Review: The Doctors Are In

(Crossposted to Mightygodking.com.)

Full disclosure: I've known Graeme Burk and Robert Smith? through a variety of online Doctor Who fan communities since the series was an obscure line of novels carrying on in the wake of the cancelled TV show. I have attended conventions with them, I'm big fans of them as people as well as authors, and I have been commissioned on occasion by Robert for essays in one book or another. (Including the recently released Outside In 2, by ATB Publishing, where I wax opinionated on "The Christmas Invasion". You know, if you're interested in that sort of thing.) The point is, I am probably magnificently biased when it comes to the recently released 'The Doctors Are In: The Essential and Unofficial Guide to Doctor Who's Greatest Time Lord'.

That said, it's tremendous fun to read. It's not an episode guide, because goodness knows we are spoilt for choice when it comes to that. (Including one by Burk and Smith?, as it happens.) It's also not a history of the program, because again, there are plenty of great ones out there. Instead, this is a book of critical analysis--the authors take a look at the various facets of the Doctor's magnificently complex personality, embroidered by thirteen actors and dozens of writers, directors and producers over the years, and try to figure out just what makes him tick. Is he a brooding and melancholy survivor of unimaginable devastation? A cold, alien wanderer in the fourth dimension? A puckish sprite who revels in making mischief for the wicked? (Um, yes to all of the above. Sorry, spoilers!)

Naturally, with fifty years of stories to mine for material, there are a wealth of interpretations to draw upon, and a wealth of conclusions to come to. That's where the book shines, really; Burk and Smith? are among those rare people who can disagree completely and totally and not get upset about it. Over the course of the book, they clash over topics from "Does 'Genesis of the Daleks' really live up to its reputation?" to "Was the Third Doctor too cozy with UNIT?" to "Was Matt Smith prone to trying to punch up a bad script by flailing his arms and shouting a lot?" And impressively enough, their answers are always well-reasoned and informative even when they disagree. Even more impressively, they disagree profoundly for much of the book and the tone is still light-hearted and humorous.

Is it essential reading? Well, it does serve as a basic reference guide to the series--Burk and Smith? do give a potted history of the making of the series as they discuss each Doctor, there's a list of recommended viewing that will certainly serve as a good place to start, and the back of the book contains a list of resources if you want to know more. But I will admit (as do they, in the back of the book) that there are other books out there that serve as a more comprehensive guide to the history of the show both in front of and behind the cameras. This is intended as light reading, not as reference material.

In other words, if you already have one of a dozen or so episode guides, behind the scenes books, or reference manuals on Doctor Who, this probably isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know. But if you're the sort of person who already has episode guides, behind-the-scenes books and reference manuals on Doctor Who, you're probably the sort of person who appreciates reading one that's well-written, entertaining and far from merely a dusty compilation of facts about the series. If that's the case (whether you own all those other books or not, really) you will get a lot of enjoyment out of 'The Doctors Are In'.

Review: Big Bang Generation

Gary Russell's revenge is best served cold.

In 2001, he published the novel 'Instruments of Darkness', which brought Big Finish audio companion Evelyn Smythe into the BBC Books and established her, and by extension the Big Finish audios, as "canonical" (for those who take such things seriously). It received lackluster reviews, primarily from people who felt that it was an exercise in nostalgia, excessive continuity references, filling in plot holes from other Gary Russell novels, and hagiography for a companion that Russell had created and clearly loved, but couldn't show and had to therefore tell with several scenes where people just stood around explaining how great she was.

(Shortly afterward, Gary Russell declared his stated belief that the audios and the books were separate canons and that he didn't care about tying them together anyway. Not that I'm suggesting these things are related.)

It took fourteen long years for Russell's plan to come to its ultimate fruition. Fourteen years of patiently waiting for Doctor Who to once again become a global televised phenomenon, for the TV series to adapt Big Finish audios and Virgin New Adventures in a way that cast doubt on the canonicity of the books and the CDs from the Wilderness Years, for River Song (a clear and loving pastiche of Bernice Summerfield) to be taken into fans' hearts while the original Benny languished in spin-offs and the memories of a tiny subset of the new fandom, for the phenomenon known as "NAstalgia" (an unthinking adoration for the Virgin New Adventures based on rosy memories of their output) to develop. Fourteen years for Gary Russell's masterstroke.

'The Big Bang Generation' weaponizes NAstalgia. It's a wafer-thin run-around that only makes vague stabs at coherence, with dull and unconvincing villains and dozens of pointless digressions that only serve to hang continuity references on. It's utterly disposable, not awful but mainly the sort of thing that you'd maybe give to an eight-year-old in an effort to keep them quiet for a few hours. BUT IT'S GOT BERNICE SUMMERFIELD IN IT.

More specifically, it has Bernice Summerfield's first-ever appearance in the New Series canon in any form, her first meeting with the Capaldi Doctor, her first official meeting with the Doctor since 1997's 'The Dying Days', and the first canonical appearance of any characters created for her Big Finish spin-off series in official Doctor Who media. In short, this is a book pretty much designed to settle the argument, to the extent that it can reasonably be settled, of whether the Wilderness Years are canon. And it comes down hard on the triumphant, fist-pumping, it-even-mentions-Keri-the-Pakhar, "Yes!" side of the equation.

And so Gary Russell's revenge is complete. Because I have to admit, it was totally worth the aimless plot, the unconvincing villains, and even having to put up with lifeless Big Finish tagalongs Ruth and Jack in order to get Bernice Summerfield and the Doctor together once more. God help me, I enjoyed this book even as I cringed at how many scenes were really just one character or another reminiscing about how great Bernice Summerfield was, and how she was the Best Companion Ever, and how her touch could cure scrofula. Because I can't help it, I agree with that. 'Big Bang Generation' proved that the only difference between me and the target audience of 'Instruments of Darkness' was the choice of companion to get all misty-eyed over.

I actually liked 'Big Bang Generation'. From hell's heart, Gary Russell, I salute you.

Review: Perfect Timing

(Originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide on 29 September, 2003.)

As the fortieth anniversary of Doctor Who approaches, I now present to you my thoughts on an anthology designed to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the program. Let nobody ever state that my reviews aren't timely and current.

Seriously, the reason I'm just now reviewing Perfect Timing, five years after its release, is that it's nigh impossible to get ahold of. An anonymous philanthropist made a copy available to me at last, but in all probability, if you don't already have it, you're not going to get it. This is a shame, because Perfect Timing is one of the best anthologies of Doctor Who short fiction extant, easily beating all of Big Finish and the BBC's efforts and standing on a par with Decalog 3 (which remains, to my mind, the gold standard for Doctor Who anthologies.)

Why is this anthology so much better than all the others? Certainly, a part of it has to be the A-list talent that Mark Phippen and Helen Fayle assembled. The project benefited the Foundation for the Study of Infant Death, and as such generated a lot of goodwill among the community of Doctor Who writers. Many professional Doctor Who authors contributed to it, donating stories that wouldn't necessarily get by their normal editors. But it wasn't just the pros that contributed great work; looking at the list five years on, three or four of the unpublished authors later wound up getting novels for the range... clearly, Phippen and Fayle had a good eye for talent.

