To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to review 'The Masters of Luxor'. I mean, this is basically a discussion of a historical curiosity, a first draft of a script that wasn't deemed good enough to warrant a second draft, made for a production whose style of drama is now sitting comfortably at fifty-one years out of date. Is it even worth it to discuss the quality here? Does it even make sense to try?
In case the answer is "yes", I can say that 'The Masters of Luxor' as published isn't very good. There's a lot of random conjecture that turns out to be absolutely right for no reason beyond the writer having no real mechanism to deliver exposition about the dead, silent city and its robotic inhabitants. There's not much action over the six episodes, there's a lot of discussion about religion that seems weird and out of place as well as slow and talky, and the Perfect One is simply not very exciting as an adversary. There's some nice atmosphere at points, but it's really nothing that the city in 'The Daleks' didn't do better. Oh, and although the dialogue would certainly have been rewritten further in later drafts (and was rewritten for the script book already, according to the afterword) it still sounds clunky and not particularly like any of the regulars. Basically, it's not hard to see how they went a different direction after this.
But again, the quality isn't necessarily what we look at with this one. It's interesting to read it not because it's good, but because it demonstrates the thought processes of the people working on the series at the time. They knew they wanted to contrast the first "science fiction" episode of the series with the "historical" they'd already done, and their mental focus was obviously on the potential for sterility and inhumanity inherent in science. The unseen Masters of Luxor had gone down a path of eugenics, which wasn't (yet) a component of the Daleks' evil, but both of them shared the notion of a world where science gone mad had led to a world on the brink of death, and a city that was a scientific paradise with nobody left to live in it.
The discarded humanity is personified in both stories; in 'The Daleks', it's the Thals who skulk outside of the abandoned city, scarred by memories of a century-old war. In 'The Masters of Luxor', it's Tabon, who abandoned himself to exile and suspended animation rather than face the consequences of his experimentation. The Thals, of course, are just as responsible for the Daleks (in the original story, at least) as Tabon was for the Perfect One, but their ancestors' aggression and violence is downplayed to the point where the act of resuming the war against their old enemies is seen as a positive act and not a resumption of a campaign of genocide. Perhaps the production team weren't quite ready for Tabon's guilt, or perhaps they simply wanted more sympathetic characters? It's hard to sympathize with anyone outside of the regular cast in 'The Masters of Luxor', and Tabon's self-sacrifice seems more to be his just desserts than a tragic comeuppance.
Or honestly, it could have just been practical concerns. There are a lot of freaking robot costumes in this one, far more than the number of Daleks that appear on-screen. The TARDIS flies, something it did rarely in the Classic Series, and of course the story ends with the entire city exploding. It might very well have been judged unworkable in light of their budgetary concerns. (At the very least, 'The Daleks' stretched out the sets and costumes over an extra episode.)
Ultimately, we may never know exactly what caused this script to be rejected in favor of Nation's story, but I think we can answer one question. In the introduction, John McElroy asks, "In a universe of infinite possibilities, there are of course worlds in which [Masters] was the second story--I wonder if Doctor Who is still running there?" Based on this script, I'm guessing not.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Review: 12 Stories, 12 Doctors
I finally managed to get hold of a copy of the 50th anniversary novella collection, '12 Stories, 12 Doctors' (yes, I got what I'm calling the "Fuck You, Everyone Who Bought a Previous Edition" Edition) and I have to say, on the whole I was immensely satisfied. There were a few flaws--I'll get into them more as they crop up in specific stories, but they all seem to stem from a problem I'll call "Famous Writer, First-Time Who Writer Syndrome". It's what happens when someone who is an extremely talented writer decides to jump into the Doctor Who pool with what they think is a fantastically clever and original idea, all without being aware that it's already been done six times in five decades from every conceivable angle. The result doesn't feel as innovative as they no doubt hope for.
Nonetheless, this is an incredibly impressive collection of talent turning their collective hand to Doctor Who, and I think the results speak for themselves. Even so, I'm going to add my two cents. As follows...
1) "A Big Hand for the Doctor" by Eoin Colfer. This is a story that, depending on how you look at it, either "gets everything wrong" or "takes advantage of the wider scope available to a story that isn't written in 1963 for production in Lime Grove Studios with William Hartnell to do exciting and interesting things that simply weren't possible at the time, but that expand the conceptual space of the First Doctor". (Guess which side I'm on.) This is a fun story, albeit one that isn't attempting to slavishly recreate the Hartnell era, and it has an impish charm to the way it reinterprets canon without ever actually rewriting it. The coda is a bit twee--Colfer's FWFTWWS manifests here by having a Famous Author witness the events of the story and turn them into fiction, just like Wells and Dickens and Christie and and and...but the coda is short enough that the story doesn't suffer for it.
