It's a sunny, blustery day on the South Side of Glasgow. My AirBnB in Shawlands worked out in the end although I can't tell if I left a mug ring on the table or if it was already there. I've already been out to buy repair oil for wood from Morrisons.
I just met Stevie Jackson from Belle & Sebastian, proving Glesga is a small town, really. I'm enjoying my stay, doing a bit of shopping but a bit of family drama with an elderly parent has cast a cloud over the weekend. The big storm threatened tomorrow is making me anxious about travelling back up to the North East. I don't really do relaxation.
I was listening to the latest Tom Baker adventures from Big Finish on the train down from Elgin. Before I post about that, I have a number of Dr. Who discs to briefly review here.
Warzone/Conversion was my first purchase from the new Forbidden Planet store in Sauchiehall Street, just before New Year. The first story is a satire of Parkrun as a selection for Cyber-conversion. The whole cast running for two episodes actually works though and is grimly ironic. The second adventure involves a tentacled, alien medic trying to cure Roman slave companion Marc. Techno-pirates get involved and the 80s CyberLeader and Lietenant are also present. The Tardis team split up at the end of this story. A tragic fate for Marc was foreshadowed in Tartarus but I was reminded too much of Bill Potts in Capaldi's swansong. 3/5 Talmars
The Dalek Occupation of Winter is a much darker take on the story Andrew Smith told in Emissary of the Daleks. It's more adult and more sinister and much less cliché. The plot is a little like The Krotons and there's some futuristic-pastoral Space 1999 electronic music. The Doctor is part of a revolution but in the end, the Daleks win, which is bleak and daring. Maureen O' Brien and Peter Purves read with great verve. The other characters are cynical, turncoats or psychopaths. (5/5 Talmars).
The Lost Stories, which are now, amazingly ten years old, returned last autumn with adventures for the Fifth and Sixth Doctors.
Nightmare Country is a very dialogue driven, conceptual story about VR, like the earlier Children of Seth. The very recognisable voices of Beth Chalmers and Tracy Wiles took me out of it, since they play other regular characters in the BF DW universe. I remember reading about the mausoleum planet in DWM about twenty years ago. Tegan is very good in it but Turlough is aggressive and out of character. It ends very abruptly, albeit touchingly. ( 3/5 Talmars)
The Ultimate Evil, Wally K. Daly's two-parter is very 1985-86. The sound design helps to sell a story so corny even Colin "Sticking my fingers in your orifices" Baker comments on it. It's silly Flash Gordon nonsense that wouldn't be out of place in a 70s annual. Charmingly, Daly plays the parrot but sadly, Andrew Smith is still writing like this. (2/5 Talmars)
Entanglement is set in 1930s Cambridge; the presence of Burgess and Philby is a red herring really, since it's really about alien researchers and their technology. And DW "did" the Russian spies in Uncle Terrance's Endgame in 2000. This is a donnish mad science story with tweedy charm and like Winter, Purves and O'Brien sound staggeringly youthful. it's interesting that I like these Early Adventures readings better than the full cast 80s nostalgia of The Lost Stories (5/5 Talmars).
I'm setting off for Elgin before noon tomorrow, as Storm Ciara's jaws close round the British Isles. Coming soon: the Night, The Prisoner and the Shadow of the Batgirl.
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