I have thought about blogging on James Blish and Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek novelisations; the long-promised Dan Dare post; Byrne's West Coast Avengers and Astro City. Maybe over the Xmas holidays some or all of these might appear at last. In the mean time, I can still write about the Big Finish audios I've listened to, walking through the playing fields to school in the dark, frosty mornings.
I cross this bridge most days of the working week.
I'm going to save the First Doctor Companion Chronicles Box Set 2 until after this Christmas's last hurrah for Peter Capaldi, since David Bradley's First Doctor is the guest star. But the lively performances by Anneke Wills as Polly and Elliot Chapman, replacing the late Michael Craze as Ben Jackson in that set led me to a pair of the Early Adventures - featuring the same team. Frazer Hines also reprises his amazing evocation of Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor in
That story saw a middle-aged and gloomy Ben and Polly commemorating 1986 for the second time in their lives. Unlike the socially -conscious ashram couple of Russell T. Davies' imagining, here Ben and the Duchess ( an unlikely romantic pairing anyway, to my mind: they're more like brother and sister) are unhappily married to other people.
Finally, BF have expanded a one-off box set into another ongoing series of boxes.The Eighth Doctor: The Time War 1 begins to bridge the gap between Doom Coalition and 2013's Night of the Doctor.
The Night Witches and The Outliers.
These stories sit between the established adventures in the second half of the 1966/1967 fourth season of the tv series. The Outliers, which was released second, is clearly set after The Underwater Menace and its Fish People. A watery threat imperils miners in the far future in Simon Guerrier's story. Twenty-first century corporate shenanigans are satirised in this story as the Doctor plays his Earth Examiner role again. But the story's disappearances end on a rather grisly note. The time-sensitive aquatic dwellers in this adventure provide a strange callback to a 1998 short story Mondas Passing, from the BBC's very first Short Trips collection.
That story saw a middle-aged and gloomy Ben and Polly commemorating 1986 for the second time in their lives. Unlike the socially -conscious ashram couple of Russell T. Davies' imagining, here Ben and the Duchess ( an unlikely romantic pairing anyway, to my mind: they're more like brother and sister) are unhappily married to other people.
Despite this melancholy fan service, I find Guerrier a dull storyteller and I might have been better off with plodding Justin Richards and his Victorian melodrama, The Morton Legacy.
The Night Witches, released first, is the superior play. I knew of this wartime Russian squadron of female pilots from the DC Bombshells series. The gender of the fliers means this is a female-dominated play with appropriate accents. There's a typical 60s Who doppelganger subplot and a romantic interlude for Ben - Elliot Chapman gets better and better. Although these plays are taking a week to listen to, this one is very atmospheric and it's straight time-travel: no aliens or monsters. Despite the fact that BF have brought this Tardis crew to three different theatres of war in WWII alone, I thoroughly recommend it.
In four episodes, echoing famous war movies, we find Paul McGann's reluctant Time Lord drawn into the machinations of Jacqueline Pearce's icy Cardinal Ollistra, from the War Doctor series starring John Hurt.
The Starship of Theseus sees the Doctor and his companion Sheena (...or is it Emma? Or Louise?) on board a luxury space liner. But the reality warping Time War changes the vessel into a refuge ship which has to pay a terrible toll to trolls operating a Time Bridge. I think. It's confusing.
The Doctor and a party of refugees are subsequently stranded on a planet ravaged by time in Echoes of War. Their amnesiac Dalek ally is a little too like the one in Across The Darkened City - as we'll see in a future post. The Doctor and his party then became drafted by Ollistra in The Conscript and the defiant Doctor ensures the fate of innocent recruit Norvid in this boot camp tale.
The final episode, One Life, is a human interest story borrowing heavily from the novel and tv story Human Nature. The world-shattering secret of one of the characters is revealed to be pivotal to the war effort and Ollistra's true objective. What is really interesting is that we know the Doctor will end this arc as one of a feared and despised race and, facing death, will renounce his ( dubious) pacifist stance to become the Doctor of War.
I thought this set was much more compelling and focused than either Doom Coalition or Dark Eyes, where it often felt the story arc was being derived from the individual episodes rather than vice versa. It's too early to say how effective Rakhee Thakrar will be as Bliss, the new companion. I'm still one of those fans who thinks the Last Great Time War was more interesting than a series of rather pedestrian Dalek battles on audio but I'm keen to hear the adventures of Derek Jacobi's War Master next month.
Hoping you're enjoying the run-up to the festive period. Take care.
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When Superman was first envisioned by Jerry Siegel, the idea was that he'd be from a dying Earth in the future, not Krypton. This may be where the 'Man of Tomorrow' name came from, though it's possible that it merely reflected the idea that Earthmen would one day be as evolved as Kryptonians. (In Superman's early origin, all Kryptonians were superpowered as the result of evolution.) "So what's all this got to do with Dr. Who?" you ask. Simply this. I much preferred The Doctor before all the Gallifrey nonsense reared its ugly head, which I regard as contrived and as tedious as Superman's Kryptonian heritage. I think the idea of The Doctor as an advanced Earthman from some distant point in the future is a much more appealing idea, and I wish the BBC had gone down that route instead. I'm not sure if The Doctor having two hearts was revealed prior to his Gallifreyan origins, but if so, it could have been attributed to the future evolution of Earthmen, or as the result of a mutation or scientific experiment (for some reason). All this Time Lords nonsense strikes me as a desperate 'idea' by uninspired writers trying to be 'Science-fictiony'. The original Star Trek was far better at handling SF (and time travel) than most Who episodes have ever been. I've listened to a few BF adventures, but I find them incredibly boring as they seem more interested in being 'inventive' and 'far-out' than in telling a good, compelling story. Anyway, that's my two cents worth, Dougie - have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
ReplyDeleteThe Time Lords concept has been in place since 1969, six years into DW's 54-year life span. I'd say they're fundamental to the character. Attempts to add mystery to the Doctor's origins were made in the final years of Sylvester's McCoy's time and in the Virgin novels but they didn't survive into the tv revival.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, if Dr Who was rebooted in the future, serial fiction about an adventurous traveller in time and space, I imagine it would still be like the BBC's Sherlock- certain "totems" would be essential parts of the concept: a police telephone box, eccentric costume, Daleks.
The idea of the Doctor as a university dropout is more English than the high-flying graduates of Star Trek and a dropout from a society of cosmic grandees is more English than a superman or a refugee, which I think are American tropes. Just my opinion, of course.