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.

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: Fourth Doctor and Sarah reprise Frankenstein )
( The Pirate Planet: Fourth Doctor, Romana I and K-9 do battle with Douglas Adams )
( Warrior's Gate: Fourth Doctor, Romana II, K-9 and Adric at the junction of the universes )
( Arc of Infinity: Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa meet the future Sixth Doctor and Omega )
( The Two Doctors: Sixth Doctor and Peri meet Second Doctor and Jamie and do battle with the Sontarans )
( Time and the Rani: newly regenerated Seventh Doctor and Mel deal with renegade Time Lady )

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.

( The Game: Five and Nyssa bring peace to a vicious planet, with William Russell )

( Dreamtime: Seven, Ace and Hex find Ayers' Rock/Uluru in space )

( Catch-1782: Six and Mel make some genealogical discoveries )

In summary, three unexceptional but decent plays.

Three more Big Finish audios, the last one slightly out of sequence:

( Her Final Flight: Sixth Doctor meets Peri many years on - or does he? )

( The Juggernauts: Sixth Doctor and Mel meet Davros and the Daleks )

( Three's a Crowd: Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem face angst and agoraphobia )

In summary, three good 'uns.
------------------

Actually I've listened to five since my last big write-up but already did The Harvest here.

( The Axis of Insanity: Five, Peri and Erimem in interdimensional confusion )

( Arrangements for War: Six and Evelyn and a Romeo-and-Juliet situation )

( The Roof of the World: Five, Peri and Erimem play cricket in Tibet )

( Medicinal Purposes: Six and Evelyn go body-snatching )

I'm coming to realise that the Big Finish audios are a bit hit and miss; but then, so was the classic series, and so is the new version too. Sturgeon's Law, I suppose.

As ever, I'm a bit behind with my Who-blogging - in particular I want to do a decent write-up of the I, Davros series which I listened to commuting last week - but two of the recent batch had something interesting in common.

( Real Time )

( The Harvest )

Neither of these is as good as the greatest Cyberman story ever, which is Spare Parts, but they both take the Cyberman concept to places it has not gone on TV, where the only original Cyberman story after their first appearance is Tomb of the Cybermen - sad to say, the most interesting thing a Cyberman does in their 2006 incarnation is the fooling around on the gag reel of the DVDs which is the source for my icon (thanks again to bohemiancoast).

...although none of these five really deserves to be called a "classic" in its own right, and one of them is quite possibly the worst of the show's original run.

( Planet of Evil: Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane and anti-matter monsters )

( The Invasion of Time: Fourth Doctor, Leela, and K9 on Gallifrey fighting Sontarans )

( The Horns of Nimon: Fourth Doctor, Romana II and K9 re-enact ancient Greek myth )

( Black Orchid: Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric in the 1930s )

( The Twin Dilemma: The Sixth Doctor's first story, with Peri, and possibly the worst of the original run of Doctor Who )

So, in summary, Black Orchid and The Invasion of Time are surprisingly watchable despite their flaws; Planet of Evil not quite as convincing; The Horns of Nimon decidedly less so; and The Twin Dilemma should be skipped. It is firmly at the bottom of the Dynamic Rankings site and likely to stay there.

Another catch-up post for Big Finish adventures 51-55, of which the first features the Sixth Doctor and Iris Wildthyme, and the others are Eighth Doctor and Charlie in the alternate universe which they were banished to at the end of Zagreus, with new companion C'rizz (pronounced "Kerres") joining for the last three.

( The Wormery )
( Scherzo )
( The Creed of the Kromon )
( The Natural History of Fear )
( The Twilight Kingdom )

The four Excelis plays were apparently run as a parallel track to the first Eighth Doctor audios from Big Finish. They link the established Big Finish central characters - the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors, and Bernice Summerfield - with (in the first three) the marvellous Anthony Stewart Head (Giles from Buffy) and (in the first and last) Katy Manning as Iris Wyldthyme, a renegade Time Lord rather different in character from Jo Grant. They are fairly self-contained as stories; I thought the third, Excelis Decays, was the best.