In addition, it doesn't hurt that the editors took a slightly loose attitude towards the beast that is 'canon'... although note that I say "slightly", there. There's nothing in here that overtly contradicts anything in the novels, TV series, or audios; it just adds things to the margins that raise an eyebrow or two. (If you're treating Perfect Timing as canon, and I see no reason why you shouldn't, then you should be aware of the following: the First Doctor and Susan had a companion, Jed, before Ian and Brbara; the Voord were good guys; Sarah Jane was married, at least briefly, to a private eye; Kamelion is the last of his kind, and was created to worship a dead god; the Nimon are actually little blobs in giant, unconvincing minotaur suits; Grant traveled with the Doctor for years, during which time the Doctor had a Legion (from Lucifer Rising and The Crystal Bucephalus) as his companion, before finally being dropped off at the Bi-Al Foundation after a severe injury; the Eighth Doctor had or will have a companion named Carmen at some point, during which time he has a multi-Doctor adventure with the Sixth Doctor; the Doctor visited Grace Holloway several times on her birthdays after the telemovie, but could never convince her to travel with him; Bernice Summerfield traveled again with the Eighth Doctor after The Dying Days, but before Oh No It Isn't!, but we still don't know whether they shagged or not; and, finally, after the Doctor dies in some distant future point, one or more people take on his name and mission.) The only piece that's irreconcilable with canon is From the Cutting Room Floor, David McIntee's alternate versions of scenes from The Dark Path, and even some of those work just fine.

So, now that you've borne with me thus far, a discussion of the individual stories...

Lumping all the very short stuff together... personally, I prefer to see longer pieces in an anthology. If it's not at least a full page, I question the need for its inclusion at all. That said, that's just my personal quirk, so it's hard for me to judge The Use of the Myth, These UNIT Things, Second Hand, Doing It Right, Cheeky Things, Nightmare, and Transitions. None of them really lasted long enough to make an impression on me -- but that's just me.

Bear Paw Adventure, by David Howe, isn't exactly what you'd expect from a story that says it's going to explain the "Mountain Mauler of Montana" reference from The Romans. It's actually a story of a teen's prank gone wrong, and most of the real action takes place off-screen; however, it's well-characterized, and certainly the central idea, that traveling with the Doctor doesn't always leave you better off afterwards, is nicely expressed through Jed.

Always Let the Conscience Be Your Guide, by Mark Clapham and Jim Smith, expands on the world only glimpsed in The Keys of Marinus, and shows the wider conflict through the eyes of Yartek, the Voord leader. It drives home the idea already expressed in Keys, that free will is more important than the guidance the Conscience provides, and it does so with some interesting imagery and vivid prose.

Birth Pains, by Damon Cavalchini, is interesting, if sometimes incomprehensible; it attempts to do an over-view of the series from the perspective of the TARDIS. It's well-written, but the problem with writing from the perspective of something totally alien to human thought is that you wind up with something totally alien to human thought. Worth struggling through, but the very nature of it means you have to struggle.

Venusian Sunset, by Paul Leonard, returns us to Venus, this time with the Second Doctor. (A side note: This story features Ben and Polly, but not Jamie, and is hence set between Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders. Many novels make use of this team, even though it had a very short TV run before Jamie joined the team. Many novels make use of the Second Doctor and Jamie, because the two are such a great team. But nobody seems to want to use Ben, Polly, and Jamie all together. I don't know if this means anything, but there you go.) In any event, we return to Venus, but this story doesn't quite have the impact that Venusian Lullaby did, because it doesn't have that funereal atmosphere that permeated the former. A nice story, but a bit of a let-down as a sequel.

From the Cutting-Room Floor, by David McIntee, consists of excerpts from the unpublished sections of The Dark Path. McIntee's been vocal, publicly and privately, in his condemnation of the editing of The Dark Path, and so I was quite interested to see what was lost. On the whole, I don't think much was. Don't get me wrong, the material here isn't bad; there's a nice little self-contained story that shows the Master and Ailla "at work" before the events of the novel, and establishes their partnership. But I think that part of what makes The Dark Path so good is the focus it shows, and the pieces contained herein would, I think, have diluted that focus. It's nice to see these pieces, though, just like it's always fun to see 'Deleted Scenes' on a DVD. (And I think you could probably do a whole set of short stories or even novels featuring Koschei and Ailla.)

Thicket of Thieves, by Kathryn Sullivan, suffers from a profusion of characters and alien races introduced to each other in rapid succession, all with similar goals but different motivations. That said, it's got some great comedy scenes with the Second Doctor (particularly well-characterized here) and Jamie (likewise).

Entertaining Mr. O, by Paul Magrs, features Iris Wildthyme, and as such, I hated it before finishing even the first page. Iris has long since worn out her welcome with me, having turned from a cleverly post-modern examination of the role of the storyteller within the story into an irritating Mary-Sue who goes about wittering about how much better she is than the Doctor. I'm sorry, but the very mention of her name sends me into fits of rage, and as such, I can't review this story objectively. If you don't utterly hate Iris Wildthyme, you'll probably like this. However, if you don't utterly hate Iris Wildthyme, your name is probably Paul Magrs.

Masters of Terror, by James Ambuehl and Laurence J. Cornford, feels like it was written as part of a bet to see if you could fit H.P. Lovecraft, the Master, and the Silurians all into a single story. Which, mind you, they do, and make it all seem quite natural... it's just that I'm still so amazed that there's a story that juxtaposes those three elements that I can't think about what actually happened. Worth reading, just to see how it all fits.

Baron (Count) Dracula and Count (Baron) Frankenstein, by Stephen Marley, is a beautiful confection that takes place in the same setting as his novel, Managra. Marley has a great comic sensibility, and this piece is a smooth, delightful little comic gem that goes down in moments and leaves a wonderful after-taste in the brain. It makes me wish he'd write another Doctor Who book, or failing that, that BBV, Big Finish, Telos, or one of the other people doing spin-offs would start commissioning a series set in his 'Europa'. It really has the potential for a full series there.

The Aurelius Gambit, by Helen Fayle, commits one of the occasional sins of a Doctor Who short story, that of biting off more than it can chew. It brings in a new love interest for Sarah Jane Smith, while introducing a pair of criminals with access to alien technology who are committing crimes, then framing the Master for them in the sure and certain knowledge that the Master isn't going to care, and UNIT isn't going to catch him. That's a lot of great ideas, but it's also a lot of work for a short story, and unfortunately it all feels terribly unfinished. I'd love to see this expanded, though.

Not Necessarily In That Order..., by Paul Ebbs, is another comic gem. It's a very simple story, more an extended, shaggy-dog joke than an actual "story" per se, but it gains a lot of humor from the fact that the punchline is actually the set-up, and the whole thing is cleverly told out of order. A short, sweet little story.

Child of Darkness, by Daniel Blythe, is a Terminator pastiche, but cleverly done, tied-in well to the mythos, and with a wonderful twist ending. It's also got great prose and nice characterization. But apart from that, you know...

The Zargathon Menace, by Jonathan Morris... well, by now, my admiration of Jonny Morris has solidified into a Salieri-like envious hatred, so you can imagine how reading yet another clever, hilarious, well-written short story from him made me feel. You'll probably be reading his obituary soon enough, and I'll be eating his brains to gain his writing skills. That is how it works, right?

One Perfect Twilight, by Craig Hinton, is basically a solidified chunk of fanwank dropped into the anthology, but frankly you should have figured that out when you saw the name 'Craig Hinton' under the title, right? Fanwank works or doesn't depending on my mood, and I happened to be in the mood for this one; Kamelion's origin story caught my interest, and I polished it off quickly. Others might like it or not, depending on their respective tolerance levels for references to the series.

Ghost in the Machine, by Trina Short, is a cute little story with Turlough solving a cute little problem; I liked it, in no small part because the author paced it well and didn't pad it. Turlough's a bit of a jerk, but then again, that's just excellent characterization more than anything else.

