"And erm, perhaps looking like this it was perhaps the only thing I could do. "

Life I saw an old school friend today. I was on my usual Saturday morning stroll up Lark Lane to buy the papers and a girl (well she was then) called Claire was walking towards me. Although she hadn't changed much it took me a second or two to register exactly who she was -- long enough for her to walk by me. I turned on my heal and followed her a bit around the corner next to Keith's Wine Bar and watched her head up the street, my brain still processing not having seen her for eighteen years and wondering if I should shout out. I didn't shout out -- or run after her. The moment was gone.

When I was at school, me and a few friends talked about having a ten year reunion which would have been in 2003. The year came and went, mostly because the friends had all lost track of one another. For all I know the reunion happened and I wasn't invited but anyway I did still wonder how everyone was getting on. Since then, though I'm slowly having the reunion anyway, meeting old acquaintances in likely and unlikely places. Of course online (hello Facebook) but also in the real world, in newsagents in Manchester, in pavilions at the Grand National and now on Lark Lane.

Sometimes we talk, sometimes we don't. Sometimes you can tell a lot about a person by what they're wearing and how they're walking. Claire strode confidentially, perhaps even more than I remember at school, although when we walked home together once or twice it did take less time than usual because I had to keep up with her. She was dangling car keys not pocketing them which either means that she wanted people to see the badge on the fob (not that I could tell you what that was knowing simply nothing about cars) or she was in a hurry. Clearly I'm not Sherlock Holmes.

Oh the stories I could tell about me and Claire -- most of which would be fictional. I quite liked her and actually asked her out once although she didn't seem keen and like all the other girls I asked out and didn't seem keen I didn't pursue it. But sometimes we were good friends though and it's genuinely great to see that she's still knocking around and still in the same city. So many of the people I knew from school have moved away so it's pleasing to see that the statistic of people I met in school who are still in Liverpool just went up by one.

"I has sellofane iz chrissmis."

Meme The virus has mutated. LOL Vogue: "We're in ur magazeen, puttin werds on ur mo-duls."

Hits and flops

Film The Guardian today ran two commemorations -- one from Martin about Michelangelo, the other Woody on Ingmar. Both are really wonderful and say as much about their writers as their subjects. Although neither are on their website, I've managed to track both down at the International Herald Tribune, here's the Scorsese and the Allen:

"I learned to try to turn out the best work I'm capable of at that given moment, never giving in to the foolish world of hits and flops or succumbing to playing the glitzy role of the film director, but making a movie and moving on to the next one. Bergman made about 60 films in his lifetime, I have made 38. At least if I can't rise to his quality maybe I can approach his quantity."

If only he could also get them released everywhere as well ...

Sick Building.

Books Despite suffering one of the least inspiring titles in the franchise's history, Paul Magrs's Sick Building (I mean what next? The Flytippers? The Wheelie Bin? Dutch Elm Disease?) is the very definition of an enjoyable romp with just the right mixture of humour, action and inventiveness. The Doctor drags Martha to Tiermann's World to warn its sole inhabitants, a family of settlers that their idyllic lifestyle is about to be swept away by the Voracious Craw, a cosmic hell beast with the munchies that'll eat literally anything that exists. But instead of a Swiss Family Robinson, the time travellers discover a brood in thrall of a paternal-proto-Prospero blind to the impending doom that will inevitably befall their so-called Dreamhome as the Craw nibbles away at the wilderness (wouldn't Attack of the Voracious Craw been a much better title?).

A fairly traditional base under siege story with a ticking clock (a day and half until the worm turns and takes them along with everything else) with a small cast. The family are realistically drawn, the reclusive Professor Ernest Tiermann who has tyrannically dragged is family to this empty world in the back of beyond, his doting Stepford Wife Amanda and their pubescent son Solin who hasn't met anyone but his parents and whose only company has been Servo-furnishings, domestic appliances imbued with personalities in order to fulfil all of the family's wishes. It's been a feature of the new series that everyday objects could be imbued with some fantastical or frightening facets (see the statues in Blink) and this is a wonderful extension of that -- kids throughout the land will now be trying to get a decent conversation out of a vacuum cleaner.

