...I have just heard the news about the guest star in the upcoming Sarah Jane Adventures!!!!

This is the end (at least, for three decades) for Sarah Jane Smith as a regular character in Doctor Who. There is only one really bad one out of these eight, and it is the one which is not based on a televised story.

( 8) Doctor Who and the Planet of Evil, by Terrance Dicks )
( 9) Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, by Terrance Dicks )
( 10) Doctor Who and the Android Invasion, by Terrance Dicks )
( 11) Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius, by Terrance Dicks )
( 12) Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom, by Philip Hinchcliffe )
( 13) Doctor Who - The Pescatons, by Victor Pemberton )
( 14) Doctor Who and the Masque of Mandragora, by Philip Hinchcliffe )
( 15) Doctor Who and the Hand of Fear, by Terrance Dicks )

What struck me almost for the first time as I read these books is that this is the period when the basic format of the show as we now know it was first tried - a single, female, companion, who has a life of her own (remember that Sarah first met the Doctor while impersonating her own aunt, and her journalistic career is mentioned in both The Android Invasion and The Seeds of Doom), and the Tardis travelling from adventure to adventure, without any real fixed base for the Doctor (the last proper UNIT story is just before this sequence, and the first proper Gallifrey story immediately after). Previous companions were either a larger ensemble (with minor male exceptions - Steven in The Massacre, Jamie in a few episodes but no complete story) or part of UNIT. Sarah Jane Smith (followed by Leela, Romana, Peri, Mel and Ace) is the first real predecessor of Rose, Martha and Donna. And unlike a lot of others, the printed page does her justice - perhaps because so many of her books were written by Terrance Dicks, who after all invented the character as script editor. All decent enough reads (apart from the Pescatons).

I have finally finished the Tom Baker TV stories, but will save my assessment of the Fourth Doctor until I've finished reading the books. Apologies to those of you reading by RSS, but here are my views on seven Fourth Doctor stories and one Fifth Doctor story for luck.

( The Hand of Fear: The Doctor and Sarah Jane are hoodwinked by Eldrad )
( The Androids of Tara: The Doctor and Romana and android doubles )
( The Power of Kroll: The Doctor and Romana and one of the worst monsters ever )
( The Armageddon Factor: The Doctor and Romana complete the quest )
( The Leisure Hive: The Doctor, Romana and the shape of things to come )
( Full Circle: Introducing Adric )
( State of Decay: Doctor, Romana, Adric and vampires )
( Mawdryn Undead: the Fifth Doctor meets an old friend )

And so to the glory days of Who, when Hinchcliffe and Holmes oversaw the Best Stories Ever (until recently), and Terrance Dicks turned them into readable and sometimes (as in two of these cases) good novels.

( 34) Doctor Who and the Giant Robot, by Terrance Dicks )
( 35) Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks, by Terrance Dicks )
( 36) Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen, by Terrance Dicks )

The Season 12 novels, including the two not reviewed here but with slight reservations for Doctor Who and the Giant Robot, are consistently good in a way that I don't think can be said for any other season so far. (I know that Season 7 has its partisans, though.) All the elements seem to have come together successfully. There are a couple of significant differences in characterisation: Dicks' version of the Fourth Doctor is more jolly than the screen version, so I imagine that fans coming to Tom Baker's stories via the books will be surprised by the darkness in the original portrayal. Harry comes over as more clueless than gallant as written by Dicks (the reverse is true in Marter's books for some strange reason). I'll come back to Sarah in due course.

You may be relieved to know that the end of this mad project is coming into view; there are different ways of calculating it, but the half-way mark for Classic Who stories, counted individually, is definitely in the second half of Season 12. And I've read perhaps a quarter of the remaining novelisations already. Thanks for your patience.

My apologies to those of you who are not all that interested in Who; I have three posts brewing on different aspects of the canon (of which this is the first) which I plan to write this weekend. There are a couple of non-Who posts brewing as well, and I'll try to leaven the mixture.

