but when you end up buying D&D-inspired soap at a comic convention, it seems the pendulum has swung into the joss stick frippery of Goth shops like Elgin's own Incunabula.
It's not as if I needed more comics, though, given the hoarder chaos which engulfs me in my new flat. There was a troubled moment a night or two ago, when I wondered if this was going to be Burnfield Gardens in Giffnock all over again.
The actual removal only took just under three hours and it's only when everything was delivered that I realised just how accurate I had been, saying I was decanting two flats into one. I have lost two cupboards and one built-in bookcase, moving from Mayne Road.
However, the 20-sided die is cast! Over the last couple of days, as I go to work ( and go between Sharilee - changing THAT- and Craigbeg, getting the latter ready for inspection and marketing to new tenants), I've been listening to Big Finish's second volume of First Doctor Adventures, starring David Bradley. I'll talk about the first play another time but the authorship of the second doesn't fill me with enthusiasm.
Early 80s fan-script- writer and subsequent police officer Andrew Smith was something of an inspiration to me in my late teens. I wanted very much to write my own stories of Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor and the one-off success of a Rutherglen boy reassured me that it might be possible. Sadly, I recognised myself in bespectacled. graceless, pompous and faintly amphibian youths like Chris Chibnall.
It seems to me that, in his capacity as one of Big Finish's worryingly small cadre of scriptwriters, Smith's work has advanced little since those grave, teen boffin days. His stories are earnest and ponderous sci-fi, frequently bristling with military machismo and therefore faintly ridiculous ( but not in a good way), especially in this era of UNIT's asthmatic, fangirl cosplayer, Petronella Osgood.
Hour of the Cybermen is a bland, cardboard story with parping electronic music, celebrating the flight-suited Eighties Cybermen. They were tremendously exciting in 1982, after a 7-year absence, with their clenched fists and emerald vomit. But this audio is only able to capture the strange emphasis of David Banks' booming Cyberleader. Their dehydration weapon is sadistic and very timely in an remarkably hot summer but the plot was staggeringly predictable: the UNIT traitor was signposted so early on, I thought it was satire perhaps. I'm dismayed by the overwhelmingly positive response this audio has received. I thought it was one of the weakest, most pointless releases in a long time. Half a Talmar, for the Cyber-plot but Colin Baker's pronunciation of planet as "planUTT" is beginning to obsess me.
This has been a tempestuous week in DW fandom: the irredeemably racist nature of beloved late 70s Grand Guignol Talons of Weng-Chiang was discussed in DWM. Blogger Elizabeth Sandifer has been unrelenting in her criticism of the serial ( and The Celestial Toymaker) and in her Tweets, her rather extreme response to the magazine's piece on the 1977 story led to some very nasty bullying on Twitter, largely instigated by the response of a former DWM editor. Considering the blind eye many of Sandifer's attackers have turned to gay DW writer Gareth Roberts' ugly transphobia, it seemed grossly hypocritical of that section of DW fandom ( professional and amateur). I think Sandifer is an astonishing writer and commentator and whether her reactions were hyperbolic or not, this situation has revealed that, as with Jodie Whitaker's casting, some unsavoury reactionary attitudes are widespread in fans of a phenomenon that preaches diversity and tolerance.
Happily, none of the reductive "gammon/Brexit" traits of Big Finish seem to surface in the first box set for Jenny, The Doctor's Daughter. Like Dark Eyes or Doom Coalition, there are four adventures herein: Stolen Goods, Prisoner of the Ood, Neon Reign and Zero Space.
In each story, Jenny and her new companion, the enigmatic and innocent Noah (Sean Biggerstaff) are pursued through space and time by a cyborg bounty hunter, piqued by the duo's prodigious make-up. They encounter camp frog -space- fraudster Garundel; the invasion of a close not unike Brookside by the Ood and a mind-controlling criminal; dethrone a despotic emperor in a Bladerunner world with a drugged populace and visit a space station manned solely by clones.
I had long felt that, just as Rose Tyler was a more successful take on late-90s BBC Books companion Sam Jones, Jenny was a bland version of Miranda, the Eighth Doctor's adopted daughter, who graduated from one novel appearance, Father Time to her own (extremely short-lived) comic.
I felt therefore this might be a spin-off too far. Also, Georgia Tennant's father, Peter Davison's autobiography portrays him as a superficial and self-involved git, a Smiling Character Assassin. Irrationally, this was an impediment for me. However, I enjoyed this set very much- from the Glam Rock flourishes on the Delia Derbyshire homage theme "toon" to associate producer Tennant's effervescent humour. The Ood story was very amusing and the speedy, comic strip sensibility of the whole set was very effective. The coda to Zero Space is a delight with a very welcome cameo. 5/5 Talmars. 1977- you can't go home again.
Coming soon-ish: Marvel's Conan (and Star Trek, although it may be the 23rd Century before I get to it!)
All images are considered copyright of their respective owners
No comments:
Post a Comment