From the Heart of Europe

One of Two, and Three of Four

Sat, 17 May 2008 17:05:12 GMT

Lj userpic: doctor who
Lj-tags: doctor who, 2nd doctor, 4th doctor, megaliths
I was pleasantly surprised, on reviewing my Second Doctor lore as I read the novelisations, to realise that I had not seen any of the four surviving episodes of The Ice Warriors, though I had listened to an audio version with Fraser Hines narrating. So I watched it, and it is a heck of a lot better with the pictures than without; the sense of a really cold environment, with different groups of humans surviving as best they can, and the Ice Warriors themselves all come across really well on the screen. Not surprised to see that this was an early effort of one of DW's more successful directors. Shame about Victoria but you can't have everything.

I don't have a lot of Four stories left - half of the Invasion of Time, a few from the last season, and just one last story after this remaining from Sarah Jane's first run on the show. Fannish consensus is fairly heavily against The Android Invasion, but I think this is a bit unfair, perhaps driven by the fact that it is not a particularly glorious farewell to Harry, Benton and UNIT as we first knew it. I thought the creepiness of the village which is not really a village, the general concept of the android doppelgangers, and the sinister Kraals behind the scenes, worked rather well. Admittedly the Kraals' plot makes No Sense At All, but they are neither the first nor the last baddies in Who of whom this is true. Also we get to see Tom Baker playing the Doctor's evil double (as again with another story reviewed below).

The Stones of Blood was one that I remembered fondly from first time round, and I liked it again on re-watching three decades later. Perhaps, now that puberty is behind me rather than yet to come, I appreciate Mary Tamm's costumes as Romana all the more. But of course I also have a fascination with megaliths, and this is the only broadcast story that really uses them (though see also the SJA story The Thirteenth Stone). And of the three stories featuring an ancient cult in England within a few years of 1980, this is the only one that really pulls it off well (the other two being Image of the Fendahl and K9 and Company).

I either missed most of Meglos first time round or else just wasn"t concentrating. It too is rather excoriated by fans, but it reminded me rather of the middle-grade Pertwee stories: there is one absolutely wooden performance, Edward Underdown as Zastor, and the special effects are dire (watch Tom Baker's legs disappear as he walks across the desert, and also we have plant monsters almost as bad as in The Chase). But there is plenty to like: the Grugger/Brotadac relationship, the return of Jacqueline Hill as Lexa, the whole concept of an evil cactus, and, again, Tom Baker playing the Doctor's evil double and getting a lot more to work with this time. It isn't the best story of the season by any means (that is probably Warriors' Gate), but it's not Tom Baker's worst either.

May Books 17) Odd Man Out

Sat, 17 May 2008 15:55:04 GMT

17) Odd Man Out, by F.L. Green

Literally the only film I have seen this year is Carol Reed's adaptation of this novel, published in 1944. So my write-up of it is very much based on the differences with the film, of which three seemed to me pretty significant.

The first, which concerns me most in a way, is that where the setting of Reed's film is somewhat ambiguous, Green's book is absolutely firmly set in Belfast in 1944. The city centre streets are named - Royal Avenue, Dublin Road, Victoria Street; and the tram that in the film is heading up the Falls Road is going up the Shankill in the book. Green therefore also catches the sectarian picture a bit more than the film does (or could); the youths on the tram chant "No Surrender!" at the police, the two ladies who care briefly for the fugitive Johnny are respectable Protestants, which adds an extra poignancy.

Second is the book's structure - whereas the film continually cuts between Johnny and his various pursuers, in the book he is almost absent from the first half after his colleagues abandon him, so that by the time we reach the mid point we are wondering what on earth has happened to him. Since he is then reintroduced to us half-way through the book, Green can be pretty clear about the fact that Johnny is dying as soon as he reappears; in the film there is a bit more suspense on this matter.

Third of course is the nature of the drama, culminating in the ending. It is inevitable, of course, that Johnny will die. But Green has Agnes and Father Tom more complicit in the manner of his death - and redemption, according to the last paragraph - than Reed. Throughout, Green talks about souls, faith, belief, where Reed concentrates more on character and action.

Altogether, it makes for a convincing package. William Hartnell's character, Mr Fancy, is here the sinister Fencie, ten years older: difficult to choose between them or some of the other differences in characterisation. But basically, as so often, the film is very good but the book is even better.

Sign of the times

Thu, 15 May 2008 07:44:35 GMT

For most of the last twelve years I have been a subscriber to the daily digest of news from Eastern Europe provided by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty from Prague, and before that by the Open Media Research Institute in Munich. While its political leanings (pro-US and NATO, often euro-sceptic) were often visible in its reporting, it never missed a big story or even a medium-sized one in the course of breaking, and was certainly a more reliable tracker of events than any of the mainstream English language media. They cut back much of their Eastern Europe reporting after the EU enlargement of 2004, and last night came a message from Jeff Gedmin, who was head-hunted to run RFE/RL a couple of years back, to say that due to the weakness of the dollar they will no longer produce the daily newsline. It's a shame; I can get pretty much the same information by setting up the relevant Google news alerts (and indeed have done so) but it was nice to have RFE/RL as a backstop reference point. At least the archives will remain on-line.

