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):

( Read more... )

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

( Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons )
( Doctor Who - the Mind of Evil )
( Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos )
( Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon )
( Doctor Who and the Dæmons )

I've tended to rather rush through writing up the Pertwee stories I have been watching, as they are much of a muchness, but this is different. I remember back in 1981 when it was re-broadcast, we really wondered why - surely there were other, better Pertwee four-parters out there? The Terrance Dicks novelisation is only average. It seemed as if Carnival of Monsters had been chosen mainly because it followed on in continuity directly after The Three Doctors. Spoiled as we were by the Hinchcliffe and Williams years, Carnival of Monsters did not seem all that special.

I must say that now it does. The 1973 season was probably Pertwee's second best (after his first, the 1970 season) and Carnival of Monsters is surely the best story in it - followed by Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks, which are both OK but not spectacular, and ending with  The Green Death which is also a good one, particularly because it gets rid of Jo. The one thing that lets it down is the visual effects, rather a lot of dodgy CSO being used. But if you can shut your eyes and pretend you are still six during those bits, the rest is fantastic - Robert Holmes at his very best in the script, Michael Wisher in pre-Davros days as the main villain, Ian Marter in pre-Harry Sullivan days as a minor character, a real feeling of several different completely alien cultures (the two classes on Inter Minor and the Lurmans), and an absence of the blatant padding that mars so many Pertwee stories. A special shout to Cheryl Hall, later the girlfriend of Citizen Smith, as showgirl Shirna.

And there's a couple of serious reflections in there too - the MiniScope itself is a futuristic development of the zoo, and gives rise to a rather caricatured discussion of conservation versus entertainment' more seriously, Inter Minor is clearly a communist totalitarian state, threatened to its very foundations by any influence from the outside. Michael Wisher's character Kalik is the conservative brother of the unseen president Zarb. It's nicely observed, although not all conservative backlashes end with the leader of the hardliners being eaten alive by a Drashig. Shame.

I have now Run Out of classic Doctor Who to listen to as I commute to and from work. Luckily there are still plenty of Big Finish audios out there, and also I hope to do some shopping in London next week...

( The Smugglers )

( The Highlanders )

( The Macra Terror )

( The Enemy of the World )

In conclusion: All of these are fun, none of them is outstanding, none of them is embarrassing either (apart from my reservations about the narration for The Macra Terror).

My latest watched Doctor Who DVD, this being the last of the first Jon Pertwee season. I liked it. Alex Wilcock has already said pretty much all I would want to say about it. I would just add a few more details:

The Doctor's own role is not especially glorious in this story. Rather than concentrate on the dangers of the drilling project, he prefers to try and escape via TARDIS. When the Brigadier accuses him of having wasted time "gallivanting", the Doctor takes deep offence, but the Brigadier is absolutely right. Had the Doctor stuck around on our world instead, he could have simply badgered Stahlman to take his glove off, which would have resulted in his being instantly discredited. We the viewers know about the intimate connection between the drilling and the Primords; the penny never really drops for the characters.

It's a shame that they didn't give Liz Shaw a decent farewell scene. I suppose that is part of the problem of a season with only four stories and the last one seven parts. There was too much plot to fit in, perhaps. On the second DVD, Caroline John comes across in the interviews as a very pleasant and intelligent person, much more so than the last companion-playing actress who I saw interviewed, who came across as pretty brainless. But it's nice that the last shot of the series, and of the season, is of her laughing at the Doctor and Brigadier squabbling.

The story of John Woods/John Levene and his acting career is a rather nice one too, which I hadn't heard before.

More on alternate universes in another post. But in summary: a good set of DVDs.

Yesterday at PicoCon, Jon Courtenay Grimwood was saying that he reckoned all good British sf was now being written by people from the left side of the political spectrum, and someone, either he or Brian Stableford, went on to argue that this was all a reaction to Thatcherism, which was admittedly a deeply traumatic and formative political experience, even on those of us from parts of the archipelago less affected by her economic and social policies (ie both parts of Ireland).

( It's not the whole story, though. )