2) "The Nameless City" by Michael Scott. The Second Doctor and Jamie are manipulated into battle against vaguely Lovecraftian monsters by a thinly-disguised Delgado Master. So basically, here the FWFTWWS is Michael Scott not realizing that he's pastiching every third New or Missing Adventure. (Or maybe he does, and it's all done on purpose. Can't rule that out.) Nonetheless, it's well handled and spooky, with some interesting details that make the Doctor and his TARDIS seem strange and creepy all over again, and a resolution that's fun and clever.
3) "The Spear of Destiny" by Marcus Sedgwick. It wouldn't be a Third Doctor story without the Master showing up to provide the second-act twist, and I certainly won't fault Sedgwick for not being made aware that the previous story also involved the Master. (Especially since as originally published, there was a month-long gap between the two stories.) It certainly doesn't dampen what comes off as a letter-perfect pastiche of the Pertwee era, from the "UNIT family" to the cod-'In Search Of' fixation on weird and spooky legendary pseudo-archaeological artifacts (in this case, the titular Spear) and the sheer confounding Pertwee-ness of Pertwee. He gets that wonderfully frustrating paternalism dead on, and it's charming to watch him work in what feels like a slightly shortened version of a missing episode.
4) "The Roots of Evil" by Philip Reeve. This is definitely one of the highlights of the anthology. The Doctor and Leela get involved in some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey shenanigans involving a future incarnation (the Doctor is justly horrified to find out he will be wearing a bow-tie someday) that has set a lost human colony on a path of undying hatred against him. (One of the characters, "Ven", turns out to have a full name of "Vengeance-Against-The-Doctor-Shall-Someday-Be-Ours". The Doctor responds by admitting that would be a bit of a mouthful, and offering him a jelly baby.) Needless to say, there are horrific secrets at the heart of the colony, gruesome monsters, and witty bon mots dropped casually into the barking mad villain's monologues. It's not just a pastiche, it's a charming and clever story in its own right.
5) "Tip of the Tongue" by Patrick Ness. This is one of the ones that feels most like an actual children's story, perhaps because it focuses mainly on actual children. There's a certain sly understanding of the way that children deal with things that remain unspoken, yet are understood perfectly by all concerned; Nellie, one of the two main characters, is constantly dealing with emotions and realities too big to be spoken out loud. The thematic depth gives a lot of weight and realism to a story that might otherwise feel surreal or silly. The Doctor's barely in it, but I didn't mind that at all, given how well the prose flowed.
6) "Something Borrowed" by Richelle Mead. This was another favorite--telling the story from Peri's perspective gives some dramatic heft to a character that got stuck in the peril monkey role all too often in the series, and the Rani is a good choice of villain for an anniversary celebration. There's some material that's a little bit telegraphed, which is more a factor of the short space the author has to work with, but the whole thing is well-written and fun. (Although I did come away wondering what's going to stop the Rani from going ten miles down the road and doing the same thing all over again...)
7) "The Ripple Effect" by Malorie Blackman. This one, unfortunately, suffered from FWFTWWS big-time. The idea of the Doctor encountering Daleks that don't act like Daleks, and being unable to set aside his fear and hatred of them, is something that's already been done in stories like "Dalek", "Victory of the Daleks", and "Dalek Generation". The idea of the Doctor having to erase a parallel universe that's actually better than ours because of Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Reasons has already been done in "Genocide" and "The Girl Who Waited". And without the space to really develop either idea, it's hard to make this seem like anything other than a retread of things other authors have already done. If she'd had a chance to expand it to novel length, and had to do more than just reiterate these tropes, it might have turned out very special...but as it was, it kind of overstayed its welcome.
8) "Spore" by Alex Scarrow. Weirdly, it's the Eighth Doctor story that goes for the purely Hinchcliffian horror tale...but it does a reasonably effective job, with a space fungus that liquifies everything it touches and converts it into monsters. Perhaps a little too short to be effective--at novella length, the story barely has time to convey the threat before the Doctor resolves it--but it does a good job of what it sets out to achieve. And the pseudo-companion is a soldier who appears to be Asian-American, which is a nice change from the typical white dude/screamy white woman.
