Evolution of Mom Dancing with Michelle Obama.

Nicholas Briggs’s The Sands of Life.

Audio  After the initial excitement of Tom and Mary reunited (or not quite as was the case thanks to the intricate farce of The Auntie Matter), we’re now straight into the business of sorting out what a Fourth Doctor and Romana story is really like outside of The Key To Time season. The answer if Nicholas Briggs’s The Sands of Life is a model, is some pretty generic Doctor Who which fills an hour with some excellent performances, atmospheric sound design and some intrigue, which is fatally difficult to review in this context because despite its unusual three episode structure (Big Finish tend to offer two per disc), this is only the first half of the story, and the slightly “generic” element could just be a classic bait and switch, the second disc turning the entire story on its head.

In the near future, the Doctor and Romana tumble to Earth just as masses of alien beasts capable of manipulating the time stream are apparently returning to their breeding ground in the Sahara Desert, during which endeavour they wipe out a space platform owned by a conglomerate called The Conglomerate, whose CEO, Cuthbert isn’t too pleased about it. All the while Romana finds herself communicating with the beasts, which is of particular interest to Earth forces when the time team are inevitably captured and then Cuthbert who pulls some strings to force the Doctor’s co-operation in his investigation of this unusual species. Before long Romana’s lost in the desert and the Doctor’s rushing to save her.

There’s not one element of that which doesn’t thrum to the sound of some other Who adventure and throughout the story beats remixed from elsewhere are deafening pitched in, from the Doctor obfuscating in the face of authority to intergalactic xenomorphism to the tension between big business and the government. This is more comfort Who and Briggs’s script is incredibly witty throughout, especially in those moments self-reflexively relating backwards to Tom’s own wild pronouncements about the kinds of things he’d like to see in Doctor Who related to badgers and companions shaped like parrots.

It’s the usual tension in these Fourth Doctor adventures about whether they’re supposed to be providing a waxwork recreation of Saturday night television drama in the 70s or something which throws the essentials into a contemporary mix. That’s marked here by Briggs’s own pastiche of a Dudley Simpson music backing what are entirely cinematic scenes, suggesting Planet of the Dead scored in the style of Planet of Evil. In the first series, that resolved itself into producing something which sounded like their source material but with stories which simply couldn’t or wouldn’t be produced then because of interesting narrative structures or changes in socio-political concerns. This is looser, purposefully less focused.

Yet it’s always compelling because of the cast. In the background to the main story is that of a new elected President of Earth who’s also hearing voices, played by Hayley Atwell. Yes, that’s Captain America’s Hayley Atwell, who despite her fame elsewhere remains a Big Finish regular (this is her fifth story) (I think) and is amazing value in a tiny role which must surely grow in importance in the bottom three so we’ll talk more about it then. She’s joined by the ever reliable David Warner, as the blandly evil Cuthbert, a clear analogue to certain Earth-1218 individuals whose business ownership means he’s arguably one of the most powerful men on the planet, certainly more powerful the elected representatives of the people.

All of which ignores the reunion of John Leeson as K9 with this TARDIS team. He’s been no stranger to the franchise obviously, but this is (again, I think) his first appearance in a regular format Who adventure outside of cameos, spin-offs, one off stories, remakes like Shada and audiobooks like Shada and it’s like he’s never left, picking up his chemistry with both Tom and Mary and proving that his voice always transcended the limitations of the tin dog, however cute he was. With due respect to David Brierley, K9 was never quite the same that season. What’s also remarkable is that there’s no showboating, no great entrance. At a time of crisis he’s simply, there, in the TARDIS chatting to Romana. Good dog.

Doctor Who: The Sands of Life by Nicholas Briggs is out now from Big Finish.  Review copy supplied.

silicon-based

Nature Alan Hale in the Alamogordo Daily News considers the possibilities for the discovery of silicon based life. He's unconvinced:

"Although carbon atoms and silicon atoms are similar in structure, they are not identical. The silicon atom is quite a bit more massive than the carbon atom, and moreover, the chemical bonds in silicon-containing molecules are nowhere near as strong as those in organic molecules. Since it is the strength of these bonds that makes carbon-based life so versatile, it would seem difficult to have a silicon-based lifeform that could remain intact for any given length of time, except, perhaps only under a rather narrow range of conditions."

So, Eldrad must live.

WHO 50: 1976:The Hand of Fear.

TV  Sarah Jane’s final scene in The Hand of Fear.  The Daleks and TARDIS might be the surface reasons for the franchise’s ongoing success, but if there’s one scene which best expresses the tone of Doctor Who, it’s Sarah Jane’s final scene in The Hand of Fear.

The convenient misunderstanding, the potted plant, the stuffed owl, the freeze frame.  Almost every Who writer since then has challenged themselves to recapture the indefinable spirit of that scene for better or worse and once you notice it, you’ll see it in dozens and dozens of other stories.

It’s there in the mismatched friendship between the Tenth Doctor and Donna.  The Eighth Doctor and his shoes in the park.  The squareness gun.  The whole of The Snowmen feels exactly like that if you watch closely enough.

That thing, you know, that indefinable thing.  The thing which makes us happy and sad both at the same time, silliness and seriousness wrapped tightly and loosely together with a scarf.  This thing:

Inside the console room ...

SARAH: I'll never be warm again. Never, ever, ever.
DOCTOR: No, we're well out of that. Goodbye, Kastria.

The Tardis de-materialises.

SARAH: Do you think that Eldrad, well, do you think that he really is dead?
DOCTOR: Oh, I doubt it. Very difficult to kill.
SARAH: Well, I quite liked her, but I couldn't stand him.

The Tardis tilts.

DOCTOR: Whoa, easy, old girl, easy. These temperatures must have affected the thermo-couplings.
SARAH: Yes, I know how she feels. I think Kastria must be the coldest planet in the galaxy.
DOCTOR: Oh, rubbish. I've been to much colder places.
SARAH: Oh, big deal. It's all right for you. I'm human. We're not so thick-skinned.

The Doctor gets under the console.

