Doctor Who Books Read and Heard, Part 18!

This post: novel treats from the eras of the 2^nd, 3^rd, 6^th, 7^th and 8^th Doctors – and all of them in the form of short stories. 

A note on order.  Target Originals are not read in order of publication (which was all over the place), but in order of each Doctor, and each Doctor is read in order of their stories broadcast on TV.  However, I jump about in terms of which Doctor I read at any given time.  The Virgin New Adventures for Sylvester will be read in order; as will the BBC 8^th Doctor series (as though they had been on TV, see?  I’m trying to get an arc flavour).  The BBC Past Doctors series and the Virgin Missing Adventures are simply read in terms of which one I fancy next, as they are stand alone adventures slotting in-between the TV ones.

Oh, and in case you forgot, I’ve taken to recording which books I read that are actual paper copies, and which are Kindle or other electronic.  I’m being social historical for my own benefit. I want to see how long it is before I just plug books straight into my brain, how many years before I’m a reading cyborg.

As always with these rambly reviews: OFTEN LARGE SPOILERS ON ALL BOOKS IMMINENT!!!!

1.    Doctor Who: Short Trips no.28 – Indefinable Magic, by Various, edited by Neil Corry (Big Finish Short Story Book Collection)
(This was a very pleasing collection to read.  Right from the 1^st story, by James Goss, about sentient books going around altering reality to fit their contents, even if those contents were fantasy.  “There’s nothing more dangerous than a book with ideas”, says the 8^th Doctor.  Very wry, and nicely played in tone, this story.  The collection had lots of moments of lovely idea expression, like this one: “I would call it something else.  I would examine it, establish its properties and then call it something else.  I would not call it magic, sir” [says the 1^st Doctor, can you tell?!]  “…because to call it magic is to turn your back on logic and reason and basic curiosity about the universe.” [- From Eddie Robson’s ‘The Power Supply’.]  That told those people! 

I am going to have trouble keeping this ramble anywhere near succinct, as most of the stories here had something lovely about them, something thought provoking.  Highlights are: Ian Farrington’s ‘Favourite Star’, which was a clever tale about false horoscopes and friendship; Matthew James’ ‘A Hiccup in Time’ which was partially about doing laser eye surgery on Henry VIII.   ‘Shamans’ by Steve Lyons had Leela investigating table tapping via the Fox Sisters.  ‘The Fall of the Druids’ by David N. Smith had the best usage of Kamelion I have yet read; especially when paired with the marvellously self preservatory Turlough.  Simon Guerrier’s ‘Pass It On’ had an especially lovely and evocative first section, with a clever narrative style that I wanted to try and do myself at some point. ‘The Science of Magic’ by Michael Rees has a complicated fantastical magical creature invasion scenario, involving Pertwee and the Brigadier and Liz Shaw. ‘Hello Goodbye’ by Jim Sangster is short and sweet, about the Doctor leaving UNIT, and in which the absence of “any goo to analyse” is mourned.

‘Trial by Fire’ by Mike Amberry has the 6^th Dr and Evelyn only just escaping burning at the stake by the Inquisition; a very nice twist on a city of disappeared people.  ‘What Has Happened to the Magic of Dr Who?’ by Gareth Roberts goes through the whole book, parts here and there.  In letter form.  Very funny complaints from viewers of each era as to what is wrong with the current Doctor compared to the one before.  Exhaustive and correct.

Lastly, ‘Blessed Are the Peacemakers’ by Caleb Woodbridge, in which one of the cardinal arguments of religion vs. any other way of thinking is well put:
“It is truth, absolute truth, and every world must know it.”
“If it’s so certain, why don’t you try to convince people by sitting down and chatting to them about it, hmm?” [says 4^th Dr.]
“That’s all you offer, Doctor – uncertainty and ignorance.  What kind of freedom is that?”  [replies invading, certain entity.]
…What indeed?  This is a great collection about the magic of Dr Who, the idea of magic as advanced science, the idea of magic as itself, and some other bits between.  Thoroughly enjoyable.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

2.   Doctor Who: Short Trips, no. 23 – Defining Patterns, by Various, edited by Ian Farrington (Big Finish Short Story Collection)
(Hmm.  Now this felt like it should have been a great collection, all about the butterfly effect, and actions causing far distant unforeseen consequences or the patterns you can see throughout events – or that only the Doctor can see…But it didn’t read well, to me, at all.  Threaded through the whole book is a story of the Doctor and some new UNIT companions in 1957.  This story is supposed to be a pattern in itself, reaching a twisty conclusion in the last story.  I won’t spoiler the end of that continuing thread, because I didn’t think it was very good but someone else might, so I don’t want to ruin it for them.  I found it a predictable end, coming on the heels of some stories that were ambiguous and opaque in the wrong ways, boring ways.

The stories I did like were ‘Time and Tide’ by Neil Corry, where the 7^th and Ace save some people from a large illusion; interestingly written.  ‘Losing the Audience’ by Mat Coward had a small section warning against seeing patterns when probability is concerned, that had a good point.  ‘Séance, or Smoking is Highly Addictive, Don’t Start’, by John Davies had a nice message of taking life and holding onto it, even when other people die around you.  ‘The Celestial Harmony Engine’ by Ian Briggs was good, in a very strange overblown romance novel sort of way.

