David Campbell, the Scottish Rockabilly whom Doctor Who's granddaughter fell for, gets short shrift. He's deceased in An Earthly Child, the Big Finish subscriber freebie from 2009 .... and in Legacy of the Daleks, John Peel's nineties novel of 22nd century knights living in castles. I blame DC's Atomic Knights for that particular trope. I played The Porter in a bloody post-apocalyptic production of Macbeth in 2002! It's just a ludicrous idea: why would medieval chivalry be your model if you were rebuilding civilization?
Anyway, Eight teamed up with a female knight called Donna while Susan, who was using prostheses to disguise her eternal youthfulness (!) tried to kill the Master- hence his corpse-like appearance in The Deadly Assassin. It's the kind of bleak, fanwanky story that gives comic books a bad name.
Child is BF's version of "Whatever happened to Susan?" Marc Platt, whose stories tend to have more of a fantasy element, creates a believable world - no knights or castles- but it feels more like 21st Century Bristol rather than the 22nd Century. Nonetheless the premise is a logical one: alien Susan sends out a distress call for help to rebuild the conquered world but the respondents are another alien race of slavers who, rather wittily, sign up their targets with multiple choice questionnaires!
Paul McGann's son Jake plays Susan's son Alex, Unfortunately, the young actor has a bit of a lisp and a whiny delivery. An arc where the Doctor built a relationship with his petulant great-grandson would have been interesting. But three plays later, Alex goes the Miranda Dawkins route and becomes a Dalek casualty in the audio To the Death. So, the whole event feels like a squandered opportunity.
There was a real sense of a meeting of equals, however, between Susan (Carole Ann Ford, the definite article, you might say) and Doctor Eight. I wish she could have been the Doctor's companion for a few stories: two clever aristocrats swanning around the universe...
My latest selection from the library in Cooper Park was the audiobook of Trevor Baxendale's Tenth Doctor adventure, Prisoner of the Daleks. This story introduced the dreaded interrogator, Dalek X.
Nick Briggs achieves a convincing impression of David Tennant in a way that other readers don't ( it tends to take me out of the story. Exhibit A: Arthur Darvill's Amy Pond voice.)
Dalek-Killer Bowman is very similar to Marvel's butch cyborg überman, Cable, and you get the sense that not only does Baxendale think he's really interesting, but that he's also an effective foil for the Doctor. The Spartan growl is a bit wearisome and you want the Doctor to really rip him apart verbally- but he loves soldiers really. Bowman's feline bodyguard Koral is more interesting but gets far less airtime. The tone of the book is ominous, picking up on the grim WWII vibe of all Terry Nation's Dalek stories. When Who is written as "balls-out" action movie space opera, I tend to find it too simplistic so why did I enjoy this one? It has to be the portrayal of the Daleks. If the villains were just another generic alien race, the unrelenting bleakness of the story would become tiresome. But Baxendale's Daleks are ruthless, clever, sadistic and monstrous. This audiobook is a little long but quite compelling.
Finally two books: The Big Finish Companion Volume 1 is a huge tome of a thing: synopses and details of sixteen ranges of audio drama. This volume only goes up to disk 75 of the Monthly Who releases in 2005 (and there have been 78 since then!) It's interesting to leaf through summaries of plays I'm unlikely to live long enough to hear, like Sapphire and Steel or I, Davros. Visually, however, the300-odd black and white pages are unengaging.
Like last year, The Brilliant Book of Doctor Who 2012 is a delight. I may not be crazy about Moffat's direction for the series but this book is an excellent souvenir, often hilarious and full of "Easter Eggs": the Churchwarden's journal referencing The Smugglers from 1966; a Victorian Theatre Poster with a joke about Blake's Seven; and the heartbreaking "Special Book by George Thompson aged 7 and a quarter". I defy you not to be moved by "I saw a thing on CBBC when a little boy had to go into care...I am not like that little boy but I am worried that cos I am scared of so many things they will do the same thing as on the telly".
Coming soon: Wanted and Haunted
All images are presumed copyright of their respective owners
Did Carole Ann Ford reprise her role as Susan in the Big Finish production? (An ironic name as, often, they seem as if they never will. Finish that is.)
ReplyDeleteYes, she did and I've edited the post to make that clear. I think she was poorly served by the 60s stories- and her own inexperience- but she still has that "unearthly" quality on audio.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteShe appeared in a two-part episode back in the '70s of 'Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?', playing a sexy barmaid. Well worth watching as they're funny as feck.
ReplyDelete