( Excelis Dawns )

( Excelis Rising )

( Excelis Decays )

( The Plague Herds of Excelis )

1) About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1980-1984, by Laurence Miles and Tat Wood

This is the fifth and latest so far published in this superb series of reference guides to Doctor Who (see previous reviews of volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4). It's the only one that doesn't begin or end with a change of Doctors - it encapsulates the whole Peter Davison era, plus Tom Baker's last season and Colin Baker's first story; it also, of course, covers roughly the first half of John Nathan-Turner's time as producer. It's an era where my memory is variable - I saw every episode of seasons 18 and 19 when first broadcast, but remember only about half of season 20 and a bit less of season 21. Since I started watching old Who again in 2005, I've seen only five stories from this period (out of 29), so on the whole it is less fresh for me.

Still, Miles and Wood deliver the goods, explaining what the intellectual and cultural roots of each story are, usually finding good things to say despite their general anti-John Nathan-Turner snarking as well as blistering specific critiques of each one (eg, under The Twin Dilemma, they point out that there doesn't actually appear to be a dilemma in the story). Their inserted essays are, I think, more analytical on the whole than in the other volumes, starting and finishing with the cases for the defence and prosecution of JNT, and including also reflections on the effects of Doctor Who Monthly and the 1983 Longleat celebration on Doctor Who fandom.

wwhyte thinks they miss the importance of the Renaissance in Season 18. They also mourn the fact that Graeme Harper directed only two stories - fortunately, this turns out not to be true.

I have another three Who books on my reading pile, but this series is the best I have seen so far.

Not really the ones I would have chosen to watch during the longueurs of this week's business trip, but they just happened to be the stories I had to hand when doing the last-minute packing.

( The Sea Devils: Third Doctor, Jo, the Master and aquatic reptiles )

( Trial of a Time Lord parts 5-8 (Mindwarp): Sixth Doctor, Peri and Brian Blessed )
( Trial of a Time Lord parts 9-12 (Terror of the Vervoids): Sixth Doctor, Mel and the Vervoids )
( Trial of a Time Lord parts 13-14 (The Ultimate Foe): Sixth Doctor, Mel, the Master and the Matrix )

( The Happiness Patrol: Seventh Doctor, Ace and the Candyman )

So in summary, "Mindwarp" was an unexpected pleasure, The Sea Devils, "Terror of the Vervoids" and The Happiness Patrol all had their strengths and weaknesses, and "The Ultimate Foe" is best forgotten.

Two Doctor Who audios this week - yes, the month that Big Finish are publishing the 100th in their series of plays, I have got around to #50, Zagreus, a three-CD extravaganza with four Doctors (Davison, C Baker, McCoy and McGann); and I also listened to Slipback, the first proper Doctor Who audio play (I shall justify this controversial claim below), broadcast by the BBC in 1985.

Zagreus is surely the best (so far) of the various anniversary offerings. The Three Doctors is rather poor, The Five Doctors is at least an honest effort, and the less said about the 30th anniversary the better. But here we have the "current" Eighth Doctor/Charley pairing (the sparkling Paul McGann/India Fisher combination) meeting a whole host of characters, more or less real, played by former cast members of the televised series. I didn't recognise all the voices on first listening, partly because I wasn't expecting so many, but I may even try listening again with a crib sheet in front of me; as well as Lalla Ward and Louise Jameson reprising Romana II and Leela, with splendid Time Lady/savage bitchiness setting up the scenario for the Gallifrey spinoffs (plus John Leeson as K-9), we have the voices of Polly, the Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith, Nyssa, Turlough, Peri, Erimem, Evelyn Smythe, Mel, Ace, Benny, and the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors all playing other parts, and also Don Warrington as Rassilon, three years before he became President of Britain. Oh, and Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor, even though he had died seven years earlier. I'm not wild about the main plot strand, though it develops quite well from the previous Eighth Doctor story, Neverland, but the device of exploring the Doctor's past through distorted reflections in his subconscious works - it could have been really gruesome and self-indulgent, but in fact you can't wait to find out what happens next. I am not surprised to find that Alan Barnes, who is my favourite of the Big Finish writers, gets an authoring credit here.