Simon Guerrier’s ‘The Great Escapes’ has Lucie Miller trying and failing to escape a situation many times; the story ends with her about to be executed – the Doctor has not come.  Steven Savile’s ‘Loose Change’ is a nice circular story about the adventure of a coin.  Its symmetry pleased me.  John Dorney’s ‘Lepidoptery for Beginners’ contained the lovely line: “sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from nonsense”, which I often agree with when tired.  Clever little story.

I found this beyond patchy.  Despite the recurring pattern story they were setting up here, many of the stories read simply as excerpts, as unfinished. They read unsatisfying.  Comparing it to the very high quality of the one before…puzzled.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

3.   Doctor Who: Vanderdeken’s Children, by Christopher Bulis (BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures)
(This one was an interesting story.  It started off very slowly, and I had troubles getting hooked.  Then it became a sort of scifi story like Alien, when a crew are exploring a spaceship and finding strange puzzles and mysteries – and grisly murders.  So like a sort of Crystal Maze, but violent.  [And lacking the incomparable Richard O’ Brien.]  Then I became interested.  It also had the extra element that the abandoned ship on which these mysteries are taking place has been discovered simultaneously by two nations who hate each other and are at a sort of perpetual military readiness for standoff; both want the ship as salvage.  One is a cruise liner, with civilians that may get hurt.  Both cultures of people are very different.  This leads to allsorts of varied and likeable/ pleasantly annoying sub characters, most of whom get growth if they are not killed.  In the meantime, the Doctor and Sam are trying to solve the puzzle of what the hell is going on, at the same time as trying to prevent an all-out war that will end either or both civilisations.  This all does sound like a mish mash of several different films, but it doesn’t matter, as it’s written engagingly and plausibly.  I enjoyed it, both as a semi horror, a thriller and simply as a good mystery.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

4.   Doctor Who: Timelash, by Glen McCoy (Target Original)
(6^th Doctor.  Ehem.  Am I the only one out here who enjoyed both the TV version of Timelash, and thence, also the book?!  Is it really only me?  It was of course, especially interesting once the illustrious Herbert appears, and I did like the spoiler discovery of who he was at the end, it gave me a smile.  I am not one who will criticise the plain sets of the original TV outing, their beige boxiness.  I definitely will not criticise Paul Darrow [ever], and I loved the Richard III haircut, which I did miss seeing in the book, and I had trouble remembering how well he delivered his sibilant lines, so his character to read, was not so interesting.  I imagined with slightly more gusto, the timelash itself and the Borad’s use of it to dispose of mostly anyone.  So I made my own small mental improvements.  But mostly, this is one of those stories where I am perfectly happy with the original and the book doesn’t deviate much at all.  The only thing I would say about the book was that Glen McCoy has a bit of a strange writing style, some odd word orderings within his sentences.  But I am a fine one to talk of such, hmm?  So we’ll let it pass!  ACTUAL BOOK.)

5.   Doctor Who: And the Web of Fear, by Terrance Dicks (Target Original)
(2^nd Doctor.  Now.  I understand that [a] this is one of many people’s favourite stories ever, and since we only got it back recently in its fullness, they love it even more.  And [b], it’s not one of my favourite stories on TV at all.  I felt it dragged a bit, with an overpadded middle, and I got a bit bored waiting for the Great Intelligence to reveal who it was hiding within.  I also got fed up with the military stereotypes of the time: the doughty Sergeant, the cowardly Welshman etc etc, yawn. 

Oddly, I didn’t find this a problem in the book at all.  I found it flowed much better, I couldn’t see the actors making their annoying dated expressions.  I liked several of the subsidiary characters more, and I felt Victoria in particular was less of a contrivance for shifty plot balancing and filling in time, and more of an actual person with plausible reasonings to her actions.  Of course, the one thing the book could not re-create was the joy of those marvellous underground Tube sets, and the atmosphere of menace; or the lovely sound-effect of the web being spun.  Or that infamous and nicely shot battle scene [I love the Brigadier…though obviously, he’s yet to become one].  I’d say this is one of the better Terrance Dicks ones, for not losing nuance of dialogue etc – he does tend to cut out a lot of the banter of the Tom Baker stories, which ruins one of their great strengths, and several companion characterisations.  But here, he did well, I thought.  ACTUAL BOOK.) 

6.   Doctor Who: Rags, by Mick Lewis (BBC Past Doctors Adventures)
(3^rd Doctor.  This was a difficult one.  In one sense, it’s almost purely a nasty horror of the kind Shaun Hutson or early James Herbert used to write: its dirty, unkind, menacing, deeply violent and very unsettling – it makes its readers wonder at how much baseness they possess and what would make it come out.

Another factor is that this is basically about class hatred and division, and I read it during the General Election just gone [May 2015], which made it especially piquant [a word I think I have *never* used before].  Being about class divides, resentments and deeply held hatreds, bitterness etc – it obviously had to be the third and most Establishment Doctor, for this story – he was always going to be the number one choice.  That being the case, the oddest thing about this story was that despite the spot on characterisation, the Doctor is barely in this book.  Jo Grant features heavily, and the undoing of her character is a painful thing to read.  The Doctor foolishly leaves her in the danger zone of influence of the strange punk band of class hatred, laying waste by means of mind control through music, to many rich or upper class people its entourage [ever growing] comes across.  Jo is susceptible and she succumbs.  She doesn’t do violence, but she very nearly does, and the reversal of her relationship with the Doctor is sad to read.