Birthday

Thu, 15 May 2008 06:04:38 GMT

Happy birthday, my love! Wish I was there with you!

Tadpoles

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:59:14 GMT

F was given some frogspawn to care for from school just before Easter, and the tadpoles graduated from the small plastic container they arrived in, to a bucket in his room. F has been very responsible about feeding them; I felt very uneasy though about having dozens of God's creatures living under our roof, without the prospect of ultimate liberty.

But my doubts have been happily confounded. artw took us all to the local pond shop on Sunday, and bought some pondweed and a bonus pond snail. The pond shop itself was pretty amazing, a suburban labyrinth of water features (mostly inhabited by fish, amphibians and other invertebrates). Now, the big plastic turtle which we originally bought as a sandpit for B nine years ago, and which has since done occasional duty as a paddling pool, has become a new home for the tadpoles, sitting in the drive just outside the garden gates in order to prevent U from experimenting with the water. It has a couple of shelves that its inhabitants can sit on when their legs have grown, and has already started attracting insects. Summer is coming, and it is beautiful.

May Books 16) Contested Island

Mon, 12 May 2008 16:26:21 GMT

16) Contested Island: Ireland 1460-1630, by S.J. Connolly

I found this a much more interesting and well-structured book than Lennon's Sixteenth Century Ireland. By the end of it I had a much better idea of the two key narratives - the shift of the Old English areas to permanent alliance with Gaelic Ireland, and the growth in power of the state apparatus centred in Dublin. The general failure of the Reformation to take hold in Ireland is a part of this story, but Connolly admits after surveying the various theories that he does not have a good explanation of why it failed. The least satisfactory thing about the book is that the six maps at the end are horrendously mislabelled; only one is published with the correct caption.

An unexpected benefit of reading about this period of Irish history is that it gives me a slightly different insight into international relations today. Reading how various English military expeditions tended to end not with the defeat of the Irish enemies, but with them being bought off with recognition of their authority and (often temporarily) converted to allies, has obvious parallels with today's Iraq and Afghanistan. And the gradual extension of the central govenment's authority across the whole island has many resonances with state-building efforts around the world up to the present.

It is fascinating that the British government in Ireland was utterly unable to cover its costs from locally raised revenue. At the start of the book, roughly 90% of Dublin Castle's budget had to be met from Westminster; by the end of the book it was down to roughly 30% but that is still a heck of a lot - and the cost of this improvement in the finances was the loss of identification with English interests of the vast majority of the previously loyal population. One question that is rarely asked is, given the huge costs of Ireland to England, why bother? I guess there was a certain amount of protecting existing investments of property and prestige, but the question of securing a geographical back door to the English realm must have been even more important - just before the start of the sixteenth century, you have Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, and just after the century ends you have thousands of Spanish troops landing in Kinsale.

Some of you will remember that my interest in this period is driven by family history. My namesake and ancestor Sir Nicholas White gets two mentions, one in passing as a reformist official, the other as the person who suggested that a legal dispute be resolved by the two litigants fighting to the death in the yard of Dublin Castle - which doesn't sound terribly reformist to me...

Anyway, somewhat heavy going in places, but enlightening all the same.

Richard Holme

Mon, 12 May 2008 09:00:58 GMT

Last week was insanely busy for me, and I've only just caught up with the news of the death of Richard Holme eight days ago, aged 71. I first knew of him in my early activist days as a student immediately after the SDP/Liberal merger, when diehard Liberals excoriated him as the demon prince of selling out to ex-Labour and later New Labour; his acceptance of a peerage rather than fight the winnable seat of Cheltenham threw activists there into a mild spin as well (if I remember rightly, the two candidates to replace him were the future MP Nigel Jones and his ex-wife, or something like that).

But when I actually got to know him, through my involvement in the Lib Dems Northern Ireland policy working group after I had moved back to Belfast, I found myself really impressed by his gravitas and also his humour. As the party's Northern Ireland spokesman, and in the House of Lords to boot, he was a bit invisible to the public eye (I shouldn't think many people reading this had ever heard of him), but was very active behind the scenes. He sent me a congratulatory note after I captained the QUB team on University Challenge, but mocked my election literature - "Couldn't you have found a photograph to use which was taken after your fourteenth birthday?"

Once I moved to the Balkans we lost touch - I was sorry to see the circumstances of his parting company with the Broadcasting Standards Council, but glad to get back in touch with him briefly a couple of years ago. Nice tribute to him by Paddy Ashdown in the Independent and by Trevor Smith and others in the Guardian.

