purplecat

I've been scratching my head over how to cover Time and Relative Dissertations in Space in more detail, since I wanted to talk about several of the essays but didn't really want to make 18 more posts about it. I've opted for discussing each of its four parts in turn. These are not so much reviews as comments and thoughts I had while reading the essays - some of these comments probably arise because I'm approaching them from a computer science direction (my general notes about this in my original review of the book).

( How to pilot a TARDIS: audiences, science fiction and the fantastic in Doctor Who )

( The child as addressee, viewer and consumer in mid-1960s Doctor Who )

( 'Now how is that wolf able to impersonate a grandmother?' History, pseudo-history and genre in Doctor Who )

( Bargains of necessity? Doctor Who, Culloden and fictionalising history at the BBC in the 1960s )

This is an oddly schizophrenic book and its clear that the authors had rather different conceptions about its primary audience. Jonathan Bignell and Alec Charles, for instance, are clearly writing essays targetted at an academic audience with a strong background in the theory and jargon of media studies and/or social science (since I'm not an academic in these areas it is difficult to tell which, precisely). Most of the authors settle for writing in an academic style but with an eye to being readily comprehensible by the lay man and a few, particularly in the final section, write pieces that wouldn't be out of place in DWM; light on academic theory and sprinkled with fannish in-jokes.

It also suffers from the accident of timing. It is a collection of essays studying Doctor Who with a particular emphasis on its evolution and its cross-media forms. Sadly, although published in 2007, its essays are all based on presentations given in 2004 so its contents are forced to largely ignore the developments of the new series. This renders most of the essays instantly out-of-date which is a shame because every single one of them (even those that are jargon heavy and difficult to follow) have something interesting to say but you wish that the new series perspective could also have been brought into play.

The other interesting observation I made across all the essays in the book was a more personal one. When I did my PGCHE (Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education) much was made about discipline context and assumptions. So I was struck by two "discipline assumptions" here. Firstly, and this is peculiar to Computer Science, we write predominantly to page counts. Unlike most disciplines which publish in journals we publish predominantly in conferences generally with a 15 page limit. This causes problems (B. often complains about the lack of necessary detail in CS papers), but it also forces you to ruthlessly prune out, for instance, additional interesting examples which are, perhaps, not central to your point. So I found several of the essays "unnecessarily verbose". In particular I felt that they marshalled more examples to make their point than was strictly necessary, almost to the point of mindless listing in some cases. Secondly it seemed very problematic, to me, to try and make a point about the body of work that is Doctor Who as a whole based on selected examples. In something as diverse and multi-authored as Doctor Who (a fact stressed by several of the essays) I couldn't work out what the criteria could be for choosing representative examples since a counter-example was almost bound to come along within a couple of years, if not sooner. How do you distinguish the trend from the one-offs? I suspect this is something obvious to someone within the discipline (or at least, the accepted processes are obvious though they presumably also have their within discipline critiques).

It's too daunting to try and cover all the individual essays in one post and there are things I want to say about several of them. So I'm going to group them together into a number of subsequent posts.

I wouldn't recommend this to a general reader, but anyone interested in a theoretical take on the development and impact of Doctor Who or with a more general interest in the nature of popular culture and television programs in particular, will find lots to sink their teeth into here.

Sick Building by Paul Magrs, has been very well received, at least in my neck of the woods, but I can't for the life of me see why. This book has much in common with his short story in the Doctor Who Storybook 2007 in that there is nothing actually wrong with it in any way, but compared to talking poodles, men transforming into lizards just because, a literally two-dimensional Mike Yates, and a Doctor who is half-human on his mother's side because his mother is a mermaid and so her top half is human this was pretty tame stuff. I wasn't necessarily a huge fan of Paul Magrs other Dr Who books but I was a fan of the fact that this sort of bizarre stuff was being written under the Dr Who banner. It now appears that, stripped of the permission to let his imagination run riot, Magrs is a competent but otherwise uninspiring author.