The 6th Doctor Sends A Letter, by Charles Daniels, is a bit OTT, but contains some great lines, and captures the bombastic side of the 6th Doctor well (if, again, exaggerating it a bit for comic effect.)

The Great Journey of Life Ends Here, by Gary Russell, is a story idea mentioned in his introduction to Placebo Effect, but I really thought he was joking. He wasn't. This story is, indeed, a Nimon vs. Macra story, which was turned down to make way for his Foamasi vs. Wirrrn story. Actually, this is better; given a short story instead of a novel, Russell eliminates a lot of the padding that afflicts his longer works, and while the two monsters don't get much time "on-screen", he at least gives them a sense of menace. And I think he's probably been waiting years to explain away the Nimon's costumes.

Wish Upon A Star Beast, by Steve Lyons, suffers from one flaw -- he never does explain why the villainous Santa Claus wants to unleash a horde of vicious killer Meeps upon the unsuspecting children of Earth on Christmas Eve by generating Black Star radiation from the Christmas Miracle Star. But frankly, if that's the plot of your story, who really needs an explanation for it? This is drop-dead hilarious, and a delight to read.

Schroedinger's Botanist, by Ian McIntire, is pretty much everything you ever need to know if you want to do a book set during Grant Markham's time as a companion. Which, admittedly, people haven't exactly been clamoring for, but if anyone does, they should read this story first. McIntire conveys the passage of years through smooth, elegant prose, and develops Grant quite a bit in the process. It also gives him a nice, if very sad, departure scene, something he never got in the books.

Chain Male, by Keith Topping, further develops that weird thing he, Martin Day, and Paul Cornell have worked out with Ian and Barbara's son John becoming a rock star and getting married to Tegan. I'm sure if I'd been following their fan-fiction for decades, I'd get a lot out of this, but I haven't, so it just confused me more.

Ascension, by Stephen Graves, takes place between So Vile A Sin and Bad Therapy, and feels like it fits in perfectly. It's got amazingly good characterization of the post-Roz relationship between Chris and the Doctor, and explores it quite nicely. The plot's another "life-force vampires luring in innocents" one, but well-executed for all that. Another excellent read. (Oh, and the Doctor gets one tremendous line that neatly encapsulates every fan's thought about Chris.)

Caveat Emptor, by Susannah Tiller, is a short, sharp story about the fate of the last human, and the role the Doctor plays in it. I liked it, but it's so short that it's hard to dislike. It certainly doesn't wear out its welcome.

Doctor-Patient Relationship, by Kate Orman and Jon Blum, is actually from the first draft of Vampire Science, but it's so far removed from what we finally got (since permission was withdrawn to use Grace Holloway) that it's essentially a separate, self-contained story now. And on that level, it works quite well. Wonderful prose, like I expected anything else; great characterization, like I expected anything else; a clever central idea, well-developed -- see points one and two. It's interesting to think that part of the reason they included the bit in Vampire Science about the Doctor making side trips away from Sam was to have room for this opening chapter; instead, that's now become justification for Stacy, Ssard, The Dying Days, and the entire Big Finish run. He must have been pretty eager to ditch her... not that I blame him.

Worm, by Lance Parkin, takes place in that same gap, suggesting that the Doctor and Benny took more than a few side trips on their way to Dellah. It's also a story that takes a great idea and develops it wonderfully -- finally, a race of monsters that takes the Doctor's advice and just surrenders. I've never heard of this "Lance Parkin" fellow before, but I think he just might be someone to watch.

The Ravages of Time, by Mags L. Halliday, shows yet another Eighth Doctor and Benny story, yet another story featuring Poe, and another famous person traveling with the Doctor (anyone want to do a multi-Doctor story with the Sixth Doctor, the Seventh Doctor, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe?) Yet, despite all this, it comes off as original, and in its brief space tells a lot of story. It could probably have done without the "story-in-a-story-in-a-story" device, but it's still a good piece.

Emerald Green, by Mark Phippen, isn't bad. It's not great -- for one thing, it labors under the weight of Sam Jones, the anchor who drags all stories down in which she appears -- but it's a decent enough piece of storytelling that doesn't falter or confuse itself.

Sad Professor, by Nick Walters, shamelessly panders to the fanboys by giving us a meeting between the Eighth Doctor, Sam, and Benny, set on Dellah not long before Where Angels Fear. Speaking as a fanboy, I say pander away! Highly enjoyable, but I confess a bias.

Dark Paragon, by Jon Andersen, I wound up not being fond of. The central idea, that the Doctor found a successor to carry on after he died and that she named herself the Doctor as well, is very clever; the further development, that the Master goes after the new Doctor in order to spite his old enemy is also good. But the problem is, there's no story to go with those ideas. The Master relentlessly stalks the new Doctor and, on all the worlds where he catches up to her, yammers on about how the old Doctor wasn't all that good of a person. The story never manages to rise above the three problems with this -- first, that the Master isn't exactly threatening when he relentlessly talks to his foes, second, that the Master complaining about the Doctor's lack of moral rectitude is like Adolph Hitler bitching that Ghandi forgot to buy a birthday card for his grandmother one year, and third, that after the third planet and conversation, the whole thing starts to feel like a Moebius loop. A lot of very good ideas, but I think it needed another draft or two.

So, after all that reviewing, what's my ultimate opinion? If anyone managed to last through what was, quite possibly, the longest review I've ever written (and I don't blame you if you haven't), I'd ultimately say that this was great. Doctor Who has had a slightly spotty record in the short story area, but I think this anthology shows that you can do something amazing with the form.

Review: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street

(Originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide on 15 July 2002.)

Part of it is that I think I just resonate with Lawrence Miles. Part of it is that I enjoy reading the non-fiction history books that Adventuress emulates. Part of it is that I'm loving finally seeing the consequences of The Ancestor Cell dealt with in some measure. But for all those reasons and more, I loved this book. Small print, thin margins, and all... I'm definitely looking forward to see what happens next. (And incidentally, I no longer believe anyone who tells me that the BBC has moved on to do continuity free adventures with a Doctor who's a tabula rasa, able to adventure free and clear of his convoluted past. Every single one of the above books, not just Mad Larry, had the Doctor remember bits and pieces of his past in throwaway dialogue, and every one of them "resonated" with Ancestor Cell in some way. It's as if all of the authors were champing at the bit to do continuity references, and were restraining themselves with great effort. With Adventuress, we finally start getting some overt continuity, and I for one welcome it. I just wish we had a reality where Lawrence Miles worked better with his fellow authors, instead of alienating them... bringing them along in his visions...*sigh* Oh well. We'll set that aside with our Harlan Ellison Doctor Who book.)

As for Sabbath, well... I'm curious to see what he'll do next. That's about all I can say -- there wasn't really enough of him that I felt I could like or dislike him. I did feel that he crossed a line when he took the Doctor's heart, and that if the Doctor had been in full possession of his faculties (and when he regains them, whenever that is) he would never have allowed it (and will reverse it). But I also felt like I was meant to feel that way -- that it was meant to seem like a violation of the Doctor, not like a "Yaaay!" sort of moment.

I'll be starting on Mad Dogs and Englishmen soon, and I have up through Trading Futures... beyond that, of course, it's down to the vagaries of the distribution system.

Review: Doctor Who - The Audio Scripts

(Originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide on  31 March, 2003.)