Slipback was produced in the 18-month hiatus between Colin Baker's two full seasons, a six-part radio series starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Sixth Doctor and Peri. It's an odd contrast to the more recent Big Finish audios featuring Baker and/or Bryant. The first difference to strike you is that Baker really doesn't much reflect the egotistical brash persona of the Sixth Doctor as seen on TV and heard in the videos. (Bryant is unmistakeably Peri though.) The second difference is that the six episodes only last ten minutes each, which really is the wrong length. If this had been successful, we might have seen a seamless transitioning of Doctor Who to audio instead of television, more than a decade before Big Finish got into it. But it wasn't. The problem is that the author was Eric Saward, trying to channel Douglas Adams and not doing it very well. One of the characters is a computer with a squeaky accent, combining Eddie and Trillian from the Hitch-Hiker's Guide. Valentine Dyall is wasted as an insane spaceship captain who enjoys his baths. The whole thing fails to gel.

None the less, this is the first "proper" Doctor Who audio play. The 1976 Fourth Doctor audios don't count: in Doctor Who and the Pescatons, most of the narrative is carried by the Fourth Doctor telling the story, with occasional voicing from Sarah Jane Smith and the villain, and in any case it isn't a "real" BBC production. Exploration Earth is too didactic to count as proper drama. The two Third Doctor audio stories were recorded later. So Slipback is in a lot of ways the fons et origo for  Big Finish's subsequent triumphs.

Two rather routine stories, followed by four very experimental ones and three stories revisiting old Who themes.

Nekromanteia: listened to it some time ago. Five, Peri and Erimem, rather incoherent plot with witches and planetary invasion, nice touch with the cat at the end.

The Dark Flame: felt this worked a bit better. Seven, Ace and Benny and a rather complex tale of identities and possession - seemed to borrow bits from Image of the Fendahl and The Hand of Fear, but no harm in that.

Doctor Who and the Pirates: billed as the Six and Evelyn musical story, though in fact the Gilbert and Sullivan songs are restricted to the third episode of the four. Bill Oddie as the pirate captain! But a very successful leavening of the comic overtones with a serious and tragic foundation.

Creatures of Beauty: Another experiment in format, with the plot fragmented non-sequentially across the four episodes, so that the crucial contribution of Five and Nyssa to the very beginning of the story only really becomes clear at the end. Very well done.

Project: Lazarus is a story in two parts, the first of which is (another) tragic tale with Six and Evelyn, and the second featuring Seven and Six together - or is it really Six? Rather on the horrific side for my taste, but well done.

Flip-Flop: Like Creatures of Beauty, requires some intellectual work from the listener. The two discs are alternate versions of the same planet's history, in each case changed into the other by the intervention of the Doctor and Mel. Really very well done.

Omega: Five on his own, dealing with Omega who is attempting to re-manifest in this universe. Lots of creative playing with the listener's head, culminating in a brilliant moment at the end of episode three. And an Irish time lord - Professor Ertikus, played by Patrick Duggan. Really liked it despite my lack of familiarity with Arc of Infinity. Despite the serious theme I thought it borrowed more than a few elements from Douglas Adams.

Davros: Alas, despite resurrecting Terry Molloy to play Davros, ex-Gulliver/Time Lord/Thal Bernard Horsfall to play the chief human villain, and the fantastic Wendy Padbury to play his wife, I felt the brilliant cast was let down by the plot, which has an episode of silly office bickering between the Sixth Doctor and Davros and then the predictable mayhem and slaughter.

