All The People That You Used To Be

To my great surprise, after five years of trying, I have managed to secure a permanent full-time teaching job back in Glasgow. I will be leaving Moray in October, during the Tattie Holidays. I have extremely mixed feelings since the response I've had from kids and colleagues (and, anecdotally, even one parent) since announcing my departure has been very warm.

But I've been homesick for a great deal of the time since the autumn of 2010. I have missed most of my nephew's time in primary school and my cultural life has often been quite fallow. The rural landscapes of the South West speak to me more than the North East and my role as an absentee landlord is increasingly onerous. I've developed my professional practice up here but I need to refresh it in another situation.

Among the memories of my time up here will be listening to audio plays (and occasionally reading novels) about the multiple faces of Doctor Who, on the five-hour train journeys to the Central Belt. Here are some tardy but brief reviews of Gallifreyan product from July and August,

The Legends of River Song is a prose short story collection starring the Eleventh Doctor's camp and curly Space Cougar.

Jenny Colgan's Picnic at Asgard is set on a theme park planet with Wagnerian attractions. Suspicious Minds by Jac Rayner is of course about Elvis- an Auton Elvis, natch- and killer bees. Steve Lyons' A Gamble With Time is an homage to City of Death in title only and is an unmemorable, "timey-wimey" story.
Death in New Venice by Guy Adams  unleashes mind-reading terror in a planetary gated community while Andy Lane's River of Time is a Lovecraftian body horror tale in a New Adventures vein, utilising River's archaeological shtick.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the women writers have a more convincing take on River and make her more appealing. I wouldn't mind an audio version read by Alex K herself but there will be further adventures from BF in the new year.  (4/5 Talmars)

I was really looking forward to Jenny T. Colgan's  hardback novel, In the Blood. It's a sprawling international conspiracy thriller pitting the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble against Gally, the octopus gangster from Big Finish's Time Reaver, starring RTD's time-travelling double act.
This saga of fatal internet trolling is cinematic in scope but, unfortunately, I thought the novel was very slightly written and feels in need of a revision. It doesn't really stay in the memory and Donna doesn't feel recognisable.  (1/5 Talmars)

Classic Doctors, New Monsters is a Big Finish box set released mid-summer and its eponymous mission statement is to pit Nu Who enemies against the 80s Doctors. And Paul McGann.

Despite their popularity, I feel the Weeping Angels have outstayed their welcome. Fallen Angels was the first but least memorable of the set. The conceit of the modern-day newly marrieds encountering Matthew Kelly's lugubrious Michelangelo was mildly entertaining but I think the predatory statues should be rested.
Judoon in Chains: by contrast, this was the episode I most enjoyed. The most voluble of Doctors. ol'Sixie played the Hopkins role in a Space Rhino parody of  The Elephant Man.
Harvest of the Sycorax is the most interesting scenario where Big Pharmaceuticals have neutered pesky human emotion and betray the human race to the space-going voodoo pirates.
Andrew Smith's The Sontaran Ordeal is slight by comparison but when his space paladin Sarana ( Josette Simon from Blake's 7) reviles the Eighth Doctor, it's another step toward John Hurt.
(4/5 Talmars)

In the weeks to come, there may be fewer posts- I had planned to write about James Robinson's Vigilante, Darwyn Cooke, Tim Sale and David Warner, Those posts may yet be published but the Big Move might postpone them 'til later in the year. I had plans for the 40th anniversary of Captain Britain (including how to approach him from an independent Scottish mindset) which I wouldn't like to miss. Stay tuned.

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