GUEST POST! Catherine Anne's Opinions and Observations, Part 1!

Back when I was doing my Guest season a month or so ago, Catherine Anne and I both forgot that I asked her to write me something, and then the season petered out (both of the scheduled last people to post got busy and I felt a bit bad bothering them so I left it...in a quiet English manner).  Catherine Anne remembered, so became the third person.  Even better, she remembered and had actually written something. 

Catherine Anne is great.  She's a longtime Facebook friend that I'm hoping to meet at some stage (probably when Stanley and I eventually get off our arses and get married).  We met on a sort of love-in group for people who adored the Tudor Monastery/ Edwardian/Victorian/Wartime Farm programmes FB forum - a specifically we love Peter Ginn angle (most intelligent and gorgeous historian/archeologist).  She's really funny and has tidied up quite a number of my bad moods just by writing a very wry Facebook status.  Her friends keep telling her to make a book of them, or just, y'know, write a book with herself talking in it.  About whatever, doesn't matter, we love her voice. 

Anyway, she wrote me a small bit of Observations, and I'm hoping I can cajole her to keep at it, and periodically do me another one, whenever she fancies it.  Cos you're going to love her quiet witty voice too.  She'll make your day better.

***

Dreams of Futures Past

As I got up this morning, and stood in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, I reflected that all was not as it should be. I was prone to a small bout of resentment and general discontent. I was, in short, still pissed off with Tomorrows World. Allow me to explain. When I was growing up in the 70's, at about the time that I realised there was more to life than Basil Brush and Playschool, I was fortunate enough to tune in to Tomorrows World. For an imagination already fired up on watching Dr Who, Star Trek and UFO, T.W. offered a tantalising glimpse of the giddy whirl that my future held.

Pocket calculators, digital watches ......... HOVERCRAFT!!!!!! ....... This is it (I thought back then), this IS the future.........this is what my life will be!! I'll rise to a fully automated house where everything is taken care of by a bit of quick programming, I’ll eat my delicious meals prepared in mere moments in the intelligent microwave, then I’ll don my matching silver bootees and cape and zoom off to work in my own personal HOVERCRAFT (as you can tell, my pre-teen mind sort of fixated on that point).  All manner of leisure activities will be available for my delectation, there'll be no such thing as dusting, and I’ll be mistress of my own fate.

Which brings me back to this morning.  Standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. Raymond Baxter, Judith Hann and the rest of them LIED TO ME. Granted I’ve got a microwave, but I view it with the same sort of suspicion and distrust that the Spanish Inquisition employed when it was suggested that the earth revolves around the sun.  In the years that I’ve had it, I’ve probably spent more time boiling lemon water to CLEAN THE MICROWAVE than I have actually cooking food in it. I’ve got a few kitchen gadgets, but they're mostly manually operated (I’m still getting to grips with my Habitat Garlic Press - an item purchased on a whim whilst dallying with the idea of being cosmopolitan and 'edgy' back in the very early 80's).

I’ll be the first to admit that life's come on a bit since the seventies, which seemed to revolve around shortages and power cuts, with occasional trips to Rhyll (anyone from the potteries will get that last bit instantly) mingled with going to school looking as if I’d spent the night napping on a Van der Graaf generator because mum thought nylon bedding was soooooooo much more convenient than boring old cotton. But on the whole, Tomorrows World did for me. It gave me expectations and hope, a sort of hope that has since been crushed (after all, even the most creative imagination is stifled when facing the stark reality of either walking for miles in the rain or chancing the rancidly Bohemian atmosphere of the local bus service, BECAUSE PERSONAL HOVERCRAFT DO NOT FEATURE IN YOUR LIFE*).

There's nothing for it but to begrudgingly trudge on, occasionally muttering ''bloody Raymond Baxter'', and dealing with the harsh realisation that they're never going to actually build a food replicator, and it's time to start cooking lunch.