Master: Again, alas, decent performances by all, rather let down by the plot which is an extended piece of the type of fan-fic we have all read so much of since June. (Except this is Seven/Beevers Master rather than Ten/Simm Master.)

In summary, the middle five of these are all excellent; not so sure about the two on either side, though Davros does have nostalgia value.

6) The Age of Chaos, by Colin Baker

( Cover picture - note top right corner )

Yes, it's a real rarity - the only full-length Doctor Who book written by one of the Doctor Who actors. Colin Baker had written three Sixth Doctor stories featuring his own character and Bonnie Langford's Mel, but here's a full 96-page graphic novel published by Marvel in 1994, taking the story of Peri further. I have not seen the series in which she gets married off to Brian Blessed (or killed, depending on the interpretation), but Colin Baker obviously feels as strongly about it as most fans do:

( Colin Baker's introduction )

Anyway, it's a fun quest story, rather in the Conan the Barbarian genre of medieval romps, though with inevitable science fictional overtones; the Doctor, his penguin-shaped companion Frobisher, and a locally recruited warrior set off to save Peri's grandchildren and their kingdom, Peri herself having disappeared some time back. My only problem with it is that the artist who drew three quarters of the book, Barrie Mitchell, referred to so positively by Baker in the introduction, doesn't actually draw the Doctor to look very much like Baker at all! (Mitchell is apparently best known for having drawn "The Four Marys" in the girls' comic Bunty, though I doubt that he did it for the whole run from 1958 to 2001 as WikiPedia implies.) The artist of the first quarter of the book, veteran John M Burns, seemed to me to catch him rather better.

( Sixth Doctor by Mitchell and Burns )

This books is something of a curio, admittedly, but quite fun. Edited to add: For more on it see snapesbabe here and here.

Planet of the Spiders was Jon Pertwee's swan-song as the Doctor, back in 1974. Not as bad as some of the other Pertwee stories I have seen, but as with so many of them it is rather spoiled by the ropey CSO effects, the ineptly chosen cliff-hangers, and the frankly not very scary spiders. Also one of the supporting cast (Jenny Laird, playing Neska) is so wooden in her acting as to suck the life out of any scene she appears in. But the others are good, the Doctor/Sarah Jane chemistry is great (and her grief when the Doctor appears to have died all the more credible), and it's also good to see (in Tommy) a positive and sympathetic portrayal of someone with learning difficulties. Sadly, as so often for this era, Terrance Dicks' novelisation is better.

The Mysterious Planet was Robert Holmes' swan-song, from 1986. He wrote some of the best stories of the original Doctor Who run; this is not one of them. It's the first segment of the infamous Trial of a Time Lord season, with the action of the main narrative (the Doctor and Peri land on a mysterious planet and must prevent the local bad guys from taking over the universe; also confusingly it may or may not be a far future Earth) frequently interrupted by flashforwards to a courtroom where the Doctor is on trial, the main story being presented as evidence for the prosecution.

The trial sub-plot simply does not work. There appears to be no due procedure that makes any sense; the evidence presented by the Valeyard (at least as far as this story goes) doesn't do much to prove the case (as even the Inquisitor admits). If you simply tune out these deeply embarrassing bits, you are left with a fairly standard story: a couple of decent performances from guest actors, and a couple of very cardboard-looking robots.

Attack of the Graske is an interactive game on the BBC website featuring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, inviting the young viewer to help him prevent the eponymous Graske from ruining a family Christmas (it went on-line immediately after The Christmas Invasion was shown). The logic puzzles are not terribly taxing but Tennant is at his most charming and chummy, and there is a nicely done (if slightly pointless) scene in Victorian England.

I discovered that I had been missing out on the Doctor Who Monthly CDs issued as companion pieces for the Big Finish sequence of audio plays - I had heard one of them, The Maltese Penguin, but in the wrong place - so have caught up with the first three to take me to roughly the right place in internal continuity.

( The Ratings War )

( No Place Like Home )

( Living Legend )

Am revisiting some Old Who soundtracks for the rest of this week's listening.