( 29) Doctor Who and the Time Warrior, by Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes )
( 30) Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion, by Malcolm Hulke )
( 31) Doctor Who - Death to the Daleks, by Terrance Dicks )
( 32) Doctor Who and the Monster of Peladon, by Terrance Dicks )

So, since I read Doctor Who and the Planet if the Spiders a while back, that is the end of the Third Doctor novels. The general level of quality is better than for the first two Doctors, with some excellent reads - Barry Letts' Doctor Who and the Dæmons and Malcolm Hulke's Doctor Who and the Green Death - and some of Terrance Dicks' best efforts - Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, Doctor Who - The Three Doctors and Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders. And even if Malcolm Hulke didn't always match his own ambitions, his books were always interesting, and Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters and Doctor Who and the Space War are pretty good.

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.

Several Fourth Doctor stories to review, as watched in lengthy airport stopovers lately.

( The Seeds of Doom: Doctor and Sarah battle a giant plant monster )

( The Sunmakers: Doctor, Leela and K9 lead revolution on Pluto )

( Underworld: Doctor, Leela and K9 do battle with ropey special effects and lose )

( Shada: Doctor, Romana and K9 do battle with the unions and lose )

In summary: first two great, second two less so.

17) The Glittering Storm, by Shaun Lyon
18) The Thirteenth Stone, by Justin Richards

These two audiobooks are both based on the recent TV Sarah Jane Adventures, and are read by Elizabeth Sladen. I have a particular concept of what I rate as a book for the bookblog and what I don't. I'm counting these two because they are described as "audiobooks" and, crucially, feature only one reader doing the text. I listed the audio autobiographies of Tom Baker and Nicholas Courtney on last year's bookblog on the same basis. The Big Finish Companion Chronicles, by contrast, have two actors each, so I reckon that makes them plays rather than books.

Yet all the Big Finish plays are listed separately on LibraryThing, so I've posted all my reviews of them there, even though they are not tagged as bookblog entries here. An argument could be made that if it has an ISBN number, it's a book, or at least a review of it is fair game for one's bookblogging. Another argument can be made that it's my blog and doesn't have to satisfy anyone except me. I expect I will come back to this fascinating topic some time.

The Glittering Storm ( isn't as good as The Thirteenth Stone )

The Thirteenth Stone ( is better than The Glittering Storm )

I wasn't overwhelmed by the first series of Sarah Jane Smith audios, but the second run is brilliant. Clearly Big Finish have rather hit their stride with the various spinoff series, I Davros also being a pretty unqualified success. And as with I Davros, I reckon the Sarah Jane plays would be fairly accessible to a non-fan, perhaps even more so; the setting is contemporary, and the only heavily sfnal element is in fact Sarah's own personal history (apart from the ambiguous ending). They form a single story arc, and all of them are by David Bishop, whose novel Who Killed Kennedy I enjoyed last year, and whose Test of Nerve, from the first run of SJS audios, turned out to be rather prophetic in its tale of terrorist attack on the London Underground.

( Buried Secrets )

( Snow Blind )

( Fatal Consequences )

( Dreamland )

One of the triumphs of the stories is the way in which families turn out to be important, more important than gangs of conspirators. We have Will Sullivan (played by Tom Chadbon = Duggan in City of Death) and his vanished but adored brother Harry, and the mother and daughter team of protesters, Maude and Emily, in the third story; and the revelation about Josh in the last story as well. And of course we listeners know that there is another family relationship there as Natalie is played by Elizabeth Sladen's daughter Sadie Miller.

Finally, it is a bit surprising that the same mistake was made three times of giving Sarah a Harry Sullivan-lite gormless male sidekick - Brendan in K9 and Company, Jeremy Fitzoliver in the two Third Doctor audios, and Josh in the first series of Big Finish's Sarah Jane adventures. Turning Josh into a deeper and more rounded character here was one of Bishop's best moves. Removing the twittish male side-kick altogether for the new TV series was an even better move.