These kid-friendly plastic pals really are fun to be with, especially those who are given speaking roles - the PIXAR-like knockabout double act of a vending machine called Barbara and a sun-bed called Toaster. As Tiermann prepares to leave he only has enough room on the escape ship himself and his family and doesn't consider his mechanical creations important or worthy enough to be saved, despite their years of loyalty. One of the discussions in the book, taking a cue from Isaac Asimov, is the extent to which machines can be given the same rights as their human masters. Predictably, the servants eventually turn on their master but it makes a change for the machines to have the moral high ground.

The Doctor here is mostly in full on shouty-shouty-blah-blah-blah mode even to the point of being shushed by Solin when his mouth starts running away with itself. Magrs captures most of Tennant's mannerisms perfectly allowing the darkness seep in at just the right moments especially in an effective incident in which the Professor hits several nails on a number of heads regarding the loss of family and home. If Martha isn’t quite as vivid it’s perhaps because she’s given far less to do, as with Gridlock providing reassurance to her captors that the Doctor will save the day. She does have a rather lovely scene with Solin though in which the boy’s attempt at male-female interpersonal relations is just a bit too uncomfortably familiar for those of us who didn’t understand girls at his age either.

This, then, is latter day Paul Magrs being called upon to produce a sleek, well paced, family-friendly, fairly generic Doctor Who fiction totally unlike the ingenious flights of fantasy and mythological investigations from the turn of the millennium which is just right considering that these are supposed to ape the television series in much the same way as the past Doctor novels of the past. Which isn’t too say it doesn’t have some suitably Magrsian moments -- perhaps only the writer of an audio story called The Horror of Glam Rock would go on to have the Doctor use one of Queen’s greatest hits to calm one of the planet’s predators and the final defence of the realm from the bite of the Craw is about as ludicrous as anything in The Scarlett Empress and will infuriate parents which is just the way it should be!

Sick Building, by Paul Magrs, is released by BBC Books on 6 September. ISBN 9781846072697.

"He will be waiting for the third encounter, and his power does not diminish... "

TV The full artwork for The Key To Time boxset has been released and isn't it pretty? I suppose the only vexing question for some fans will be how to put it on the shelf -- do you take the individual stories out of the box so that they match everything else or keep it as it is and disrupt the effect. It's the rubber sleeve for the Resurrection of the Daleks all over again...

Spare parts

Life The field in Sefton Park that our flat overlooks has been busy this week -- the Jesus Army staged a minor skirmish at the weekend and over the past couple of lunchtimes there’s been a tiny five-a-side tournament with a proper pitch with barriers and prize givings and pony rides and everything.

Up here we see all and this morning we’re being visited by a film crew. I was impressed that could recognise it as such as soon as the random vans and people deployed on the car park which goes to show that Ricky Gervais’ sitcom Extras was educational as well as funny. I can tell who the director must be, the producer, the costumers and make up artists and prop people.

Half the fun with these things is trying to work out what is in production. There is an unrecognisable actor in a football shirt and shorts, a collection of background artists in winter togs, a selection of kids games such as cricket bought from Toys’R’US and a rather large dog. The footballer sits in an open car boot rhythmically banging his boots together as the background artists pretend to be people visiting the park looking nothing like people who visit the park at least not in this weather.

I stand at the window puzzling at the scene for a while. An advert for the toy shop? Sky Sports? Tesco? Pick ups for a football film? Eventually I telephoned the Liverpool Film Office who explain that it is a scene for an advert, for the National Heart Foundation -- and so the rhythmic boot banging is perhaps supposed mimic the beat of the human pump -- which is actually a really clever idea.

They’re just ordering the background artists around a bit ready for the next shot. There is a lot of waiting around but it is interesting to note actually how quickly everyone is working -- no one is strolling -- there’s a job to do and has to be done professionally so that they can move on to the next thing. Apart from the two runners with bats and balls have a knock about behind one of the vans …

Paying close attention to the music I'm hearing.

Music Me earlier to a parent: "At the end of the concert tonight (Prom 43) there was an encore and the orchestra played Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King, which is the kind of thing which orchestras tend to know and the conductor left the stage in the middle to have a listen. How does it go? Erm. Duh-duh-de-duh-duh-de-duh-duh-de-duh-duh-de-duh-duh-de-duh-duh-de-duh-dub-duh. Oh no hold on -- that's the theme from Tetris."