9) "The Beast of Babylon" by Charlie Higson. At first, this one seems like it might be going down a road that's a bit too kiddie--the Ninth Doctor teams up with a teenage girl named Ali for an adventure in Ancient Babylon! But just when you start expecting Ali to learn valuable lessons about Olden Times before coming back home, Higson makes clever use of the prose format to reveal a few details about Ali that weren't quite what was expected, turning the story into something of a shocking twist on the pseudo-companion tropes that are common to solo Doctor stories. Far from being FWFTWWS, this one feels like someone cleverly subverting the structure of a Who story in a unique and inventive way.
10) "The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage" by Derek Landy. This author and this Doctor seem made for each other. Landy has his finger perfectly on Tennant's lightning-fast patter, his gift of gab and his brilliant command of every situation (there's a wonderful sequence where the Doctor is challenged to a chess match, and announces that his opponent is so over-matched that there's no need to even play the game). Combine that with some hilarious jokes about children's literature and books in general (as they struggle to escape a world composed of Martha's literary tastes, they pass a scene from 'Twilight' and Martha simply hisses out, "Don't judge me") and you've got a story that brought a huge smile to my face.
11) "Nothing O'Clock" by Neil Gaiman. I don't wish to diminish any of the other authors in this anthology, all of whom are luminaries in their field and are immensely talented. But this is just a quantum leap beyond everything else in the book in terms of quality. It captures the Eleventh Doctor and Amy's voice perfectly. It expands on tiny details of their depictions on television in ways that really make me wish for more Past Doctor Adventures just to get this kind of contextualization on a more regular basis. It has one of the all-time great and creepy monsters in the Kin, which are not only great and creepy but perfectly encapsulate the fairy-tale ethos of the Moffat era without simply pastiching it. It has one of perhaps the best ever "Doctor fucks over the bad guy" moments, which I went back to read about five times (including one time reading the entire story out loud to my wife because it was just that much fun to revel in the prose). And oh by the way it's just awesome. Again, I don't want to suggest that the other stories in this book weren't great, but this is just a level of great that's above other levels of great, because Neil Gaiman is a one-in-a-billion talent and one of the best authors of our time. It is a pastiche, which is something that caused me a moment's pause because I would be interested in a take on Doctor Who that is solely Neil Gaiman's--a producer's take, if you will, instead of a writer's take. But that's merely a quibble that shouldn't stop anyone from picking up a must-read story.
12) "Lights Out" by Holly Black. This was probably a tricky brief, taking the Doctor with the fewest stories and trying to capture his voice. Black does a good job, though, capturing the spiky exterior of the Twelfth Doctor and the depth of feeling it conceals. The story is also in keeping with this Doctor, as well; it's a murder mystery, a character study and a moral dilemma all at once. You can easily see it fitting between 'Deep Breath' and 'Into the Dalek', and not just because that's where the author clearly sets it. A solid conclusion to the anthology, although I can understand being frustrated that Puffin seems to think it's worth sixteen bucks all by itself.
So there you have it. Plenty of good ones, very few weak ones, and one that's an absolute must-read. That's a pretty good record for a Who anthology, and it shows that in good hands, there's still a lot of interesting life to every Doctor. I look forward to another fifty years.
Nonetheless, this is an incredibly impressive collection of talent turning their collective hand to Doctor Who, and I think the results speak for themselves. Even so, I'm going to add my two cents. As follows...
1) "A Big Hand for the Doctor" by Eoin Colfer. This is a story that, depending on how you look at it, either "gets everything wrong" or "takes advantage of the wider scope available to a story that isn't written in 1963 for production in Lime Grove Studios with William Hartnell to do exciting and interesting things that simply weren't possible at the time, but that expand the conceptual space of the First Doctor". (Guess which side I'm on.) This is a fun story, albeit one that isn't attempting to slavishly recreate the Hartnell era, and it has an impish charm to the way it reinterprets canon without ever actually rewriting it. The coda is a bit twee--Colfer's FWFTWWS manifests here by having a Famous Author witness the events of the story and turn them into fiction, just like Wells and Dickens and Christie and and and...but the coda is short enough that the story doesn't suffer for it.