'I saw amazing things, out there in space. But there's strangeness to be found wherever you turn. Life on Earth can be an adventure too.

You just have to know where to look.'
4) Invasion of the Bane, by Terrance Dicks
5) Revenge of the Slitheen, by Rupert Laight
6) Eye of the Gorgon, by Phil Ford
7) Warriors of Kudlak, by Gary Russell

These are four short, cheerful books, full of positivity, sticking pretty closely to the first four broadcast Sarah Jane Adventures. It's interesting that the BBC have chosen to go back to the old approach of novelisation of the broadcast stories for Sarah Jane, while instead publishing original fiction featuring the Ninth and Tenth Doctors and Torchwood. I sense a didactic purpose, getting kids into the reading habit with these attractively covered volumes, each of them 119 pages of text in fairly large print (at a cost of £4.99 each, which, alas, is standard these days). I don't think it took me as long as an hour to read any of them.

( Invasion of the Bane )
( Revenge of the Slitheen )
( Eye of the Gorgon )
( Warriors of Kudlak )

Anyway, I'd recommend all of these for the younger Who fan, who might then be persuaded to lend them to older Who fans.

Not yet finalised my Hugo nominations, but here are a couple of items I'm likely to include on my list which I haven't yet seen mentioned by others:

Novel: The Children of Húrin, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Indubitably eligible; while some of the material has been published before, it was first published in this form in 2007. So what if the author died a third of a century earlier?

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): Along with the obvious Doctor Who episodes (Blink and Human Nature/Family of Blood) I will be nominating Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane, from the Sarah Jane Adventures.

Still haven't read Brasyl, of course.

...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.

The last of my Doctor Who catch-up posts, which may be a relief to some of you. Three Tom Baker stories, two featuring classic monsters and the third more of a classic in its own right.

( Destiny of the Daleks )

( Revenge of the Cybermen )

( Terror of the Zygons )

So, two good, one so-so.

9) Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster, by Terrance Dicks

Much of my Doctor Who reading this month has been a displacement activity from Proust (but more on that in my next post). This is one of the good Terrance Dicks novelisations, of the 1975 TV story Terror of the Zygons, the second Season 12 Fourth Doctor story to be written up (after Doctor Who and the Giant Robot), and one of the good early Dicks efforts: decent efforts at background characterisation given for Sarah, Harry and the Brigadier, and much entertaining back-chat between the Doctor and both his allies and his enemies. Obviously I got it as an exercise in nostalgia after reading Sting of the Zygons, at a cost of UK£3.95; worth every penny, I tell you.

Three Classic Who stories to write up, with The Talons of Weng-Chiang decidedly superior, The Monster of Peladon decidedly average, and The Ambassadors of Death decidedly different. (Only two Third Doctor stories left to go now.)

( The Monster of Peladon )

( The Talons of Weng-Chiang )

( The Ambassadors of Death )

So, in summary, one total classic, one interesting (if you can bear to take in all seven episodes) and one for completists only.

First of all, I agree with everyone who says these have been excellent. The average quality of each of the five stories has been at least on a par with New Who, taken as a whole. I felt that the weakest story was the first, Revenge of the Slitheen, with the strongest probably the fourth, Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane (both, as it happens, written by Gareth Roberts). But all were well worth watching, especially in the company of an excited eight-year-old who had already seen them and was bursting to tell me what happened next. ("Do you know who he REALLY is, Dad?" "NO, and I DON'T WANT TO!")

( Revenge of the Slitheen )

( Eye of the Gorgon )

( Warriors of Kudlak )

( Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane )

( The Lost Boy )

So, in summary, this was generally excellent television. The fact that the format allowed for cliff-hangers every second week certainly made a difference. Elisabeth Sladen is still brilliant as Sarah, and Yasmin Paige as her main sidekick Maria is also excellent. Of the supporting male cast, Daniel Anthony (Clyde) and Joseph Millson (Alan, Maria's father) are also well up to it, though as noted above Thomas Knight (Luke) is still maturing. (And I see that Juliet Cowan, who plays Maria's mother Chrissie, was in This Life playing a character called Nicki - can anyone remind me which one that was?) I hope there will be more.