DOCTOR: Where's that astro-rectifier? What did you say?
SARAH: Thick-skinned.
DOCTOR: Oh, good, good.
SARAH: Here.
DOCTOR: Multi-quantiscope.
SARAH: You know, I might as well be talking to the moon. You don't even listen to me.
DOCTOR: Mergin nut.
SARAH: What?
DOCTOR: No, no, forget the mergin nut. I'll have the ganymede driver.
SARAH: There.
DOCTOR: Thank you.
SARAH: Oh, I must be mad. I'm sick of being cold and wet, and hypnotised left right and centre. I'm sick of being shot at, savaged by bug-eyed monsters, never knowing if I'm coming or going or been.
DOCTOR: Zeus plug.
SARAH: Oh, I want a bath. I want my hair washed. I just want to feel human again.
DOCTOR: Forget the zeus plug. I'll have the sonic screwdriver.
SARAH: Oh, and boy am I sick of that sonic screwdriver! I'm going to pack my goodies and I'm going home. I said, I'm going to pack my goodies and I am going home! Right! Excuse me!

Sarah storms out of the console room.

DOCTOR: What was that you? I don't know why she goes on like this. There's really nothing the matter at all.

The Doctor gets a mental wave.

DOCTOR: The call. The call from Gallifrey. Gallifrey. After all this time, Gallifrey. I can't take Sarah to Gallifrey. Must get her back home. Must reset the coordinates. South Croydon.

Sarah enters carrying a bag and a pile of stuff including a plant in a pot, a stuffed toy owl and a tennis racquet.

SARAH: Ahem!
DOCTOR: You're a good girl, Sarah.
SARAH: Oh, look, it's too late apologising now. Everything's packed. I've got to go.
DOCTOR: What? How did you know?
SARAH: What?
DOCTOR: I've had the call from Gallifrey.
SARAH: So?
DOCTOR: So I can't take you with me. You've got to go.
SARAH: Oh, come on. I can't miss Gallifrey. Look, I was only joking. I didn't mean it. Hey. Hey, you're not going to regenerate again, are you?
DOCTOR: Not this time. I don't know what's going to happen.
SARAH: You're playing one of your jokes on me, just trying to make me stay.
DOCTOR: No. I've received the call, and as a Time Lord I must obey.
SARAH: Alone?
DOCTOR: Yes.

The Tardis materialises.

SARAH: And I'll give your love to Harry and the Brigadier. Oh, and I can tell Professor Watson that you're all right.
DOCTOR: We've landed, Sarah.
SARAH: What?
DOCTOR: We've landed.
SARAH: Where?
DOCTOR: South Croydon. Hillview Road, to be exact.
SARAH: That's my home. Well, I'll be off then. Here.

She gives him his coat back.

DOCTOR: Thanks.
SARAH: Don't forget me.
DOCTOR: Oh, Sarah. Don't you forget me.
SARAH: Bye, Doctor. You know, travel does broaden the mind.
DOCTOR: Yes. Till we meet again, Sarah.

Sarah leaves.

In Stokefield Close, the Tardis dematerialises. Sarah looks around.

SARAH: This isn't Hillview Road. I bet it isn't even South Croydon. Oh. He blew it.

She speaks to a dog who is sunbathing on the pavement.

SARAH: Hey, hey. You. He blew it.

The dog runs off. Sarah walks away whistling 'Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow-wow'.

Freeze frame.

"Olympiades is the death of God."

Architecture The Atlantic has a short history of the Olympiades, Michel Holley's Paris rezoning project that created epic modern structure but with little understanding of how they'd ultimately be utilised by the people:

"Holley’s dream has faced criticism since construction. The "vertical zoning" means parts of Olympiades are deserted at certain times. The mall closes at 9 p.m., and as restaurateurs lower metal over their storefronts, men gather in corners, emitting catcalls. Outside, wind whips between the towers. Evenings, the slab empties except for some men and dogs lingering at its edge, near the overgrown planters and vents that billow the smell of Chinese food.

"I’m sure that there is a set of quite good restaurants on the slab, but you need to be quite courageous to get there after 8," says Didier Bernateau, director of development at SCET, the urban engineering firm that leads the network of public and private companies that develop land in France. "There’s a feeling of unsafeness, and the stairs, and the coolness of the wind."

"It is the worst failure in the history of Paris’ urban projects," says Ahmad Kaddour, an artist who teaches silk-screening classes at an Olympiades workshop. "Olympiades is the death of God."

This is just the sort of scheme which was originally planned to ring Sefton Park, until that project faced public opposition and ran out of money. Ugly façades, amazing views.

"Au troisième coup..."

Communications The Parisian speaking clock is eighty years old:

"The talking clock at the Paris Observatory has been giving away time to phone callers for 80 years.

Invented to deal with an early example of information overload, it still gets about one million calls per year - charging 56 euro cents per call."

A couple of years ago it was revealed that one of the main customers of the speaking clock was local councils.

The Oxford Comma.

Grammar  Last time I attempted to use what I now find is called the "Oxford comma" was at school.  I was told it was wrong, I'd love marks, and I haven't used it again. There are some circumstances when it could be quite useful:

"The Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma) is that extra comma that you sometimes get at the end of a list, before the and or the or. “She wrote novels, essays, and JavaScript” uses an Oxford comma. “He bought apples, butter and the ranch” doesn't."

The Oxford moniker derives from the century-old endorsement of the serial comma by the Oxford University Press manual of style; and the OUP is backed up by a slew of revered authorities: Strunk's Elements of Style, Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage and the Chicago Manual of Style. Why? Because omitting the Oxford comma can result in distressing double meanings:

“She lives with her two children, a cat and a dog.”

Despite that I still would use it. I'd probably rewrite that sentence to make it clearer:  "She lives with her two children and two pets, a cat and a dog."  You could even argue for some brackets around the animals [via].

Chris Chibnall on Torchwood's Miracle Day.

TV Chris Chibnall has an interview for Starburst during which he's remarkably self aware about Torchwood's numerous problems, and it's entirely possible to infer from what he's saying that it's coincidental that Children of Earth was its finest hour because he had nothing to do with it. He has this to say on the subject of Miracle Day:

"I did a bit of very early storylining with Russell on Miracle Day, right at the start, before they pitched it to Fox, before they pitched it to Starz. I think somewhere along the way it sort of lost a little bit of its Torchwood-ness. Whether you like or dislike Torchwood, it has an essence – of madness and cheekiness and sexiness, and fun and darkness, those sort of polar facets of what it’s about, of putting those things together – and somehow it lost a bit of that somewhere in the process. when we were first talking about it, it was something a bit bolder, a bit cheekier. it may just come back to the fact that one of the great essences of Torchwood was taking those American tropes and doing them in Wales. And in a way, that’s what made Torchwood so brilliantly odd. Once you put it in California, it becomes more like other shows."