(*Yes, ok, look, I admit it. The personal hovercraft thing has sort of stuck with me all this time. and should my rarely purchased Euromills ticket ever prove to be a winner, it'll be the third thing I demand from my list (number 1 being Tom Jones to turn up at my local pub and sing 'What's New Pussycat', and number 2 a pet aardvaark called Gerald).

Coffee, make up, headmistress, phonecall, writing: Wait...

This isn’t a coffeehouse post, even though it technically could be, cos here I sit at the coffeehouse.  Same one as usual.  It just doesn’t feel like one.  It just feels like me listening, and cribbing what I hear.  Phone conversation:

“I’d really like you to take this on.  I’m not trying to pressure you, Alison is quite keen and we can roll this into a single arrangement…”

Lots of women are doing make up, slowly and carefully.  I must have come in at some magic time of day.  I always think it’s weird when women do make up in public (you wouldn’t get dressed in public would you?).  Watching the states of face go on – the complete illusion, be it good or bad, or eyebrow filling in from nothing.

“I didn’t realise that was an issue.  However, if she wanted to work for more than 3 days a week, she has asked for a guarantee I would…”

There’s a woman I recognise as headmistress of a school in the next borough, sitting diagonally across from me. Blonde hair, just past shoulder length.  Black dress, small flowers.  Cornflower cardigan.   Not the voice on the phone.  Laptop.  A diary with a page for a day, A4.  She is deeply immersed in her stressy allocation of activities and/or people to relevant days.  There’s much hand to furrowed brow, hand to mouth with pen in tight fist.  Much deep breathing as if she’s trying to keep calm.  Her shoes are like tap shoes, delicate and cloppy sounding as she keeps moving her feet about.  Such an active pantomime of pressured work she’s doing, as if she’s acting for a camera (or me, or anyone, that can see her from the corner of our eyes.) I’m sure she really is working, and worried, and has an awful lot to do…but all the really loud sighing and blowing out?  The single-minded absorption in her work, but so much theatrical action to go with it.  Goodness dear, says an imaginary granny next to me, knitting needles clicking, you ARE busy, aren’t you?

                                                       *

I’m expecting women to do work differently to men.  Not expecting all this shitting jargonese I can hear from this phonecall; all these obfuscatory important sounding buzzwords.  The harsh all business bulldozing tone of voice: “If you’re concerned how others in the office might perceive –“ See, she’s pulling out issues a man might not, but the tone of her voice is grating and hard.  It’s all variables she’s ticking off a list, it’s not that she sounds like she cares or has time for this conversation (“she wants an exit strategy”).  She just wants the person at the other end to do as she wants them to.  She’s covering all the issues she can find (“any concerns whatsoever, we know the territory is one of your concerns”), so that the woman on the other end will capitulate.  After a barrage that’s too fast for me to get down, she pauses and says: “if that helps?” periodically.  I don’t like her at all.  She’s not even one of those women of whom you’d say ‘I want her on MY side, not against me’.  I just don’t want this fast talking manipulator anywhere near me.  I want her to stop talking, take a breath and listen to what the person on the other end of the phone is trying repeatedly to say to her.  For a start.

Damn, her phone call is long (“much easier for me to extend her contract, potentially I could do that if it’s what you felt…” – false language of caring, maddening).

Not sure what I expect. Maybe I have stupidly higher standards I apply to my fellow females?  I wish the headmistress had quietly and calmly gone about her business, without all the signalling to all and sundry that she is Very Busy, Possibly Too Busy.  Who does that help/benefit?  I didn’t feel sorry for her, the way she was flipping back and forth those pages made me feel she was disorganized if anything.  I wondered why she had come to the coffeehouse to work when she was clearly befuddled with stress – she’s had four cappuccinos, and she didn’t order decaf (I really am a very nosy earwig, y’know).  Her face remained blank and guarded throughout, but the rest of her body, though trying to speak control, spoke chaos.

And the other woman?  I want her to send an email and let the other woman get a word in edgewise.  She laughs, a big blowsy barking sound, forced out. (“It makes far more sense to do that, time-wise, yes, much more efficient” – see, now organisation is annoying me.)