I was a little surprised to find out that Big Finish was releasing a book of their audio scripts -- after all, they'd said on their website that they had no interest in putting out print versions of their audios, since the audio was a hard enough format to get people interested in. It's certainly been a hard format to get me interested in, mainly because a lifetime of reading has trained me to tune out the noises around me so I can concentrate on visual stimuli, which is a bad trait to have when you're trying to listen to an audio-only drama.

In other words, I was quite glad to see a book of audio scripts from Big Finish. I hadn't been avoiding their work on any principle of cost or quality, but simply because the medium didn't appeal to me... and this nice hardcover book was going to give me a chance to read some of the Doctor Who I'd missed out on as a result. As it turned out, there was quite a lot of good Who in here (and some bad, as well, but you can't have everything) -- it served as a good read, a nice work of reference on the four audios it contained, and enough of an advertisement that I'm probably going to be buying two of the four audios just to hear the voice performances. So on the whole, I'd call this an excellent success for Big Finish, and I hope very much that this is just the first volume of many.

Loups-Garoux, by Marc Platt, was one of the reasons I bought this book -- I'd heard a lot of raves about the story, and I've also been a huge fan of Platt ever since Ghost Light. I wasn't disappointed, either... this is a great story. Pieter Stubbe is a wonderful villain, filled with a dark and menacing charm, and I find myself wanting to buy the audio just to hear his voice when he delivers lines like, "Huh. Grandmothers. I've had my fill of grandmothers." Doctor Who has given us very few villains as utterly cool as Stubbe, and my only wish is to somehow see him again. The other characters are nice too, and the regulars are dealt with well (I love the Doctor's awkward, tentative stabs at romance), and although the plot sometimes seems a little vague, it's never contradictory and always engaging.

The Holy Terror, by Rob Shearman... wow. This has been billed by many as a comedy (sometimes prefaced with the words "dark"), but don't be fooled. This is actually an intense drama with comic moments strategically placed to relieve the tension like lightning bolts in a storm. The whole thing is an exploration of responsibility -- What responsibility does the Creator have to his Creation? -- and it's dealt with on many levels, from Frobisher hunting down the gumblejack he created out of the TARDIS databanks to Pepin VII refusing to become a god to his subjects to the final, shattering denoument in which we see who the Creator really is, and what he's been doing to his creations all along. It's violent, it's bloody, it's gory, but there's never a moment in which I don't believe that this is the natural, inevitable progress of events -- I've got to get this on audio, because I think it's possibly one of the best works of Who to have shown up in a while. It's on a very high plane, and I recommend it a lot.

The Fires of Vulcan, by Steve Lyons, is... solid. It's like a lot of Steve Lyons books -- the characterization is sound, the plot unfolds well enough, there are reasonably clever moments, and on the whole, there are far worse ways to pass an afternoon (or evening, in my case) than to read it. But don't expect something world-shatteringly good. It's solid. That's probably damning it with faint praise, but there's really nothing else you can say.

Neverland, by Alan Barnes... yeurgh. This is the "bad Who" I was talking about earlier. I understand that Gary Russell wants to show off not just the quality of the scripts, but also the storylines and writers that he's developed at Big Finish. Hence, instead of including a probable crowd-pleaser Eighth Doctor story such as The Stones of Venice, Invaders From Mars, or Seasons of Fear (I'm basing this on the writers involved, not on having heard the audios), he went with one of his own writers, and a story tied strongly in with the Big Finish Eighth Doctor mythos. This proves to be a mistake, in my opinion, because Barnes isn't a very good writer, and Neverland isn't a very good story. The whole thing reads like a second-hand-shop version of the War, and although there are a few cute ideas (dispersed Time Lords continuing to exist somewhere, Time Lords donating lives to soldiers in the fight), there's a lot of codswallop (why do anti-time creatures feed on time? Shouldn't they annihilate each other?) and blather (Zagreus, Zagreus, Zagreus, yadda yadda yadda.) The Eighth Doctor... I will never again claim that the Eighth Doctor in the books doesn't have a distinct character anymore, because now I've read Neverland, and I can at least tell you who he isn't. He's not this guy. Ironic, since Paul McGann actually voiced these lines, but this isn't the Doctor. There are further problems with this as the selection (it relies heavily on knowledge of previous audios, it ends on a cliff-hanger) but the biggest one is that it's just plain bad. Not the best way to end the book.

Still, with four stories and only one being dross (and two being spectacular), that gives it a pretty good claim to be worth picking up -- and it helps that this also doubles as a reference work, for those people who want to refer back to events in The Holy Terror but don't have a good fast-forward/rewind feature on their CD player. I'd love to see another volume of these, perhaps one featuring The Shadow of the Scourge or an all-Excelis edition... and Big Finish needn't worry about this cutting into their audio sales. If anything, it'll increase them.

Review: Doctor Who - The Blood Cell

First, a bit of full disclosure--I pitched a Doctor Who novel back before the new series revival that featured a manipulative Doctor trapped in an inescapable asteroid prison, which may have colored my enjoyment of this book with the faint taste of nostalgia. That said, a big part of why I wrote my pitch for 'Heist' the way I did was because I wanted to evoke some of my favorite elements of 'Doctor Who' during the McCoy/New Adventures era, the unexpected reveals of the Doctor in bizarre situations and the way he put authority figures so brilliantly off-balance. So it's not really so much that James Goss wrote a book I would have loved to have written as it is that he wrote a book that fits squarely into the traditions of the series that I love best.

And boy, did he. The very first scene is an absolute marvel--it's not just the reveal of the Doctor, it's not just the reveal of the prison. It's the Governor. The narration of the entire sequence, indeed of the entire book, is from his point of view...and it's wrong. Not in any way you can pinpoint yet, but something about the Governor is magnificently, ineffably wrong. The Governor is a man with mysteries to unravel, and the Prison is a place that conceals more than just prisoners. That initial scene pulls you all the way through the narrative on the sheer force of its writing.

And the rest of the novel is paced brilliantly. Each revelation, from the power outages to Clara's arrival to the Doctor's interactions with the other prisoners to the...well, but that would be telling, wouldn't it? They all come at exactly the right time to immerse you further into the story, to tantalize you with the next set of questions and the next set of answers. The Governor's palpable wrongness is teased out of the story expertly, the confessions drawn out of him at exactly the right times. Goss really is performing a masterwork of plotting, and his quiet, almost serene style nonetheless exacerbates the constant tension in the book.

And of course, Goss has a perfect handle on Capaldi and Coleman's renditions of their characters. The book feels like it couldn't be done with anyone other than Twelve and Clara, and the interplay between them sparkles magnificently. (The scene where Clara asks the Doctor why he can't simply regenerate his way out of a stubbed toe is a thing of beauty.)

Ultimately, the ending is satisfying, although it perhaps tries to ramp up the scale of its threat just a bit too much for what has up until now been an entirely holistic and seamless sense of menace. But it is unquestionably excellent, a masterpiece as both a Doctor Who story and a character study. The Governor will stay with you long after 'The Blood Cell' ends, an impressive achievement for any book. This is definitely one of the reasons to stick with the Doctor Who novels even though the television series has taken over a lot of their primacy in the greater narrative; it's worth sticking with them because every once in a while, they give you a novel like this.

Review: Doctor Who - Silhouette

It's sometimes difficult to remember, but there are actually two Justin Richards out there. The first Justin Richards is Justin on autopilot, the Justin who's asked to write a 250-page novel on about three weeks' notice and comes up with something palatable in that span of time, or the Justin Richards who writes the messy "arc plot" novels that are more of a laundry list of plot elements than an actual idea. It's the Justin Richards who wrote books like 'Grave Matter' or 'Time Zero' or 'Apollo 23'--not a bad writer by any stretch, but not a great writer either. He's a competent, reliable writer, no more or less.