The main problem with Torchwood, throughout, was its wilful ignorance of the nuts and bolts of producing a coherent piece of entertainment television.  Chibnall says the brief was to "go and do something that isn’t like anything else" which is fine and they certainly did, but at the same time, as I noted in this analysis written during the first series, it has at least to be coherently structured and watchable in the traditional sense, all of which Torchwood largely failed at, unless you're being deliberately obtuse and avant-guard, which it wasn't.

After the five episodes of proper drama that was Children of Earth, Miracle Day, thanks to, if you listen to the dvd commentaries, innumerable production problems and a loss of nerve, returned to many of the same problems as the first series, with incoherent characterisation, weird plotting and not enough exposition.  It's true that Miracle Day felt more like Torchwood once it was back in Wales.  But putting Torchwood in California wasn't the problem.  Making Torchwood badly was the problem.

[Incidentally, that link via The Mary Sue, where the comments are a pretty good indication as to why Davies advised Chibnall never to read the internet.  Which is good advise.  Except that when working in a vacuum, it's also impossible to know how your work is being received.  If the reaction is overwhelmingly negative, which it pretty much was after the very first episode, you're unlikely to know if you're on the right track.  The trick is not to actively do exactly what the audience is suggesting.]

My Twitter Archive #1

About  Twitter has finally allowed us to look back into our stream archives and provided us old schoolers with the opportunity to offer some lazy content / interesting autobiographical blog posts.  Here's the first of mine.

Eric Roberts on playing the Master.

TV The AV Club's Random Roles slot invites in Eric Roberts and inevitably asks him about the TV Movie. What was he thinking?

"Well, when I was in school in London—I was the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art—I got hip to Doctor Who, ’cause everybody else there was watching it. Then I come back to the States, I become a movie star, and I forget about Doctor Who. One day, out of nowhere, somebody says, “Have you ever seen Doctor Who?” And I said, “Yeah, I love that campy thing! It’s so much fun!” They said, “Well, they want you to play The Master.” I said, “I’ll do it! But on one condition. He’s always a campy monster. I want to play him where he’s spooky to look at.” They said, “You want to be really frightening?” I said, “Yeah, I want to scare the pants off of people.” They said, “Give us an example.” I said, “I want to really drool. I want people to go, ‘Ew, what is that? Oh, my God!’ I want to scare you.” They said, “You can do it. Go with it.” So they allowed me to be gross in beautiful costumes. [Laughs.] And I did it, and it was so much fun. It was like being 8 years old again. "

Fun for you perhaps.  We'll talk about this some other time in greater depth, but here's a question worth asking:  Was Doctor Who not going to series in 1996 the best thing which ever happened to Doctor Who?

Jacques Rivette reviews Titanic.

Film Popular filmic showman Jacques Rivette offers his review of Titanic as part of a list of his notable films coupled with his thoughts on those which were released around the time of the interview in 1998:

"I agree completely with what Jean-Luc said in this week’s Elle: it’s garbage. Cameron isn’t evil, he’s not an asshole like Spielberg. He wants to be the new De Mille. Unfortunately, he can’t direct his way out of a paper bag. On top of which the actress is awful, unwatchable, the most slovenly girl to appear on the screen in a long, long time. That’s why it’s been such a success with young girls, especially inhibited, slightly plump American girls who see the film over and over as if they were on a pilgrimage: they recognize themselves in her, and dream of falling into the arms of the gorgeous Leonardo."

Kate Winslet is practically one of the few things which keeps that film watchable in the first half before the action kicks in / tragedy strikes so these comments come across as particularly nasty.

But to an extent Rivette is the kind of figure desperately fighting against a tide of a particular kind of film which seems to run counter to his belief.  Either that or it's old fashioned jealousy that his own films have reached that kind of mass appeal.

An Audience With Mark Wahlberg.

Film Only about one in every ten Mark Wahlberg films is anything like as good as it should be, but luckily his junket interviews are always worth reading because at a certain point you begin to wonder if the dialogue in The Happening was improvised because there's a blurring with the amazing things he's saying. The Guardian today has a typical example:

"Remember that guy I was yelling at on the phone yesterday? Well, he's in jail again. What happened was that this guy went on the run, he was basically in default of court, and he wanted to hide out with me in California. I said: 'Dude, absolutely not, I'm not aiding and abetting a fugitive. Turn yourself in.' But he didn't listen, he didn't listen. He wanted me to pay for his lawyer because I paid for his lawyer before." Another shrug. "So anyway, he gets grabbed and now he's inside and his wife is saying that we've got an arrangement where I have to pay her a certain amount of money each month. He finally called me last night. I was in the fucking green-room of the Graham Norton show and I start fucking swearing down the phone at him and it sends me into a tailspin. The producer woman was like, 'Oh wow, shall I wait outside?'"

I know it's a Xan Brooks and we're not really talking to Xan Brooks after The Dark Knight Rises debarkle, but wow.

Dalek Invasion of Earth recreated.

Belated Compulsory Valentine's Day Post.

That Day Most official film related websites close within a few years of the related product having been released on some home format or other, or relegated to some backwater of the studio's site.

Fittingly the stand alone for You've Got Mail is still there, still reminding us of what the world was like on dial-up.

One facet of the site includes some user related content, and stories from visitors about meeting their own other half online usually via AOL chat or some other prehistoric social media.  Example:

"We met on America Online in May of 1993 in a chat room called NorthEastPA. He was the only person in the room who was actually from PA so I sent him an IM and before long we were chatting privately and then on the phone. It wasn't long before I uprooted and moved across the state to be with him."

Or:

"I found myself looking in the member directory in search for someone I can talk to. I was online and had some time to kill before heading off to work. Then I noticed a cute profile...and I instant messaged her. The profile wasn't like a normal 20 year old woman's profile, it was simple and you can tell from the profile she was a sweet woman. Most profiles in my age group are full of shout outs, slang etc (even mine). She answered my im back, before you know it, it turns out we graduated high school together and she sat in front of me in one of my classes once."