Parallel 59.

Books  Parallel 59 is an adventure of two halves. On the one hand it’s a fairly standard tale in which the Doctor and Compassion are captured, interrogated then help to lead a revolution. On the other, at the risk of spoiling a surprise, it’s a wonderfully bleak tale reminiscent of Terry Gilliam‘s Brazil with Fitz in the Sam Lowry role which is eventually revealed to be an iteration of a certain other pre-millennium sci-fi adventure in which there is no spoon and the problem is that despite the two being so carefully entwined, it’s the latter which really draws in the reader leaving the former as something of a chore.

The problem is that for over two hundred pages the reader isn’t really given much to be interested in as the Doctor, pitched up in the planet Skale having guided a lifeboat there from a malfunctioning space installation is fingered as a spy, not believed and is dragged through cells and meetings and largely shouted at. He’s utterly charming of course in the Tom in City of Death sense of the word, bluff when required yet stunningly intelligent when that’s required. If anything he’s more Doctorish than he’s been for many novels and there’s a particularly exciting moment when suicide is the only escape option.

But surrounding him are a cast of military types who just seem so desperately interchangeable and unlikeable. They’re apparently fighting over one another to defend their world in their own way but it’s difficult to really get a handle on any of them so when the traitor is revealed much later it takes a page or two to actually remember who they were. Luckily said traitor is thinning out the ranks so actually a couple become slightly better defined towards the end but largely they’re defined to such a limited degree it’s difficult to be bothered about their fate.

Meanwhile, Compassion escapes and falls in with a fairly identikit group of rebels who are tying to break back into the installation and save the world or something. Compassion is really interesting in these passages, once again telling all of her new ‘friends’ exactly what they think they want to hear so that she can get them to do exactly what she wants. One of them keeps calling her space girl and it takes everything she has to stop herself from breaking his arm. We're also given more hints that there's something very wrong about her physical make-up -- making a body scanner explode spectacularly. At least authors Natalie Dallaire and Stephen Cole have a real handled on the main characters.

But like the military camp, there’s so many of the rebels and crucially we’re not given much of a description of them so they’re not too easy to empathise with. It’s the schism that has existed throughout these books between novelistic Who and the television version -- there’s not much between these characters and the visitors to The Impossible Planet, but those actors bring a presence to the wafer thin characterisation that’s just not possible on the printed page, and again even when one or two make the supreme sacrifice it lacks the emotional punch that say the death of Mr. Jefferson in The Satan Pit had.

Then, threaded through that, first-person Fitz is back, this time relating his new life through diary entries which very vividly and empathically create an alien world, with characters that are all carefully defined, make sense and actually make the reader interested about in their welfare. As the novel opens, the ex-Londoner is already ensconced on Mechta, a masterpiece society with predetermined roles, his being a worker in a care home for children. The city is an apparent healing zone for the sick of Skale who are slowly each given an order to leave for home by red taxi when they’re deemed in good health by a central control directive. The fact that everything is planned out and ordered gives the reader some hint as to what’s actually going, but it’s how Fitz interfaces with the society which is the real joy.

He has friendships -- think Renton in Trainspotting without the heroin and AIDS and whatnot with his best friends Serjay and Low Rez as the Sick Boy and Spud figures. He has relationships, sleeping his way around Mechta, from Anya to Denna to Filippa each of these women perfectly defined and totally realistic. He ponders (as I have) whether the TARDIS has created a much more pronounced version of his old self, doomed to have a girl in every time zone (or words to that effect) but I’d say his propensity for rebellion and questioning of authority are also a facet of that. And unlike Frontier Worlds it feels like a perfectly natural device, of the story in that they’re diary entries rather than simply bolted on for effect. But it’s the same voice as the earlier novel and since Peter Anghelides is singled out for special thanks in the acknowledgements I wonder if these are his work.

There’s a great sense of the city with its tram system and northern quarter and largely idyllic sense of community in which people hardly ever lock their doors because there’s not a lot worth stealing (sounds like a student hall in the early nineties) which makes the darkness and twisted version even more shattering when it inevitably arrives, as this society decays. Perhaps were supposed to see a comparison between the bombs and gunplay in the Doctor’s story with the mysterious doom infecting Mechta but it’s the bending of that reality that’s most scary with Fitz at the centre trying to make sense of it and wanting to save Filippa, the girl for him.