We got F out of bed last night to watch Time Crash (we're an hour ahead of you guys in Ireland and UK-land, so it wasn't on until twenty past nine, way past his usual bed-time even on a Friday). He loved every minute of it, though some of the jokes were a bit above his head. And this morning we sat down and watched the Doctor Who Confidential (which consists entirely of fannish squeeing from Collinson, Davies, Moffat, Harper, Davison and Tennant). And then we watched The Runaway Bride. And we finished off with a few scenes from episode one of Castrovalva, so that he could see what the Fifth Doctor looked like first time round. And then after a break we watched both episodes of Revenge of the Slitheen.

F has only really got into Whodom in the last few months. He was aware of it as something his parents watched after his Saturday bedtime, but then his cousin J raced through our DVDs of the 2005 and 2006 seasons while we were staying with them in July, and then the Sarah Jane Adventures began and he is now completely hooked. Now it is again past his bedtime, but he is spontaneously redesigning my filing system for my Tenth Doctor episodes. Excellent.

Two Third Doctor stories to write up here, neither of them particularly outstanding.

( Colony in Space )

( Death to the Daleks )

I see that both were directed by Michael Briant (who also did The Sea Devils, The Green Death, Revenge of the Cybermen and The Robots of Death); I think I would have guessed if I hadn't known.

Three Old Who stories that I've been watching.

( The Dæmons )

( Resurrection of the Daleks )

( Robot )

In summary, Robot is recommended; the other two really for completists.

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

( Invasion of the Dinosaurs )

( Revelation of the Daleks )

The first ever commercially produced Doctor Who audio was the 1976 Argo Records production, Doctor Who and the Pescatons, starring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen as the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. To be honest, it is not fantastic. The plot is ripped off by writer Victor Pemberton from his Second Doctor series Fury from the Deep; there are only three actors (someone playing the villainous leader of the alien Pescatons), and so Baker switches from dialogue to linking narration rather jerkily; too much plot happens off-stage, as it were; and the solution, as he kills off the aliens and destroys their planet, is rather un-Doctor-ish. One for completists like me, but most of you can skip it.

Even more so the much shorter Exploration Earth, also from 1976, an educational radio programme which just has the Doctor and Sarah travelling through time and observing the gradual geological development of the planet Earth, with a chrome alien attempting to disrupt things, who is despatched rather casually at the end.

19) Doctor Who – the Caves of Androzani, by Terrance Dicks
20) Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin, by Terrance Dicks
21) Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, by Terrance Dicks
22) Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, by David Fisher

Four Target novelisations of Doctor Who stories from the original series here. The first two are average Terrance Dicks treatments of two of Robert Holmes’ best scripts, The Deadly Assassin being regarded by many as the Fourth Doctor’s greatest story, and The Caves of Androzani regarded by almost everyone as the Fifth Doctor’s best moment.

But with Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, Dicks has taken a Third Doctor TV story which by all accounts (I haven’t seen it) was decidedly average and turned it into a cracking good read. It was one of the first of his many many Doctor Who books (and he’s still at it), and for those of us (like me) who occasionally mock the by-the-numbers approach of his later efforts, it’s very much worth re-reading the earlier ones to remind ourselves of how good he was at turning dodgy special effects and occasionally wooden acting into a novel that caught the spirit of what he, as script editor, had no doubt hoped and intended the original TV version to be. (Like The Caves of Androzani, Planet of the Spiders has the Doctor regenerating after an adventure climbing around in caves. But I think that’s a coincidence.)

