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.

I have rather run out of enthusiasm for the Eighth Doctor stories, which seemed to me to start very well and then go into a bit of a drag. These four, from late 2004, were the last "new season" presentation before the TV series was revived; I look forward to finding out if a change of format helped.

The other over-riding problem I have had with the Divergent Universe story line is that, if the entire setting is a put-up job by powerful alien scientists, and if our protagonists are in the habit of waking up to find that it was all a dream, it becomes quite difficult to care about what is happening.

( Faith Stealer )

( The Last )

( Caerdroia )

( The Next Life )

2) The Year of Intelligent Tigers, by Kate Orman

This had been recommended to me some time back by purplepooka, so that's the second good tip from her that I have followed up this week.

I enjoyed it. The amnesiac Eighth Doctor, with companions Fitz and Anji (who I previously encountered a few books later), is on an artistically inclined colony world where the indigenous large tiger-like fauna turn out to be more intelligent than their human neighbours had thought. Multiple narrative points of view, both human and tiger, vividly and credibly portrayed background scenery, and a very Doctor Who-ish, humanistic resolution to the conflict between the two races. Will look out for more by this author.

5) The City of the Dead, by Lloyd Rose

I got this simply because it is the highest-rated Doctor Who novel of any epoch by LibraryThing users, and I wanted a) to assess whether LibraryThing ratings can be considered a reasonable guide to quality and b) if it is worth giving the BBC series of Eighth Doctor Adventures another go, having been underwhelmed by my previous samplings.

Well, the answer to both questions seems to be a reasonably firm Yes. The setting of the story in Who continuity is unfamiliar to me - the Doctor is suffering from partial amnesia for some reason, and I have read nothing else with either of the two companions, Fitz and Anji. But the portrayal of the Eighth Doctor (amnesia apart) is consistent with the Big Finish audios, and I thought Anji came across well as an interesting character (Fitz rather less so).

I also felt initially suspicious about the setting, among occultists in New Orleans. Indeed, there is no scientific hand-waving anywhere in the book to explain away the magic - spells and summonings work, and elementals are real. Yet in the end I was satisfied; there are plenty of sf stories (indeed, many Doctor Who stories!) where there is detailed technobabble to explain what is going on, but the means and motivation of the bad guys remain unconvincing, and this is not one of them. Also the New Orleans setting was well sketched out (I suppose - I've never been there), and the plot had some genuine surprises - Lloyd Rose clearly has a good knack of misdirection. Plus the Doctor actually, possibly, maybe, has an intimate encounter, discreetly described.

I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd read more of this series, but if this is the best then some of the others must be pretty decent too.

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 )

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.

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.

34) Doctor Who [The Novel of the Film], by Gary Russell

This was the novel of the TV movie, written by Gary Russell (two of whose other Who novels I have read; I liked one of them). Not really a lot to say about this; he has stuck fairly closely to the script, padding out the introduction a bit more, wisely not expanding on the Doctor's demi-humanity. I see that I found the visuals and the acting particularly attractive in the broadcast version of the story, and inevitably those get lost in the transfer to the printed page. But it's basically OK.

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.

There is much more to be said than this, but I will save it until next week.

It's only a short week in Brussels, and I somehow didn't make it to the gym, but I got through another two Eighth Doctor audios on the commute, the second and third of the Big Finish series with Paul McGann and India Fisher playing his companion Charley Pollard.

( The Sword of Orion: boring Cyberman rubbish )

( The Stones of Venice: atmospheric and evocative )

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 )

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.

Remember when I said that commuting to work by train would mean I did a lot more reading? Not so. Since I bought my MP3 player, I've been listening to a lot of Doctor Who - staring with canonical stuff, The Abominable Snowmen, The Web of Fear and The Space Pirates, and then (with so much to choose from) going for Big Finish's series of Doctor Who audio plays in which the history of the Whoniverse somehow worked out differently. I listened to the seven plays in order, but will review them out of order as they seemed to me to naturally group as follows:


( Alternate regenerations )

( Different beginnings )

( A Storm of Angels )

( Shada )

In summary, then, "Auld Mortality" and "Shada" are particularly recommended, though none of them is bad.

The lovely Belgian Waffle complains that there is too much Doctor Who here, and looking over the past few weeks' entries, she has a point. (And I haven't even revealed the Speshul Prodjekt I'm currently working on.) So, while I don't intend to cut down especially on the dockeroo posts, I will start employing the cut tag a bit more judiciously. And don't worry, there's a big long post mainly about me and hardly at all about Doctor Who coming up, with lots of answers to interview questions.