Obscure Who link

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:21:08 GMT

Did anyone else pick up on the similarities between the settings of The Doctor's Daughter and The Ark? When they reached the spaceship at the end, I was really hoping for an explicit line about "the Steel Sky", or perhaps an elephant in the undergrowth. As it was, it looked very similar to the jungle where the Doctor, Steven and Dodo met the Monoids all those years ago. So perhaps there was a general policy of sending out mixed crews of humans and humanoids; in one case, the humanoids might be half man, half fish; in another, they might be half human, a quarter Beatle, and a quarter ping-pong ball.

May Books 2) Template

Sun, 11 May 2008 09:48:36 GMT

2) Template, by Matt Hughes

I actually read this book a week ago in Burgundy, but am following up on james_nicoll's suggestion that we all blog about it today - Hughes has kindly been distributing it electronically to anyone who promises to review it on-line.

In style, it is a conscious homage to Jack Vance, whose Tales of the Dying Earth I enjoyed a couple of years ago. There are three notable differences. First, Hughes' hero, Conn Labro, is a naïf rather than a man of smug sophistication like Cugel: he comes from a planet where all transactions are based on economics, so that (as another character describes him) he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The novel therefore becomes a quest on several levels as he explores the universe, discovers the truth about his origins and gets the girl and his inheritance. Second (though this may just me my lack of appreciation), it is much less funny. The worlds and cultures that Conn Labro encounters on his journey to enlightenment tend to be monolithically organised around a single principle, but the effect (for me anyway) was sinister rather than humorous, and presumably intended to be so.

Those two differences with Vance are matters of authorial choice, and I think Hughes deliberately takes his story in a direction Vance didn't go, and on the whole navigates well. The third difference I noted, unfortunately, is not to Hughes' credit. The women of Hughes' universe are much less visible than the men: there is the central character's love interest, a slightly comical police detective, and another character who stands and watches her brother gambling (why does she not gamble herself?) and is then horribly murdered. Vance's women are much more interesting, and on occasion get the better of his hero. If Hughes' hero doesn't always win the argument, he makes up for it by saving his lover's life.

One other small point I regretted in Hughes book - a road not taken, perhaps - is that there is a hint in an early chapter that the somewhat two-dimensional cultures described are each intended to represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins. This is a neat idea, and would have brought an interesting extra set of structures to mesh with what is a fairly standard hero's quest narrative; but Hughes doesn't quite do it. Still, I enjoyed the grand narrative sweep and general sensawunda. Good fun.

May Books 15) Kosova Express

Sun, 11 May 2008 09:12:27 GMT

15) Kosova Express: A Journey in Wartime, by James Pettifer

I've met James Pettifer half a dozen times on the Balkans conference circuit, and corresponded with him occasionally; he was kind enough to send me a copy of this book shortly after its publication in 2005, since when it has sat accusingly on my bookshelves. But I was planning to go to Kosovo next week (in the event, my plans have changed and I will go only to Montenegro and Albania) and so picked it up a few days ago.

It is an autobiographical account of what it is like to be a reporter of conflict; the physical difficulties of transport and communication in the field, the problems of getting copy into the paper, convincing sceptical editors, and overcoming opposition and interference from the British foreign policy apparatus. It is also the political story of the movement of Kosovo from miserable subjection to the verge of independence, and I don't think I have read a better account of the 1991-99 period; I really regretted that apart from a couple of vignettes from 2001, he does not take the story further.

Pettifer is a romantic. His story is full of geography, both human and physical; his Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia are steeped in history. This is both good and bad. I found myself in roughly equal measure deeply impressed by his insights into the interconnections between key figures and events across the region, and frustrated by his paranoia about continental western Europe (the "Euroids") and the British intelligence services (though if even a quarter of what he alleges is true, there are some very serious questions to answer, for instance about the Macedonian arms plot of 1993). His sympathies, like Rebecca West's, are absolutely clear, but that certainly does not make this a bad book. (I do wish someone had proof-read the Slavic names for him, though.)

Pettifer can be a difficult personality. I have seen him walk out of a conference before it began in protest at the presence of another participant. One wonders to what extent his difficulties with his various editors in London and elsewhere were personality clashes as much as professional issues. Having said that, I am impressed by the nice things he says about many people who I also count as friends, both in the region and among the foreign correspondents.

Anyway, if you want an insight into Kosovo that gives a very different perspective than the usual diplomatic histories, you could do a lot worse than start here.

Extracts from Doctor Who and the Dæmons: what the Master thinks of the Doctor

Sun, 11 May 2008 08:07:39 GMT

Two nice extracts from Doctor Who and the Dæmons, for all you Doctor/Master shippers out there (the viewpoint character is the Master in both cases):

...in a moment, he would be witness to the fulfilment of one of his lesser ambitions—the death of his old enemy, the Doctor.