2) "The Nameless City" by Michael Scott. The Second Doctor and Jamie are manipulated into battle against vaguely Lovecraftian monsters by a thinly-disguised Delgado Master. So basically, here the FWFTWWS is Michael Scott not realizing that he's pastiching every third New or Missing Adventure. (Or maybe he does, and it's all done on purpose. Can't rule that out.) Nonetheless, it's well handled and spooky, with some interesting details that make the Doctor and his TARDIS seem strange and creepy all over again, and a resolution that's fun and clever.
3) "The Spear of Destiny" by Marcus Sedgwick. It wouldn't be a Third Doctor story without the Master showing up to provide the second-act twist, and I certainly won't fault Sedgwick for not being made aware that the previous story also involved the Master. (Especially since as originally published, there was a month-long gap between the two stories.) It certainly doesn't dampen what comes off as a letter-perfect pastiche of the Pertwee era, from the "UNIT family" to the cod-'In Search Of' fixation on weird and spooky legendary pseudo-archaeological artifacts (in this case, the titular Spear) and the sheer confounding Pertwee-ness of Pertwee. He gets that wonderfully frustrating paternalism dead on, and it's charming to watch him work in what feels like a slightly shortened version of a missing episode.
4) "The Roots of Evil" by Philip Reeve. This is definitely one of the highlights of the anthology. The Doctor and Leela get involved in some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey shenanigans involving a future incarnation (the Doctor is justly horrified to find out he will be wearing a bow-tie someday) that has set a lost human colony on a path of undying hatred against him. (One of the characters, "Ven", turns out to have a full name of "Vengeance-Against-The-Doctor-Shall-Someday-Be-Ours". The Doctor responds by admitting that would be a bit of a mouthful, and offering him a jelly baby.) Needless to say, there are horrific secrets at the heart of the colony, gruesome monsters, and witty bon mots dropped casually into the barking mad villain's monologues. It's not just a pastiche, it's a charming and clever story in its own right.
5) "Tip of the Tongue" by Patrick Ness. This is one of the ones that feels most like an actual children's story, perhaps because it focuses mainly on actual children. There's a certain sly understanding of the way that children deal with things that remain unspoken, yet are understood perfectly by all concerned; Nellie, one of the two main characters, is constantly dealing with emotions and realities too big to be spoken out loud. The thematic depth gives a lot of weight and realism to a story that might otherwise feel surreal or silly. The Doctor's barely in it, but I didn't mind that at all, given how well the prose flowed.
6) "Something Borrowed" by Richelle Mead. This was another favorite--telling the story from Peri's perspective gives some dramatic heft to a character that got stuck in the peril monkey role all too often in the series, and the Rani is a good choice of villain for an anniversary celebration. There's some material that's a little bit telegraphed, which is more a factor of the short space the author has to work with, but the whole thing is well-written and fun. (Although I did come away wondering what's going to stop the Rani from going ten miles down the road and doing the same thing all over again...)
7) "The Ripple Effect" by Malorie Blackman. This one, unfortunately, suffered from FWFTWWS big-time. The idea of the Doctor encountering Daleks that don't act like Daleks, and being unable to set aside his fear and hatred of them, is something that's already been done in stories like "Dalek", "Victory of the Daleks", and "Dalek Generation". The idea of the Doctor having to erase a parallel universe that's actually better than ours because of Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Reasons has already been done in "Genocide" and "The Girl Who Waited". And without the space to really develop either idea, it's hard to make this seem like anything other than a retread of things other authors have already done. If she'd had a chance to expand it to novel length, and had to do more than just reiterate these tropes, it might have turned out very special...but as it was, it kind of overstayed its welcome.
8) "Spore" by Alex Scarrow. Weirdly, it's the Eighth Doctor story that goes for the purely Hinchcliffian horror tale...but it does a reasonably effective job, with a space fungus that liquifies everything it touches and converts it into monsters. Perhaps a little too short to be effective--at novella length, the story barely has time to convey the threat before the Doctor resolves it--but it does a good job of what it sets out to achieve. And the pseudo-companion is a soldier who appears to be Asian-American, which is a nice change from the typical white dude/screamy white woman.
9) "The Beast of Babylon" by Charlie Higson. At first, this one seems like it might be going down a road that's a bit too kiddie--the Ninth Doctor teams up with a teenage girl named Ali for an adventure in Ancient Babylon! But just when you start expecting Ali to learn valuable lessons about Olden Times before coming back home, Higson makes clever use of the prose format to reveal a few details about Ali that weren't quite what was expected, turning the story into something of a shocking twist on the pseudo-companion tropes that are common to solo Doctor stories. Far from being FWFTWWS, this one feels like someone cleverly subverting the structure of a Who story in a unique and inventive way.