( The Rapture: Seventh Doctor, Ace and Tony Blackburn on Ibiza )
( The Sandman: Sixth Doctor and Evelyn and some aliens )
( The Church and the Crown: Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem in the France of the Three Musketeers )
( Bang-Bang-A-Boom! Seventh Doctor and Mel in a far-future version of the Eurovision Song Contest )
( Jubilee: Sixth Doctor, Evelyn and the Daleks, in a story which was later revised for television )

So, in summary, all good stuff, with The Rapture the best and The Sandman the least impressive.

Two stories from Old Who which were both better than I had expected.

( Invasion of the Dinosaurs )

( Revelation of the Daleks )

tijsmans was asking what classic Who he should watch to get up to speed (or, as he put it, to become "a legitimate Who fanboy"). He already has Genesis of the daleks and The Deadly Assassin; my other recommendations to him were as follows.

( recommendations )

Discussion welcome!

I have slipped behind in noting these, partly due to my long trip ending after 24 hours rather than six days last week. So this will be a fairly short set of reviews.

( Five Sarah Jane Smith Plays... )

( ...five with Five, Six and Seven... )

( ...and three of Eight. )

Anyway, looking forward to the next ones now; though I may take a break from the sequence for some more spinoff plays first.

My return to the gym this week after almost a month's absence, combined with some solitary lunches and longer than expected train journeys, meant that I got through four more Who audios, one for each of the four participating Doctors. I liked the first of these least, and the last most.

( Minuet in Hell: Eight, Charley, Brigadier and a real muddle of a story )

( Loups-Garoux: Five, Turlough and werewolves in Brazil )

( Dust Breeding: Seven, Ace, and old friends )

( Bloodtide: Six, Evelyn, Charles Darwin and the Silurians )

So, skip the first of these but the other three are all worth getting.

More Doctor Who audios - I know I said I was taking a break, but had problems finding and then ripping the CDs I actually wanted to listen to, so they will have to be later in the week. Two clunkers, one OK and one superb one this time.

( The Maltese Penguin: Sixth Doctor and Frobisher in a yawn a minute )

( The Holy Terror: Sixth Doctor and Frobisher again )

( Last of the Titans: Seventh Doctor on his own )

( Storm Warning: Eighth Doctor's triumphant return )

(Apologies if this appears twice; problems posting)

There's nothing like watching or listening to a good Dalek story to make you realise how bad a bad Dalek story can be. But more of that after this evening's episode has been broadcast. Thanks to my new commitment to Being Fit, I have been listening to more of the Big Finish audio plays than I usually manage. I've gone slightly out of order, in that I skipped straight from The Shadow of the Scourge to The Mutant Phase without listening to the two Frobisher stories in between, but since they aren't really sequential it doesn't really matter.

( The Apocalypse Element: Sixth Doctor and Evelyn Smythe, Romana and the Daleks - made of win )

( The Fires of Vulcan: Seventh Doctor and Mel, a bleak story in the Roman Empire )

( The Shadow of the Scourge: Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice Summerfield confront extra-dimensional monsters in a hotel ripped from the heart of Kent )

( The Mutant Phase: Fifth Doctor and Nyssa, and more Daleks )

Three more Doctor Who audios from Big Finish.

( Red Dawn: Fifth Doctor meets Ice Warriors on Mars )
( The Spectre of Lanyon Moor: Sixth Doctor and Evelyn meet the Brigadier - a really good one )
( Winter for the Adept: Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and ghosts )

Three more Doctor Who audio dramas from Big Finish to review.

( The Fearmonger: Seventh Doctor and Ace get mixed up in future fascist leader's plans to take over Britain. )

( The Marian Conspiracy: Sixth Doctor and new companion Evelyn Smythe visit the court of Queen Mary I. )

( The Genocide Machine: The Seventh Doctor and Ace visit a ginormous library and confront the Daleks. Excellent. )

In summary: I'm generally enjoying these, and thought that The Genocide Machine was very good indeed - the first really gripping one I have heard. Though I think I may switch to one of the spinoff series for a while for variety's sake.