Funnily enough, he was experiencing a twinge of regret. They had not always been enemies. In the early days at school they had been playmates. Even later, though their paths diverged, a friendly rivalry had been as far apart as they would allow themselves to go. If only the Doctor weren’t so abominably good! All this claptrap about morality, integrity, compassion and the rest! If only he had seen sense, together they could have ruled the Universe... But there it was. The Doctor had chosen. It was his own fault that he had to be killed.

and

...his mind was full of memories of his sometime friend. The time they played truant together, ‘borrowed’ the Senior Tutor’s skimmer and went on an unauthorised visit to the Paradise Islands; the time he fooled the High Council of the Time Lords into thinking it was the Doctor who had put glue on the President’s perigosto stick; the time the Doctor saved his life by... He shook his head fiercely. This was no time for weakness.

May Books 10-14) The Season 8 novelisations

Sat, 10 May 2008 09:04:54 GMT

Five more Who books, of which three are decidedly skippable and two rather good.

10) Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, by Terrance Dicks

This is one of Dicks' better efforts - introducing three new regular characters (Jo Grant and the Master both get good introductions here, Mike Yates rather less so) and bringing back the Autons. The Doctor is an inveterate name-dropper, and basically more fun than the character as actually played by Pertwee. It is a very rare case of Dicks actually improving on a Robert Holmes script - certainly when I eventually saw the original TV version I was disappointed that the 'orrible squamous Nestene Consciousness does not actually materialise in sight of the viewer. And it is a taproot text for much else in the later Doctor/Master stories - the radio telescope in Logopolis, the phone call in Last of the Time Lords. A good one.

ObNI: McDermott, who is the only identifiably Northern Irish character I know of in Doctor Who, here becomes a "Northcountry man".

11) Doctor Who - the Mind of Evil, by Terrance Dicks

As often happens with stories from this period, we lose the action sequences which made the original story watchable and the confusion of the plot is therefore mercilessly exposed to the reader. Three different strands of action (Master/Keller machine; nerve gas nuclear missile; peace conference) all combine here rather confusingly.

12) Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos, by Terrance Dicks

As often happens with stories from this period, the printed page is able to compensate for the ropy special effects and less convincing performances of the original. The story is still pretty silly though.

13) Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon, by Malcolm Hulke

This was one of those books which, on rereading, failed to live up to my fond childhood memories. Hulke irritatingly switches between writing down for a younger audience and meandering into heavy-handed political parable. For whatever reason, it is written as if it were Jo Grant's first story; and the introduction is much more clumsily handled than in Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons. The back-story of the human colonists is ripped off unimaginatively from dozens of better sf books about future dystopias. And the whole plot basically makes no sense. The least good of the Hulke books so far.

14) Doctor Who and the Dæmons, by Barry Letts

This was one of those books which, on rereading, very much lived up to my fond childhood memories. It is funny, witty, adds bags of backstory to both minor and major characters (the account of the Doctor and the Master growing up together on Gallifrey ought to be canon for all interested fanfic writers), substitutes far better special effects on the page for the end-of-budget ones we got on-screen, and is generally a good read. My favourite Third Doctor book so far.

Who those people are

Sat, 10 May 2008 08:42:29 GMT

Yes, a lot of you got it: the seven women in my previous question are all presidents of their countries - respectively, as miteque said, of Liberia, Ireland, Finland, Philippines, Chile, Argentina and India. wwhyte has a point in that not all have executive powers - though the majority of them (Liberia, Philippines, Chile, Argentina and to a certain extent Finland) do.

Female heads of state is too broad an answer - that would leave out the Queens of the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands, and arguably the Governors-General of Canada, Antigua and ~~Barbados~~ Barbuda, and St Lucia.

Even democratically elected female heads of state/ female heads of state in republics is too broad an answer - that description would also have to include this lady, currently in her second term and looking a bit uncomfortable in her ceremonial uniform:

So, who is she???

Edited to add: - See comments for the answer - miteque got the country, and arwel_p named her correctly.

Who are these people?

Fri, 09 May 2008 20:45:10 GMT

What makes these seven women unique in the world today?

We love Dodo

Fri, 09 May 2008 20:23:52 GMT

livii shares my insane fascination and writes about it at length here. There's not a lot of us about who appreciate her.

May Books 6-9) The Liz Shaw novelisations

Thu, 08 May 2008 07:16:09 GMT

So, on to the Third Doctor books, starting with three Dicks efforts of varying quality, and a good one by Malcolm Hulke; all covering stories first broadcast in 1970.

6) Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks

This was the first original Target novelisation (published after the three 1960s First Doctor novels had been reissued) and the first of over sixty novelisations by Dicks (plus a dozen spinoffs). It's not actually one of his better ones (and it's interesting that I often find myself writing that about Dicks' novelisations of Robert Holmes' stories). In particular, the joke of Sam Seeley being a funny little man from the country grates even worse on the printed page than it did on screen, and there is not enough clarity about who the viewpoint character is meant to be. I had fond memories of this from when I first read it as a child, but it didn't really live up to them.

7) Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke

This was the second original novel in Target's series of novelisations after Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, the first of Hulke's six books for the range. It is a good one; Hulke tells the story in part from the point of view of the eponymous cave monsters (the word "Silurian" is not used here), showing us humans as alien vermin. He also makes the story a more overt parable about authority and power, and adds little bits of character especially for the Brigadier and Liz. (And see note below on a minor character.) I suspect this will be near the top of my list of Third Doctor novels.

8) Doctor Who - the Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks

This is not particularly good. We lose out on the action scenes which were one of the original story's strong points (along with generally good direction), and Dicks adds little new to the plot (having said which, see below for a point on a minor character) which basically exposes its weaknesses rather more mercilessly to the reader. Published in 1987, this was the last of the televised Third Doctor stories to reach print (wording chosen carefully to allow for Barry Letts' novels based on his two audio dramas).

9) Doctor Who - Inferno, by Terrance Dicks

I'm glad to say that Doctor Who - Inferno, published in 1984, is one of Dicks' better novelisations. He has judiciously trimmed Don Houghton's original seven episodes (deleting its least attractive aspect, the sexist banter between Greg Sutton and Petra Williams) to make a good TV story an exciting book. The twist of the parallel world plotline makes the Third Doctor himself the viewpoint character for a substantial chunk, and this always brings out Dicks at his best.

Two of these books contain explicit references to Northern Ireland, which are otherwise very rare in the Doctor Who mythos (though see also Daragh Carville's play, Regenerations). In Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, we get the following back story for Major Barker (renamed from Baker in the TV story, where he was played by Norman Jones without a beard):

...he saw himself one rainy day in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, leading a group of soldiers who were trying to pin down an IRA sniper. The sniper had already shot two of his men dead, and wounded a third. The Major carefully worked his men into a position so that the sniper was completely surrounded. Then he called upon the sniper to surrender. A rifle was thrown down from a window, and a man appeared with his arms raised. As Major Barker called on his men to break cover and arrest the sniper, shots rang out from a sniper in another building, instantly killing the young soldier next to Major Barker. Without a second's thought, Barker aimed his revolver at the sniper standing with his hands up in surrender, and shot him dead. For that moment of anger, Major Barker had been asked to resign from the British Army and to find another job.

Things had changed rather drastically in Northern Ireland between the time of broadcast of this story (January-March 1970) and Hulke's novelisation, published four years later. According to the grim and masterly Sutton index, before the summer of 1970 the only people killed by the British Army in Northern Ireland were two Protestants shot during riots on the Shankill Road. IRA sniper attacks on the army began only in February 1971. (I don't know if this is at all helpful for the UNIT dating controversy.) The idea that Barker would have been removed from the army in the circumstances described is rather grimly laughable; even the odious Lee Clegg was eventually allowed to walk free and return to the ranks.

The second (and briefer) such reference is in Doctor Who - the Ambassadors of Death, where we are told that Reegan (as played by William Dysart)

had been born in Ireland, though he had spent much of his life in America and other parts of the world, frequently on the run from the law. He had begun his criminal career robbing banks for the IRA, and had left Ireland in danger of his life when it had been discovered that he was keeping more of the proceeds for himself than he was donating to the Cause.

More recent events notwithstanding, Reegan's history sounds more like Odd Man Out than anything else; Dicks celebrates his 73rd birthday this coming weekend, so would have been twelve when Odd Man Out was first released. England seems an odd choice of refuge for a former IRA bank robber to flee to.

I've headlined this post by referring to Liz Shaw, but in fact she doesn't come across particularly well on the printed page and, given my childhood memories of the first two of these books, I was surprised by how much I liked Caroline John in the TV role when I watched. I am beginning to spot a pattern where the brainy companions (Zoe and Liz) don't transfer well to the novelisations, whereas the screamy ones (Victoria, Polly and I expect Jo) actually come over rather better.

May Books 5) About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1985-1989

Sun, 04 May 2008 19:04:37 GMT

5) About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1985-1989

This is the last (so far) of the About Time series of guides to Doctor Who, covering not only all the Seventh Doctor series and all but the first of the Sixth Doctor stories, but also the 1999 TV movie, the misconceived 1993 Dimensions in Time piece, The Curse of Fatal Death and the two Peter Cushing movies. Tat Wood is the main credited author (Lawrence Miles being absent this time, but with "additional material" by Lars Pearson and a defence of The Two Doctors by Robert Shearman).

As in previous volumes, Wood's sarcastic yet affectionate humour makes it a good read, even though it's the period of the programme's history I probably know least well. There are some brilliantly sardonic one-liners which I was regrettably unable to refrain from reading aloud to anyone who would listen. The explanatory essays are as good as ever. Slightly disappointed with the editing - there seem to be a lot more typoes than usual, and some other structural glitches as well. But any serious fan needs to get this.

