missed out by me – its going in the Dalek Special later]. This one  takes me to a spacious and unfamiliar setting [Tibet, the Himalyas].  The monks were fiercely dressed and yet chanting the Lotus Flower Prayer Mantra…the whole set up reminded me of a horror I very much enjoyed reading as a child, that I can never remember the title of, and therefore can never find.  Troughton, Jamie and Victoria slot perfectly into this strange and cold world, trying to solve the mystery of why robot yetis are attacking a small monastery.  Though I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially visualizing the scenes with the venerable and ancient Padmashavamba, taken over by the Great Intelligence [wish I could’ve seen if these were anything like I pictured on the TV eps, though…its possible they weren’t and the staring and terrible eyes I am imagining are FAR more scary] – I did have some problems with it. 
   
   Travers was a completely unconvincing and erratic character, drawn so lightly he felt like a plot device only, not a person at all.  Likewise, Victoria was largely an afterthought in all of this, which was a shame – I don’t see why she couldn’t have been more included in the action.  The Great Intelligence was the main problem though.  So: once you have taken over the Earth, and generally GOO-ED UP the entire universe…er, then what???  What for???  As usual, a villain with completely ununderstandable motives!  There is no point subjugating a whole cosmos if you then can’t do anything with them?  I couldn’t make sense of what it wanted and why, at all (same problem in the later Web of Fear, though even moreso!).
   
   But overall, I thought this skipped along and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  These 3 – Troughton, Jamie and Victoria, have a sufficiently different set of characters that they bounce off each other nicely.  Obviously, I would have written Victoria way more interesting, were it me – but it wasn’t me, and it is as it is; and as it is – not bad at all, most enjoyable!  ACTUAL BOOK.)
6.  Doctor Who: Shadow of the Scourge, by Paul Cornell (Big Finish Monthly Audios, no.13)
   (7^th Doctor. This was a good setting for me.  I like stories either in large outside areas that are relatively unpopulated – the countryside works well for me: all that green to look at too; or inside, in closed quarters – creates cabin fever between characters, which makes for good drama.  This was the second setting.  A conference in a hotel, where the Doctor, Ace and Bernice Summerfield turn up.  This was my first exposure to Bernice, having not got anywhere near her in my New Adventures reading yet, so I was interested to see what I made of her.  I wasn’t expecting to like her as a character – I was expecting to find her an upstart usurper in the Who universe [yes, I take things waaaaay too seriously, I agree].  But I didn’t.  I found her very personable indeed.  She made me laugh.  She took things in her stride, with humour, without being the slightest bit smug or annoying.  And she didn’t conflict with Ace, as a character at all; they were performing different functions within the story.  Ace was being rather Action Girl, but with a sweet loyal naivety; Bernice was more grown up and understanding the seriousness of things, not as a game.  The Doctor had a plan, as usual; and as usual, it ended with complications from which he required assistance.  This is why the companions are so important in Who. 
   
   [In new Who they take it too far – the companions often solve problems the Doctor should solve; taking away from his centrality as the clever pragmatist with ideals.  In classic Who, and in the classic Who inspired Big Finish audios, they get the balance more finely: the companions hone the Doctor’s ideas, they help them out in action – they are vital.  Not simply there to enquire what the hell is going on, or need rescuing; though that is sometimes the case.  They are there to humanise him a little; he is there to help them remember what is the Right Thing to do and how to get there in a mire of difficult or weird circumstances.  He teaches them resourcefulness, to the point where they surprise him back sometimes.  The Doctor would be boring without his companions to bounce off of; the companions alone would be…a different genre, not a bad thing, but not Who.  Digression ended.]
   
   Anyway – I liked the plot and humour of this one, a good deal.  [“You’re doing that wry thing with your eyebrows”, says one character to Bernice when caught in an untruth.]  I enjoyed the different conference rooms, the Crocheters made me laugh [ the one character who turned out to have stolen from the others – redeemed at the end; as is the fake medium who actually could channel].  The idea is that The Scourge is a race of beings who basically feed on fear, depression and despair; and create more of it to continue.  They have been with humans as long as humans have existed.  At one point, someone describes them as “a hyperspace version of Radiohead”, which did crack me up.  There’s a complicated bit of business about going into another dimension where they can feed even more so, which I won’t bother you with, as of course!, its foiled by the end.  This was both a serious idea and executed in a humourous way – which was walking a fine line – for me, it worked very well.  I enjoyed it.  It actually had some useful things to say about depression and ways of looking at it too…ON DOWNLOAD.)
7. Doctor Who: The Holy Terror, by Rob Shearman (Big Finish Monthly Audios, no.14)
   (6^th Doctor.  Conversely…this one seems to be very highly regarded, and I didn’t get on with it at all.  It’s reviewed [as I checked after I got on with it so poorly] as a religious drama showing the terrible lengths people will go to, the terrible actions, to fit in their beliefs with the world.  What I heard was cod I Claudius, and one of the most annoying companions EVER – Frobisher.  I haven’t read any of him yet, this is a bit like my introduction to Bernice in the previous play…but whereas she sat nicely next to me; he grated on me every single time he spoke.  I listened to this play twice, wondering what it was I was missing that everyone else seemed to think was so great, but concluded whatever it is, I’m not going to be getting it just now.  I didn’t hear any great lessons about religious tolerance or how to think for yourself that I hadn’t heard elsewhere better and more clearly.  And whilst there were many funny moments, the overall feel of this play was false, for me.  As if it was trying really hard to be both funny and useful…I shall leave this one to the people that like it.  As ever – try it for yourself – you might immediately see what flew past me and love it.  I’ve liked this author’s work in the past also, so clearly this was just an instance where he and I didn’t mesh – you can’t like everything.  ON DOWNLOAD.)

And that’s it for now.  This entry seems to have been VERY long and more rambly than usual!  Dalek Special still on the way, but still doing reading for it.  I’m also doing a Companion Special in the future, a post specifically about books and some of the audios relating to the companions, hopefully a varied range.  Not sure when though – all these posts require vast amounts of reading, which is brill and fun for me; but it eats into time I could be writing other things (for the section of my readers who don’t like Who or sci-fi; and for the sake of the many novels I’ve been trying to write for the last 20 years!!!).  So when we get there, we’ll get there, with everything!  More regular postings soon, hopefully. 

Next post (or next post but one) should be something nice and meaty in terms of eighteenth century literature, feminism, and money.  Bit of an essay.  Been working on it a bit, first section’s almost ready for you!  Soon…