It’s not explained why some people simply don’t feel the music’s malign influence, namely Mike Yates [yay, always happy to read Yates], since Benton and even the Brigadier aren’t immune, except that Benton gets a sort of military version and ends up wanting to discipline his own class of people, whereas the Brigadier ends up feeling very murderous towards what we could variate and call Hippy Scum.  I always think, in these stories, you need to be extremely careful how much you mess with the characters of recurring or main players.  Hence Yates comes off ok, as he basically gets to stay himself and be almost the last reasonable person standing in a bloodbath; whereas Jo practically loses her mind with only flashes of lucidity within hatred…and the Doctor, after spending most of the story playing catch up is brought to his knees by the creature himself and gets lost for about 3 chapters more.  Risky and I’m not sure entirely successful.

As a horror this works fine: it’s questioning of society and very unpleasant.  As a horror with the Doctor, I wouldn’t say it works as well as Mark Morris’s Deep Blue, say, but it’s stuck with me.  I want a wash.  For a horror, this is a good thing.  For a Doctor Who novel?  Not so sure it’s sticking with me for the right reasons.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

7.   Doctor Who: Nightshade, by Mark Gatiss (Virgin New Adventures)
(7^th Doctor.  This one took me an age to finish and I’m not sure why.  It’s another one where I feel the character of the Doctor got a bit lost amidst a cast of many many subsidiary – and very well written indeed – characters.  He was not a main element of the plot here.  I like the Doctor to be the main thing in a Doctor Who story.  I like the companions to be present much also.  I like a good range of secondary characters.  But I don’t like either the companions or the secondary characters running the show, and this was what happened here [and, by the way, is the entire writing premise of new Who – as well as great whacking dollops of EMOTION, too much for this one here who will cry at anything…I am moved to think of the Matt Smith new Who ep where we defeated the cybermen with love.  I can see the idea, but it’s too drippily sugary, even for me, and I am a sugar lover.  Anyway…].

Saying that, even though the Doctor is not as big a player as I like, Gatiss does create some lovely people for me to get to know.  I love his old men characters – he does love and respect the older person, Mark Gatiss, which is rare and rather lovely in a writer nowadays [think The Last of the Gadarene too – another plucky and excellent older man].  The character of Trevithick is wonderful: resourceful, realist: I really rooted for him.  Hawthorne, Vijay, Holly, Cooper – all the scientists, a great and well differentiated cast.  The vast amount of villagers were well done.  Poor old Jack Prudhoe. [They all had brilliant names too.]

Ace was an odd thing here.  She has a romantic attachment, so there’s echoes to both Remembrance of the Daleks and also Curse of Fenric, and Gatiss is well done to mention her earlier developments as a character in the Timewyrm section of the New Adventures.  And yet – I do feel that Ace’s personality keeps chopping and changing from tale to tale; unlike Sam in the Eighth Doctor Adventures, for contrast, who is markedly and plausibly changing, story by story, and we can see why: every move backward and forward is painted, understandably.  To follow a character’s growth this way is always great for a reader, satisfying.  Even watching why a character cannot grow, if well painted, is fascinating.  With Ace, despite the fact she has/had such potential, I feel writer after writer in this series is simply using her as filler – she’s either the grumpy feisty teen of how we first ever see her in Dragonfire, almost a sort of developmentally stuck but bolshey 15 year old; or else she’s a battle weary semi soldier.  And none of it much is genuinely shown or explained in either dialogue or action.  She just comes off as a bit schizophrenic between books: each story doesn’t affect her to the next one – she resets.  I think this series is failing Ace.  Not just this book.  The continuity between them, from book to book to book.  A shame, I love Ace.

In short, this book is a wonderful set of characters, with a very nice Civil War interlude I didn’t see coming, but it doesn’t have a strong Doctor or Ace element to pull it along.  Which is to its detriment.  Try it, you might well completely disagree with me.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

Doctor Who Books Read and Heard, Part 17!

This post: treats from the eras of the 1^st, 2^nd,4^th , 5^th, 6^th,7^th and 8^th Doctors. 

A note on order.  Target Originals are not read in order of publication (which was all over the place), but in order of each Doctor, and each Doctor is read in order of their stories broadcast on TV.  However, I jump about in terms of which Doctor I read at any given time.  The Virgin New Adventures for Sylvester will be read in order; as will the BBC 8^th Doctor series (as though they had been on TV, see?  I’m trying to get an arc flavour).  The BBC Past Doctors series and the Virgin Missing Adventures are simply read in terms of which one I fancy next, as they are stand alone adventures slotting in-between the TV ones.

Oh, and in case you forgot, I’ve taken to recording which books I read that are actual paper copies, and which are Kindle or other electronic.  I’m being social historical for my own benefit. I want to see how long it is before I just plug books straight into my brain, how many years before I’m a reading cyborg.

As always with these rambly reviews: OFTEN LARGE SPOILERS ON ALL BOOKS IMMINENT!!!!

1.    Doctor Who: And The Enemy Of The World, by Ian Marter (Target Original)
(2^nd Dr.  This is a funny one, because of course it was only recently released on DVD after many years lost, so we’ve all repeatedly watched it quite recently.  And it has a very strong subsidiary cast: Astrid, Bruce, Kent, Fariah, Benik – all stand out and are properly different people [unlike my recent complaint in The Ice Warriors of everyone sounding more or less the same: angry early 1960s white male].  This has carried through to the book.  I particularly got a strong sense of Fariah, Astrid and Bruce – the latter moreso toward the end.  This helps an otherwise preposterous story no end.