No need for a cut-tag for the first of the two stories I'm looking at here though. "The Gunfighters" is just a silly story of time-travellers landing in Tombstone just before the gunfight at the OK Corral. Hartnell has some great lines; trying to pass off the Tardis crew as entertainers, he introduces himself as "your humble servant, Doctor, er, Caligari." "Doctor Who?" asks the bewildered local. "Yes, quite right!" comes the response. I still think Jacki Lane is good as Dodo as well, and of course so is Peter Purves as Stephen.

It really did take me until last night to get around to watching, for the first time, ( the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie. )

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.)

14) [Doctor Who:] The Dying Days, by Lance Parkin

Encouraged by kharin, I went through a probably unnecessarily convoluted process of transferring this Doctor Who novel from the BBC website to my Palm T|X, and read it in bed over the last week or so. This is a story of the Eighth Doctor, Bernice Summerfield and the Brigadier defending 1997 London from an invasion of Ice Warriors from Mars. There is lots to like here. I especially liked the setting - the casual name-dropping of real celebrities from 1997 (including Lalla Ward twice, once as herself and once as Romana), but in the world of Doctor Who (the Whoniverse?), where the UK has had a massive space programme since the early 1970s - a sort of sfnal Cool Britannia. It was a heck of a lot more convincing than, say Remembrance of the Daleks' attempt to reconstruct 1963. The basic plot got a little convoluted - sinister British technocrat is conspiring with the aliens to take power, with lots of little details that didn't always tie up well - but the characterisation and writing was great. Sure, the final escape from certain death through improvised parachute and airbags is a bit of a stretch of the imagination, but hey, we have a Time Lord battling invaders from a Mars with a breathable atmosphere - you expect gritty realism?

Despite my aggravation with getting hold of the text, the BBC has done a great thing in getting Lance Parkin to revisit the book and tell us the story of the story. This was in fact the very last of the New Adventures published by Virgin under the supervision of Rebecca Levene (who I knew at Cambridge), but also the first novel to feature the Eight Doctor. There is therefore a bit of an elegiac tone, and we cannot be really sure who will live and who will die. I saved reading Parkin's notes to each chapter until I had finished reading the book, and recommend that you do too - both read the book, and then read his notes. One story he tells is this:

On May 1st 1997, on the night of the General Election, Tim Collins, newly-elected Conservative MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale and Doctor Who fan (he’d had letters published in fanzine DWB) sat in his local town hall, oblivious to the activity around him, frantically reading The Dying Days, ‘because he wanted to have read all the New Adventures under a Tory administration’.

Collins lost his seat earlier this year to another friend of mine from those days, Tim Farron.

Back in August I was on a panel at WorldCon with the title "Dr. [sic] Who Retrospective: The Best Years"; my nominations were Season Ten, Season Twelve and Season Fourteen. But I'm beginning to suspect that the Rebecca Levene Years may also be in contention.

8) Doctor Who: Genocide, by Paul Leonard

Picked this up really as an experiment at WorldCon. I never saw the Eighth Doctor TV movie, so this is my first encounter with him; I had no idea if his companion, Sam, was canonical or not though I now learn from Wikipedia that she had an exciting life; but the story also features Jo Grant, and it's not so long since I watched "The Green Death".

Well, it's not bad. The central plot is a set of time paradoxes - will humanity survive, or will we be displaced by humane, environmentally conscious equine quadrupeds who are very reminiscent of Swift's Houyhnhnms? The Doctor has to choose one way or the other, and either way an entire race may be destroyed, hence the genocide of the title. I felt there were one or two problems with the internal chronology of the book which could not be smoothed over by time-travel, and too many cases of a) characters promising not to move from a safe location, then immediately doing so and b) "I'm going to kill you now!" "No you're not." "Okay, I won't kill you now but I might kill you later!" And one plot twist was foreshadowed many years ago by Douglas Adams, but I thought Paul Leonard invested it with a certain dignity (leaving a message in the basalt, surely inspired by the towel in the prehistoric volcano). Overall it was just about worth the £2 I paid for it.

I'm stunned to discover that there are no less than 73 books in the Eighth Doctor Adventures series! Are any of them better than this? If so, I'd be interested in looking at them...