And then there's the Justin Richards who wrote 'Silhouette'. This is Justin Richards when he's engaged with the material, when he's challenged by the writers around him to do his best work. This Justin Richards instantly grasps the tiny nuances of dialogue and mannerism that separate the Capaldi Doctor from the Smith Doctor, and writes him with that simmering, icy anger just beneath the surface that Capaldi's performance brings out. This Justin Richards relishes the chance to write for characters like Strax, Vastra and Jenny, effortlessly displaying the character dynamics between them and showing why so many people feel like they should have their own spin-off by now.

This Justin Richards delivers a Victorian mystery with science-fiction elements that seamlessly evokes the current season of the television series. It's a pastiche, without question--Richards isn't trying to do something that couldn't be done on television, he's trying to do something that would fit right next to 'Deep Breath' in the Doctor Who canon. But it's a pastiche that's executed with verve and energy and joy, one that feels fresh and exciting simply because it's been done so well. Richards "gets" modern Who, and he's having fun playing with it. That's not to say there's nothing he does that couldn't be done on the show--the scene where Affinity, the villain's shapeshifting henchman, tries to cast his glamour on the Doctor and repeatedly gets the wrong incarnation out of it is a treat--but the main point is that right now, the televised Doctor Who is good enough that pastiching it well is something to be proud of.

This Justin Richards doesn't make as many appearances as he used to--which isn't surprising, since he's the editor of the Doctor Who range and his commissions usually mean that there was an emergency somewhere along the line that required that other Justin Richards to step in and whip out a book in a hurry. But when we do get this Justin, I'm reminded that he's a great writer who can come back and do another book any time he wants to.

Review: The Book of the Still

(Originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide on March 20, 03.)

The Book of the Still reminds me of no other debut novel in the history of the various ranges so much as Lawrence Miles' Christmas on a Rational Planet. Like Miles, Paul Ebbs brings so much energy, zest, and sheer swaggering charisma to the book that it feels like something new and ground-breaking, even though it's "just" a first novel. Both of them are flawed, as first-time authors tend to be, but both of them have a prose style that doesn't let even a single passage go by without trying to make it something special, something exciting, something that's never been done in Who before. It's that energy that lifts the book up to one of the better first novels I've read, and that makes me proud to be a fan of Doctor Who.

Right from the beginning, which Ebbs entitles the "Obligatory Spectacular Opening", we get a sense of amazing energy. The Doctor attempts to steal the eponymous Book through a plan that involves free-falling from orbit, a scene of dazzling excitement that sets the pace for the book to follow. We get lots of fun -- Anji stuck in a Bollywood movie, the Doctor trying to learn how to dance on a doomed planet, and Fitz... well, OK, Fitz does spend much of his time acting like a brainwashed idiot, which doesn't do wonders for him, but it's still a good book. The whole thing clips along with sparkling dialogue and a fascinating plot.

It's not flawless by any means -- the trio of villains who dog the Doctor throughout the book outstay their welcome by chapter two, and Carmodi is phenomenally irritating (although perhaps intentionally so). And I still couldn't tell you what Carmodi lost because of the Doctor, and why she believes the Doctor's responsible for it. But this was one of those rare times when I didn't care about the "whats" of a book because I was having so much fun with the "hows". I just had a blast reading this, and I can't wait for Paul Ebbs' next novel. If Lawrence Miles proves to be an accurate model, it'll be even better.

Review: Camera Obscura

(Originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide on September 1, 2003.)

Camera Obscura isn't so much a book as a piece of confectionary -- Lloyd Rose's second book is light, sweet, and fluffy, leaving a pleasant taste in your mouth as it melts delightfully into the memory. It's not a calorie-heavy work; the plot, which revolves around a dangerously malfunctioning time machine, is a light run-around that never distracts from the important part. This is a book that entirely deals with the repercussions of The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, and provides us plenty of Sabbath/Doctor conflicts and confrontations to bring a grin to our faces. Sabbath more or less winds up being the straight man to the Doctor's "Bugs Bunny"-esque revenge for the events of the last several books, and we love every minute of it.

I do recall saying in my review of The Adventuress of Henrietta Street that had the Doctor been in full possession of his faculties at the time, he would never have allowed Sabbath to do what he did -- and furthermore, that once his faculties had returned, he'd reverse it. In fact, he goes one better than that. Upon finding out that his second heart now beats in Sabbath's chest, he finds method after method of making use of the fact to make Sabbath regret every possible moment of his double-hearted-ness. From invading Sabbath's brains to stabbing himself in the chest just for fun, we finally see a bit of a return to form for the Doctor. He's no congenital idiot in this book... instead, he's the one pulling the strings, and Sabbath dances for him.

Mainly, I think, this is because Lloyd Rose is writing a thinly-disguised Seventh Doctor. In fact, I think that Lloyd Rose is writing a thinly-disguised Virgin NA, complete with an appearance by Death and as many other continuity references as she can get away with. Not that I think this is a bad thing by any stretch, naturally. I geek out on the NAs with the best of them, and anyone trying for a conscious evocation of my favorite era of the series gets my vote.

This is, for the most part, a "mythos" book, and as such it really lives or dies on the strengths of the regulars. The plot isn't much cod, another "oh, look, with the Time Lords gone time machines are common and that's BAD", with some clever little curlicues. But it's not about the plot -- it's about finding out what Sabbath's been up to, and getting the first real confrontation between the two and the setting down of their respective philosophies... and in that sense, it shines. Sabbath comes off well, the Doctor comes off better, and the companions get some good moments too (although Anji still doesn't drive me wild.)

The prose is just delightful, too... every scene between the Doctor and Sabbath crackles with energy, and there's just some wonderful lines and wonderful scenes. It does subscribe to the Kate Orman School of Torturing the Doctor, in some very gruesome ways...but unlike some of the other novels that went in for this, the Doctor gets sequences that show that he can take the pain and still save the day, which I love. Recommended.

Review: A Life of Surprises

(Originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide, March 14, 2003.)

Now that Bernice Summerfield has been around, as a character, for a decade (a quite respectable length of time for a fictional character), it's time for a celebration of her exploits -- an anthology that selects moments from her long and storied career and presents them to us for our enjoyment!

Except for her time with the Doctor, because we don't have the rights. And most of her time on Dellah, because we don't have the rights. And we've just decided to ignore those five years on Vremnya. So, here it is, a celebration of the last year of the ten years of Bernice Summerfield!

Actually, that's a bit harsh. Several of the stories do at least make veiled references to the Doctor, even if they can't mention him directly (except for Terrance Dicks, who gets away with it because he's Terrance Dicks.) And there's even one story that mentions Dellah. Still, the whole thing is weighted a bit heavily towards the Big Finish era of Benny books and audios, which, while it isn't a bad thing, does get away from the "anniversary" aspect of the anthology.

Don't get me wrong, though -- I loved A Life of Surprises. This is, overall, one of the top anthologies produced for Doctor Who and spin-offs, and possibly the best ever. Lots of great authors, lots of strong stories, and very little dross.

The Shape of the Hole, by Paul Cornell, is one of the ones that makes veiled reference to the Doctor, and has a nice message. Kind of hard to say more about it, because it's two pages long.

Kill the Mouse!, by Daniel O'Mahoney, is another example of why I think this writer should do another Who novel -- while this is a beautiful bit of prose and a fascinating story, it still feels way too short. It's as though he wrote an excerpt from a novel (my complaint about the last O'Mahoney story I read, Heart of Glass, as well.) Still, it's got vivid imagery and creepy scenes.