The one thing that is sorely missing in the book, is the extremely strong screen presence of Troughton when he is being Salamander.  There was a huge physicality to him – I practically smelled his ruthless maleness and roughness when he was on screen [quite a triumph for Troughton making the two so different].  This does not, I feel, translate to the book.  You do get a sense of his ruthlessness from his speech and what he does, but the strong sense of presence just wasn’t conveyed and is a shame, because this performance, as well as the strong support cast, is what carries this story.

Some of the longer speeches from the underground people have been cut or removed here, which in one sense did enable the story to flow on a lot more cleanly [because there was a large amount of cringey Hampstead AmDram speechifying going on from a certain young man under the ground, in particular]…but in another, it stops the reader coming to feel they know the underground people as much as those above ground.  So that’s a problem.  Maybe there were word count issues?

Anyway, I think this is a good story and I enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed watching, slightly differently.  I noticed here, a slight lackage of Jamie and Victoria that I did not so much note while watching.  Different things coming to the fore.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

2.   Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle, Witchmark, by Andrew Hunt (Virgin New Adventures)
(7^th Dr. I am very pleased that this initial section of the New Adventures is coming to an end.  The Timewyrm and Cat’s Cradle themes seem to have simply tripped up the authors involved, who have had to crowbar the necessary ideas into each novel, with no real linkage and each theme doing very little for each story.  As of the next book, they will be standalone – which is fine, as each book is long enough as if it were a serial of its own anyway.  Good.

Sorry to say I didn’t enjoy this.  And can you imagine it – BlackberryJuniper NOT enjoying a book with unicorns in?  Centaurs?  Trolls?  Other myth and fantasy type creatures?  It started off well, the adventure beginning on Earth and then tracking to a mythical land of Tir Na Nog-like qualities.  Garbled versions of mythical creatures with different names are there.  I trotted along happily with this for a while then started to get bored, because the plot wasn’t really going anywhere and I wasn’t feeling identified with the characters.  Ace is showing her younger self, alarmingly – and not in reaction to this fantasy land of childhood; there is no explanation given for her sudden reversion almost as far back as her Dragonfire self.  As if the harrowing story that she was just in [Cat’s Cradle – Warhead, Andrew Cartmel’s hard hard story of degraded people] hadn’t occurred.  Or a couple of the one’s previous, where she had some harsh and life-changing experiences.  People really should pay attention to character development and continuity.  Especially when playing fast and loose with a character as good as Ace, whom I like very much.  The Doctor is his usual self, but just not getting to do a lot, other than leave Ace behind, and yet accumulate another companion for his leg of the journey instead [the incongruously named Bathsheba, Bats for short; much the same as a unicorn of similar name elsewhere in the story].

One of the oddest things about this story is the American Werewolf in London obvious steal.  The two backpackers David and Jack have a massively similar conversation and way of relating, syntax etc, and are almost walking across the moors when we first meet them.  They too are menaced, though later encounter a burned and tortured centaur, rather than becoming the victims of a werewolf.  Gradually through the story they start to serve their own purpose, though I’m not really clear what they added to the book – but I really want to know if the author realised he was nicking David and Jack from American Werewolf, almost whole???  Very odd.  Didn’t read as a homage because didn’t fit with the rest of the plot. 

**Don’t read this paragraph if you don’t want to know the end of the book.**The solution to why this strange land exists, why it’s sun has vanished and why the inhabitants are falling into desperation and depravity is very pat and old once given – which I didn’t actually mind at all, as it fitted and was neat [it’s an experimental planet, populated with archetypes from Earth’s myths, to see how they work out, by a race of sociopath experimenters – a bit like lots of Rani’s, except slightly more helpful at the end when the experimenter agrees to give more fuel to the planet’s sun, so the planet may continue…].

I was excited at the idea of Scotland Yard having a Paranormal Department – oooo, I thought, maybe we can have a slightly X-Files-y, or Omega Factor-y element to some upcoming stories by the same author [or Talamasca, or Legacy element – you get my drift].  But then the only representative of this organisation, which was pretty much one man anyway [don’t think Mulder stuck in the basement, as that was a little bit cool, and this man is not at all cool], is rather gluttonous, inept, behind the plot and generally uninteresting.  Which was disappointing.

So…this was not very good, for me.  I have read other more glowing reviews, so know it hit the spot for some people.  Such is life.  On to the next one…ACTUAL BOOK.)

3.   Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, by Terrance Dicks (Target original)
(4^th Dr. I have very little to say about this one!  I love it on TV, I am one of the many who subscribe to the idea this is one of Tom Baker’s – and indeed Who’s – finest stories.  I love the gothic atmosphere, I love the mix up of scifi and fantasy; I love the dynamic between Sarah Jane and Tom here.  I love the extended outside filming and the lovely countryside – I am a big fan of stories containing lots of views of trees and grass from the 70s. 