10) "The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage" by Derek Landy. This author and this Doctor seem made for each other. Landy has his finger perfectly on Tennant's lightning-fast patter, his gift of gab and his brilliant command of every situation (there's a wonderful sequence where the Doctor is challenged to a chess match, and announces that his opponent is so over-matched that there's no need to even play the game). Combine that with some hilarious jokes about children's literature and books in general (as they struggle to escape a world composed of Martha's literary tastes, they pass a scene from 'Twilight' and Martha simply hisses out, "Don't judge me") and you've got a story that brought a huge smile to my face.
11) "Nothing O'Clock" by Neil Gaiman. I don't wish to diminish any of the other authors in this anthology, all of whom are luminaries in their field and are immensely talented. But this is just a quantum leap beyond everything else in the book in terms of quality. It captures the Eleventh Doctor and Amy's voice perfectly. It expands on tiny details of their depictions on television in ways that really make me wish for more Past Doctor Adventures just to get this kind of contextualization on a more regular basis. It has one of the all-time great and creepy monsters in the Kin, which are not only great and creepy but perfectly encapsulate the fairy-tale ethos of the Moffat era without simply pastiching it. It has one of perhaps the best ever "Doctor fucks over the bad guy" moments, which I went back to read about five times (including one time reading the entire story out loud to my wife because it was just that much fun to revel in the prose). And oh by the way it's just awesome. Again, I don't want to suggest that the other stories in this book weren't great, but this is just a level of great that's above other levels of great, because Neil Gaiman is a one-in-a-billion talent and one of the best authors of our time. It is a pastiche, which is something that caused me a moment's pause because I would be interested in a take on Doctor Who that is solely Neil Gaiman's--a producer's take, if you will, instead of a writer's take. But that's merely a quibble that shouldn't stop anyone from picking up a must-read story.
12) "Lights Out" by Holly Black. This was probably a tricky brief, taking the Doctor with the fewest stories and trying to capture his voice. Black does a good job, though, capturing the spiky exterior of the Twelfth Doctor and the depth of feeling it conceals. The story is also in keeping with this Doctor, as well; it's a murder mystery, a character study and a moral dilemma all at once. You can easily see it fitting between 'Deep Breath' and 'Into the Dalek', and not just because that's where the author clearly sets it. A solid conclusion to the anthology, although I can understand being frustrated that Puffin seems to think it's worth sixteen bucks all by itself.
So there you have it. Plenty of good ones, very few weak ones, and one that's an absolute must-read. That's a pretty good record for a Who anthology, and it shows that in good hands, there's still a lot of interesting life to every Doctor. I look forward to another fifty years.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
The Warriors of Death
I've mentioned before that the Hartnell era was one in which the BBC really hadn't started thinking of television as a medium in its own right; in their mind, they were producing live theater with an audience they couldn't quite see. This theatrical inspiration can be seen strongly in 'The Edge of Destruction' and 'The Brink of Disaster', which plays like an effort from Sartre or Pirandello, and as the plot of this story kicks into high gear, it can also be seen very strongly in the Shakespearean convolutions of 'The Warriors of Death'.
The obvious parallel here is with Tloloxl, played by John Ringham like an extremely experimental version of 'Richard III'. Actually, no--that's what everyone says, because they notice his gait and his slightly nasal speech, which is how King Richard III is traditionally played, but he's really doing Iago. The director does a wonderful job of constantly putting him just a little bit upstage of every single character he speaks to...he's constantly whispering in everyone's ears, insinuating and promising and plotting. Constantly plotting, really; when he promised at the end of 'The Temple of Evil' that he was going to destroy Barbara, he didn't muck about. He forces Autloc to put Barbara through a series of grueling tests on religious doctrine, he frames the Doctor for violations of temple protocol, and he sets Ian up for a duel to the death in a scene with the Perfect Victim that is an absolutely letter-perfect manipulation. We are now officially light-years from Tegana and his overt mustache-twirling, here. Tloloxl is subtle, conniving, and in perfect command of the situation.
And of course, he's helped by the Doctor. The subplot where the Doctor's efforts to find a way back to the TARDIS inadvertently help Ian's nemesis Ixta is exactly the kind of thing Shakespeare loved. Mistaken identity, chance and coincidence conspiring to bring about tragedy, and of course a good old-fashioned Poisoned MacGuffin that owes more to the laws of drama than the laws of nature. (Oh, and a contrivance that furthers the plot in an ironic fashion--the Doctor's shout to Ian is exactly what causes him to drop his guard long enough for Ixta to scratch him.)