What ultimately stops to book from totally convincing is it’s length. I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that many of these books don’t work because they’re too long and that some of the story ideas simply aren’t enough to fill the two-hundred and eighty odd pages that are expected of them. Sometimes that’s dealt with through a more relaxed attitude to line spacing and shorter pagination. But in some cases, such as this one, there just seems to be a lot of padding and far too many characters and stripping both back would have paid dividends instead of this thing which apart from the Fitz story drags horribly in the middle. As it stands, Parallel 59 is half a great book trying to break away from the average.

Great cover though …

Jeopardy

Music One of the elements I have enjoyed throughout the Proms season is the unexpected levels of potential jeopardy throughout. Not in the Irwin Allen sense of the word though -- more in an unexpected happening leading to human derailment. BBC Four’s presentation of last night’s Prom 40 brought the further interval adventures of presenter Angellica Bell in which she dried totally during the weird quote reading which has been brought in to replace the now defunct Promundrum (which still isn't a real world, despite this blog being the top result in a Google search for it). Having been handed the floor by Verity Sharp (putting in a rare tv appearance now that The Culture Show gig has been invaded by Lauren Don’t Falter Laverne) she burst into some material about Mahler but then forgot what she was going to say; the director cut to a presentation slide and you could hear whispering a quick thank you to someone obviously passing her a prompt card. Bless Angellica Bell, bless her.

She redeemed herself later though -- the expected guest, Tenor Matthias Goerne (who looked to be in obvious pain from a torn ligament whilst singing said Mahler) called in sick and Bell had to improvise an interview with a music teacher who revealed herself to be married to one of the experts in the box. Angelica was a bit more relaxed and even as the chat strayed away from anything related to the show and into what this lady’s teaching career entailed (examining mostly) kept things never less than interesting and actually let the interviewee speak (which is rare thing in broadcasting lately) -- although that could just have been a time stretching strategy. She wasn't on tonight and it just wasn't the same.

Tonight’s Prom 41 brought jeopardy of another kind. The presentation of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was augmented by an appearance by the Marcus Roberts Trio who noodled away in the solo sections. Of all the works in all the Proms, this is the one with which I’m most familiar -- I’ve a copy of the soundtrack album to Woody Allen’s Manhattan and I’ve heard that version (recorded by the New York Philharmonic) hundreds of times in the past decade. I can whistle bits and pieces back to front. But to hear it live, with Roberts and co introducing totally new sounds made it something unfamiliar again and therefore fresh. The jeopardy was -- could the symphonic and jazz sections collaborate? Most of the time, they could.

Some of the orchestra players seemed a bit pensive during the solos, almost desperate to begin playing again and when they were playing, the piano improv did get drowned out somewhat (although that might have had something to do with the BBC’s sound balance than what was happening in the hall). But my favourite moment was when the camera found a position in which the face of conductor Robert Spano could be seen in the shiny surface of the Steinway piano as Roberts’s fingers danced across the keyboard, obviously enjoying every minute. Then, just as the trio were getting ready for their solo, the congratulatory flower person arrived with the bouquets and tried to hand one to the bassist, instrument in hand, just as he was about to play, distracting everything. Jeopardy.

Malevolent mime

Film Nathan is disappointing harsh about the underrated Paul Mazursky's underrated Scene from a Mall, featuring the LA Woody Allen. I mean for goodness sake, it's better than bloody Miami Rhapsody: "Through it all Bill Irwin’s malevolent mime (is there any other kind?) serves as Allen’s mocking shadow, lampooning his actions in pantomime until Allen finally musters up the courage to punch him. As Roger Ebert points out in his one-star review of the film, this is the moment Irwin’s entire performance has been leading up to yet it barely registers. Neither does the comic incongruity of setting a domestic psychodrama in a mall—that sad, soul-sucking cathedral of capitalism at its most impersonal and homogenous."