“…with the funding regime.  Is this what you want to do from your perspective?...contracts, I will know by October…role with those options…does that help at all, it allows me to plan for longer term, as well…was costing him 90 thou pro rata, one of the reasons I left him alone…”  Blimey.  90 thou pro rata?  That’s one feck of a part time job she’s discussing there.

I think I expect men to be machines at work (as a generalisation of course), and often, they do behave like that, as if scripts and demeanours are before them and they riffle through, pick and adopt whichever comes naturally at the time.  And I really do seem to expect women to do better than that.  Why?  We’re brought up to be constantly caring for others and watching people’s reactions and looking for approval etc…why on Earth would I expect us to be less prone to manipulative work behaviour and image making than men?!  I seem to expect us to engage with those we deal with with genuine interest – if they are lower in work status than themselves especially (don’t be a dick, as Stanley would say).

“That ok then? I’ll speak to you on Tuesday, cheers then Abby”, she says, and FINALLY lets the poor woman go, whose head must be swimming with demands, comparisons and scenarios.

Back to the makeup. That was interrupted. There’s a woman in purple coat, black faux fur ruff, smart.  There’s a big line of black liquid liner going on over large brown eyes.  A very funny squinty face as she’s applying it, too.

I think I may be after all work situations being an ideal of Quakerliness that probably never existed – where we all call each other by our names, not titles, or ‘sir’, or ‘Mrs’.  And when we listen properly when others speak, we try to find solutions, compromises, room to breathe.  Not battle, dominate, manipulate.  Wear down and talk till someone’s head is spinning.  I seem to unrealistically think that we can all leave our work at work too: that I am fed up and therefore should no longer have to hear long business conversations on trains, buses or in coffeehouses (places you go to to escape work, not an extension of work).  That was a good 15 minutes of that other businesswoman’s life I had to live with there.  She didn’t ask if she was impinging on the space around her, she just got on with speaking really loudly and inviting us all by default into her conversation.

The eyeliner woman finishes her eyes and moves on to her mouth, which gets lined in deep cherry red, then filled in with a very glossy corally red, via a palette and small brush, very dedicated work.  Then her colleague – I presume colleague, they have identical coats – it would be a bit creepy if two thirty something women were wearing the same exact fancy coat otherwise…must be some kind of uniform? – comes over with a truly resplendent slice of chocolate fudge cake.  This colleague has shown insight, and has already done her eye and cheek makeup (it’s the 80s in stripes over here), but not her mouth.  She delicately takes a fork (very long gel nails, in purply black), and proceeds to very genteely take tiny bites of the cake, and slide them off the fork into her mouth, very very slowly, while chatting away to her other clone.  Original purple coat is making the world’s saddest face as she realises she can’t eat the cake because of the heavy lip make up.  (I mean she could, she could break up a bit and carefully put it in her mouth without touching her lips, but this hasn’t occurred to her, and she looks like she might cry, as the cake does indeed look scrummy.  It’s sad, now I want cake too, and it isn’t mine, and I’ve run out of money!  These things my days are made of – resentment of certain sorts of people; and cake envy.  Sigh.  Clearly a bit of personal mental reorganisation also necessary.)

I start thinking about diets, Slimming World, Weight Watchers.  How diets go so well, then don’t?  Control.  The deliciousness of the idea of order, of food plans.  Point counting.  The amount you’d have to spend on food. The joy of not having to think or make choices for a bit because they are made for you.  But then you end up thinking about food constantly, and breaking the diet, followed by berating self, and what Josie Spinardi rightfully calls: “eating cos you ate”.  Pressure.  Versus mindful eating.  The merry go round of dieting.  

That not-mine cake is gone now, thank goodness.  The headmistress is gone.  The annoying phone woman is gone.   Purple coat and other purple coat, also gone.  All that’s left is an empty plate with crumbs on, a lipstickless fork.  I wonder if I can stretch that to be a metaphor for anything?!