This book was one of Terrance Dick’s better ones, in that he managed to keep hold of the atmosphere of a story not scripted by himself and different to one he would have done.  He kept the feel of the dialogue, the relationship between the brothers, the scaredness of the poacher, the strange mania of the Egyptian.  The whole overblown feeling of the entire story was preserved.  So it remained a very good read, just as it’s a very good watch.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

4.   Doctor Who: The Romans, by Donald Cotton (Target Original)
(1^st Dr.  MAKES FACE OF ANNOYANCE.  I was not warned [due to my usual policy of not reading any other reviews before I write my own ramble, lest I pick up other ideas by accident], about this book.  I was not warned about the Carry On Up The Romans aspect.  The TV story is lighthearted and quite funny, but this treatment of it in the book?? 

I like the epistolary style, that’s always a nice touch in a book as you get so much direct speech and verbal mannerisms etc – I am the person who read the 1000s of pages of unabridged version of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and really really liked it [and didn’t think it needed editing, amazingly]…but this…?  Ok, it was a bit funny, but it made the Doctor seem like nothing but a deluded pompous old fool.  It made Ian seem like an even more pompous and incredibly boring young fool.  Vicki seemed oddly perky and incongruous.  Barbara was resourceful as ever but simply a sidenote.  The other secondary characters were nothing but farce outlines. 

If I had been in the mood for this, it would have been fine – I love the actual Carry On films, despite their MASSIVE sexism [my inner feminist is more tolerant some days than others; some days she talks about history and things being of their time; other days she is just affronted by things and discouragedly fed up]; after all, I grew up with them…But I wasn’t expecting that deviation – taking Doctor Who into that world [and the Carry On universe *is* a universe, make no mistake, just as Who is].  Funny thing is, a Doctor Who-Carry On hybrid could almost work…

But for me, in this book, it didn’t.  It was like the ever remembered and ill-fated day Stanley proudly found me a porn tribute version of Charmed [my favourite go to prog to fix life in all the world].  I wasn’t amused AT ALL.  I was Really Incandescently Cross [and yeah, I did watch it – the dialogue was alarmingly accurate for round about Season 2, freaky; but it seriously had no plot].  Thus, I leave you here with my harsh and humourless judgement: an abomination, this book.  I hear the Myth Makers is likewise ruined.  Ah well, spose I’ll live through it.  Or read it on a day when I feel Carry On-ish and humorous.  ACTUAL – RUBBISH – BOOK.)

5.   Doctor Who: Placebo Effect, by Gary Russell (BBC 8^th Doctor Adventures)
(8^th Dr.  This was an odd one. It was the Foamasi vs. The Wirrn, with lots of other races too, before the galactic version of the Olympics, in the future.  Meshed up with a Church of The Way Forward, looking for a Goddess; and a human woman marrying an Ice Warrior [which is a main plot moving subplot].

I couldn’t decide if I was really enjoying its impeccably described and set Micawber’s World scenes, complete with vast amounts of subsidiary characters [that I did not get mixed up, so well written] all with quirks and relevance.  Or whether I was finding it beside the point.  The point seemed to be The Wirrn invasion, but it took so long to play out and was overshadowed by the Foamasi characterisation – loved the voice synthesiser idea, especially the butler who sounded like Sir John Gielgud. 

I’m starting to get the impression with Gary Russell’s books, of what I was saying about lots of the earlier entries in the book series: that of a huge amount of ideas, all tossed together to make story salad.  Sometimes it works better than others.  In this case, the subsidiary characters were running the show, as they were funny and resourceful and involved in much intrigue – Russell seems to like his Who characters much larger than life: Green Fingers, the Duchess of Auckland, Reverend Lukas etc.  There was a particularly well written and marvellous section where the Reverend discusses evolution [the contentious ideas of micro and macro evolution] very eloquently with Sam.  I had to read it through a couple of times to follow it all, and it was the most involved I got during the whole book.

Because of the subsidiary character focus, the Doctor and Sam are involved, but…not irrelevant, but they don’t feel particularly pivotal, even though the Doctor does make some leaps of deduction.  I didn’t feel he was as lovingly done as in the other books of this particular series so far.  The whole thing felt light: a bon-bon of this series, rather than, umm…a gobstopper?  Ok, I’ll stop this unfortunate comparison in its tracks.  Readable, fun, some great ideas, not as involving as I’d like.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

6.   Doctor Who: Project Twilight, by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright (Big Finish Monthly Audio Releases,no. 23)
(The 7^th Dr and Evelyn.  This was a surprisingly non sensational and thoughtful look at vampires, and the Doctor’s inherent prejudice and suspicion of them and their motives.  He turns out to be partially wrong, which swings the plot, and is nicely done and worked up to.  The character of Amelia and her wonderfully hissy voice, played by actress Holly de Jong, is the stand out character for me in this one.  The pretend gangster Reggie was a good character too – silly but believable.  Cassie was a lovely noble creation, left in the wilderness at the end, to save her and others from harm.

This one felt like it had a slow start, but it picked up considerably as it went along.  It had one of those endings where the baddies survive, secretly at the last minute – suggesting a sequel.  Wait and see, I guess.  ON DOWNLOAD.)

7.   Doctor Who: The Eye of the Scorpion, by Ian McLaughlin (Big Finish Monthly Audio Releases, no.24)
(5^th Dr and Peri.  Set in Egypt, 1400 BC.  Thebes.  The story centres around them arriving and seeing a female pharaoh about to be enthroned, except that history shows there never was one…so what’s happening?

The first thing to note here was a really lovely sound palette, very evocative, not intrusive, and highly atmospheric.  And equally fitting incidental music.  It stood out in its loveliness, whilst blending perfectly with its subject matter and backdrop.