If this was a traditional Shakespearean play, though, the duel between Ian and Ixta would be the climax. Instead, we're at only the halfway point, and Ian's story serves only to advance Barbara's main plot. This is also Doctor Who when it's at its most ensemble-oriented, and Barbara is allowed to be the protagonist for a story in a way that Martha or Clara never are. As such, Ian is the peril monkey, the Doctor is held prisoner and it's Barbara who has to save the day. Which is frankly just awesome, full stop.
The obvious parallel here is with Tloloxl, played by John Ringham like an extremely experimental version of 'Richard III'. Actually, no--that's what everyone says, because they notice his gait and his slightly nasal speech, which is how King Richard III is traditionally played, but he's really doing Iago. The director does a wonderful job of constantly putting him just a little bit upstage of every single character he speaks to...he's constantly whispering in everyone's ears, insinuating and promising and plotting. Constantly plotting, really; when he promised at the end of 'The Temple of Evil' that he was going to destroy Barbara, he didn't muck about. He forces Autloc to put Barbara through a series of grueling tests on religious doctrine, he frames the Doctor for violations of temple protocol, and he sets Ian up for a duel to the death in a scene with the Perfect Victim that is an absolutely letter-perfect manipulation. We are now officially light-years from Tegana and his overt mustache-twirling, here. Tloloxl is subtle, conniving, and in perfect command of the situation.
And of course, he's helped by the Doctor. The subplot where the Doctor's efforts to find a way back to the TARDIS inadvertently help Ian's nemesis Ixta is exactly the kind of thing Shakespeare loved. Mistaken identity, chance and coincidence conspiring to bring about tragedy, and of course a good old-fashioned Poisoned MacGuffin that owes more to the laws of drama than the laws of nature. (Oh, and a contrivance that furthers the plot in an ironic fashion--the Doctor's shout to Ian is exactly what causes him to drop his guard long enough for Ixta to scratch him.)
If this was a traditional Shakespearean play, though, the duel between Ian and Ixta would be the climax. Instead, we're at only the halfway point, and Ian's story serves only to advance Barbara's main plot. This is also Doctor Who when it's at its most ensemble-oriented, and Barbara is allowed to be the protagonist for a story in a way that Martha or Clara never are. As such, Ian is the peril monkey, the Doctor is held prisoner and it's Barbara who has to save the day. Which is frankly just awesome, full stop.
The Temple of Evil
It's really no wonder that this story is so fondly remembered--this is really the finest example of this era of Doctor Who. The cast, both regular and incidental, are firing on all cylinders, and more importantly they've figured out exactly how to do this kind of story. The Doctor and his companions are separated from the TARDIS quickly and elegantly, kept apart by the thinness of a brick wall and by the distance of an entire civilization.
But at the same time, this is about more than simply getting back to the TARDIS and getting the heck out of Dodge; the scene between Barbara and the Doctor, one of the best in fifty-plus years of the series, showcases what the first Doctor era did better than any other. Barbara isn't willing to simply sit back and observe history, not when she knows where it ends. She must know, as a history teacher, that the Aztec practice of human sacrifice is more than mere superstition; equally, she must be aware that history has never been kind to rulers (especially women) who attempt to use their power to change the long-established and deeply-held customs of their people. But at the same time, she knows she has a chance that no-one else will ever have again. Her final line to the Doctor--"Not Barbara, Yetaxa," is delivered with such steely determination that you can't help root for her quixotic dream.
But of course, it fails. It fails not just because of the arc of history, or because of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey reasons...it fails because one person can't change the entire course of a civilization with a well-timed "No!" It fails because the 'victim' wants to honor the gods, and Barbara's intervention (no matter how well-intentioned) is nonetheless a condescending attempt to impose her culture on another because she thinks it's 'better'. What she's trying to do, while kinder in execution, is no less a destruction of the Aztec culture than Cortez and his successors attempted.