                                                           *

Which reminds me of why I’m really here.  I’m sposed to be writing. There must be a story waiting to be told.  I have no clue what it is.  I used to want to write about everyday life, but very grounded, in an almost Virginia Woolf like detail.  Then put magic, or metaphysical things in it.  But I wrote less and less. No matter what détente I arranged with the critical demons, they just kept bothering me, endlessly.  It got worse, not better. I felt tired, endlessly insecure, second guessing my every choice and decision till I had practically no idea who I was.  In life as well as writing.  I still don’t have any clear idea of who I am other than a collection of changeable traits; some of which crop up with more frequency than others and in fairly reliable combinations.

I see myself more and moreso, almost giving up on writing. Find myself focussing more and more on the outside work that I could do, contribute.  Obviously with my save-the-world, change-the-world inclinations, writing still should be the way to go.

But it feels less and less possible.  Regardless of me being convinced that it’s a fact that more minds are changed, and have been caused to think and re-evaluate by fiction and persuasive characters than by any political speech.  But my demons don’t let me write much anymore.  Nothing I truly value.  If I value it a bit less, like thinking aloud here, it piles out.  But actual stories, ideas for stories?  Characters coming and talking to me till I write them down, then carrying on and getting their own wind in their own sails whilst I listen and take dictation?  Not so much anymore, at all.  It’s like there is a black pit in my head.  Or a solid wall.  Or a dark absorbing fog.  I can’t even seem to begin to think of characters, or hear their voices as I used to, the characters having conversations with each other.  Where there used to be possibilities, endless wonderful choices, there’s now…nothing.  It just doesn’t come.  When I'm anywhere, doing anything.

I can’t be sure whether it’s because I question so much else in my life all the time and therefore have no clue who I am from day to day. Other than this questioning and doubting and questing for changed conditions.  Or whether it’s because I do seem to be focussing outward more: volunteering, job-hunting, taking Fluffhead out so much more than before because I can see he really needs to keep socialising. 

I’ve always wanted to write fiction, and I’ve always valued it.  And yet in many ways, this last year in particular – and it’s been coming a long time, I’ve never thought it less doable.  It really feels like I have almost (but not quite) given up.

I still read voraciously and connectedly, devouring the minds and visions and ideas of others.  I know my own visions are still inside me somewhere.  Though possibly their nature has changed; I may be looking in the wrong place, trying the key repeatedly to the wrong room.

Often, even blogging becomes difficult.  My own experiences feel either too boring (that’s downer thinking, I know: as anything can be interesting, depends on how described), or simply too long to do. To sort through thoughts in my mind seems too high a mountain to climb.

I wanted to tell you about Fry’s enormous ongoing back tattoo and the brilliantly interesting tattoo artist, watching the ooze and wipe of blood (“we use vegan ink here”); about my canvassing experiences, feeling politically engaged and purposeful (on and off).  And the soul destroying nature of modern job hunting.  About Fluffhead’s development – my serious worries about balancing work, child care and self-care.  Worries about money could not be more boring, but they are there too.  About a weekend away at the inlaws and Fluffhead’s first seaside trip: his palpable joy, the way he shook with cold as the sea washed over his ankles but he fiercely grinned, refusing to move and gripping my hand so hard.  Loving the sea so much and curling his toes through sand and seawater with such fascination and focus.

But when I try and tease any of this out, what I feel is tiredness, this yawning grey foggy tiredness.

And what I do is read.  Or consume vast amounts of TV series – loving to watch character development or plot savvy moves.  I analyse constantly even when lost in it.  And I do the same whilst reading: even when the writing is so good I can barely find technique, it repels my attempts.  Its joy both to be in it, of it, and to watch it work.  But doing it?

I just do not seem to be able to grab the mental level of awakeness to say anything.  Concentration and clarity seem to come and go and be of only moments duration. Fascinating.  A proper locked room, or wing, a whole wing of a house.  All I can do is keep showing up here, keep reading (both fiction, non fiction, history, philosophy – and writing books); keep talking to my writer friends, keep watching how it all works.