The formats change but the fundamentals stay the same.

kilts

History More Adventures in Kilt and Khaki: Sketches of the Glasgow Highlanders and others in France is the World War One memoir of Thomas M. Lyon ("Private Leo"), originally published in The Kilmarnock Standard.  Lyon is cautious to suggest that he's offering a definitive portrayal:

"The book does not purport to be a detailed chronicle of the doings of the Glasgow Highlanders: it should be regarded rather as an album of random literary snap-shots portraying certain isolated incidents of life and work in the trenches and behind the lines in France, and a few of the particular individuals with whom I have been associated there. The time covered ranges from June 1915, to September 1916. being the term of the writer's service in France, and with one or two exceptions all the sketches were written at intervals extending over that period."

What's extraordinary is the matter of fact way in which Lyon describes what to our eyes look like great acts of heroism.  Typical example:

"At last we stood on the side farther from our lines, and moved forward in close succession, the Corporal who led the way whispering warning of any irregularity in the earth's surface or other impediment likely to trip unwary feet. Suddenly I heard immediately behind me the appalling rattle of a tin can, followed by a muffled gasp from Pudd'ri and a heavy thud.

"Halt, you two in front !" I whispered, and turning, "What's up, Pudd'n ? Where are you ?"

"I found him sitting on the ground trying to extricate his legs from a contrivance formed of two or three hoops of barbed wire fastened together crosswise, and with a tin can attached. He had inadvertently strayed a little to the right of the path we were following, and had stumbled into the ball of wire designed to warn us of the approach of any Germans to our fortifications and to impede their advance. I helped to free him from the encumbrance, and we moved forward again."

The Gallifrey Chronicles.

Books Done. After nearly eight years and seventy odd novels, my read through these particular Eighth Doctor stories completed with a six hour burst yesterday afternoon. It’s not the greatest of human achievements and something which a small percentage of fans have clearly also managed, especially those who read them in real time during their original publication rather than my start/stop approach, but it’s good to have another of these little projects crossed off the list. How does it feel? We’ll leave that for a final gratuitous review of the whole series, but suffice to say it feels strange not having another one ahead of me. Perhaps this is as close as a Who fan can come to having turned the final page on Harry Potter’s The Deathly Hallows.

Not that this is the end of anything. It’s a full stop or even a semi-colan. It’s the final chunk of a particular iteration of the franchise, something we’re reminded of on the last page with its advert for the first three Ninth Doctor spin-off novels, which entered publication at almost exactly the same time. I’ve often wondered if any young fans did pick up Lance Parkin’s The Gallifrey Chronicles along with them, especially since they were displayed together in Borders. What would they make of it? Would they think, as many fans did watching the chip scene from The End of the World, that it was referring to the same destruction of the Doctor’s home planet? We’ll talk about that again in a bit, but this is perhaps the least stand alone book in the series.

Which is presumably why I want to break format, or at least format for this blog, and assume you’ve read it, and write about it in much the same way as the television episodes, no vagueness in synopsis, or pussyfooting around character development. So if you haven’t read The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin, stop reading now. There are some amazing twists in here, especially on page 202. Some of those twists I already knew about thanks to being a Doctor Who fan during publication but there are enough others that it’s important that you simply don’t know. Indeed, I wouldn’t even glance at this review unless you’ve read all of the other seventy odd novels so get thee to Gary Russell’s novelisation of the TV Movie now and don't come back until you've finish.

Let’s be honest, The Gallifrey Chronicles was a bugger of a commission. Unlike The Dying Days when Parkin previous completed a book line, he was to some extent still helping to introduce the character of the Eighth Doctor whereas this is all about reasserting the fundamentals of the character, wrapping up eight, if not fifteen years worth of stories from the wilderness years, narrative reset and conclude story elements from early in the series so that the character can logically head off into a regeneration into someone who looks like Christopher Eccleston without much baggage, but without actually concluding this version of the characters adventures in case BBC Books decide to continue the range anyway later on.

Astoundingly Parkin manages to do all of that with a story which is both typical and atypical and as much about the implications of Doctor Who as a franchise and this novels place within that as putting the relevant toys back in the box. He understands that unlike some showrunners and writers at the close of some television series that the show will go on (not least because he’s writing this book because of that) and so he has fun with it. As he says in the preview for the novel in Doctor Who Magazine, although the Virgin New Adventures were and still are greatly respected in fan communities, the Eigth Doctor Adventures still had a great many things to recommend them and it was important to respect that too.

In Marnal we have a prototypical Doctor Who author who in places sounds like a purposeful homage to Terrance Dicks (he even says, "you see" at the end of sentences) who wrote the very first (if not necessarily the best) of these EDAs, The Eight Doctors (whose cover this also references). His library is the massed collection of Who prose fiction, across novels and magazines, but as the “famous rock guitarist” notes in the opening quote (albeit from 1989) there were so many hundreds of them “you couldn’t pick them up in the middle or anything”, which could be seen as a comment on The Burning, which was supposed to be a reboot but turned out to be anything but because new readers tended to wonder why lost his memories.

When Marnal utilises his makeshift scanner to track the Eighth Doctor’s movements he becomes me, or rather us, piecing together his fellow Time Lord’s journey, perhaps in a similar way to readers who didn’t or couldn’t pick them up in order and might have missed a few, or skipped ahead like fellow traveller Philip Sandifer. He’s especially like us in relation to having more knowledge about the Doctor’s past than the man himself and although it’s a grinnable moment when he inevitably finds K9 hidden in the TARDIS, there’s also sadness because unlike us he doesn’t remember the robot dog (though Parkin still manages to have some fun with our expectations when he’s first namelessly introduced).

In some respects, like Star Trek’s These Are The Voyages, though in a good way, Parkin’s decided his book must also commemorate the whole run of novels through the wilderness years, with a cameo from the Seventh Doctor and utilising one of the more oddball elements of the first Virgin New Adventure, Timewyrm: Genesys, as part of his solution to how what happened to Gallifrey. Not having read those NAs, I assumed Ace remembering Paradise Towers was the author making fun of some continuity error, yet, thanks to @thejimsmith and a glance at the TARDIS Datacore, I’m told that the events as described herein are as they happened then, the Doctor in clearing out some of his brain gives some of Ace’s too.