Sick building is, unsurprisngly, an evil building novel. Our heroes spend much time being menaced (or assisted) by vacuum cleaners, sunbeds and vending machines which, when put that way, makes it seem not so far from talking poodles after all but somehow this feels bereft of the sort of verve and excitement I picked up from Magrs' other works. Certainly the vacuum cleaners etc. don't seem particularly representative, or illustrative, or to be having conceptual fun with or of anything in particular. There is an (almost) obligatory kidult and another mention of the Doctor's apparent preference for Rose over Martha. As an interesting side issue the book was originally entitled The Wicked Bungalow, this being vetoed, by all accounts including his own, by RTD. Since I am at a loss to understand why "Sick Building" is preferable to "The Wicked Bungalow" I can only assume that this must be one of those reasons why I'm not in charge of a vastly successful television brand.

Just as I'd pretty much decided to cut my losses and give up the new series books along comes Wetworld by Mark Michalowski challenging me to revise my assumptions. It's about as old school (as in Virgin-Books-a-like) as its possible to be within the confines of the new series, throwing around mentions of adjudicators and world-building the details of the first expansion of humans into space*, even the obligatory kidult is sixteen years old, sensible, independent and could just as easily have been twenty. It is set on the planet Sunday, a swampy world inhabited by what turn out to be suprisingly intelligent otters (though the book is a little inconsistent in its treatment of their intelligence) and a small bunch of colonists all of whom are muddling along more or less happily when a meteor strike brings a strange tentacled monster to the world, followed shortly by the Doctor and Martha. So far so generic Doctor Who, in fact classic series fans will be picturing the Power of Kroll at this point. Be reassured though we are spared anything remotely approximating the swampies from that story, not to mention the attempts of the 1970s BBC special effects department to produce a giant squid.

While the book avoids many of the irritations of its stable-mates, length, if nothing else, prevents it having the level of detail I associate with the old new adventures (though on the plus side since many of them were a good 100 pages longer than their plot or prose could carry, this isn't necessarily a bad thing) and it is forced to be fairly to the point with little time to spare for description or added depth. On the plus sides it has a coherent plot, with interesting ideas and a monster with a sensible agenda and a interesting modus operandum. There was one character who I feared was about to turn into the kind of irritating bureaucrat Dr Who is so often fond of, closed-minded and inclined to respond to crises by locking the Doctor up, but fortunately despite the fact it looked like the story was heading this way he never did get round to arresting the Doctor, or impeding him with unecessary red tape. It's a good Martha book too, she gets to be resourceful and independent without it appearing forced but, on the downside, it also introduces a proto-companion, Ty Benson, who appears to steal some moments that should more appropriately gone to the Martha. This is made more obvious by Martha's clear jealously.

So, all in all, a bit of a mixed bag. Wetworld has flaws, but it is much closer to the kind of Dr Who book I'm interested in reading than almost anything else the new series books have produced. It's good, but not good enough, I don't think, to dissuade me from buying these books more circumspectly in future based on author pedigree and recommendations.

*by this I mean it's set on a colony planet during the first wave. The Virgin New Adventures fleshed out this milieau in a number of books. Wetworld doesn't add anything much to the previous world-building but is clearly singing from the same hymn sheet.

Another day, another new who book, another viewpoint kidult. Once again this one was mostly just a bit bland. It is set in a small sleepy American town the better, I suppose, to capitalise on its Halloween setting, but it really felt just like a sleepy English village with the numbers filed off. This is clearly written as a child friendly horror novel (not unsurprising given that Mark Morris' day job is a horror writer). There is plenty of vivid imagery as various Halloween decorations come to life, but after a fairly creepy start its mostly just generic "mild" peril. Doctor Who, after all, has strong roots in child-friendly horror so its really quite hard to make this sort of fare stand out.

An interesting side-note (for anyone who's been following the "was Martha ill-treated" debate) is a passage where Martha reflects that all conversations with the Doctor inevitably find their way back to Rose. Proof that, whatever the text of the transmitted episodes, the sub-text that so many complained of was definitely intentional. As I understand matters, these books are far too carefully vetted to let something like that slip through unless it was in a briefing document somewhere.