And wait.  Trusting that any moment, any day now, any character will come out of that room and talk to me.  Any plot, any idea, anything to actually grab me.  (Or they won’t.  Also a possibility.)

Wait.  Listen.  Pay attention.

And in the meantime…you get a lot of book and film reviews and other waffling, cos that’s what I am able to do.

Doctor Who Books Read and Heard, Part 19!

This post: treats from the eras of the 1^st, 2^nd,4^th,  5^th and 7th 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: Enlightenment, by Barbara Clegg (Target Original)
(5^th Doctor.  At a total loss as to what to say about this one.  Except: I loved it on TV, thought it was a very original and odd idea, that felt natural and weird at the same time.  And then I read it and loved that too – a perfect carry over of the tone and style.  Barbara Clegg writes just as well in novel form as for TV script.  I loved to see Tegan confused and wrong-footed by Mariner’s unwanted attentions – her very genuine short-changing of him and no attempt to play games or even understand him, was so *her*.  And Turlough’s final unmasking and his choice of the Doctor in the end, his realisation that he truly liked and admired the Doctor – that was just as satisfying to read as it was to watch.  And of course, I can’t forget Wrack’s voluptuous greed, and Striker’s robotic detachment as performances, and as I read, I was seeing them again, so well cast as they were.  The whole thing was a bit of a fever dream, but written very clearly.  I really like this unlikely story. 

More and more as I read through Davison’s era, I realise I very much like the stories and angles he was given to work with; a shame that I didn’t enjoy him as the Doctor at the time, and good that I do now.  His abrupt and thoughtful manner I now find endearing, with Tegan and Turlough as perfect foils in their separate ways.  Image below from: them0vieblog.com ACTUAL BOOK.)

2.   Doctor Who: The Dark Path, by David McIntee (Virgin Missing Adventures)
(2^nd Doctor, Jamie, Victoria.  I am going to go right against the grain here. This is one of the hardest to locate and buy Missing Adventures, and it’s pricey.  It cost me a fair bit to get this book.  And I was really disappointed with it.  I’m aware this is one of the most highly regarded of the whole series, as it shows Roger Delgado’s Master, before he was the Master.  How he becomes the Master.  In this story he is called Koschei.

I’m a bit at a loss to explain why this one fell so completely flat for me.  To begin, the set up is painted extremely clearly.  I had been doing a huge Deep Space 9 binge before I started reading this one, and the terms used felt very up to date for the late 90s sci-fi; they fit right in.  The worlds of both Darkheart, a lost colony of Earth’s long gone Empire, and the various spaceships and their inhabitants felt competent and real.  I enjoyed a lot of the subsidiary characters: Captain Sherwin, the Pack Mother, the Adjudicator Hakkuth, Ipthiss, Salamanca…there were many beautifully drawn characters.  Different races: Draconian, Terileptilians [I have a feeling I just fudged that one!], and several other races familiar to us from other stories.  A Federation under strain, worries about an Empire reforming, power struggles played out in miniature but with huge consequences – these are all well done and familiar themes, all in play here.

In addition, Victoria is handled well in this story: even though she does spend a lot of time crying, wandering about lost and generally wishing she was not there, was somewhere safe – this is handled not as a matter of lazy characterisation, but as a prefacing of her attitudes in the story this story is supposed to come before: Fury From the Deep.  It shows her vulnerability, her uncertainty at why she is travelling.  She ends up with Koschei for much of the book, listening to his slow descent into…I am reluctant to say evil, and prefer to say misguided power craziness, and some of the time, she is deluded by him, some of the time she questions, but it all plays into her increasingly vulnerable state.