None of which distracts Parkin from his main discourse, the series finale. Having decided the middle third of the book needs to be a conversation in a cellar, the first third is about reaffirming the structure of the series, the Doctor and his companions whizzing around saving the universe or a planet or even just a building full of people. To some extent, the last few novels have already done this duty but weaved within that is the companion’s own arc which we’ll also look at in a bit. It’s the prose equivalent of so many stories in the Moffat era, glimpses of adventures, a final shift around the universe before the everything settles down for the mainstream of the novel’s symposium.

That the Doctor does spend so much of the novel in that cellar and then isolated from his friends is interesting. Perhaps that’s why they’ve been together so much in the last few novels, the inevitable requirement to split them up here. It’s the process so many of these books have accomplished of stripping the Doctor down to his fundamentals. Unlike many of those occasions though, he’s unable to utilise his usual tactic of being captured so he can find out his foes plan or get someone on side. He tries and with dialogue which is just as poetically beautiful and covering similar ground as the turn of the Earth speech from Rose and the dialogue with the couple in Father’s Day, but unlike those occasions it's thrown back in his face.  Parkin needs to break this Doctor in order to save him.

It’s in here, as we see for the first time the Doctor’s meditative attempt to mentally visit the part of his brain which is shut off, that Parkin’s writing turns positively metafictional, as he describes how the Time Lord is “the finest dream of hundreds of human beings, refined as they (tap) away at their typewriters”. I won’t quote the whole thing, it begins at the bottom of page 130, ending with “after far too long, a new generation of children were about to hear that music for the first time, and they would learn their sofa wasn’t just for sitting on.” Well, reader, I cried, because when Lance was writing this, he didn’t know if it was going to be a success. But like all of us he hoped and for once …

It’s a beautiful passage which entirely captures what it was like in 2005 when this book was published and even that happened oddly after the show had been broadcast and seen (thank goodness) to be a terrific success, not that Lance doesn’t luckily hint at that by adding “Before his sweetest victory, unfinished business here…” which is the book acknowledging its status within its own prose. But it’s curious to note that BBC Books itself hedged its best. This might have been the last of this continuing series, but Nick Wallace had already been commissioned to write Fear Itself, the first EDA PDA with other PDA’s still in publication. If the revival inadvertently flopped, the intention was clearly for all this to continue.

Once the Doctor enters his decimated TARDIS interior (one of the more visual examples of a torched narrative policy), Parkin unexpectedly decides to bookend the series referencing back to the TV Movie, or as I assume its novelisation because it references Gary Russell’s rationalisation that the Eye of Harmony in the TARDIS is a kind of back up power source in case the connection between the timeship and Gallifrey is broken (also explaining how it can still work when the home world has been discombobulated) and tells us that the spectre of the Eric Roberts's Master is still trapped in its innards (though it’s not made clear how that squares with the bearded bloke whose also referenced as a survivor of Gallifrey's destruction as he appeared in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street).

It’s reading these section I realised that the structure of The Gallifrey Chronicles itself is designed to mimic the TV movie. Marnal’s arc initially referenced as having met HG Wells, being surrounded by books, regenerating into a younger man without much in the way of a dramatic gesture, giddily making friends with a real medical practitioner whose caring for him, before shifting him into the Master’s position of convincing her, thanks to the visions in the scanner, that the Doctor’s an evil figure whose stolen his TARDIS (in actuality this time) (the stolen TARDIS bit not the evil) (well not really) (see above). Well, played Parkin.

It’s in the final third the book, as the prototypical alien invasion story kicks in that we really begin to notice how much the books feels like a season finale, specifically Parting of the Ways, Doomsday, Last of the Timelords, Journey’s End and The End of Time. The Eighth Doctor’s justification for destroying Gallifrey with its giant lever is a hairsbreath away from what the Ninth Doctor doesn’t do. There’s a big reunion of old friends and referencing missing ones. There’s the apparent heroic death of a character. There’s a moon drifting into orbit and destruction from above, decimating the planet within hours, focusing in on small human tragedies before calm after the panic.

How much of this is inevitable depends on how closely you think Russell T Davies read these novels. He’s clearly at least aware of them. After the chip scene from The End of the World was broadcast he took to the Production Notes column in Doctor Who Magazine to explain very specifically that it wasn’t the same Gallifrey destruction from the books because this wasn’t allowed due to BBC Trust licensing rules and that having somehow reconstructed his home planet, the Doctor would later be forced to destroy it again. Which is fine, but I much prefer the explanation from Parkin’s own Ahistory that they’re the same event just seen from different points of view, something which the author plays up to here in a flashback.

There are a couple of flashbacks. The one about the destruction of Gallifrey borrows some of the prose from The Ancestor Cell (with permission, the copyright page explains, of the original authors) and would then lend some to Lance’s Tenth Doctor novel The Eyeless on the notorious page 46. As he says on his blog “You’ll know it when you see it and you might even think ‘I can’t believe he got away with that’.” I didn’t then, but now I can see it’s direct from here, I doubly can’t believe it. It confirms The Eyeless to be a direct sequel to the story arc in the EDAs, and Parkin putting into narrative his Ahistory beliefs. Since it was the best novel of that year and you could still read it, I’m not going to explain how. But still …

Another is flashback to during Father Time, and a small adventure for the Earth-arc Doctor and Miranda which glances ahead to School Reunion and The Sarah Jane Adventures in tone, children and their mental capacity being utilised as part of an invasion plan via mobile phones. It’s to introduce the nurse, Marnal’s companion, and to remind us the Doctor doesn’t always remember the people he saves even if he changes their lives or ruins them by opening a window into something extraordinary only to shut it again when he goes. In some respects, Rachel is a proto-Amy, in truth the Doctor does stay with her. She rationally re-enters her mundane existence until Marnal turns up and cracks the window open again for her.

Then there are Marnal’s flashbacks which feature, in a reference to the Leekley Bible that shockingly nearly became the tv movie, the Doctor’s Time Lord father Ulysses (choosing a name being a fashionable affection) and his human mother. Maybe. The TARDIS Datacore is very excited about the whole thing, anyway. They’re not new characters and all this was hinted at back in Unnatural History and they continuity overhang from the NAs was somewhat dealt with in The Shadows of Avalon when the Doctor says he remembers having a father but also being loomed but he’s not sure which was a dream. As ever with Doctor Who both might as well be true. We’ll probably be getting a third option in eight months anyway.

