I'm now into week two of living in my new flat in Elgin. I have begun to realise that I may have read the title deeds incorrectly and the long back yard- a concrete stretch, overgrown with weeds and ending in a sad, tilting whirlie- might actually be mine, and not upstairs' property. I duly snapped up two Noughties books by Channel 4's Urban Gardener on ebay, for inspiration and day-dreaming.
Meanwhile, the bigger bedroom is still piled, floor-to-ceiling, with unopened boxes. I have made some inroads, and found some doublers from Twomorrows Publishing; extra Lin Carter paperbacks and my Sphere Conan collection. My plans to post about Roy Thomas's Conan from the early 80s have gone awry though- I haven't prepared my notes fully and I was distracted by finding my Ettore Sottsass vase from Habitat again.
I also found all my doublers of James Blish's Star Trek novelisations; I have long planned a follow -up-post about Trek at Marvel and DC and the reprints in the Eaglemoss hardback series. Hopefully, I'll get on to that and the Walmart DC 100-pagers between now and the Tattie Holidays. But S4 folio pieces and my first Higher poetry essays are coming in, now, too and those 13 or 15 boxes still need to be opened.
My walk to work is slightly longer again- especially since I think this move has given me sciatica- and this last week, I listened to the second box set of adventures from Big Finish for David Bradley's interpretation of the First Doctor, as originated by the immortal William Hartnell.
It's nice sometimes to be wrongfooted by a creative person and that happens twice in this box set..Social media has really been more of a hindrance than a help to me and while I've tweeted and posted things to strangers that I might be more circumspect about in real life, I've also received unsolicited and outrageous responses from strangers too. It's a fatal combination of passion and anonymity.
Last year, I had an unfortunate Facebook spat with John Dorney over what I perceived as his condescension. His work here, although it's more in the vein of the surreal and often sinister stories in Sixties World Distributor annuals, is impressive: quite a cerebral outing for the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan. (4/5 Talmars)
The Invention of Death is a pure sci-fi story, introducing an immortal, amoeba-like race of humanoids. It's hard to imagine how this culture would have been realised at Lime Grove but the soundscape reminded me very much of the alien worlds of mid-60s Who.
The Tardis crew almost immediately fall prey to the dangerous games of a species that have no fear of death but interestingly, it's their own scientific knowledge which inspires the tragic circumstances of the plot.
There is a rather unconvincing sequence where Ian is pushed out a window by the amoral Ashtallahan scientist. However, I can absolutely picture it as a cliffhanger in creaky black-and-white.
The poignant conclusion of this story is, perhaps, more sophisticated than 1964 children's television would allow for but I enjoyed this homage far more than Dorney's Fourth Doctor scripts.
The other re-evaluation springs from Andrew Smith's The Barbarians and the Samurai. I was scathing about Smith's painstaking Eighties homage Hour of the Cybermen recently ( and before that, the gung-ho Navy lark, Storm of the Horofax and the spacey Star Men). However, I thoroughly enjoyed this "Pure Historical" set in 19th century Japan.
Being of the same vintage as me, I imagine Smith was enthralled by the 1980 BBC presentation of Clavell's Shogun , starring Richard Chamberlain as English navigator "Anjin-San". The book allegedly informed Wolverine's samurai schtick and the show influenced a kung fu superhero of my own creation, as well as my first full-length DW fan fiction story. ( I stole the 1980 Doctor Who Magazine comic strip title, Dragon's Claw and mashed up You Only Live Twice with elements from Claremont/ Byrne X-Men comics and Conway's Wonder Woman!)
The Tardis crew arrive in an isolationist Japan where westerners are often simply put to death. They become embroiled in the schemes of a power-hungry local warlord and his right-hand man, Casper Knox, an English mercenary who is somewhat in the "Anjin-San" mould. To satisfy the educational remit of 60s Who, there's a detailed description of a tea ceremony and a brief explanation of the properties of sulphur dioxide.
In the very recent wake of the hugely dismaying response of many "Whovians" on Twitter to 1970s racist attitudes, I wondered how diverse the voice cast would be for Samurai. Happily, there wasn't too great a sense of "whiteface" for this story. My one caveat would be that the principal actors don't really sound anything like the 1964 stars of the series. They are attempting RP but it's not entirely convincing and no one sounds very much like the voices we know from tv and audio. Thankfully, there are few of the ghastly "wawn" and "nawn" vowel sounds that have saturated BBC programming this decade. (5/5 Talmars!)
This is a very successful evocation of Doctor Who's earliest days. Like the Jenny box set, I'm keen to hear another pair of stories for this team.
Coming through the post soon: Kirby's Prisoner!
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