May Books 4) Decalog 2: Lost Property

Sun, 04 May 2008 07:09:58 GMT

4) Decalog 2: Lost Property, edited by Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker

A collection of ten DW short stories (actually one has no Doctor, but does have Sarah Jane, Mike Yates, K9 and the Master). As usual, of varying but mostly good quality; I hope any of the other contributors who read this will forgive me for favouriting the two Fourth Doctor / Leela stories, one by Tim Robins and set on a commercially exploited Mars, the other by Pam Baddeley and setting settlers against indigenous people on a planet with its own bizarre legal culture. Apart from that, I enjoyed all the rest except the one with Zoe and Jamie and the one with Peri and the peculiar timeshare.

May Books 3) Don Quixote, Part II

Sat, 03 May 2008 16:04:55 GMT

3) Second Part of the Ingenious Knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Well, I finally managed it: the second half of Don Quixote, having read the first part three years ago. It hangs together rather better than the first part - much less episodic, one senses that unlike his characters the author knew which way things were going. There is some nasty business with a Duke and Duchess who set our heroes up for a series of practical jokes; but Sancho Panza acquits himself very well from it all. In the end, Quixote's neighbours get him to just give it a rest, and the world is obviously a poorer place as a result. (Also he then dies, to reinforce the point.)

One recurrent theme of Volume II is that Quixote and Panza keep on bumping into people who know them not only from Volume I (published ten years before) but also from the seventeenth-century equivalent of fan fiction; in an early chapter, Panza is prevailed upon to explain a couple of continuity glitches from the previous volume, and there's a repeated complaint that the fanfic writers have got the leading characters completely wrong. (Tat Wood makes an obvious parallel in About Time Volume 6, which I have also been reading this weekend.)

Anyway, that's another off my list of classic literature and 2008 reading resolutions. It didn't blow me away, to be honest, in the same way that Proust has been doing; but it is one of those books everyone should try and get through.

May Books 1) The Prince of Tides

Fri, 02 May 2008 19:51:12 GMT

1) The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

I must admit I wouldn't normally read a book like this; it came free with the Palm T|X back in November 2005, and I had pretty much laid that gadget aside since I got a Blackberry with my new job last year. Oddly enough, it has been the Hugo nominees that pushed me back to the Palm; the best way that I found of reading the nominated short fiction available was to convert via Mobipocket to Palm format. So I came back to this epic novel as well.

Well. It's a tale of a memorably dysfunctional family - not just the standard horrors of conflicting gender roles and alcoholism, but also dead babies in the freezer and rapists eaten by a convenient tiger. The emotional dynamic between the narrator, his twin sister, his brother and their parents is convincing and compelling, and gripped me through to the end.

Oddly, the least believable element is not so much the grand drama of events in South Carolina but the narrator's conversations (and eventual fling) with his sister's psychiatrist in New York. The other slightly peculiar element, as with The Red Badge of Courage (though not as bad), is that the rednecks (including the narrator) seem suspiciously articulate.

Glad I read it. Mostly.

April Books 35-40) Six Jamie / Zoe novelisations

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:42:45 GMT

I'd already read probably the best Jamie / Zoe novel, Doctor Who - The Invasion, by Ian Marter, and also the worst, Doctor Who and the Dominators, also oddly enough by Ian Marter. Four of the other six are fairly standard efforts by Terrance Dicks, but the other two present points of interest.

35) Doctor Who - The Wheel in Space

A standard Dicks novelisation, compressing a six part script into Target format without adding much of interest. Happily, the best line of the original remains intact.

36) Doctor Who - The Mind Robber, by Peter Ling

This is much more fun. The original TV version was one of the most surreal stories ever; the novel takes some liberties with the script, but basically improves it further to make it one of the better Second Doctor novels. Even the Karkus somehow makes better sense here. One to look out for.

37) Doctor Who and the Krotons, by Terrance Dicks

Again, an average Dicks treatment of a less-than-average Robert Holmes story.

38) Doctor Who - The Seeds of Death, by Terrance Dicks

For once I felt Dicks was trying a bit harder here, with a certain amount of characterisation and back-story for the (admittedly somewhat implausible) future Earth society and the hierarchy in charge of the T-Mat. The Doctor gets really trigger-happy with his wholesale slaughter of Ice Warriors at the end. One visual that I am happy to lose is the Ice Warrior leader Slaar, who reminds me too much of Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet in Space Balls.

39) Doctor Who - The Space Pirates, by Terrance Dicks

The good thing about the novelisation is that we are spared the excruciatingly awful accents of the original version (Milo Clancy is almost certainly Irish here). The bad thing is that we see even more clearly just how implausible the plot actually is. None the less, I felt Dicks was trying a little harder here, and he has made a pretty awful story slightly less awful.