None of this is as shocking as it might be. For all his being a trickster, a mad man in a box and a magician, a lonely god, giving him an extended family arguably doesn’t change much. Both Ben Kenobi and Merlin have parentage, and he’s the Whoniverse’s equivalent of both, not that you’d necessarily want to see a Children’s BBC series about it. Yet the idea that the Doctor may be half-human still terrifies some fans.  I’m not going to make some judgement about it being to do with the mixed heritage implication, though it is fascinating how in some respect we’re one of the more inclusive fandoms but scream bloody murder when our hero is anything other than an asexual wizard with a single origin.

Threaded through all of that Parkin must also provide closure for the Eighth Doctor's companions and delighfully he decides to include all of them, even including a cameo for Compassion. The death of Sam Jones is shocking, and leads to the Doctor and Fitz having the conversation, but tempered by having read the Big Finish collection Repercussions, with its implied retcon which suggests the Doctor’s removed her from Earth in order to preserve the web of time, or some such. Plus the gravestone says Samantha Lynn Jones, which seems to indicate that it’s dark Sam’s grave instead not that any of them notice and it also doesn't rule out left overs from the tampering done by the Council of Eight. Either way when he says that the 2002 expiration date might not mean anything, that she might still be out on her travels, it makes the gravestone seem about as flimsy as Rose’s voiceover in Doomsday.

The return of Anji’s the big surprise even if the connection was rather implied in The Deadstone Memorial. Would she be condemned by the Doctor for bending time? Well, in the new series, he’s not exactly been subtle about saving his companions via lottery tickets especially without the Time Lords around to wag their fingers so he’d probably look on her compassionately especially since she’s being a bit subtle about the whole thing. Plus it’s just nice to have a companion with a genuinely happy ending and completion without guilt (a rare thing thanks to spin-offs) and with all her memories of her travels intact even if she doesn’t want to talk about them too much.

Of greatest importance is sending off Fitz and Trix. Parkin replicates the usual structure of a Doctor Who story, some separation, the Doctor and his companions off doing their own things but in a rare example, their adventure is life, only vaguely interested in whatever it is the Doctor’s up to. This "explains" the structure of To The Slaughter, which places them in solidly heroic territory. It’s implied here that outside of the Doctor’s orbit, they become necessarily self involved, even Fitz who’s been with the Doctor for many, many years. An obvious parallel is with Amy and Rory later, who only become involved themselves when the Doctor’s around, even though as other spin-offs indicate there must be spooky-doos on Earth all the time.

Fittingly, Parkin doesn’t have much interested in explaining much more about Trix’s past. There’s the implication of the murder of her husband, of being a fugitive, but Fitz isn’t interested in the details and so neither are we. Trix will always be one of those companions whose story seems incomplete, introduced too subtly for impact then gone before we know it, like so many of the story elements in the EDAs, the structure of the series with its individual authors writing against each other, sapping it of any logical progression. Perhaps if after Halflife she’d actually become a shape changer, she would have been less of a blank, fulfilling the original promise of Chameleon all those years ago.

You could argue that their coupling is a bit arbitrary (cf, Mickey and Martha), but it’s sweetly handled, and I know this flies in the face of what I’ve been fighting against elsewhere in terms of romantic drama, gives Fitz some much needed closure, his story of effectively growing up in the Doctor’s company brought to fruition. There’s no doubt some psychoanalytical essay writeable about the Fitz shifting his connection between a father and mother figure, attributing Freud to the gesture, but I don’t have time or patience. But doesn’t Trix sign him up for the gig at the pub like a pushy parent and in writing his song, isn’t he trying to impress her whilst underscoring his disconnection from the Doctor? They fuck you up your Mum and Dad etc.

As you know I’ve always oscillated in my appreciation of Fitz, which has admittedly tended to depend on who was writing him. It was always engaging to have a slightly unreconstructed figure in the TARDIS, but without going the full Gene Hunt due to tone and compliance it’s sometimes come across as a bit forced. He was certainly there for far longer than necessary (around fifty five novels) even taking into account his many reimaginings along the way. I’ve yet to see why the authors decided to keep him on all those years, other than to have a figure with a silhouette similar to the Doctor but able to say and do the things which the Time Lord isn’t allowed to without breaking the format.

Which isn’t to say my jaw didn’t drop after reading page 202. This is Parkin expertly playing with our expectations of the sort of thing which happens in series finales (of which I could list a few but I’m not making the mistake of posting spoiler warnings for one thing and then spoiling a whole bunch of other things) (Jen Lindley in Dawson’s Creek) (sorry) and I absolutely bought it even having had an inclining of what was in the final pages. Again he’s offering a template for the future of Doctor Who, in which what seems like a major character death is easily explained due to narrative information having been kept from us and in this case in a form which is again purely the stuff of nuWho.

As is the global alien invasion threat thingy which fills the final third. The Vore are motivationally practically predict the intergalactic termites from Planet of the Dead, albeit shaped like the Prawns from cinema's District 9 and almost as organised. Having referenced HG Wells earlier and mentioning War of the Worlds, this is Parkin gorging on the commemorative cake he’s been given. But he also inadvertently stumbles into one of Torchwood’s central themes. What happens with the Doctor isn’t there to save us or wanders in at the last second. What about all the deaths in between and shouldn’t we take some responsibility for out own safety?  Just to be clear.

Brilliantly, Trix assumes the Doctor’s in the thick of it, sorting things out, manages to find out where he’s been and goes there, but he’s off doing pretty much what they have, sorting out his own problems. The story is set incidentally in June 2005, the publication date of the novel (clever), at the end of the broadcast of the first series (cleverer still), but set nine months before Aliens of London (oh) and according to Ahistory at roughly the same time as the comic finale The Flood (um) and Death Comes To Time (ugh). Such are this franchises inherent narrative pile-ups. In my rationalisation, at this point the Eighth Doctor’s chronology, most of those events haven’t happened yet and time can be written. It’s not much, but it’ll do.