Solar Max and the Seven-Handed Snake Mother, by Kate Orman, is the result of what I can only assume was some sort of bet to see if she could write a story based on that title. It is a good story, if a bit strange, but the whole thing seems ever so slightly, well... like it was written to justify that title.

A Mutual Friend, by Terrance Dicks, is utter shameless pandering to the fans by making an utterly contrived meeting between Sarah Jane Smith and Bernice Summerfield. That said, I loved it because I'm one of the fans being shamelessly pandered to. That, and I loved the line about "alco-pops saying 'pop' but thinking 'alco'."

Alien Planets and You, by Dave Stone, is one of the highlights of the collection for me... then again, I'm a Dave Stone fan. It's a hilarious how-to-be-Benny guide, complete with footnotes on how the hints are used in practice. My one complaint (which also pops up later) is that the footnotes are placed at the end of the story instead of the bottom of the page, which breaks the rhythm of the story a bit.

Something Broken, by Paul Ebbs, is another funny one -- Benny lends herself to humor better than the Doctor, I think, and the short story lends itself better to humor than to any other genre, so the two together help a lot.

The Collection, by Peter Anghelides, might have worked better as a novel -- it's a time travel story, with several twists and turns, but crammed into such a small space that it's like watching Greg Louganis try to do a triple-somersault half-pike into the shallow end of the pool. It also doesn't help that it has the same footnote problem that Alien Planets and You did.

Setting Stone, by Mark Stevens, is another story that makes reference to the Doctor... and to the morally ambiguous nature of some of the Seventh Doctor's adventures. Here, the archaeologist Benny comes across the remains of a civilization she helped bring down, lo those many centuries ago. Bittersweet, but pretty good.

Time's Team, by David McIntee, ranks as one of his better works -- I've always liked McIntee's ideas, but felt he had somewhat undifferentiated prose, so it's nice to see him put some work into making this one... well, still not sparkle, perhaps, but at least glint. It's another humorous story, too.

Beedlemania, by Nev Fountain, is possibly the strangest story in the collection, needing to be read to be believed. It's also quite, quite funny, although it doesn't do wonders for Ace's reputation. So mind-bogglingly strange as to beggar the imagination.

The All-Seeing Eye, by Justin Richards, is haunting, beautiful, and strange... and creepy, too. Richards is usually noted for his plotting, not his characterization, but this one is almost all character -- and does a lot of development in a very short span. Seen as a companion piece to Virgin Lands from the Short Trips: Zodiac collection, it's very interesting indeed.

And Then Again, by Rob Shearman, is yet another one of those bloody alternate universe stories... and one that has the (unnamed) Doctor in it to boot. That said, it's still quite good, being a glimpse of the one person who you'd expect to be most like Bernice, and yet is pretty much her exact opposite.

Cuckoo, by Stephen Fewell, is actually a bit of a plodder... after all is said and done, not much actually happens in this story, unless of course you count the chicken attack. The message seems kind of vague, too. Probably the weakest story of the anthology, but still not actually bad.

A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, by David Bailey, has the world's biggest plot hole, but dances around it interestingly. (The story involves Benny having stored some of her memories in a 'menmosine store book', which locks up the memory so she doesn't remember it, but the book will. The bad guy tricks her into reading the book out loud so he can find out what she knows... but she's stored so much stuff in it that help arrives before he gets to the relevant information. The plot hole? If she's stored all this stuff in it, she doesn't remember it, which basically means that Benny is a total amnesiac.) Also notable for another hidden Doctor appearance, in which he restores all of Benny's lost diaries to her.

Squadborronfell, by Nick Walters, is a nice enough mood piece, a sad little reflection on war and hatred that rises above the 'Star Trek'-esque plot it's given. Still, not that memorable -- although again, not bad.

Taken By the Muses, by Steve Lyons, is an absolutely hilarious story of Benny having to argue for her life entirely in rhyme before the Supreme Muse. Steve Lyons every once in a while gets a weird rhyming obssession which can turn out quite funny, and this is another recurrence of it. I loved it.

The Spartacus Syndrome, by Jonathan Morris, could well be the best story of the collection and cements Morris' skyrocketing reputation after two fantastic novels. I won't go into detail, except to say that first, this is a story worth picking up a collection for (although I hope I've made it clear that the collection as a whole is good), and second, he fits the 'Life of Brian' joke in there.

Might, by Neil Corry, brings back Keith from Return of the Living Dad... well, maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. Hard to say, which is one of the strong points of the story. It's got some interesting stuff in it -- not on the high end of the anthology, but that's only because it's a very good anthology.

Paydirt, by Lance Parkin, takes the same level of myth-building that we see all the time for the Doctor and points out that, by now, this can actually apply to Bernice as well, which is an astonishing thing when you think about it. Probably more "ground-breaking" than "good", but still both, which is always welcome.

Dear Friend, by Jim Sangster, is Benny's open letter to the Doctor... and does anyone else find it odd that the Doctor apparently never visits her, even "off-screen", and she never mentions his name, even when talking about him? It's like the characters are aware of the licencing agreements. *shrug* A nice enough capper to the collection, except for...

Afterword, by Lloyd Rose, which isn't a story at all, but the actual afterword -- an essay on the evolution of Bernice which really makes you just want to stand up and cheer for the character.

That's basically what this anthology is -- a big cheer for Bernice. And as one of her big fans, I invite everyone to join right in.

Review: Warmonger

(Originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide, February 21 2003.)

This book almost defies description. It's awful -- cheerfully, gleefully awful. The characterization of the Doctor and Peri is so different from any other version ever seen of either of them in print or on screen that I began to suspect Terry had gotten his notes mixed up and thought he was writing for Blake's 7. The plot, while epic, is "epic" in the sort of Boy's Own Adventures way that's probably only fun if you're ten years old. The continuity is a walking, talking nightmare, the sort of thing that will give serious fans aneurysms and could well be the final stake in the coffin of canon.

And yet...

I loved it. I loved every single page of this book, whooping and hollering in places as another continuity treasure got plundered for the sake of a single book, laughing insanely as time twisted around and characters got run through the mangler, and generally enjoying the hell out of myself. Like Blood Harvest, another Uncle Terry sequel to one of his famous TV stories, Warmonger carries off its prose style with such verve and sheer enthusiasm for the act of writing that I couldn't help but be carried along with it. This isn't fanwank, because in fanwank, the story exists to fill holes in continuity. Here, the holes in continuity exist because of the story.

So, where to begin? With "The Supremo", the Doctor's alias for most of the book? Aside from being the sort of name that provokes hoots of derisive laughter, and sounds like someone the Karkus might have fought in the Daily Telepress to boot, it's actually a clever idea. The Doctor is crossing his own timestream and, in his own personal past, leading the fight against the Time Lord Morbius who he will someday encounter as a disembodied brain. He certainly can't call himself the Doctor.

There. I've given it away.

Warmonger is a sprequel (part sequel, part prequel, only possible in a universe with time travel) to The Brain of Morbius. In fact, that's my only real problem with the novel (he says, awaiting the hoots of derisive laughter.) Dicks should have realized that any serious fan has figured out who "General Rombusi" is within two pages (and I mean that literally -- this is one of the rare stories whose main plot twist is given away in its dedication), and skipped the whole mystery thing to just go gung-ho with it. As it is, we're stuck watching the mysterious General, a charismatic renegade Time Lord, discuss private matters with Solon on Karn while the Doctor wonders, "Who can he be?" He's the Rani, Doctor. In a very cunning disguise.