And more than that, it fails because it threatens the power of the priestly class. Tlotoxl is a master of realpolitik more than a true believer; he's fully aware that the rain will fall without blood. But he also knows that the Aztec military machine runs on the blood of its victims, that the sacrifices are as much a message to the empire's enemies as they are a devotion to its gods. He knows instinctively that Barbara is a threat--how could she not be? She interposes herself by her very existence between him and his gods, and his gods are all that make him who he is. And further, this is an era of the series where the past isn't presented as "just like the present, but everyone is stupid except for a chosen few who act just like us". Tlotoxl is religious, but he's by no means superstitious. He knows, from a thousand subtle and tiny cues, that Barbara is no reincarnation of a dead man. Even if she was, he'd have to destroy her...but the fact that she's a fraud and a charlatan make it not just a necessity but a duty as well. Tlotoxl is one of the best villains the series has ever produced.
And all that's just in the first episode. And all that doesn't even get into Ian's beautiful confidence as he fully recognizes that Tlotoxl is setting him up to be killed by Ixta and just doesn't give a solitary fuck because he's that badass, or the Doctor's flirtatious relationship with Cameca. That is a hell of a lot to pack into thirty minutes...small wonder, to bring it back full circle, that this one is held in such high esteem.
But at the same time, this is about more than simply getting back to the TARDIS and getting the heck out of Dodge; the scene between Barbara and the Doctor, one of the best in fifty-plus years of the series, showcases what the first Doctor era did better than any other. Barbara isn't willing to simply sit back and observe history, not when she knows where it ends. She must know, as a history teacher, that the Aztec practice of human sacrifice is more than mere superstition; equally, she must be aware that history has never been kind to rulers (especially women) who attempt to use their power to change the long-established and deeply-held customs of their people. But at the same time, she knows she has a chance that no-one else will ever have again. Her final line to the Doctor--"Not Barbara, Yetaxa," is delivered with such steely determination that you can't help root for her quixotic dream.
But of course, it fails. It fails not just because of the arc of history, or because of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey reasons...it fails because one person can't change the entire course of a civilization with a well-timed "No!" It fails because the 'victim' wants to honor the gods, and Barbara's intervention (no matter how well-intentioned) is nonetheless a condescending attempt to impose her culture on another because she thinks it's 'better'. What she's trying to do, while kinder in execution, is no less a destruction of the Aztec culture than Cortez and his successors attempted.
And more than that, it fails because it threatens the power of the priestly class. Tlotoxl is a master of realpolitik more than a true believer; he's fully aware that the rain will fall without blood. But he also knows that the Aztec military machine runs on the blood of its victims, that the sacrifices are as much a message to the empire's enemies as they are a devotion to its gods. He knows instinctively that Barbara is a threat--how could she not be? She interposes herself by her very existence between him and his gods, and his gods are all that make him who he is. And further, this is an era of the series where the past isn't presented as "just like the present, but everyone is stupid except for a chosen few who act just like us". Tlotoxl is religious, but he's by no means superstitious. He knows, from a thousand subtle and tiny cues, that Barbara is no reincarnation of a dead man. Even if she was, he'd have to destroy her...but the fact that she's a fraud and a charlatan make it not just a necessity but a duty as well. Tlotoxl is one of the best villains the series has ever produced.
And all that's just in the first episode. And all that doesn't even get into Ian's beautiful confidence as he fully recognizes that Tlotoxl is setting him up to be killed by Ixta and just doesn't give a solitary fuck because he's that badass, or the Doctor's flirtatious relationship with Cameca. That is a hell of a lot to pack into thirty minutes...small wonder, to bring it back full circle, that this one is held in such high esteem.
Monday, November 10, 2014
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.
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.
Saturday, November 8, 2014
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.
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.
Friday, November 7, 2014
Review: Doctor Who - The Crawling Terror
Review: Doctor Who - The Crawling Terror
I'll be honest--I very nearly left this review as just the word, "Functional". Because that's all 'The Crawling Terror' is. It's a story that manages to tick off the requisite boxes in the "Doctor Who story" checklist and doesn't fail too hard at any of them. It's a book that achieves the goal of not irritating you, and nothing more. Which, given that it's being compared to the whirling fireworks of unpredictable creativity seen in the televised version, means that it actually fails very badly indeed.
In many ways, this is exactly the book for someone who thinks that the TV show is too unpredictable, because it couldn't be trying harder to be a "classic" Doctor Who story. The Doctor and his companion land in a quiet English village (tick!) where a mysterious, disfigured scientist (tick!) has been conducting strange experiments at his newfangled lab that the locals distrust (tick!). The experiments unleash monsters (in this case, giant insects--tick!) that mentally enslave the locals into doing their bidding (tick!) and it turns out that aliens were behind the whole thing and the evil scientist is collaborating with them (tick!). The monsters isolate the village from the outside world (tick!), with only a token heroic military presence just outside who is out of their depth when dealing with monsters but struggles on nonetheless (at this point, you can just go ahead and tick all remaining boxes on the list. If you made a Doctor Who Bingo game, this would be the blackout card.)