The invasion only really exists to provide an excuse for the book’s final end. Given the book’s status as a finale within a grander shared narrative, it would have been impossible for Parkin to attempt proper closure so he couldn't, end the Doctor's story, since this is now a series filling in a gap rather than pretending to be a continuation.  That’s the approach Scott Grey took in the comics, in The Flood, in the end, commemorating Survival too in its own way, with the Doctor and Destrii wandering off towards adventure, having realised, despite being gifted it by the production team, that a regeneration would have been unworkable. The EDA version would have probably been the Doctor watching Fitz and Trix’s marriage.

Instead, we have the Angel’s Not Fade Away approach of the deliberate cliffhanger which says the adventure will continue, you know it will, we know it will, and so nothing I’m going to write will ever be satisfying enough. So it’s the Doctor taking a leap into danger amid dialogue that touchingly underscores our faith in him. He will win. He always does. Eventually. The Doctor never loses. He has losses certainly. But he never loses, not completely. Which is another metafiction point, I suppose, about how even after cancellation, even after a failed tv movie pilot thingy, he came back because we all had faith in him, and The Gallifrey Chronicles as a printed entity is a tribute to that faith too.

What next? There are still a number of approaches to experiencing the Eighth Doctor adventures across media. Some fans have decided that the books, comics and audios are all alternative, parallel versions. Some do believe they’re part of one long story, but somehow the comics and audios are all tucked in during the three year Greenpeace gap after Vampire Science or the slightly bonkers TARDIS Datacore version in which they’re all kind of weaved together into a complex, unworkable soup. None of these make much sense. None of the novels refer to audio or comic companions other than from the Radio Times strips for start, which is fine for the parallel timelines theory, but looks odd whenever someone like Marnal constructs a list.

As I’ve suggested before, the three are perfectly reasonably designed to be slotted in one after the other which in my head means the books, then the comics, then the audios (from the Mary Shelley arc through to Dark Eyes and beyond). Aha, says the TARDIS Datacore, but explain how Romana’s regenerated in the novels when the Lalla Ward version still exists in the audios? How come Gallifrey’s back? How come during the audio Minuet in Hell, the Doctor talks about Sam? Well the last one’s clearly Samson thanks to Gary Russell’s attempt to separate the lines, something which has since been nullified by the A Company of Friends anthology with its gut wrenching first yet final story for the Eighth Doctor. The rest, well …

After they’ve vanquished the Vore, Fitz and Trix, as implied say their farewells to the Doctor, who wanders off in the TARDIS again probably seeking to reconstitute Gallifrey. My guess? Somewhere in here it’s implied that the copy of the Matrix he has in his brain isn’t one which has been corrupted by the Faction Paradox because in destroying Gallifrey he wiped them from existence. If that’s the case, it also means one of their acts, which was to destroy the Gallifrey back-ups didn’t happen either. So “all” the Doctor has to do is reconstitute the planet from one of the back-ups, and upload his brain to the matrix, which would in theory contain his lost memories and the earliest back-up happens to be the one with Romana II as President etc.

Big red button on the timeline, the Doctor all back to normal ready for the comic strips and explaining why its still Romana on Gallifrey later on. Which isn’t to say I haven’t been trying to work out a more compelling idea, something with some more drama to it, and that would be that the Doctor enters the Kasterborous area to do all of this and somehow Gallifrey’s come back by itself anyway and the Doctor then spends two hundred odd pages (assuming this is a novel) suspiciously trying to work out if it’s the real thing and how it happened. But like the Time War in the revived series, the fun of these gaps between the books, comics and audios is that we simply don’t know. The question remains Doctor who? Or at the very least Doctor how?

Still here? I think you can see now why I tend to write spoiler free reviews of novels, this is a rare occasion when writing this has taken longer than reading the book. It’s probably as long as the book too. But The Gallifrey Chronicles, for all its narrative simplicity is a very rich text, certainly one of the best of the Eighth Doctor’s story in any media and of this line in particular. It’s that rare thing in series finales in any media. It isn’t anti-climactic. It repays the readers loyalty and it respects what’s gone before yet somehow adds something new and looks towards the future, a future which had already begun at time of publication. When I’m asked who my favourite Doctor is and I tell them the Eighth, it’s because of adventures like this. None to go.

WHO 50: 1975: Terror of the Zygons.

TV  I've never seen Terror of the Zygons.

For some readers, that is like admitting I've never seen Star Wars.

But the truth is, I've always liked having new old Who.

I like that there's still a Tom Baker story I haven't seen beyond clips, random shots of Tom Baker in a kilt, the Brigadier in a sporran and The-Loch-Ness-Monster.

Having remained relatively spoiler free, I don't actually know what the Zygon's original plan to conquer the planet Earth was or what The-Loch-Ness-Monster has to do with it.

One of the virtues of classic Who's generally self contained format is that there's no great need to have seen everything.

Regeneration stories perhaps.

When a companion leaves.

In general though, there's no great loss in not having seen a story, not in the same way as other series television in which a viewer might miss some great narrative revelation or twist.

Truth is, I've never felt the rush to see how Harry was written out.

That said, it is the only televisually available story that I have ignored.  I'd wait for the dvd.  Then it wasn't released for a decade.

There are plenty of stories only available on audio which I've also ignored until now.  I have no idea what The Savages is about other then there are some savages, probably.

When I explained this to a friend, they sounded quite envious as they noted having seen everything, the only way they can enjoy some new old Who is if a missing episode is found.

By the end of this year, I'll be the same position.

By then (hopefully) I'll have finished working my way through all of Doctor Who in chronological order for the first time.

Including Terror of the Zygons.

I hope it's good.

Stirring.

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall visit Borough Market, a photo by The British Monarchy on Flickr.

escapology

Nature Mariska the equine Houdini:

"The Friesian opens her stables door then those of her stableyard fellows, top and bottom, letting them escape. She takes the dedication to a new level by opening a stable door while ignoring a open haystack next door. She even opens a chest freezer."

The accompanying video is almost as poignant as Au Hasard Balthazar.

To The Slaughter.