Still, he does go pretty gung-ho. Peri becomes a guerilla leader, the Doctor leads an alliance of Ice Warriors, Sontarans, and Cybermen against Morbius' troops, Peri gets drunk and makes a pass at the Doctor only to be turned down when the Doctor describes the intended tryst as "incestual", Solon makes his first appearance, we get a vampire adjutant to Morbius thrown in for no apparent reason, and to top it all off, we get the first chronological appearances of Borusa and the Sisterhood of Karn to boot. This is a book that does not slow down for its readers. (And I didn't even mention that the Doctor threatens to kill Solon even before he becomes "The Supremo".)

The whole thing is a walking, talking, continuity nightmare on top of that. The Doctor travels from Karn to Gallifrey in a space-ship (contradicting every story that talks about Gallifrey as existing in the ancient past), and meets Borusa in his first incarnation, presumably before the Doctor's even been loomed (which contradicts all the rules about not being able to travel to Gallifrey in one's own personal past). Then the Time Lords recognize the Doctor, despite this being in his own personal past, and begin threatening to imprison him for the theft of a Type 40 TARDIS he hasn't stolen yet. By the time the Cybermen ally themselves with the Sontarans, The History of the Universe has gone right out the window.

Even so, it's just so much fun to read. Terry's having a blast writing this, and I can't say I had a bad time reading it. Great lines pepper the book, like, "The operation is a brilliant success. The life or death of the patient is largely irrelevant." It just feels like so much fun -- it might be cheesy, but it's a high-quality cheese.

Ultimately, I have to recommend this novel, although you should read it with the understanding that it's a "good bad" book. However, I do wish he'd chosen a different Doctor/companion combo for it. Sixth Doctor/Peri would have worked a bit better... but in a perfect parallel universe, it was Warmonger and not The Eight Doctors that kicked off the EDAs.

Review: The Crooked World

(Originally posted to the DWRG, April 2003.)

As I began reading The Crooked World, it only took me a few pages before I immediately decided that the whole thing was a great idea with the wrong author. The idea of the Doctor materializing in an animated cartoon world with cartoon physics was fun, yes, but Steve Lyons has a far too solid, sensible approach to really make such a thing work. This would have been better suited, I thought, to a wild, wacky author like Jac Rayner or Dave Stone, and not to Steve Lyons.

Then I got into the book, and I realized I was wrong. As the story continued, I started to realize that this wasn't a "wild, wacky" book. This was full of interesting questions about morality and free will, as the inhabitants of the Crooked World took a look around them and wondered just what they'd been doing all these years. I began to grow attached to the characters, and started wondering how it would all turn out. I found myself very impressed with this novel, and I understand exactly why it's gotten such praise.

The two big decisions that Lyons made that I applaud: One, he didn't decide to make the Crooked World a "virtual thingie, a computer thingie, or an alternate thingie" (to paraphrase Daniel O'Mahoney.) We don't get an easy explanation for the Crooked World so we can dismiss its inhabitants as figments or phantoms or computer programs and stop caring about them. They're real, and they stay real throughout the book. Two, (which is linked to One,) Lyons doesn't press a reset button at the end, or destroy the whole world. The inhabitants live (most of them, anyway) to deal with the consequences of their newfound free will and the society they're beginning to make. This is all really happening. We don't switch it all off at the end and walk away.

That's what gives the book its momentum as well -- the whole thing just seems to proceed to its inevitable conclusion like water running downhill. From the beginning, where Streaky Bacon finds out the consequences of shooting people with guns, everything seems to flow naturally... all the way down to the end where Mr. Weasely gives his wonderful, wonderful speech about the consequences of a villainous life ("Yes, I did have choices, I can't deny it, but I was weak and I was selfish. I let other people make my decisions for me, and this is what they have brought me to.")

Admittedly, the book could come off as preachy to some -- to me, though, it was saved from that by the sense of purity. When the Doctor defends Jasper the cat in his trial for killing Squeak the mouse, what could come off as a bunch of speeches feels to me like these people are really thinking these thoughts for the first time, really considering these ideas as real, and having to grope their way to the conclusions on their own, just like we have. It's my favorite scene in the novel, and it really does define the book for me.

Not everything's perfect in the book -- Anji gets sidelined a lot, and Fitz... no, Fitz is still writer-proof as I think about him trying to describe "real" villainy by using James Bond movies as a guideline, and trying the moves on Angel Falls, only to find out she's not quite anatomically correct. Still, I understand now why The Crooked World ranked so highly, and why Steve Lyons was just the person to write it.

Review: Blue Box

(Originally posted May 24, 2003 to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide.)

The tremendous advantage of setting a story in the past is that you can drop hints about the future and make them as accurate or as inaccurate as needed, given the knowledge of the characters involved; the even more tremendous advantage of setting it in the recent past is that, having personal memory of the period, you can make it authentic while still taking advantages of the "time travel" conceit that powers Doctor Who. Blue Box does exactly that by setting its story in the early 1980s, giving author Kate Orman the chance to evoke quite precisely the early period of computer evolution while showing just how far we've come in twenty-one years. To be honest, next to the vivid portrayal of early hacker culture and capabilities, the plot was relatively unimportant -- unimportant, but not uninteresting.

The Eridani computer functions as the MacGuffin of the plot -- it's a suitably world-threatening device that we understand that everyone concerned wants it, and wants it badly enough to do seriously dangerous things to get it. However, it's really nothing we haven't seen before. "Alien technology perverting the course of human history" is an old saw in Doctor Who, even if it is handled well here. What's important is the people who want it and the ways they're trying to get ahold of it, and that's where Blue Box shines.

Sarah Swan, the villain of the piece, is quite possibly one of the best-drawn character portraits we've ever seen in Doctor Who. She's not an evil megalomaniac (well, not until the end when things are getting way out of control), she's not a madwoman (well, not until the end, again), she's the sort of petty tyrant, control freak, and revenge-monger that anyone who's frequented the Net has run into on one occasion or another. She's not nice, she's not sympathetic, and she's the sort of person you just want to slap if you ever meet, but she's fully-realized and excellently developed over the course of the novel. She's also not the cliched "one step ahead of the heroes" villain... most of the twists involve the Doctor out-maneuvering her, and her increasing desperation to stay on top of things. She's a villain who just cannot accept that she's out of her league.

The other characters are well-done, too. Chick Peters gets a lot of development "hidden in the shadows", and Bob Salmon comes off as a great pseudo-companion. And Ian Mond... well, it's a trifle unfortunate that a relatively major part was given to a fan namecheck; like M. Night Shaymalan or Quentin Tarantino, these cameos pull the reader out of the story a bit and might be better off with very small parts. Of course, after Vampire Science, I can't complain too loudly about fan namechecks.

The regulars are well-done here, too, with the Doctor seeming to revel in playing with our antique, human technology. (If the stakes are as high as he says, I do wonder why he doesn't use something more advanced, though. As it is, by using contemporary technology, he does seem to be levelling the playing field with Swan a bit. Still, since his whole goal is to keep anachronistic technology out of human hands, he must have decided it wasn't worth the risk.)

The point where the novel shines, though, is in its careful, loving descriptions of hacking and hacker culture. Every plot point hinges on some clever use of computers, and it's fascinating to get glimpses of how the hackers of the time could make the systems sit up and beg. I'm of the optimistic and hopefully not too naive opinion that these days, security has caught up a bit with hackers -- the period described here was a sort of Wild West time, before anyone realized the damage that could be done -- but it's still amazing to read about this stuff. The style chosen fits perfectly with the material, too -- Chick Peters' journalistic writing reminds me a lot of the unnamed (but always, in my mind, Bernice Summerfield) historian who set down The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. Considering that a lot of my non-fiction bookshelves contain history books, this was right up my alley.