The Master’s birth here, enacted in the final chapter, and his friendship with the Doctor devaluing itself into a rivalry followed by enmity…again, well written and believable.  You can hear Roger Delgado talk, in these lines.  You can believe his attachment to his companion Ailla, and his distress at her ‘death’.  But…

Nonetheless, it all left me cold, I never really got into it, it took me 5 months on and off to read it.  There was much technobabble, many interesting techno lash ups from the Doctor [himself an umbrella wielding, hopping fool/genius – another good portrayal of Troughton’s oh so changeable Doctor], lots of changing sides and distrust and learning, on behalf of all the characters.  A particularly affecting scene where Sherwin has watched a battle and notes the beautiful colours of the weapon blasts, the silence of people just not being there any more, the way the ships blast open like eggshells, the people burned away in an instant.  Small not overdone moments.  Several scenes were this good.

And yet…I was relieved to finish it.  Despite the characters being involving, interesting and sympathetic, the plot being coherent and twisty…I was not involved.  I was not happy to go back to the book, I was feeling no emotion concerning the fate of these well written characters.  Usually, a book fails for me if I don’t feel caring for the characters.  It can have no plot and I’m ok if I am involved with the characters and want to hang out with them.  Same with plot – it can be silly or sublime, and if I am happy with it, I can rattle along.  Both these elements were present: good characters and a clever and interesting plot.  There was no excessive cruelty or excessive sentimentality to annoy me.  The writing was measured, intelligent and on occasion moving.  Yet I was unmoved by the experience of the book as a whole, and happy to see the back of it.  I really am at a loss to explain that.  Will sell, so someone else can enjoy.  ACTUAL BOOK.)

3.   Doctor Who: Colditz, by Steve Lyons (Big Finish Monthly Plays, no.)
(7^th Doctor. This was a solid and workmanlike WW2 story.  I’m sure I’ve commented before that the historicals seem to work particularly well in Doctor Who, both on TV and via audio.  Just something that seems to work well as a genre splice: time travel and past events, locations.  On top of that, there seems to be a neverending fascination with WW2 that I am sometimes interested by and sometimes at a loss to explain.  Not to say its unimportant at all, just to say there are lots of other events we could continually return to as pivotal, but we seems to less so than with this one.  I am not a big fan of war films, though a few classics usually divert me [am particularly a fan of the scene in A Bridge Too Far where the completely outnumbered English are met by a larger German delegation and ask if they have come to offer their surrender, apologising they don’t have enough men to take them all prisoner; I think it was simply the whimsical jet black humour of that that I fell for].

The atmosphere here feels very like a classic war film: the officers duty is to try to escape; there’s lots of appropriate sounding music; lots of filmic sounding Germanic accents, and cut glass upper class tones.  These sound particularly nice against Ace’s relentless informality, earnestness and irreverence, especially when dealing with the German officers.  You wonder whether you would actually feel that insouciant were you really in that situation: regardless of who won the war and you know it, the fact is, it isn’t over yet and you are in 1944, not 1945, and whilst people do escape from Colditz, there you are, in a maximum security prison.  Being spunky cos that’s your character remit; trying to escape, cos that’s what you’d do. 

That’s why I said this is workmanlike – there’s nothing surprising or wrong footing or layered about any of the characters or their reactions to things.  We aren’t surprised when the German lady turns out to be from a dimension where the Germans occupy England, this seems like the sort of thing that would happen in this story. I wish this story had been written by Kate Orman – then we would have had some insight into why the characters are as they are, and why Ace decides to be grown up and be Dorothy McShane for no apparent reason, and seems so sad at the end…it wouldn’t have just been a story, a yarn, it would have been a story that made us think.

However, within the workmanlike aspects is David Tennant, being quite evil and doing a very good German accent – I didn’t recognise him and was impressed when I checked the credits at the end; and Tracey Childs as Klein sounds wonderful.  There’s some very Sylvester exchanges with Klein about the nature of genocide and do the ends justify the means etc.  All the things you’d expect from a war film of a certain era…I didn’t love this, but it passed the time pleasingly.  I had the feeling though, that it COULD have been great, were it written a little more thoughtfully.  ON DOWNLOAD.)