Books In my haste to post my review last night I got the title of the book wrong with a correction offered by the author (thanks Trevor) which is a bit embarrassing. But with so few books remaining I’ve given myself a deadline of the private view at the Bluecoat as the deadline (this eight year odyssey must be over by 4 o’clock on Friday, review written and all), which is barely an excuse but it’s all fixed now. I’ve checked and double checked. Stephen Cole’s novel is called To The Slaughter. That’s To The Slaughter. Not To The Death as I originally typed, though Big Finish fans might understand why. Anyway, here we are, the penultimate novel, the first published in 2005 and the last before nuWho blazed its trail across Saturday nights.

Cole will have been aware of all that during the writing process; his author page trails his first nuWho novel The Monster Inside. What interesting is that unlike recent novels, To The Slaughter, which arguably has a very nuWho title, is steeped in nostalgia both for the show’s deep past and recent adventures. With The Gallifrey Chronicles to come with all of its promise, it’s clear Cole felt he had to pull away from providing too much closure, so this is mainly a stand alone novel that glances backward nostalgically at what’s been, though he’s careful not to go too far perhaps recognising there may be curious readers picking up the book in anticipation of the new series, wanting to see what the character’s been up to.

The set-up is pure sixties structural nostalgia. The Doctor, Fitz and Trix have been forced to land at some secret base search for mercury to repair the TARDIS’s fluid link. Before long they’ve become separated from said time machine and from each other and inadvertently stumbled into a plan to artistically remodel the solar system, parts of which they view via the inhabitants of the various space ships they’re trapped in but it soon becomes clear that this Feng Shuiing of the moons around Jupiter is cover for a much more sinister militaristic intent and insanity quite literally ensues. The stage is set for an intergalactic runaround, which leads to the reader realising the novel has a rather spoilery cover.

The novel is also that rare thing in the Eighth Doctor line, a sequel to a seventies story, or rather a line from a seventies story, when the fourth Doctor registers surprise when Commander Stevenson in Revenge of the Cybermen implies Jupiter has thirteen moons, just as a real thirteenth moon and many more besides were being discovered. In his lengthy afterword (yes, even in the penultimate book there’s a lengthy afterword!), Cole says his point in writing the novel was to explain how teeth and curls could have got such a basic piece of astronomy wrong, though to indicate how would be a bit of a spoiler too. Now I expect we’ve all become perfectly happy with such inaccuracies being explained by things just being different in the Whoniverse.

If there’s an Eighties element, it’s that, like so many stories in that period, the Doctor and his friends are essentially trying to make sense of group of infighting antagonists all in it for themselves. Scientists are commissioned by companies to create one set of stuff which is then passed off as some other stuff in order to be sold elsewhere. Work colleagues live in suspicion of one another. Everyone is morally ambiguous, even those who suggest they’re trying to protect the solar system. It’s the cast of The Caves of Androzani failing to reach an agreement with the inhabitants of Terminus, many of them as repellent as Morgus.

But these novels began publication in the 90s and Cole, who was series editor for much of that period offers some juicy references, especially to Fitz’s storyline between Interference and The Ancestor Cell, a period Kreiner now remembers clearly thanks to the events of Halflife. Some of these are pretty “hardcore” and require the reader to have a strong memory for the mythology, especially Cole’s own novels. Having been reading these for as long as most readers back then, I wonder how many of those would remember details from The Fall of Yquatine or Parallel 59. Unless they’re inveterate re-readers. Did that happen much given the rapidity of publication?

Perhaps most surprisingly are the parallels with only recent (relatively) The Tomorrow Windows. Again Fitz becomes isolated from the Doctor. Again he meets a planetary artist, or as is the case this time an interplanetary artist. Again there’s an Alien Bodies alike auction backed up on this occasion with recognisable if unnamed monster cameos (one of which was actually in Alien Bodies). Again the Doctor is forced to work against his natural principles to save the day. Again there’s a possible Douglas Adams reference as it features a genetically engineered beast that wants to be eaten so much it walks into the oven of its own accord.

All of which means I really rather enjoyed it. This is another example of meat and potatoes Doctor Who, but on a grand scale with epic intergalactic vistas, tons of action, some romance (for Fitz, obviously) and a sense of Cole simply enjoying this particular version format for one final time before, as was the case, he began having to write for a much younger audience and without directly referencing this rich tapestry (though ironically his was the one of the three novels which would include an alien race and a location that would be references in the television series itself). It must have been quite a jolt having to ignore all of this.

It’s also Cole in the position of not having to clear up the mess left by other authors in the line. Though Parallel 59 was in the middle of an arc, The Ancestor Cell was about scouring the narrative decks (and Gallifrey) ready for The Burning’s reboot, Vanishing Point was about clarifying the TARDIS team's relationships post Escape Velocity and Timeless was about making sense of the alt.universe arc. There’s none of that here. It’s all about giving the regulars a decent adventure at which he succeeds, especially Trix who is still something of a blank but allows herself to indulge in some Doctorish tendencies, including monologuing, albeit with gun in hand.

Matt Michael’s review, appearing somewhat incongruously in a DWM that’s all about the new series, takes the book to task for having a relatively flimsy storyline which I’d argue as I think you’ve gathered is one of its strengths because it gives the characters time to simply exist, but he acknowledges that its Cole indulging in his farewell. On Outpost Gallifrey (where the reviewing team had dwindled to three) it’s one sort of hit and two misses, though again their main problem, its incongruous genre mixing.  “Is it a comedy, science fiction, a political thriller, a horror?” one asks even though the brilliance of Doctor Who is its ability to be all those things and often at the same time.

I don’t know what it was like for readers picking up these novels just as the new series began, though presumably it was with mixed feelings, the version of the franchise which had sustained them (apparently in dwindling numbers) during the wilderness years ending because of the return of the show to television and the apparent need by BBC Books to merchandise that instead. It must have doubly strange when Big Finish were still merrily releasing Eighth Doctor audios and with the quality of the books themselves having reached something of a renaissance, perhaps thanks to a reduced publication schedule (one every two months).

Here I am after all of that with The Gallifrey Chronicles sitting alone on the shelf, just about where it’s sat for the past eight years, when I bought it on publication knowing I’d want to read it one day and not wanting to be in the situation of it being out of print and having to pay a small fortune. Little did I know it would be back in print and available on some sort of electronic book. Nevertheless I keep hovering my hand over it like the Tenth Doctor finger flirting with River Song’s diary in Forest of the Dead. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. I can’t read it for the first time again.  All this will be over. Finally. Oh sod it. One to go.