In sum, I loved Blue Box, with all the fervor of an 80s nostalgia freak; I recommend it as probably Kate's best book since Set Piece.

Review: To the Slaughter

(Originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide in May 2005.)

If you can imagine a story, any story, as a car, then you can imagine writers as auto mechanics. (I know this is a weird place to start, but work with me on this one.) The writer's job is to customize the story, trick it out with new features, improve its performance, streamline it, and give it a nice look.

If you can see To the Slaughter as a car, it's like it's one of those weird bullet cars they design just to see if they can break the world landspeed record. It might not always be pretty, it might not necessarily be elegant, and you probably wouldn't just cruise around in it to admire the way it handles, but man, that mother can move.

Cole starts the book with the Doctor, Fitz, and Trix hiding under a board-room table mid-meeting, and before you can say "interplanetary conspiracy" they're split up, on the run, in hiding, escaping explosions, racing against time, and cross-cutting from one thread to another at break-neck speed. The plot actually does hold together reasonably well under these stresses, and while characterization does suffer a bit, it's just because you're moving too fast to get to know anyone. (Trix, astonishingly enough, shows some signs of a personality shyly coming out to greet us, one book before she's written out of the series, but you'd still have a hard time caring if she wandered out of the book never to return.) There's some nice lines here and there, and I personally love the idea of realigning the planets to give the solar system better feng shui, but again, you're really just rocketing through the book for the adrenaline rush. And on that level it's fantastic.

Admittedly, it does steal some from '28 Days Later'... but then again, they stole their first big scene from The Dalek Invasion of Earth anyway, so we're owed payment.

Review: Endgame (Graphic Novel)

(Originally posted May 31, 2006 at the Doctor Who Ratings Guide.)

"Why, yes," he said afterwards. "That was quite fun."

The first collection of Eighth Doctor adventures from DWM (Endgame, The Keep, Fire and Brimstone, Tooth and Claw, The Final Chapter, and Wormwood, with bonus strips A Life of Matter and Death and By Hook or By Crook) are basically, in sum, a mad romp of action-oriented stories that go for scope over substance, never letting the chance to pull off a big cliffhanger or huge visual concept pass them by. This is a lot more fun than it sounds on paper, primarily because this is what comics work best at: "And then space turned all white," doesn't sound great on paper, but when you can actually see it happening as the leader of the Threshold gestures to it, it's pretty freaking cool.

And Endgame is full of these moments. Reading these strips, for the first time I actually understood why someone thought Alan Barnes could write Doctor Who stories (something I'll admit I never got from Storm Warning, Neverland or Zagreus): these are stories suited to his style, big huge concepts that splash out over the page and make you want to gasp. Plus, he writes a heroic Doctor who does heroic things and is the prime motivator of the story (and wins at the end), which I have to give him props for, having ripped previous DWM comic writers for not doing so in the past (and previous other Doctor Who writers as well). But the name-dropping thing has to go. Please.

Izzy is... unfortunate. I think she worked better in concept than she ever did in the strip, the idea of someone climbing onto the TARDIS who's an actual sci-fi fan and familiar with all the tropes of the worlds the Doctor will encounter... in practice, she just seems to be a sci-fi quote generator stuck onto Generic Companion Template #1, The Plucky Young Lass Who Tries To Help. Fey is interesting, but gets substantially more so by the end of the story.

About which I honestly don't want to say too much, other than to say, if you've come at this through the graphic novels, you'll be really surprised at how far the stories have come since The Iron Legion in terms of integrating their storylines together into a coherent, planned work. Stories like The Keep deliberately set up things in Fire and Brimstone, elements dropped into Fire and Brimstone set up important plot points in Wormwood, and there's a huge twist in The Final Chapter that then gets another huge twist added onto it in Wormwood to great effect. (Although it would have been even better if they'd not put it on a right-hand page. It's something you should have to turn the page to see. But oh well. Layout is too complex for me to quibble over.) The Tides of Time did some stuff like this, but this book really does take it to a whole other level. (Plus, the Threshold get their comeuppance, which is nice for me because I really, really, really hated the story where they killed Ace.)

The art, by the by, is nice: not flashy, but clear and simple, a definite virtue for these stories.

On the whole, possibly my favorite collection yet, and I'm certainly looking forward to The Glorious Dead.

Alien Bodies Revisited

(Originally posted to the Jade Pagoda mailing list on January 9th, 2003.)

I recently decided to re-read Alien Bodies, more or less entirely on a whim; I hadn't read the book since its original release back in 1997, in no small part because I had enjoyed it so much when I first read it. Having come, as it did, after a stretch of books that included 'The Eight Doctors', 'The Bodysnatchers', and 'War of the Daleks', it really single-handedly revitalized my hope for the range, making me believe that there was really something interesting and exciting going on, something that would make the BBC Books just as good as their predecessors. Given that weight, could it really be as good as I remembered it being after years of War-related books and the detonation of the entire plotline after 'The Ancestor Cell'?

The answer was yes. Very much so.

In a lot of ways, I think my enjoyment of the novel was enhanced by the knowledge of the arc. A few bits stood out as being "promises unfulfilled"...the tidbits we did get about the Enemy don't jibe with TAC at all, and we never did find out the full story about the Doctor's body...or about Trask (and isn't it interesting that Trask, an agent for the Celestis, remembers drowning while the Doctor watched...and years later in the range, not one but two characters have drowned while the Doctor watched--Rasputin and Roger Nepath? The fanboy in me geeks out at the thoughts in this...) A few other threads did get followed up, even if I wasn't totally satisfied with the way they finished off. The War, in the end, just got hacked off like a gangrenous limb, which was something of a shame--however, I think an ending was needed by that point, even if I wish it had been handled somewhat differently. Faction Paradox has never been handled as well by anyone else. Qixotl vanished into the ether (and hopefully, please god hopefully so did the review in which I suggested he was Captain Cook from 'Greatest Show In the Galaxy'. Look, he mentioned Golobus...and the Evil From Before the Dawn of Time...Drax was my second guess, honest! I got Tobias Vaughn right in 'Original Sin', by something like 50 pages in! I even figured out that Maggie Walsh was the head of the Initiative! :) )

Still, what stands out in 'Alien Bodies' for me is the way that it wears the Doctor Who universe so well. We get the Krotons showing up, and showing up in such a way that they're actually cleverly used. We get name-checks of planets from the TV series, but so casually, so deftly that they really seem more natural than fanwank, like mentioning Cleveland when doing a TV show set in Pittsburgh. Fanwank is always a dangerous proposition, but Miles uses it as just another tool in his toolbox.

And the language...oh sweet mercy. Marie, the humanoid TARDIS that gets stuck in the form of a 1960s policewoman. The Shift, popping up in the TV listings and the crossword puzzles. The Doctor's line about "Talking with your dementias is the first sign of madness". Jaguar urine as a surveillance device. Dark Sam being "the only person in her class who didn't think homosexuals should be shot". The Raston cybernetic lap-dancers, the "finest dancing machines ever created." So many more...

I know there's been a critical backlash against this book since it was published. I'd like to backlash against the backlash...this book deserves all the praise it got, and should really have been the template of the BBC series even more than it was--and it was the template for a lot of the BBC series. Truly a fine, fine novel.