Slow progress

Blogs Girl With A One Track Mind's Abby Lee talks to the f-word about being outed and the book and whatnot: "I hope that ideas about sex and sexuality are always evolving in a progressive way [...] I’m not sure that we can expect, or even hope for, a new ‘sexual revolution’ though: sadly women’s position in society will not change overnight, so our ability to have freedom of expression in terms of our sexuality is perhaps a slower process than we might like. However, I think and hope that we are slowly moving in the right direction - opposing gender stereotyping and challenging society’s attitude on female sexuality."

Cluster pillow

Life I have new pillows. I’ve always had a chequered history with pillows, enduring a mish-mash over the years acquiring them from all over the place and never really been happy with them. Some too floppy, others too flat but mostly of the kind which never really give me a good night’s sleep, particularly since I had that fall and despite being generally mended don’t get a completely uninterrupted sleep cycle. Some of it’s to do with the age old mattress and the base which needs replacing but a lot of it has had to do with the pillows not being head friendly.

I have new pillows, then. At the risk of sounding like The West Wing's President Jed Bartlett describing a carving knife, these are Norwegian Snuggledown Clusterdown pillows, which have spiral fibres, have piped edges and are one hundred percent cotton in a three hundred thread count jacquard cover. When you place your head down at the end of the day it is almost as though they have been waiting to give you comfort and although my shoulders still ache in the morning, if I roll over the stiffness disappears. These are very, very nice pillows.

Lost In Time

Meme The following recently appeared on a Doctor Who discussion board and it succinctly captured one of fandom's great mysteries. It's a big chunk of text, but if you are a fan and want to help out, copy and paste and post it to your own blog or discussion board and spread the word:

---------------

The BBC is searching for lost episodes of classic television shows, including Doctor Who. Currently 108 episodes of Doctor Who are missing from the BBC archives.

All 108 episodes were sent throughout the world at one point or another and may still be out there somewhere, in your attic, basement or local television station's film archive.

You can see the full list of missing episodes of Doctor Who (as well as missing episodes from other British TV shows such as Hancock’s Half Hour, A for Andromeda, etc.) at:

http://www.missing-episodes.com

If you think you may have a missing episode as a 16mm print or a copy in another format (8mm off-air or videotape), or have any information about these episodes, please contact the BBC by sending an email to:

info@restoration-team.co.uk

There is further information at:

http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/

LIST OF MISSING EPISODES
From the story Marco Polo (A.K.A. (Doctor Who and) The Journey to Cathay)
(episode 1) The Roof of the World
(episode 2) The Singing Sands
(episode 3) Five Hundred Eyes
(episode 4) The Wall of Lies
(episode 5) Rider from Shang-Tu
(episode 6) Mighty Kublai Khan
(episode 7) Assassin at Peking

From the story The Reign of Terror
(episode 4) The Tyrant of France
(episode 5) A Bargain of Necessity

From the story The Crusade
(episode 2) The Knight of Jaffa
(episode 4) The War-Lords
(In addition, the surviving print of episode 1 The Lion is damaged)

From the story Galaxy 4
(episode 1) Four Hundred Dawns
(episode 2) Trap of Steel
(episode 3) Airlock
(episode 4) The Exploding Planet

Mission to the Unknown (a single-episode story)
(a.k.a. Dalek Cutaway)

From the story The Myth Makers
(episode 1) Temple of Secrets
(episode 2) Small Prophet Quick Return
(episode 3) Death of a Spy
(episode 4) Horse of Destruction

From the story The Dalek Masterplan
(episode 1) The Nightmare Begins
(episode 3) Devil’s Planet,
(episode 4) The Traitors
(episode 6) Coronas of the Sun
(episode 7) The Feast of Steven
(episode 8) Volcano
(episode 9) Golden Death
(episode 11) The Abandoned Planet
(episode 12) Destruction of Time

From the story The Massacre
(episode 1) War of God
(episode 2) The Sea Beggar
(episode 3) Priest of Death
(episode 4) Bell of Doom

From the story The Celestial Toymaker
(episode 1) The Celestial Toyroom
(episode 2) The Hall of Dolls
(episode 3) The Dancing Floor

From the story The Savages
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

From the story The Smugglers
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The Tenth Planet
Part 4 (features the first ever regeneration from William Hartnell into Patrick Troughton)

The Power of the Daleks
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

From the story The Highlanders
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

From the story The Underwater Menace
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4

From the story The Moonbase
Part 1
Part 3

From the story The Macra Terror
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