Second is the nicely done character of the female non-Pharoah, Erimem.  Not annoying as she could have been played, not precocious, but simply a bit before her time and intelligent, curious…ripe to come away on some travels [which she does].  Her character is expounded nicely through episode 2, where Peter Davison is absent due to poisoning [bit of a hark back to the Hartnell/Troughton eras].  I thought I would find that irritating, but Peri and Erimem made such a nice combination together, off investigating mysterious deaths etc, that I didn’t really notice his absence and was fine with it.  Peri seemed very mature in this story, very happy to be travelling, and a lot more sure of herself than she often came across on TV, even at her happiest with Davison.

This is a very nice historical, very busy with many details: a parasitical hive mind creature [you can’t really go wrong with those], something fancy with a “telepathic inhibitor”, a plot to make an alternative Pharaoh involving a murder and a coup…which the Dr sorts at the last possible moment, after exposing Peri as an unintentional spy!  It’s all go and it was very enjoyable.  The historicals seem to work particularly well on radio/CD. 

Note: One of my brill friends has just pointed out to me there WAS a female Pharaoh, and at that period roughly - Hatshepsut...so...er, the blurb was wrong!  ON DOWNLOAD.)

Doctor Who Books Read and Heard, Part 16!

This post: treats from the eras of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors. 

A note on order.  Target Originals are not read in order of publication (which was all over the place), but in order of each Doctor, and each Doctor is read in order of their stories broadcast on TV.  However, I jump about in terms of which Doctor I read at any given time.  The Virgin New Adventures for Sylvester will be read in order; as will the BBC 8^th Doctor series (as though they had been on TV, see?  I’m trying to get an arc flavour).  The BBC Past Doctors series and the Virgin Missing Adventures are simply read in terms of which one I fancy next, as they are stand alone adventures slotting in-between the TV ones.

Oh, and in case you forgot, I’ve taken to recording which books I read that are actual paper copies, and which are Kindle or other electronic.  I’m being social historical for my own benefit. I want to see how long it is before I just plug books straight into my brain, how many years before I’m a reading cyborg.

As always with these rambly reviews: OFTEN LARGE SPOILERS ON ALL BOOKS IMMINENT!!!!

1.     Doctor Who: State of Change, by Christopher Bulis (Virgin Missing Adventures)
(6^th Doctor.  This was a good one but took a little while to warm up, for me. It did a rather clever separating of the Doctor and Peri very early on, but allowed them to continue to act separately though in tandem through a comm link, which on the one hand felt like a writing device, but on the other was a genuinely good and realistic idea. 

I liked the setting, that era of ancient Rome was ripe  - and still is – for novelisations of political intrigue. This with the Doctor added as a variable, makes everything much more complicated and also much funnier.  The 6^th Doctor’s boisterousness and his ability in this book to slip in and out of the personality of the 3^rd Doctor when necessary, for fighting off gladiators [yes indeed], was very nicely handled – it was well done and believable.

As was Peri having a Vengeance on Varos re-moment, and turning into a bird.  She handled it better, it became very useful, and was a very nice plot device. Peri is handled so much better in the books than she ever was on TV annoyingly.

It was also very nice to see someone making use of an underused villain – The Rani.  I liked her when she was first used on TV, and I’m surprised she doesn’t pop up more often in the books.  It would be possible to give her more depth while keeping her pleasingly simple [that isn’t a contradiction though I know it sounds like one!].  In this book she didn’t really get any extra, but it was good to see her again, and the situation merited her sort of obsessive attention and egotism.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

2.    Doctor Who: And the Planet of Evil, by Terrance Dicks (Target original)
(Fourth Doctor.  This was a perfectly good functional telling of a story that I’ve always thought of as odd and patchy anyway, on the edge of a classic era, but for me not in it entirely. The idea of the anti-matter man always seemed a bit preposterous to me, and I have no idea why that was a problem, since like Alice, I am usually very good with many impossible things before breakfast. 

Possibly it was the actor in the role, but I felt happier with the faceless book Professor Sorensen than the TV version.  I felt for him more and felt sad that he didn’t manage to overcome the anti-matter when he tried so hard to; and that his judgement was so biased toward his research that he missed the very obvious consequences for everyone around him. 

Doctor Who is probably where I scored my brains ENTIRE compartment labelled ‘mad scientist’…and for a programme that in many ways extols science, progress, humanism etc [at least in its original incarnation, not so much in new Who], I find it odd that at the same time, they were making me afraid of insane overzealous scientists every week?! Was this simply so the Doctor could keep expositionally dialoguing to me about what is good and what is bad science?  So I would learn the difference as a child?!  Stanley would say I am, as usual, reading too much into things, anything!  But I can’t help wondering at the contradiction.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

3.    Doctor Who: Cats Cradle - Warhead, by Andrew Cartmel (Virgin New Adventures)
(Seventh Doctor.  This book was very well written indeed, very memorable – bits and pieces keep coming back to me.  But I didn’t like it at all.  There was a future dystopian world on Earth.  I do get bored and fed up of horrible grey futures.  But I disliked this one because it seemed horribly real and plausible in almost every way, so well done Andrew Cartmel; he struck so many notes of possible reality with the way his world went, that I shied away from it even as I was reading it.  For example, an image that stuck with me from his nasty future world – a parent in a market place touting their child about; the child is made to look pretty with bits of foil plaited into her hair. If you looked closely, they were condom packets.  The child was a prostitute, pimped about by its own parents, who were caring for it by ensuring protection was used.  Yuck – and felt very real, no doubt happening somewhere in the world today…yes, this book felt a lot like watching the news, all at once, and being there, a few years ahead, especially all the eco doom. Really an achievement of a written immersive reality.