40) Doctor Who and the War Games, by Malcolm Hulke

I seem to be against received fannish wisdom in finding this rather good, if taken on its own merits. The original story is one of the great Who stories; the novelisation, constrained to less than fifteen pages for each of the ten episodes, is not quite of the same quality, but none the less tells a good story well, with decent foreshadowing of the Doctor's fate and sensible meditations on the nature of war. This is the first Hulke novelisation I have read in this run, and sadly was the last he wrote before his death, so I am looking forward to the others.

So, that's it for the Second Doctor novelisations. I finished up my read-through of the First Doctor novels by regretting that almost nobody manages to capture Hartnell's performance on the printed page. Troughton (who perhaps put less of his own personality into the part than any other Doctor before Davison) is easier to pin down, the visual aspects of his performance more easily described. Of the other regulars, I felt that Victoria gains most, and Zoe loses most, on the printed page. Perhaps it is easier to inject some gravitas into the rather two-dimensional Victoria than to convey how stunningly cute Wendy Padbury is as Zoe.

The best of the Second Doctor novelisations are John Peel's Doctor Who - The Power of the Daleks, Terrance Dicks' Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, Peter Ling's Doctor Who - The Mind Robber and Ian Marter's Doctor Who - The Invasion, with honourable mentions to Doctor Who - The Evil of the Daleks, the other three early Season 5 books, and Doctor Who and the War Games. None is quite as good as the best of the First Doctor novelisations, though.

Since I am reading these on my commute and am taking a long weekend chez scattyme in France, it'll be a while before I do the next lot.

Half a dozen classic Who stories

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:21:19 GMT

Just because I'm reading the novels doesn't mean I am neglecting my duties to the original classic television series (though I imagine I will finish the novels first). But I realise I've fallen behind a bit in recording my reactions to them since the start of last month.

The Brain of Morbius is awfully good, considering. OK, you have to suspend your disbelief a bit because of the unlikelihood of Solon setting up his lab on precisely the same planet as the Sisterhood of Karn, and there's a wee bit of time-wasting running around in the second half of the story. But basically this is Hinchcliffe/Holmes Who at its peak, witty, gruesome (but not too gruesome), and also rooted in continuity without being wedded to it. I loved it.

I was surprised that I did not really enjoy The Pirate Planet very much on watching it again (for the first time since 1978). Not a lot of it makes sense, and it isn't really funny enough to compensate. Mary Tamm rather glows as Romana, and that is surprisingly the best thing I can find to say about it.

I was surprised that I did enjoy Warrior's Gate. A somewhat surreal plot line, with reflections on colonialism, empire and slavery, and also Romana's extended farewell to the Tardis (for once, decently signalled in advance, more perhaps than for any companion since Victoria). Even Adric, for once, seemed to fit in reasonably well. Definitely worth watching again.

I'm afraid Arc of Infinity on the whole left me cold; Gallifrey has become just a really stupid place, where they put Colin Baker, of all people, in charge of security. The moments of Omega's return at the end would have been quite effective if it hadn't been for the nonsense of the previous three episodes.

Given the current return of the Sontarans to our screens, I thought I should revisit The Two Doctors, which didn't impress me much at the time and which fandom has since excoriated. Actually, I liked it more than I expected. If you've only seen Troughton in The Three Doctors, The Krotons and The Five Doctors (as was the case for me first time round) it doesn't make a lot of sense; but the character here is rather more consonant with the actual Doctor of the later Troughton era - think especially of The Seeds of Death where he blows the hell out of every Ice Warrior he meets. Colin Baker seems unusually at ease with himself as well, and Nicola Bryant's skimpy costume makes up for Peri's rather whiny characterisation. Even Fraser Hines manages to invest Jamie with a certain maturity. OK, the story rather runs out of steam in the last of the (double-length) episodes, but Robert Shearman makes a good argument in About Time VI as to why this is happening. This is probably the Sontarans' least impressive outing.

Time and the Rani is, unfortunately, just dire. It's not the fault of the actors - McCoy does rather well in his first outing, and the others do their best with what they are given. It's a combination of the script, which is pretty run-of-the-mill, and the incidental music, which is just simply awful - I think the worst I can remember. (It's ironic that the music was the one aspect of NuWho that McCoy didn't like.) The wriring was obviously on the wall, and as ever with this period of Doctor Who I find myself marvelling that it lasted until 1989.

So, in summary, The Brain of Morbius and Warrior's Gate are real classics, and The Two Doctors held up better than I had expected; skip the rest.

Dublin Review of Books

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:50:46 GMT

Jeff Dudgeon alerts me to the Dublin Review of Books, "a free quarterly online journal whose main object is the publication of clear and thoughtful analysis based on recently published books". Various articles to browse through at my leisure, many from the perspective, more visible in intellectual discourse than in election results, of the Irish Left. I particularly enjoyed two pieces from the current issue:

Tony Brown on Irish Euroscepticism. I know Tony as a very nice guy involved with the Institute of European Affairs in Dublin, where I have spoken a couple of times. Here he lets his passion out, exposing the mendacity of the anti-EU cause in Ireland. I recommend it especially to British friends to see how the issue plays out in the neighbouring jurisdiction. However, it should also be noted that the anti-EU forces have lost every time in Ireland, if sometimes only on the second round. (Also I notice that the article, despite being in the Dublin Review of Books, doesn't actually cite any, er, books. But it's still very much worth reading.)