From the story The Faceless Ones
Part 2
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
(In addition, the surviving print of Part 3 is damaged)

The Evil of the Daleks
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

From the story The Abominable Snowmen
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

From the story The Ice Warriors
Part 2
Part 3

From the story The Enemy of the World
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

From the story The Web of Fear
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Fury from the Deep
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

The Wheel in Space
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Part 5

The Invasion
Part 1
Part 4

The Space Pirates
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

In addition, color copies of the following episodes are sought:

The Ambassadors of Death
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 6
Part 7

The Mind of Evil
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Planet of the Daleks
Part 3

Invasion of the Dinosaurs
Part 1

-------------------

Ring, ring.

Music Remember how much I enjoyed Prom 15, Verdi's Macbeth?

Prom 39, Wagner's Götterdämmerung began at 4:00.

It's just finished. I remain unconvinced. Except for when Wagner drops in themes which sound like The Flight of the Valkyries. I quite like those. Oh and the big orchestral sounds. And the bit with the dwarf.

It's an amazing performance achievement but I'm afraid I'm a bit like Woody Allen's character at the opening of Manhattan Murder Mystery and saying to Diane Keaton: 'I can't listen to that much Wagner, ya know? I start to get the urge to conquer Poland.'

One good episode of The West Wing later ... I suppose I am slightly disappointed with myself -- I had planned ahead, read the programme notes and listened intently whilst the announcer carefully described the plot, enjoyed the interviews but as with Macbeth I simply couldn't tell what was going on most of the time and although I let the music wash over me, after a while it become pretty frustrating. I wrote and posted this in the meantime and it was eventually simply on in the background which seems like a really duff way to treat the work of the performers. Perhaps one day I'll see it performed and change my opinion entirely.

Frontier Worlds.

Books  There’s nothing more annoying than when one of these novels is quite an enjoyable read, has a few good ideas but doesn’t quite hold together much as an experience. Perhaps a lot of Doctor Who in any media could be described that way, but the main problem with Frontier Worlds is that in the end it’s a bit boring and not a patch on its possible inspiration, The Invasion of the Krynoids or The Krynoid Invasion (Seeds of Doom). Not necessarily a chore to read, just the kind of book in which you’re forever checking to see how many pages there are left to read.

The back of book blurb essentially tells you everything you need to know about the story. It’s another human-style race on some alien world with a corporation doing to some not very nice things, in this case in the area of genetics trying to use plants to prolong their lifecycle. Having landed on the world before the text of the novel begins, the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion set about working out what the problem is and how they should deal with it.

Author Peter Anghelides, is essentially playing some Chinatown-style genre games mixing the spy game with elements of hard-boiled neo-noir and an environmental thriller. It’s The Big Combo substituting the contemporary thematic issue of the atom bomb for GM crops. By keeping the story relatively thin, the author is able to concentrate instead on character and particular Compassion and Fitz. The Doctor recedes into the background as the two companions (by the time lord’s design) spend most of the book together, either as they infiltrate one of the corporations pretending to be siblings or on the run through the wilderness to a top secret facility.

The majority of the book is told from the first person perspective of the Fitz and we’re giving great chunks of insight into his childhood and how he feels after being brought back from being genetically photocopied for all those years on the remote. This material is richly layered, replete with pop culture references mostly related to the disguises that he and Compassion have adopted of Frank and Nancy Sinatra. Fitz spends most of his time quoting lines from Frank’s songs and film roles and wearing the hat -- which is usually at both extremes of endearing and annoying.

We also get to hear what he really thinks of Compassion who as they spend a hundred odd pages in the wilderness is also fleshed out considerably. The relationship is not unlike Kirk and Spock from Star Trek. Fitz is hot-blooded and passionate whereas Compassion is cold-blooded and logical. Fitz gets into a relationship with a local girl but won’t simply leave her because ‘it wouldn’t be right’ -- but Compassion can see that he should just walk away, even without telling her because it is effecting the mission and their safety.

