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.

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).

8) Doctor Who - Remembrance of the Daleks

I was goaded into reading this by a) Dale Smith's essay in the David Butler book stating that it was the best of all the Target novelisations and b) my own discovery that the author had done me the honour of putting my name on "the list" on his own website, presumably a reaction to my disparaging remarks about his scripts for this Doctor Who series and the later Battlefield.

Well. It's not the best Target novelisation - realistically, that honour might go to one of Terrance Dicks' early efforts, before he got into the habit of just doing it by the numbers, or to one of the David Fisher or Donald Cotton books, or possibly Ian Marter's novelisation of The Rescue - but it's not at all bad. The flaws, to get them out of the way first, are too much use of commas where semi-colons or even full stops would have done, and a confusion about the spelling of "Alsatian". But where I felt the TV version of Remembrance of the Daleks failed - in its unconvincing attempt to portray England of 1963 - Aaronovitch is able to push his vision rather better on the printed page. He also is able to show much more of the back story of the Time Lords, the Daleks, and perhaps especially the contemporary human characters, so that the whole thing hangs together much better.

It still doesn't quite work for me (so I suspect this review will not be sufficient to remove me from Aaronovitch's "list") but it all makes a lot more sense now.

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 )

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 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.

( 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.

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!

12) Decalog 3: Consequences, edited by Justin Richards and Andy Lane

One of the early collections of "authorised" Doctor Who short stories from Virgin Publishing. I bought it because two of the ten stories had been flagged up to me in different ways in the last couple of weeks, and neither of them disappointed: Peter Anghelides' "Moving On", a bittersweet bridging narrative for Sarah Jane Smith between K9 and Company and School Reunion (or the Big Finish version if you prefer), and Steven Moffat's first published Doctor Who story, "Continuity Errors", which has the Seventh Doctor and Bernice Summerfield meddling in the time stream pretty comprehensively.Unexpected bonuses were Guy Clapperton's "Tarnished Image" featuring the First Doctor and Dodo Chaplet, and kradical's "UNITed We Fall", bringing the Fourth Doctor and the Brigadier to UN headquarters in New York for an audit. But none of the others was bad.

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.

Just in case you are interested: I'm mirroring all my Old Skool Doctor Who reviews to mavic_chen:

First Doctor
Second Doctor
Third Doctor
Fourth Doctor
Fifth Doctor
Seventh Doctor
Eighth Doctor

But NB nothing will appear there that hasn't already appeared here first.

Some time I shall think about how to systematise my reviews of the spinoff novels and audios as well.

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 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.

Regular readers will be aware that I have been feasting my eyes on much of the early Doctor Who which was broadcast before I was born, or old enough to really take it in, and very much enjoying it. In the spirit of experiment, therefore, I have also started watching the classic Who stories broadcast after I had stopped watching - spurred to do this partly because of fannish muttering about how the final season was really much better than what had gone before, and such a shame the Beeb decided to cancel the series then.

The four stories of Season 26 were broadcast in late 1989, as the Berlin Wall fell and revolution swept Eastern Europe. Times were changing, and Doctor Who feels now like part of the old regime struggling to adapt to new demands for a new era. The programme's makers made a better fist of it than any of the Communist leaderships of Eastern Europe, but it was not enough.

( Battlefield )

( Ghost Light )

( The Curse of Fenric )

( Survival )

( The story of Ace )

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.

12) [Doctor Who] Timewyrm: Revelation, by Paul Cornell

Cornell's first novel, I think, and pretty good stuff, winding up the Timewyrm tetralogy (1, 2, 3) that kicked off the Virgin series of New Adventures of Doctor Who. A decent effort, certainly on a par with the first and second books of the series for quality (thr third being pretty dire). The Doctor has to confront his enemy, the Timewyrm, by hunting through the nooks and crannies of his own mind with help from his own past incarnations (and I liked the Doctor/Doctor interactions, not usually done this well). Many of the characters spend much of the book taking sanctuary in a church which is their only protection against a bizarrely hostile environment outside - a setting Cornell of course used again in the Ninth Doctor TV story, "Father's Day".

6) Timewyrm: Apocalypse, by Nigel Robinson

Not really great literature: Doctor and Ace on far future planet, where not all is as it seems, and the plot depends on an untold story from the Doctor's past. Still, I will read the fourth in this series.

6) [Doctor Who] Timewyrm: Exodus, by Terrance Dicks

Gosh, Terrance Dicks can actually come close to writing tolerably well. Here we have the Seventh Doctor and Ace pursuing the Timewyrm (last seen in ancient Babylon) to Nazi Germany - or rather, first to a 1951 Festival of Britain celebrated after a German victory; then following Adolf Hitler from the Munich putsch to 1940. It would be easy to do this very crassly, but Dicks manages to stay (for my money) the right side of the line. Still a slight feeling that he wished he was writing a TV series rather than a novel, but satisfying enough. Also brought back a villain from one of the series I have not yet seen...

6) [Doctor Who] Timewyrm: Genesys, by John Peel

The first ever of the New Adventures of Doctor Who published by Virgin between 1991 and 1997 (since I only recently read the first of the Missing Adventures). Actually rather good stuff as the Seventh Doctor and Ace find themselves in ancient Babylon battling an alien force, mixing it up with Gilgamesh. If I'd picked this up back in 1991 I would certainly have ended up buying many more. Biggest flaw - the silly title. Why the "y" in "Genesys"?

(Mind you, passing through Dublin airport last weekend, I noticed a new and horrible mutation of the Heavy Metal Umlaut - you can now buy your souvenir Irish fudge at a shop whose name is WRIGHTS ÖF HOWTH.)