This particular new series Dr Who adventure had a reasonably good reputation so I was looking forward to it and you know, there's nothing actually wrong with it but I was kind of bored until about page 174 when things suddenly got more interesting thanks to something that is, in fact, so completely obvious it shouldn't count as a twist. I have a feeling Stephen Cole must have had a fanboy conversation at some point in his life where they wondered why the Zygons didn't do X, and here they are doing it.

Anyway, it has Edwardians, and the Lake District, and Zygons and another bl**dy viewpoint bl**dy kidult and the passage "Martha had encountered several alien creatures in her time, and was no stranger to their evil agendas. Yet the Zygons were the first monsters she'd met who forced their prisoners into playing cards." So, you know, it has good points and bad points. But overall these books are rather bland and my completist enthusiasm is taking something of a battering. I already own the next three, and people tell me the quality picks up, but I won't be buying more if doesn't.

I really want to like Jacqueline Rayner's work. Not simply because she is one of the few women writing Dr Who novels but because she has a distinctive voice and a bittersweet lightness of touch that should make a refreshing change from the more serious-minded and action-oriented output that typifies the range. But somehow her work never really gells for me and I'm left feeling that the comedic aspects have misfired letting down the whole. In the case of the Last Dodo the parts that really grated were those written in the first person from Martha's point of view in a kind of gushing I'm-talking-to-an-eight-year-old fashion. Not only did I simply not find these particular amusing and a little patronising there didn't seem to be any reason why half the story should be told in this fashion and half in the third person, sometimes switching between the two mid-scene. I mean why? why not write it all in the first person from Martha's point of view, or at least write every scene she was in from Martha's point-of-view, or if you must switch then at least provide the framing device of a diary, or writing a letter to a young cousin, or something.

The rest of the book was OK, the characters were pretty one-dimensional (even when they weren't supposed to be), the plot was a fairly straightforward sequence of run-arounds but it was all competent. I can see that its brief descriptions of extinct and endangered species would appeal to much of the target audience. I like the fact that Rayner experiments with story-telling styles, in this case switching points of view. I like the fact she writes about topics she is passionate about. I like the fact that she appreciates that Who story-telling can be both light-hearted and serious at one and the same time. But in the end, as with so many of her books, the parts just never fell together into a satsifying whole for me and I finished with feelings largely of disinterest in the plot and characters and vague irritation at the execution.

Its sort of customary to start reviews of the Dr Who storybooks by mentioning the totally bonkers Dr Who annuals of the 1970s but I figure most people reading here either know all about them or aren't terribly interested. Suffice it to say the storybooks are their successors both in content and, in some cases, bonkersness although the storybooks are bonkers (when they are bonkers) in a canonical way while the 70s Who annuals were mostly just bonkers.

( a discussion of the stories and pictures with some digressions: Noel Coward, talking poodles and criticisms of the Isle of Wight all feature )

This was more like it. Like all the recent Dr Who books Wooden Heart made a very quick read and like many it suffered from a belief that "Kiduldt"s need books with Kidult viewpoint characters but apart from those quibbles this one was well-written and thought-provoking. Genuniely Kiduldt in fact, demonstrating that you can handle complex issues both philosophical and inter-personal within the confines of a Dr Who adventure.

( More under cut, but I'll avoid spoilers )

The Quick Reads books are designed to appeal to adults who, for one reason or another, are anxious about reading. As such they are intended to be short with a limited vocabulary. I can't quite decide whether Terrance Dicks was an inspired choice to author one of these or a result of a misguided identification of "short with a simple vocabulary" with "suitable for children".

