Kill Sil Volume One

I plan to publish my 100th post on "Place" on or around Christmas Day.  I intend it to serve as a coda to this series on Five Faces of Doctor Who Redux, by focusing on this year's Doctor Who Xmas Special. In 2010, Moffat brought us A Christmas Carol, in which the Doctor re-enacted that story to reach the frozen emotions of a tyrannical man. This year, as we learned in last night's Children in Need charity telethon, we're getting The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe. I'm afraid I was disappointed since I've never been able to get beyond Narnia's first faun . (I know I saw a production of "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" at the Citizens Theatre at the end of 1993, I think, but I remember virtually nothing else about it). Apart from the sheer impression of  the Narnia books being rather twee, middle-class and improving , Doctor Who Magazine already published an homage to Lewis. The comic strip ran over a year ago, entitled The Professor, The Queen and The Bookshop. It is the readers poll winner for Favourite Comic Strip in the current issue of DWM; the one that went on sale the day before Children In Need. The timing just created a feeling of deja vu.

Thirty years ago, Carnival of Monsters was repeated on BBC2 at 5.40, from Monday 16 November 1981 to Thursday 19 November.After the initial wonder and excitement of black-and-white Hartnell and Troughton, my sophisticated 18-year-old University student sensibilities were as dismissive of The Pertwee Era as my current incarnation is of Moffat. Katy Manning's acting seemed rather poor and the production looked gaudily cheap. These days, I recognise it as one of the cleverest and most entertaining early-70s stories.
One of my childhood memories of the serial had been the glimpse of a Cyberman - at that point, a nearly-forgotten icon of the Sixties stories. Another Sixties monster features in this week's audio play, Mission to Magnus.

The Ice Warriors of course appeared most recently in the pacy and readable The Silent Stars Go By.They are very popular with Big Finish, appearing in at least five other plays, to my knowledge. This baffles me because, sibilance aside, they're very dull to listen to.There's always some cliche riffing on feudal motifs and  the perennial question of whether they will be goodies or baddies.
Magnus - known at one time by the working title "Planet of Storms" -is an entry in the Lost Stories range and is one of the best-known since, having been commissioned for the aborted 1986 season, it was novelized by Target Books in 1990. I remember being very disappointed by the book at the time. It was a slim plot with a hackneyed sci-fi take on the Battle of the Sexes.The female-dominated society of Magnus still reminds me of "Star Maidens", the campy ITV German co-production from a decade before.

Mission to Magnus is a prime example of the contention that the "lost "season 23 would have done nothing to win over new viewers for the beleaguered Sixth Doctor. The story begins with an encounter with Anzor, yet another wandering Time Lord and one who dresses like an Edwardian funeral director. He also tormented the Doctor at school. Presumably the idea of the bullish Colin Baker cowering in his clown coat  was intended to be funny. It's hard to say because Anzor completely vanishes from the story at its midpoint. The real star of the serial is Sil, the burbling, screeching amphibian from the hugely overrated and brown satire on television Vengeance on Varos: the story in which some people sneer at other people in golf karts while Peri is turned into a bird. Allegedly, it's one of Colin Baker's best ...

 Like Varos, Magnus was written by Philip Martin whose Brechtian/ Chop Sockey/ Brummie drama "Gangsters" was reviewed on "Place" some entries ago (September's "Red Executioner"). His second Who outing is thin, derivative and curiously old-fashioned, like the rest of the Sixth Doctor Lost Stories. The Big Finish version isn't terrible: Nabil Shaban is entertaining as the obsequious corporate slug although his lines about bulk- buying "winter woolies" are ludicrous. Poor Nicola Bryant also has some dreadfully stilted dialogue to deliver.The young actors portraying the band of rebel boy-children could have been worse, I suppose. The most cringe-making sequence is actually  when Nicholas Briggs's randy Ishka allows the Rana of  the Magnii to read his mind in response to her question "What is husband?" Was genre fiction still so retrogressive in 1986?

 

"Yes. Yes, it was" confirms Emily Briggs.

Hmm. Aside from Cobwebs, I  haven't found anything I can really enthuse about, Who-wise, this month. Next week, I'll be looking at the Seventh Doctor play Robophobia.

I awoke horribly early this morning , worrying about Standard Grade Folios. My comic book comfort food was The Incredible Hulk King-Size Special 2 from 1969. This issue is composed of four episodes of what Smilin' Stan labels as the "greatest continued cliff-hanger in all of comicdom." Steve Ditko sends the previously-purposeless Hulk around the world in a Cold War thriller that introduces The Leader. A twisted reflection of Bruce Banner, the Leader is all Gamma-powered brain to the Hulk's brawn and organiser of "a vast spy ring". The use of Spidey villain and master spy The Chameleon  made me think about the recurring motif in Ditko's work of characters who are masked or literally faceless, like The Question. These stories, interestingly, mark the point where Ol' Greenskin's dialogue changes abruptly from the comparitively verbose ("A patrol coming! They mustn't chain me again!") to the almost-monosyllabic ("Puny insects! They come to kill Hulk!"). There's also a strong streak of jingoism which seems a little dated for 1964, much less '69: "The mightiest mortal on Earth defies the armed might of the ruthless Red masters of tyranny". In your face, you Big Red Cheese! However, the tone of paranoia and conspiracy lends an edge to the whole "Hulk smash" schtick.

Yesterday, November 18th, would have been the 39th birthday of my big mucker Gary Stirling; he died suddenly three years ago after suffering a brain haemorrhage. Gary hired me when I first worked in call centre recruitment eleven years ago. He then left to become a mature student at Strathclyde Uni; his degree was awarded posthumously.  I miss his vitality, scathing sense of humour and filthy cackle very much.


All images are presumed copyright of their respective owners