In London last week I bought the first of the Big Finish audio plays, The Sirens of Time, featuring Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. Four episodes, one with each Doctor and the last with them all together, sorting out the latest threat to Gallifrey. The plot isn't much, but I did like the execution - the first and third episodes, set respectively on a planet where a political prisoner is living out a lifelong exile, and on a spaceship where all the crew disappear except the android pilot and a member of the catering staff, both reminded me rather of the original Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The second episode, set on a first world war U-Boat, was very atmospheric. You know where the resolution is going as soon as you hear the very first scene (Time Lords under threat, again...) but it was reasonably good fun.

Not sufficiently good fun for me to want to plough through the whole Big Finish list. However there is a handy ranking of them by fans: the top twelve are Chimes of Midnight, Catch 1782, Spare Parts, Holy Terror, Time Works, Singularity, The Council of Nicaea, The Veiled Leopard, The One Doctor, Night Thoughts, Davros, and Doctor Who And the Pirates. Anyone have any views on these, or indeed on any others not mentioned? I think the historical background of The Council of Nicaea, and the musical arrangement of Doctor Who and the Pirates, sound particularly intriguing.

I also listened to the audio play, Whatever Happened to Susan? starring Jane Asher as Susan with parts also for Ian, Barbara and Jo Grant. All a bit silly, and quite out of whack with "established" Doctor Who continuity. But I was rather amused by a) the line about how Susan was sure her grandfather now looks younger than her (in fact, every Doctor since 1981 has been younger than Carole Ann Ford) and b) the revelation of what Susan ends up doing in the present day. I rather wish it had been her - the position was not in fact created until 1999, five years after the play was broadcast, and the person who held it then was absolutely useless...

14) [Doctor Who] Blood Harvest, by Terrance Dicks

A sequel to State of Decay, published in 1994, featuring the Seventh Doctor, Ace, Bernice Summerfield, a guest appearance from Romana, a Dashiell Hammett private eye, more vampires, and conspiring Time Lords back on Gallifrey (reference is also made to The Five Doctors). Very interesting to see what Terrance Dicks could do once liberated from the novelisation format. Here we have the Doctor and Ace running a speakeasy in Al Capone's Chicago, while Bernice and Romana return to the planet of State of Decay (now mysteriously easier to get to - it is only towards the end of the book that someone remembers that it is in E-Space - and with a much larger population) to check on the return of vampirism there. Bernice's attempts to bring British parliamentary democracy to the peasants and aristos may not bear immediate fruit. It all hangs together remarkably well, though, with only a few lapses of prose that reminded me, ah yes, this is by Terrance Dicks. (The private eye character gets a few first-person sections of narrative, though otherwise we are in standard omniscient narrator territory.) Good fun.

On TV:
An Unearthly Child - great.
Mawdryn Undead - Not bad.
Resurrection Remembrance of the Daleks - I was not impressed (thanks to wwhyte for correction).
School Reunion - Simply superb.

Elsewhere:
Paul Cornell's novel Human Nature - liked it a lot.
Downtime spin-off video - haven't seen it.

Any others I've missed? Is Downtime worth looking out for?

If you are completely mystified by the words "Doctor Who", Alex has a good explanation here. He has followed up with his take on last year's stories, recs of DVDs of the old series and of the novelisations.

fieryhands is probably sick of reading sentences that start "I'm not a big fan of vids/Coldplay/the Eighth Doctor, but..." - however, that is not going to prevent me from saying that I am indeed not a big fan of vids, Coldplay or the Eighth Doctor, but I really loved her montage of Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Doctors, plus little bits of the Seventh, to "Clocks". (Hat-tip to doyle_sb4.)

7) The Discontinuity Guide: The Definitive Guide to the Worlds and Times of Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping

Yeah, yeah, I know that almost all of the text is also available on-line. But there's nothing like dead trees (especially if you are in the middle of a long plane flight). This is a great compilation of odd facts about the series, including most particularly an attempt to introduce consistency to such matters as the Doctor's age, his academic qualifications, the histories of the Cybermen and of the Daleks, and Mars. Interesting to see the foreshadowing of two of the Ninth Doctor's more memorable lines - "Hairdryer!" ("The Web Planet") and "Run!" (Second Doctor, passim). And there's a certain amount of "Yeah, that was my favourite bit".

Speaking of favourite bits, I asked my co-panellists at P-Con what their favourite bits of Doctor Who were, both old series and new. Colin Greenland voted for an end-of-episode shot of a Dalek emerging into view (which I reckon was the end of episode 1 of "The Chase"; Juliet McKenna for the Doctor and Jo down the mine in "The Green Death"; and Paul Cornell for the start of life on earth in "City of Death". From the new series Colin voted for "Are you my mummy?", surely one of the most impressive Who moments ever, and Juliet confessed to liking the Dalek in chains.

Part of my agenda of course is to improve my knowledge of the best stories, especially those that were first broadcast outside the time period when I was watching most closely (late Third Doctor to early Sixth, then Ninth and Tenth). Apart from Season 7, the other entire season that drew the praise of the Discontinuity Guide's authors was the very last of the old run, Season 26 with Sylvester McCoy ("Battlefield", "Ghost Light", "The Curse of Fenric" and "Survival"). Other stories to look out for which I hadn't previously had flagged up to me include particularly the First Doctor's "The Massacre", but also a bunch of others from the end of Troughton's second season.

I've made efforts in this direction before, but found this book much more helpful. (I should start reading this blog as well I suspect.)

alexwilcock has been watching old Doctor Who series:
Second Doctor: The Ice Warriors
Fourth Doctor: The Deadly Assassin [corrected!]
Fifth Doctor: Arc of Infinity
Seventh Doctor: The Curse of Fenric
[Edited to add: Fourth Doctor: The Androids of Tara]