( Review of Made of Steel )

The Jadepagoda mailing list had a long and agonised debate a few years back, before new Who came along and changed everything. The debate went something along the lines of "Who fans will buy any old tat with the logo on, therefore BBC books publish any old tat. If we, as Who fans, only bought the books by the authors we actually like then possibly the quality might improve and even if it didn't we wouldn't have wasted money on books we knew in advance that we wouldn't like." While I recognised the validity of this argument I couldn't quite bear the idea of not being able to say "I have every Doctor Who novel and novelisation on my bookshelf". However, I eventually, with much indecision, decided I didn't need every officially published Doctor Who Short Story on my bookshelves, especially since the "Short Trips" collections by which these were primarily published were generally rather dull and inispiring. So, with much pride, I heroically cancelled my subscription. But then I began to hear rumblings, also on Jadepagoda, that "Short Trips: Time Signature" was actually rather good. And, mostly, it is.

( More including mild spoilers, though nothing I hadn't guessed after the end of the third story, under the cut )

The About Time series are reference works providing a story-by-story guide to Dr Who. Where these differ from the half dozen or so other story-by-story guides I have on my bookshelves, is that they seek explicitly to analyse the Dr Who stories in the wider context of the culture, specifically the media culture, of the time. They started out with the later Doctors (3, 4 and 5, IIRC) and then skipped back. This is the first of the "sixties" books I have read and the first which I have found more irritating than enjoyable.

( More on About Time 2 )

An alternative explanation for my dissatisfaction lies outside of the book itself. When I read the books about later Dr Who I remembered watching the episodes at the time, and I remember the surrounding Basil Brush, Star Wars, Buck Rogers milieu. I wasn't watching between 1966 and 1969 and I read this book without nostalgia tinged glasses.

This book is unashamed tie-in trash. One feels vaguely embarrassed to have spent money on it. Needless to say I enjoyed it immensely and no doubt ruined Bill's concentration (he's currently wading through the Narnia books in Japanese) by giggling inanely next to him.

This is actually the second version/sequel/whatever. The first (The Completely Useless Encyclopedia), also by Chris Howath and Steve Lyons, was probably funnier and also "Official" - for what its worth. Having devoted one book already to making fun of Dr Who via an encyclopedia format they are really only left with the events of the past ten years which gives them a rather smaller range of targets. Their running jokes are limited to the superiority of the extras on American DVD releases, the Space Pig (from Aliens of London), and new Who's supposed "Gay Agenda". The humour is rather more laddish than I recall from the previous version (although in the introduction they complain that its no longer as easy to be funny by simply saying something unexpectedly rude or offensize since the Internet means that fans can now be rude and offensive the whole time). I'm not sure how accessible this is to a casual Who fan and I'm not convinced how much many of the more serious New Who fans would like it (One of its many lists is "Ten Reasons Why Rose is Nowt Special" and it has entries on DAVIES EX MACHINA, 'IT'S NOT BEING MADE FOR US' and FANS, WHIRLING (as in End of the World) and obviously there is a rich seam of humour in the prospect of a sexual Doctor although the book itself seems a little too strenuously in favour of an asexual Doctor (see entries on TEARS and 'I WAS A DAD ONCE'), missing out some good jokes along the way I suspect).

I can't really recommend this book, because, as its previous version acknowledged, it is a blatant cash-in. But if, like me, you must waste your time and money on Dr Who tie-in mechandise then you'll get more value out of it than, frankly, most Big Finish Short Story Collections and Benny Novellas.

I read the Art of Destruction by Stephen Cole on the plane between Chicago and Los Angeles. It was a four hour journey and, given I'm not the fastest of readers, I was quite surprised to find that I finished the book with time to spare. It just goes to show, I suppose, how much slighter the Books written to go with the new Doctor Who series are compared to the full length novels we had become used to.

( The Art of Destruction Review )

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

An Earthly Programme: Origins and directions

Time and Relative Dissertations in Space

Sick Building

Wetworld

Forever Autumn

Sting of the Zygons

The Last Dodo

Doctor Who Storybook 2008

Doctor Who: Wooden Heart

Made of Steel

Short Trips: Time Signature

About Time 2

Doctor Who: The Complete[ly unofficial] Encylocedia

The Art of Destruction

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