4.   Doctor Who: The Death Pit, by A.L. Kennedy (short story in the digitally individually released ‘Time Trips’ series)
(4^th Doctor.  I was a bit discombobulated by the style of this story.  I’m a great fan of unnecessary extra words in sentences myself [as I am sure you are all tired of knowing].  So is A.L. Kennedy, and until I got into her rhythm, I found it annoying.  Until I found it charming.

In this story, set in a golf course in Arbroath, Tom Baker, all very much teeth and hair here, has his mind interfered with by a creature that we eventually discover has been accidentally augmented/ mutated by one of the other subsidiary characters.  There’s some nice phraseology here:  “all his thoughts seemed a bit sticky, or clumped, or hairy, like boiled sweets left in a jacket pocket”. This needs fixing, as the creature is grumpy, due to feeling too much rage.  The solution is saccharinely new Who style [yes, I am again remembering that dreadful cyberman episode where the cybermen were defeated by lurve], but in this case it is relevant as the creatures malady is emotional.  So it does work.  Tom Baker decrees: “we need to love it.  We need to be very very fond of it indeed.”

At base, to climb on a totally unbidden soapbox, I think this would work on everyone on Earth, even people like IS…but I’m too scared to even try it.  Hence partly the reason is doesn’t work!  Yet.  We’re all too scared to try being gentle and kind; this is 8/10s of the Earth’s problems I reckon. If we showed each other more observable kindness, genuine kindness, we probably wouldn’t behave so shittily to one another so often, treating each other as repositories or obstacles to/for greed, destruction, selfishness.  And there endeth the Simplicistic Sermon. Er…

Once you get into this style, this story is sweet and self contained.  The companionless Doctor spends most of the story admiring Bryony and humans in general, and talking in a very Douglas Adams era way, playful and bantery.  It’s a light, verging on superficial story.  Also quirky, amusing and gentle.  ON KINDLE.)

5.   Doctor Who: The Anti-Hero, by Stella Duffy (short story in the digitally individually released ‘Time Trips’ series)
(2^nd Doctor. This is set in the Museum of Alexandria. An odd story.  The Doctor, along with Zoe and Jamie arrive to view the library, to find some mechanical Muses have been created, which are amplifying whatever their chosen quality is – people are falling about laughing, the Doctor uncontrollably; being moved to tears by poetry, of which Jamie starts writing an epic example, and Zoe can suddenly dance expertly, ecstatically.

The cause of all this chaos is a magician and illusionist called Hero, who has created the Muses as an experiment in thought control.  The actual real Muses are not very happy about this misuse of the idea of themselves, especially since Hero is powering the wood and metal pretend Muses with actual human hearts.  [Indeed, it makes no sense.] The real Muses, who are aliens of course, come once called by the Doctor, with Zoe’s help, and rebuke Hero, bringing back to life anyone killed by the experiments. This story was so slight as to almost not be there.  Zoe was characterised well, but the story just seemed to roll off me, in a bit of a meh way.  ON KINDLE.)

6.   Doctor Who: A Big Hand for the Doctor, by Eoin Colfer (BBC 50^th Anniversary short stories, released singly)
(1^st Doctor. The Doctor has been given a bio-hybrid hand and isn’t happy with it.  It’s also a woman’s hand complete with long red fingernails.  He wants a flesh and blood one.  His original hand has been taken by a Soul Pirate – disreputable creatures who use drugs to kidnap and confuse children.  They then drain their brains and dismember them, using all till none is left and every scrap used for something.  Murderous space Wombles, sort of. In this story, the Doctor is hunting them, hence the hand loss.

He gets back from getting the temporary hand to find that Susan too has been kidnapped by them, whilst looking after some at risk children.  Oddly, this is the third story in a row I’ve read where people are controlled by visions, illusions and emotional states created for them by an outside agent..  these ones are overwhelming and lurid, and easier to live within than stopping actual bad things from happening.  Quite timely and appropriate in this world.  [I read an article the other day where Alan Moore criticized the current obsession for superhero films with grown-ups, stating these creatures are meant for children and are a hangover of the last century, stopping people from engaging with vital issues in today’s world, by immersing themselves in understanding vast fictional universes, where evils are constantly and cathartically reversed – while we do nothing in actuality.  Obviously that can apply to all readers too, in a way.  It’s a hard criticism, and one we should all think about; whether we have the right balance between resting and escapism, and dealing with the things in our parts of the world that need addressing.]