There were several very persuasive and sad scenes of people’s hallucinations on the moment of death; or people riding each other’s memories, that were very well done.  Massoud’s death for example.  I disliked his character, but felt sorry for him at his surprise and sad last vision at dying.  This was actually a problem – I disliked all the characters in the book [except a small child and I wasn’t sure whether he lived at the end or not], including the Doctor.  He behaved in a rather superior and judgemental way, which didn’t endear me to him at all. 

I felt Ace had a hard story. She was called upon to be doing many adult things.  I felt sorry for her, too.

The proliferation of very effective location detail [the scenes in Turkey, for example], coupled with lots of disturbing and adult images made for a very dark story. Not a children’s book; not a young adult’s book either I’d say – too grim.  This world was as detailed as Blade Runner, but much dirtier.  Cartmel really captures how debased humans can be, without overlabouring it.  Uncomfortable reading; bit like J.G. Ballard. 

I was actually very surprised when the book went ahead and had a happy ending – especially for Justine and Vincent.  They were an interesting pairing.  It seems her anger makes her almost mad, but by the end it has broken down to be an aggressive acting out of a terrible grief stricken loneliness, which is cured by company.  Actually quite lovely.  I was unclear why the Justine and Vincent telekinetic anger bomb weapon was actually The Answer to the problems set up in the story.  But that’s probably explained somewhere and I missed it because I was unintentionally wallowing in all that unclean and painful detail of everything was being doled out.  Hmmm. Wouldn’t read it again, but it was very good!  ACTUAL BOOK.)

4.    Doctor Who: Bloodtide, by Jonathan Morris (Big Finish Monthly Audios,no.22)
(Sixth Doctor.  Just after I was almost for giving up on these because I had had a few duds, this one comes.  A very lively, pacey and thought provoking story about human evolution, via Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, the Galapagos Islands…and the Silurians. A very welcome return for a good creature that always make for complicated moral resonance whenever they are used.  This story being no different.

The setting was 1835, with the Beagle moored and the geologists walking about, is a treat visit for Evelyn from the Doctor, the story picking up quickly from the beginning.  It’s a lot of nicely explained actual and cod science, mixed, as Lyell and Darwin try to think past faith and grapple with the ideas of the descent of man, natural selection etc.  There’s a lot of talking and discussing, and I did see on some other reviews, that some people found this onerous, but I appreciated the simple and clear explanations, as well as the elaborations that that the writer added, which complicate this story: the idea that the Silurians bred us, there was no Missing Link - they created us in a test tube, to be cattle food, clever enough eventually, to rear and support ourselves before slaughter.  There’s a lovely little conversation about whether its ethical to eat humans, and how each species treats its ‘lesser’ relatives [Robert Holmes would have been quite pleased at how it had me thinking vegetarianism is the only answer to the dilemma].  There’s lots of meat to think on in this story [oh no, I did a bad pun again, sorry sorry].

The other nice thing about this story is that there’s an appearance by the Myrka, who cannot be mocked by anybody as of course we can’t see her!  She has a voice though, and we can hear her!  [Voiced by Rob Shearman, the Big Finish writer.]  Annoyingly, the Myrka ate a character I liked, but thus goes Who, people do keep dying.

The other nice bit was a Scanners like battle between 2 opposing Silurians, as some wish for a peaceful co-existence, even a handover of Earth, to the humans, whereas others want to exterminate or continue to farm the humans. 

This is a nice story, and I’m glad the Silurians are not over used as some Who creatures are.  I liked Colin Baker’s Doctor in this one in particular, he had a quiet reason about him which perfectly suited the tone of the piece.  Evelyn too, was back on form after I felt she had been slightly miswritten in her previous couple of outings after her magnificent first one.  ON DOWNLOAD.)

5.    Doctor Who: Scales of Injustice, by Gary Russell (Virgin Missing Adventures )
(3^rd Doctor and Liz, and Mike Yates and Benton and the Brigadier.  This is an odd one.  It has illustrations akin to the very earlier Targets, and it places itself squarely in the milieu of classic Pertwee, shortly after The Silurians. It has a great feel of the era in the way it characterises, as well as giving many of the regulars a decent and continuous back story [that nerdy fans like myself adore to read].  Some of the subsidiary characters are just as wacky and child like as you would expect for the era – the Irish Twins, and the rather cybernetic Pale Man for example, they all fit right in with some of the oddness you get in, say, Terror of the Autons. 

And yet I didn’t like this one.  For all it rattled along, I found it a very workmanlike and efficient effort, but I wasn’t feeling it at all.  I didn’t really care for anyone, and even though there was a lot of the Brigadier and a lot of Liz Shaw in this book, not to mention Yates and Benton…I just wasn’t caring.  The Brigadier in particular, gets a thorough backstory, involving the breakdown of his first marriage and the preparing of the way for Doris, much later.  This isn’t handled too emotionally [as modern Who would have ladled it on], and it doesn’t feel out of place.