Their two-handers are the best scenes in the book as Fitz is continually trying to get the measure of her, and she is forever surprising him. She certainly looks down on him -- and everyone else including the Doctor and one scene in which she lives up to her name is later revealed to be an example of her telling Fitz exactly what he needed to hear at that moment so that he would calm down and continue with the plan -- she didn’t really mean the words. After an initially shaky start Compassion is turning into a rather unique creation (at least for the Whoniverse -- just how did she survive being hurled through a windscreen?) and I look forward to seeing how she develops.

It’s just a shame that the whole novel isn’t written with Fitz’s words. The author skips out whenever he needs to tell the parts of the story which isn’t in the cockney’s eye line -- then altogether towards the end and although some of those sections are fitfully enjoyable -- the best is a conversation the Doctor has with a robot in which none of his usual tricks manage to out think the android -- none of them seem to sparkle in quite the same way as when Mr. Kreiner is the storyteller.

It's just all a bit perfunctory (a bit like this review). The main villain of the peace, Sempiter, doesn't do anything all that unexpected as the story progresses -- having pumped some of the alien plant into his system it slowly saps his will and physically transforms him and he becomes psychotic and how often have we seen that before? When in the end the Doctor appears to saves the day it has a whiff of the kind of deus ex machina that the new series is criticized for. About the only surprise is that he's not entirely being a hero and his solution is a selection of the best of the available evils.

In the end, because there isn’t an awful lot of story, because the goals are never defined too clearly and because the story tends to meander more than it needs to, Frontier Worlds doesn’t really hold together and you’re left with a feeling of having read some very good writing, of having witnessed some very well written scenes, of having a better idea of who Compassion and Fitz are and how they relate to the Doctor (she’s a cat, he’s a dog) but overall not being particularly satisfied. Ho hum.

There and back again, again

Film Kristin Thompson has a useful catch-up on the state of the film version of The Hobbit and Peter Jackson's involvement thereof. Includes link to positive statement from Jackson and Fran Walsh. It essentially looks as though it can only really happen if Peter's involved -- the fan and public backlash would be too great otherwise - at this point the director and the franchise are too intertwined.

A Younger Version of Me

Life We've been reorganising the framed pictures at home lately and I noticed this picture which must have been sitting on the top and back of a cupboard for a decade. I've been trying to remember exactly when it was taken. I've always been the kind of person who hoards and tends to collecting things until I have too much, have a clearout then start again. The problem in this picture is that everything's reaching critical mass and some of it hasn't been touched in some time.

The Edward Scissorhands poster and the advert for Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth single, are both from Smash Hits and both a few years old. I will have read that quote on the other wall from sci-fi author James Blish at school (he suggested that this was the one question any writer needed to ask themselves before commiting to a piece of work). I seem to be playing Computer Monolopy but using the cards and money from a real set from the fifties which is exactly the kind of thing I('d) do.

I don't seem to have many LPs (this is pre-cd at least for me) and they're all Hits and Now That's What I Call Music which seems about right -- I only ever listened to chart music (and some folk) in those days. The orange office chair lasted for many years until it bent when I leaned back on it one night. The lovely brown MFI desk was bought for me to work at in junior school. Big hair. Big forehead. Black jeans (which I still have somewhere). Black jumper (which I hope isn't the same one I have somewhere).

Dating the photograph will have to be based on three things. The jars are filled with small jars of cotton wool with 'bottled snowballs' on the side were put together for a school christmas fair. Apparently my mum and dad gave me the alarm clock in Christmas 1992. which would tally with everything else. I'm still using the Commodore 64c here but I was trying to get some sense out of an EGA 286 PC by the time I went to university so I think this was early 1993 and I was 18 and a couple of months away from starting my first degree.

Here is what I wish I could tell this young man who's half my age: Don't change. Yes, your time in halls was hard and you could have gone out mopre than once in a while -- but if you had you might not have watched all of that world and independent cinema which would be so useful later. You tend to be obsessive but you were right to work hard enough to pass your first year. You were also right to make lots of different friends rather than just sticking to a couple. I have but one word of advice. On your second night there, after the party, when that French girl Kirsten asks you to join her in her room, you go. You do not say -- whatever it was you said -- say goodnight -- and walk away.

Nutter.

Pot calling the kettle black.

Blogs Anil Dash notices that the man revealed recently to be Fake Steve Jobs once wrote an article criticising people who blog anonymously about technology corporations. And it took this long to work out who he was? I think the lady doth protested too much.