Brendan O'Leary on Paul Bew's Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006. Again, an author I know on a subject I know; I first met Bew at the departmental parties our family would host, long before he got my father's old job in Belfast let alone his recent peerage, and O'Leary has greatly flattered me in print. O'Leary's article here attempts to forensically dissect Bew's new blockbuster on the recent history of Ireland, but ends up making me want to buy and read the book, to see what I think of it myself. O'Leary feels that Bew attaches too much strength to the importance of indigenous factors and not enough to external (ie British) influence on events: I'm not sure all of his points are totally convincing, but he makes them very entertainingly. (A minor irritation is that you have to download O'Leary's footnotes in a standalone Word document; in this day and age, that is simply unprofessional.)

Anyway, a site to keep watching. Lots more that I enjoyed browsing through, but as I said, these were the two articles that particularly grabbed me.

April Books 33-34) Two biographies of Tolkien

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:41:53 GMT

33) J. R. R. Tolkien: a biography, by Humphrey Carpenter

My bookblogging has been in part inspired by my father, who logged every book he read from his late teens until his death in 1990 in a series of small notebooks. From the mid-60s he got into the habit of putting most of his comments, if he had any, on index cards inside the actual books, and only rarely jotting down his thoughts in more permanent form. In the case of Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien, which he read in January 1980 during the year we lived in the Netherlands, he wrote this:

I read this primarily because the children are currently so interested in Tolkien, & William had given Nicholas this book as an Xmas present. But I found it an unusually interesting & perceptive biography. I'll note more or less at random some of the points that struck me: -
    1./ The account of the relationship between Tolkien & his wife. Begins romantically, in their waiting 3 years for each other. Yet she wasn't really suited to be a don's wife. She disliked his friendship w CS Lewis, & he evidently told her to lump it. She was happy only at the v. end, when they lived in Bournemouth. Yet through it all he was fond of her - & presumably she of him, tho' the author doesn't offer evidence on this.
    2./ What T's Catholicism meant to him. One wdn't have guessed this from his books. But it comes through here. Author reasonably suggests that it was reinforced by the sacrifices T's mother made for the Faith.
    3./ Security of tenure for academics can pay off in unexpected ways. T got an Oxford chair at age of 32, on strength of promising work. He completed v. little more of an academic nature, & must have been the despair of editors & publishers. Yet he was working, at something much more original than he cd have done if his livelihood had depended on production. The outcome was what many people consider a masterpiece - The Lord of the Rings.
    4./ The tenacity with which he kept to the central purpose of his life - the construction of an entire mythology. The author implies that this had formed in his mind as early as about 1917, when he was 25. He was still at it when he died, aged 81. It didn't take quite the form he envisaged, for The Lord of the Rings was an offshoot, & the Silmarillion, which he started first, was still uncompleted when he died. But the area of concern remained remarkably steady through his life. He was 62 when the first part of The Lord of the Rings was published, so he waited a long time for achievement, but it came in the end.
    This pattern, of a man finding a theme early in life, & then spending a lifetime playing it out, is a common one. I think of de Gaulle, Lenin, Marx, Darwin.

I don't know what happened to the copy wwhyte bought me 28 years ago - most likely still in our mother's house (probably, indeed, in his room!) - but I decided to get myself a replacement on a birthday bookshop browse yesterday. All the things my father said about it are still true; although I have got a lot more explanation of Tolkien's thought from Shippey and Garth, this must surely still be the best single source for the general details of his life - born in South Africa, brought up in Birmingham as a bright but impoverished middle-class orphan, invalided out of the first world war while his friends were killed, early promise not really realised in an obscure corner of academe, fame and fortune at the end of the life when he was almost too old to enjoy it. It was a good read that Christmas in 1979, and it is a good read now.

34) J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth, by Daniel Grotta

While I was at it I bought this Tolkien biography at the same bookshop in order to do a compare and contrast. It is two-thirds the length of Carpenter's book, and one third the quality. Grotta admits rather grumpily (indeed, perhaps even peevishly!) that he was not given much access by the Tolkien family, but is gracious enough to recommend that the interested reader should get Carpenter's book as well - I doubt if Carpenter would have or indeed should have returned the compliment! For the non-British reader he offers perhaps a bit more external perspective on what England was like in the early twentieth century, and he has more of the detail on the Ace vs Ballantyne affair, but he makes several annoying errors of detail which make it difficult to really trust the rest of his findings. Also the book is irritatingly repetitive in places. I would hesitate even to recommend it for the completist.

AKICILJ - Wii Fit

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:37:01 GMT

What is the basic equipment you would need to invest in to enjoy the benefits of Wii Fitness?