A Universe Called Fred

I'm back!
After a hiatus of almost 17 months, I have a new post!!
The estimable Kid Robson got me thinking about reviving the blog. Then I realised, after ICT issues across my workplace, that I might resolve my long-standing technical difficulties BY USING ANOTHER BROWSER. Derr. I have no great facility for-or real interest in technology. There we are.

So, the plan will be to use my "sister" blog, Materioptikon for trips into the past and this one for voyages to the present day. Just like Dr. Who. And speaking of that mysterious traveller in the Vortex:

 
Big Finish's autumn/winter releases compised an audio trilogy reuniting the bombastic Sixth Doctor with his long-lost companion Peri. The initial installment,The Widow's Assassin,  is the strongest play of the three. It's a blackly comic murder mystery with the trappings of a Space Fairy Tale. The sardonic tone is very effective for this pairing, although the revelation of King Yrcanos' assassin was foreseeable- if you saw Peri's startling exit on tv in the 80s.

Masters of Earth is a hectic retread of 1964's Dalek Invasion of Earth. It's set up here, in the North-East of Scotland, during the Skarosian occupation but before the arrival of Hartnell's Doctor. Numerous 60s menaces lumber on to the scene: Robomen, Slythers and Vaga plants. It's all very dependent on the creations of Terry Nation and the future world is the usual crazy clash of feudal peasant superstition and late 50s British grit. Glasgow's Brian McCardie plays a surly survivor. Another Scottish voice, Tracy Wiles, whom I recall from RSAMD, plays the rebel leader but BF did all of this before in the Lucie Miller/To The Death season finale for the Eighth Doctor, only a couple of years ago.

The Rani Elite is a thin and predictable adventure from the ponderous pen of the prolific Justin Richards, It reminded me of Kirby's second-last Omac storyline:

 The Doctor and Peri visit a Space University, the CAGE, where the bodies of students are hosting the minds of the super-rich. It's all a scheme, of course, of renegade 80s Time Lord, the Rani, who made two appearances on tv and in a couple of Who novels.

The new Rani, Siobahn Redmond is a witchy,wild-haired figure on the cover contrasting with her velvety murmur in the play. For the most part, she's a much more restrained and silky villain than the late Kate O'Mara's gay icon. However, the narrative is colourless and tediously easy to anticpate.

Aside from the novelty of a third Glaswegian Time Lord in 2014. this trilogy's USP is the warmth and charm of its Tardis team but the trope of Peri's possession by an alien force is ridiculously over-used. Inessential listening but the relationship between the leads is enjoyable.

A trio of Big Finish adaptations of 90s Who novels is coming up here shortly. However, one of the most interesting books I read over the Xmas holidays was The Annual Years by writer and academic Paul Magrs.
World Distributors Dr. Who tie-in annuals were the earliest fiction about the character that I encountered-predating even TV Comic. For me and many other DW fans, they were a iconic Xmas gift in the mid-70s.

These mind-bending, often ludicrous stories wildly careened from the risible to the disturbing, unleashing non-canonical horrors like the mutant Sons of the Crab; the savage Tryods; the hideous Pseudomen; skull-faced Rascla and the leopard-like Puskeet from Metalupiter.

Like a tv tie-in Wayne Hemingway, Magrs rejoices in the weirdness of these garish, paste-board visitations. He finds magic in funhouse mirror distortions from Manchester- an alternative Neuronic Nightmare history of Tardis travels from Kandalinga to the Plague World by way of HMS Victory and the Sea of Faces. If you would like to relive the hallucinatory world of Doctor Who annuals, Magrs is an indulgent host.

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