It’s just…the whole story somehow felt flat even though all the elements were there for a really cracking story: the Silurians, the Sea Devils, a hybrid breed between the two fighting for survival and performing questionable medical experiments on humans who they feel could be the key to their continued existence though they despise them; Liz deciding to leave UNIT, the Brigadier’s backstory, Yates getting fleshed out well, Benton saying more than he’s probably said in any other story…and yet.  I am puzzled.  Can’t think of a reason why I didn’t enjoy this.  Maybe it was the larger than life baddies, the more or less human ones; I do find baddies, especially if they talk too much and too arrogantly, bore me to death.  But here I was left cold by my usual favourites amongst the ‘goodies’ camp too.  Mystified.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

6.    Doctor Who: Time and Relative, by Kim Newman (Telos Dr Who Novellas)
(1^st Doctor.  This is mostly told from Susan’s point of view, with the Doctor a looming background character till the last third of the novella.  This works well, as Susan is given more inner dialogue and an understanding of her position greater than we are ever given in the TV version.  Since this is set before the first ever episode of Doctor Who, it explains how the Doctor came to be the meddling person he becomes by the time we know and love him.  It’s clever, setting this before any prior action, and gives Susan more power as a Gallifreyan character than she sadly ever did on screen; the story shows her having a real effect on the rather cold enigma that Hartnell’s Doctor could be, especially at the beginning.

The story revolves around the weather, the Cold Knights [murderous snowmen entities – remember this is way before new Who did this, this is 2001], and how via Susan, the Doctor learns both to break the rules [having already broken most by running from Gallifrey, but almost brainwashed into keeping the most stringent one: to leave Timelines as they are, to just observe], and to become the champion of humankind he evolves into later.  His usual ruthlessness in this incarnation is here, his one track coldness, but she tempers him.

While the Cold Knights bring first Coal Hill School, then London, then the rest of England to a standstill, and grown-ups don’t cope at all well, Susan and her small group of random survivors [including the small boy Malcolm, lovingly portrayed, who thinks Susan is a “Princess from space”] battle to get to Totters Lane so the Doctor can help them.  Some wonderful secondary characters here, Dolly, Gillian, the Ton Up Gang, the religiously scary Haighs.  There’s a small non speaking part for Ian Chesterton, and Barbara is mentioned but not seen.  The story, for all its relative shortness feels perfectly fleshed out, and nicely paced and structured.  I really enjoyed the absurdity of scary snowmen, and the Doctor’s eventual peaceful removal of them to another planet.  I enjoyed the way the story was gently left ready for the series proper to begin.  Very nicely done!  ACTUAL BOOK.)

7.    Doctor Who: Terminus, by John Lydecker (Target Original)
(5^th Doctor. I felt rather cheated by this one on TV.  I liked Nyssa a lot and felt she was one of those companions who remained an underused resource, who could have had a little more exploration and nuance.  I was always happy to see her do much of anything.  And then suddenly, it was her last story, and it was a terribly grim one, where she spent most of her time being very ill and getting iller, and losing what was otherwise a very nice outfit [I mention that as I felt she spent far too long in her initial get up, the weird maroon velvet thing; just as poor Tegan spent too long initially in her air stewardess clothes; these weren’t like the Sarah Jane or Jo days, when the Doctor kept the same clothes, but you got the impression everyone else had a bath and changed occasionally!]. 

Sorry,  I got a bit distracted there.  I found this as a read, less grim than watching.  I think this was helped by not being able to see the Garm, for example, who I had found a bit offputting, as his voice didn’t go with his wolfishness; whereas in the book, I had conveniently forgotten the voice and was substituting not only a slightly different appearance but a totally different voice on the creature.  He became a far more interesting character as a result.

I think I may have been doing this with large swathes of the book.  I deliberately didn’t go back and watch this story before reading, I just began, aware that this wasn’t one of the stories I was more familiar with because I had been disappointed with it when I had seen it before, a couple of times.  So I enjoyed the book far more, for being able to recast ALL of the subsidiary characters and make them look a little different also.  Olvir, Kari, all the Vanir – I rejigged them all in my mind, till I had an absolutely stellar imaginary cast – and then I found the story romped along, as much as any story can do when its main subject is a usually terminal illness. 

Which is a very tricky subject for any story, be it prose or TV, because by its nature it involves a lack of action, increasingly; and often a lowering of mental facility too. So it can very easily be not only outright depressing, or scary [and not good as escapist reading at all], but it can look very static on screen.  Splitting up the companions, with Tegan and Turlough going one way and Nyssa and the Doctor, or the Doctor and Kari etc in other directions, is one way to give movement to this strangely sad story.

It also allowed some nice byplay between Tegan and Turlough; she isn’t at all sure if she trusts Turlough or not.  And of course, he is being menaced by the Black Guardian at regular points too, so he is doing his best at manipulative moves to frustrate Tegan and get to the Doctor to hurt him.  Complicated by the fact he realises he quite respects and likes her as a person. 

Yes, there was a lot more here to get my teeth into than it felt like when I first watched it.  I wasn’t clear why the Vanir needed Hydromel though?  They didn’t have the Lazar disease – so was their medicine to prevent them from slowly succumbing simply to radiation sickness from the Terminus engines?  Did I miss that bit of exposition in a tired blink or somesuch??  Anyway – enjoyable, far more so than when watched!  ACTUAL BOOK.)