Anyhow, the doctor single-handedly [pun, sigh] saves Susan and the children, and defeats the space recyclers.  In a little denouement, an author saw these events: children rising in stardust, a pirate battling a man with a hook for a hand…and he went on to re-do these events in a famous story.  I wasn’t terribly impressed here.  ON KINDLE.)

7.   Doctor Who: Primeval, Lance Parkin (Big Finish Monthly, no 26)
(5^th Doctor.  For the first time in a while, with these lone stories, I’m feeling a sort of story being patched in thematically between them.  In this one Nyssa is ill and has been taken to Traken, to see if her own healers can do anything for her.  This illness hasn’t just come from nowhere, which is why its ok to have her ill with no explanation at the very beginning of the 1^st episode: it echoes her unsteadiness in Four to Doomsday, and then again in The Mutant Phase, the earlier Big Finish play.  It even helps to explain why Nyssa had to sleep during Kinda.  [Don’t we fans love that – retro continuity, explaining what was doubtless a funding decision at the original classic era?!  I’m happy to buy it as this explanation is less annoying and lazy for me, an annoyingly in some ways perfectionist fan!]  The Doctor consults the TARDIS’s information stores, which indicate that the best ever healer on Traken lived eons before Nyssa: before there were ever Keepers.  Shayla is the name of the healer: really well portrayed by Susan Penhaligon.  She thinks Nyssa is possessed – this is long before the Trakenites were scientific.  

There are various things in this quiet story that make it a good listen.  Odd bits of silly character stuff: Nyssa teaches a fellow character how to Charleston, and when the Doctor comes in, he notes sniffily that the “mark of a gentleman is that he knows how to Charleston – and doesn’t”, before going off to do useful things.  The way the story eventually falls out – neatly coming round to how the first Keeper came to be, is satisfying.  I don’t want to spoiler the story, so won’t say anymore. This play was neither epic, nor incredibly well-written – but it was well played and listenable, and filled a retro hole, explaining some things about Nyssa and Traken, in to my mind, a pleasing way.  It had good characterisation. Yes, it could have shown more fire, I suppose – but as an undramatic but well characterised entry, I was pleased with it.  ON DOWNLOAD.)

***

As a slight change to scheduled programming - the next Dr Who post will be a Special - not the afore-promised Companions Special, which I still haven't finished, but a Tom Baker Special, since I have a craving, recently, to do lots more Tom.  You know the feeling - must have more teeth and hair and that smile.  That scarf.  Those companions of his.  Anyway - the next Doctor post, when it comes, will be lots of him, both book and audio. 

  There's been a summer holiday hiatus - with the ferrying back and forth of the ever more needing to be happily occupied Fluffhead, hence this post containing so many short stories and audio instead of meaty books.  And then there was a complete loss of self on my part in first Sons of Anarchy, then Breaking Bad (yes I am aware I am many years late to both - its on purpose), followed by quite a lengthy fixation on the Phil Rickman Merrily Watkins book series (do go and check that out, well worth a read if you are into horror, or ghosty things, or theology, or psychology, or mysticism, or folklore, or British countryside as a creepy thing...or just damn well written characters...and I've just found out they are going to ruin it for TV...they better not get it wrong!).  And then of course, the infernal job hunting I'm doing - so that I keep feeling there's no point even starting to write anything as any minute I will have no more time ever again, between work and childcare.  But you know, I shall be less catastrophic and take it day by day, and keep on trucking here..  Writing about books and films and occasionally, *me*.  You poor souls.

Anyway, till next time, which hopefully won't have such a startling gap as a Whole Month!