David Fisher wrote two Doctor Who novels based on his own scripts for the Fourth Doctor stories Creature from the Pit and The Leisure Hive. (He also wrote the original scripts for two Fourth Doctor Key to Time stories, The Stones of Blood and the Androids of Tara, but the novelisations of those were done by – of course – Terrance Dicks.) I remember really enjoying his Doctor Who and the Creature from the Pit when it first came out, and Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive is, for the same reasons, also a hilarious read – Fisher has a Douglas Adams-like ability to build in circumstantial detail and hilarious commentary to make you feel that this is a real, zany universe in which the Doctor and Romana are dealing with complex alien societies as well as future technology. I saw the series when it was first broadcast, but missed the last episode for some reason – I see it’s now on DVD, and after reading this I am very much inclined to add that to my collection too.

Like a lot of people, since watching School Reunion last year, I have also re-watched the closing minutes of The Hand of Fear from 1976, in which Elisabeth Sladen's Sarah Jane Smith bids farewell to Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor. I hadn't seen anyone else pick up on the similarities and differences between the two, filmed almost thirty years apart, so thought I would note a few of them them here:

1. The Walk: Look at Sarah's expression and her gait as she walks away from the Tardis both times. Somehow, heartbreakingly, Elisabeth Sladen managed to do it almost identically on both occasions.
2. Dogs: In The Hand of Fear, Sarah encounters and talks to a dog in the street where the Tardis lands (a Golden Retriever or Labrador). In School Reunion, the Tardis dematerialises to reveal another dog, which Sarah also has a conversation with - though a rather different one!
3. The final moments: The Hand of Fear ends on a freeze frame of Sarah sneaking a wistful look back over her shoulder, whistling a jaunty tune. In School Reunion, she heads off cheerfully to new adventures, accompanied by K-9.
   And what tune is she whistling at the end of The Hand of Fear? In fact, it is an old music hall number called "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me A Bow-Wow". Which is a bit mysterious in the context of the 1976 adventure. But now it seems a bit more appropriate, because she got her bow-wow in the end (indeed, strictly speaking, twice).

Actually, Elisabeth Sladen claims she can't whistle, the tune was performed by The Hand of Fear's director, Lennie Mayne.

Two Who stories from almost a decade apart to write up.

( Planet of Giants )

( Writing about companions )

( The Time Warrior )

Two audios and a DVD edited release this time, none of them therefore available as they were when first broadcast (in 1965, 1966 and 1983 respectively).

( The Myth Makers )

( The Massacre )

( The Five Doctors )

Take the quiz. (I got 8/10.)

9) Doctor Who and the Ark in Space, by Ian Marter (published 1977, based on TV story shown in 1975)
10) Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment, by Ian Marter (published 1978, based on TV story shown in 1975)
11) Doctor Who and the Ribos Operation, by Ian Marter (published 1979, based on TV story shown in 1978)
12) Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World, by Ian Marter (published 1981, based on TV story shown in 1968)
13) Doctor Who - Earthshock, by Ian Marter (published 1983, based on TV story shown in 1982)
14) Doctor Who - The Dominators, by Ian Marter (published 1984, based on TV story shown in 1968)
15) Doctor Who - The Invasion, by Ian Marter (published 1985, based on TV story shown in 1968)
16) (The Companions of) Doctor Who - Harry Sullivan's War, by Ian Marter (published 1986; original fiction)
17) Doctor Who - The Reign of Terror, by Ian Marter (published 1987, based on TV story first shown in 1964)
18) Doctor Who - The Rescue, by Ian Marter (published 1987, based on TV story first shown in 1965)


(pictures copied, with much thanks, from Steve Hill's Doctor Who Image Archive)

( Read more... )

2) [Doctor Who] Managra, by Stephen Marley

djm4 recommended this Doctor Who Missing Adventure a while back, describing it as "bonkers, but in a very good way". Indeed. Great fun as Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith rush around a future landscape including reincarnations of Cardinal Richelieu, Casanova, Byron, another Byron, Mary Shelley, and various popes and poets. I think I just about understood what was going on, but it hardly matters.