Ten months on from hearing the first of them, I have spent my commuting time this week alternating between reading Proust and listening to the next three audio plays in the Big Finish audio series, dating from 1999 and 2000. Phantasmagoria takes the Fifth Doctor and Turlough to the early 18th century in London; Whispers of Terror takes the Sixth Doctor and Peri to a political assassination in a future Museum of Aural Antiquities; and The Land of the Dead takes the Fifth Doctor, but this time with Nyssa, to contemporary Alaska besieged by creatures from the Permian era.

There was nothing very special about Phantasmagoria, except that it shared a plot twist with The Stones of Blood and I thought got away with it better. The soundscape of London was quite nicely done, though the writers seemed confused about who Queen Anne's father was (making me wonder for a bit if this was supposed to be some parallel universe; but no, it was just a mistake). Since I was never a huge fan of Turlough, his presence here didn't really excite me.

Whispers of Terror did make something special of the audio environment, with the Museum of Aural Antiquities being a place which for obvious reasons loses little by being portrayed through sound alone rather than vision as well. The Six/Peri banter was pleasantly nostalgic too. Sadly the plot was fairly obvious right from the word go, with a silly twist at the very end.

I enjoyed The Land of the Dead much more, not for the reasons I had expected. I would defend Nyssa against the likes of The Guardian who put her far down the list of companions, but Sarah Sutton is not especially outstanding here. Davison, however, is, and has a brilliant rapport with guest actor Lucy Campbell, whose performance here is memorable but appears to have done almost no other acting work apart from a bit part in another Stephen Cole Big Finish audio. Also the story is surprisingly good, with the archaeological delvings of the scientific researchers mirrored in the psychological delvings of the two main male characters into the circumstances of the tragic accident involving their fathers from decades before. The two actors slightly struggle to bring it off but it kept my attention.

Well, tonight we have the real thing starting again!

1) The Eight Doctors, by Terrance Dicks (.co.uk, .com)

This was the first of the BBC's series of Eighth Doctor books (the book-of-the-TV-film apparently being in a different category). I had read one of these before and was not madly impressed. Here, however, we are on comfortable ground; Terrance Dicks' record of writing more Doctor Who novels and novelisations than anyone else is unlikely to be surpassed any time soon.

Though it really ought to be called Doctor Who and the Heroic RetCons. Dicks uses the opportunity of creating a new fictional environment for the Eighth Doctor to try and iron out some of the grosser continuity problems left by both the Eighth Doctor TV film, and the Trial of a Time Lord (and also a wee bit of clearing up from The Five Doctors, which I think I must try and watch again soon). Sensibly, rather than pull all eight Doctors together (he had after all written The Five Doctors and was script editor for the programme at the time of The Three Doctors) he has the Eighth Doctor dropping in on his predecessors at various points of the programme's established timeline.

The most effective piece of writing in the book is a description of the Third Doctor chasing the Master across southern England after his escape from prison in The Sea Devils. The least convincing bit is actually the characterisation of the Eighth Doctor himself. Lance Parkin got this rather better in his Dying Days, the last of the Virgin New Adventures, the last before Peter Darvill-Evans and Rebecca Levene cruelly had the franchise removed from them; in Terrance Dicks's hands, he comes across as rather like the Third Doctor, but a little less arrogant. On a tangent, I was interested that Dicks chose to place the Fourth Doctor encounter with the Eighth in the world of his vampire story, State of Decay, and its novel sequel.

Anyway, the fun bits outnumber the embarrassing bits, just about. Certainly worth reading for a sense of where the BBC thought the Eight Doctor might lead them, and also for the heroic retconning. I still feel no desire whatever to catch up with the Trial of a Time Lord season.

Via calapine, a large number of Doctors Who from 1985.