This isn't to say that you can't do anything with the classic Doctor Who tropes--Mark Gatiss is a hardcore traditionalist, and he makes his stories work by executing the tropes well and occasionally playing with them a bit. But here, everything is simply a sketch of things that were done better elsewhere. The Doctor is utterly generic, with none of the acerbic wit that marks Capaldi's performances, and Clara hits the beats in her story bible and nothing more. The supporting characters are caricatures, both the good and the bad, and the monsters are just big angry bugs of one sort or another. There's nothing to make this book stand out anywhere.
But even that isn't what makes 'The Crawling Terror' so frustrating. It's a bland, inoffensive TV tie-in novel pitched to tweens and teens, no different from many others on the market. It isn't bad, it isn't good, it's just a quick way to pass an hour or so before you move on to anothr book. That's what you get with Mike Tucker.
What's frustrating is that they knew they'd be getting that with Mike Tucker, and they commissioned him for this slot anyway. We've been getting fewer and fewer novels ever since the TV series restarted; why on Earth would you spend one of those precious slots on a bland timewaster when there are so many good Doctor Who writers out there? Why not slot in someone like Kate Orman, who can write a better novel than this while trapped in a safe underwater? Why not slot in some of the recent good writers that have done excellent Eleventh Doctor books, like Oli Smith, or Una McCormack, or Naomi Alderman? Even if you assume that they can't try an untested writer for the first few slots of the new Doctor, due to secrecy concerns for upcoming plot developments, there are better people out there than this. There are people out there who would try, and 'The Crawling Terror' doesn't try. It's content simply to be a book about the Doctor, and we all know that the line is capable of so much more.
In many ways, this is exactly the book for someone who thinks that the TV show is too unpredictable, because it couldn't be trying harder to be a "classic" Doctor Who story. The Doctor and his companion land in a quiet English village (tick!) where a mysterious, disfigured scientist (tick!) has been conducting strange experiments at his newfangled lab that the locals distrust (tick!). The experiments unleash monsters (in this case, giant insects--tick!) that mentally enslave the locals into doing their bidding (tick!) and it turns out that aliens were behind the whole thing and the evil scientist is collaborating with them (tick!). The monsters isolate the village from the outside world (tick!), with only a token heroic military presence just outside who is out of their depth when dealing with monsters but struggles on nonetheless (at this point, you can just go ahead and tick all remaining boxes on the list. If you made a Doctor Who Bingo game, this would be the blackout card.)
This isn't to say that you can't do anything with the classic Doctor Who tropes--Mark Gatiss is a hardcore traditionalist, and he makes his stories work by executing the tropes well and occasionally playing with them a bit. But here, everything is simply a sketch of things that were done better elsewhere. The Doctor is utterly generic, with none of the acerbic wit that marks Capaldi's performances, and Clara hits the beats in her story bible and nothing more. The supporting characters are caricatures, both the good and the bad, and the monsters are just big angry bugs of one sort or another. There's nothing to make this book stand out anywhere.
But even that isn't what makes 'The Crawling Terror' so frustrating. It's a bland, inoffensive TV tie-in novel pitched to tweens and teens, no different from many others on the market. It isn't bad, it isn't good, it's just a quick way to pass an hour or so before you move on to anothr book. That's what you get with Mike Tucker.
What's frustrating is that they knew they'd be getting that with Mike Tucker, and they commissioned him for this slot anyway. We've been getting fewer and fewer novels ever since the TV series restarted; why on Earth would you spend one of those precious slots on a bland timewaster when there are so many good Doctor Who writers out there? Why not slot in someone like Kate Orman, who can write a better novel than this while trapped in a safe underwater? Why not slot in some of the recent good writers that have done excellent Eleventh Doctor books, like Oli Smith, or Una McCormack, or Naomi Alderman? Even if you assume that they can't try an untested writer for the first few slots of the new Doctor, due to secrecy concerns for upcoming plot developments, there are better people out there than this. There are people out there who would try, and 'The Crawling Terror' doesn't try. It's content simply to be a book about the Doctor, and we all know that the line is capable of so much more.
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