Andrew in an exciting adventure with Doctor Who

November 2013, Croydon

As many may have noticed I have from time to time (or all of the time rather) made mention of an affection towards that most incomprehensible of things, Doctor Who.  With this weekend being its 50^th-anniversary I felt the need to write a little about what the show has meant to me.  A few snippets of memories and why and how I got horrifically addicted to a foreign television broadcast of a rather modest budget.  And why it is for me the greatest thing ever.

After all, Doctor Who shaped my life.

1963, London

Somewhere in London a committee within the BBC decides to fill a gap between the sports results and “Juke Box Jury” with a sci-fi program designed to teach children about science & history.  The result, Doctor Who, is met with general apathy and poor ratings when its start is overshadowed by the previous day’s assassination of JFK.

The show later goes on to become a world-wide hit lasting decades.

March 1978, The Everett Chalmers Hospital, Fredericton

I was born. 

I was reading an article recently that the world-wide quality of life peaked in 1978 and has been going down-hill ever since.  I claim coincidence.

1982/83-ish, Noonan

A rather young Andrew goes into the den to find his father watching a show which has a man with big curly hair and a confused looking woman in a leather swim-suit pass through a rock wall.  Notable is a strange fringe around them as this occurs. 

This moment is remarkable for 2 reasons:

1. Dad was in the house which makes this a very early memory since my parents divorced when I was 4 or 5 or so.

2. Years later I realised that this was a scene from 1976’s “The Face of Evil” which had been airing on American PBS and that it is my earliest memory of Doctor Who.  Said memory involving a rather unconvincing special effect is somehow appropriate.

1983-88 Fredericton

I go through your rather average childhood, playing Nintendo, memorising lists of dinosaurs and planets, being far too sarcastic to adults, sucking at anything sports-related (low point: striking out at Tee Ball.  You know, where they put the ball on a stick RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE?), occasionally watching Doctor Who on Saturday night but it fading into the background (after all, Transformers & Go-Bots were much more important) and generally being that weird kid at school that the other children avoided (to be fair 

I did have a tendency of wearing really ugly sweaters).

4 September 1989, Fredericton (yes, I looked up the date)

A mildly older Andrew (I was up to 11 by this point) notices in the TV Guide (those wacky days before the “Listings Channel” let alone PVRs) that YTV (AKA Canada’s new “Youth Television”) would be airing Doctor Who from the beginning starting at 6:30pm that evening.  Having memories of watching it “when little” (like 6-7 or so) I tuned in as there was a gap in the carefully coordinated TV schedule between Count Duckula and when Mom would take over the TV to watch Jeopardy at 7pm and yell out the responses. 

So at this point I started watching the show and rather quickly got really rather interested in this strange relic of a by-gone age (don’t ask me why an 11 year old would like a nearly 30-year-old TV-show, but then even when I was younger than that I would happily watch movies from the 1930s). 

Doctor Who, when mixed with my selectively OCD tendency of getting *really* into an interest meant that I was therefore doomed since it could (and did) take *years* to see all of the episodes and learn every little facet of minute trivia about the show. 

Heck, I’m *still* learning about the show.

1989, London

Just as I start watching the BBC decide to stop making new episodes of Doctor Who.  Again I show up just as humanity takes a down-turn.

2013 retrospective of 1989 events, Croydon

But all of this rambling really only touches on the “what happened”, not the cause, not the reason.  Why in particular would I become obsessive-compulsive about a TV-show, and an incredibly dated/silly one at that?  Other guys liked things like sports, cars, girls (eventually) or even bloody Star Trek.  Why was it Who for me?

It’s difficult to really pin it down, especially when dealing with nearly 25-year-old memories.  Perhaps it was the sense of escape; the adventure of it all which appealed.  It was the dropping out of the world into a better universe next door, away childhood dramas and tedium.  It appealed to the kid who read too much and was sarcastic and thought he was cleverer than most (yet to be disproved).  It was the sheer otherness, as if a portal was there not just to another place but to another time.  To someone in late 1980s Maritime Canada seeing a London of the 1960s seemed terribly exotic.  Heck, even a London of the late-1980s seemed exotic in comparison to central New Brunswick. 

Of course what *isn’t* more exotic than Fredericton?

But yes, the seed had been planted, germinated and over-run the host.  I wanted to get my hands on anything and everything Who-related, which was no easy feat in Fredericton.  Thankfully I have decent parents who grudgingly enabled my addiction.  It became known that “one does not pre-empt Doctor Who time” and for birthdays/Christmas it was always “I want this book/video/dalek”.  And whenever we were on holiday I had it planned to get to various stores in search of whatever merchandise I could find (including a trip to Florida when I was 14, screw the beach I was off to the comic book store!)

1990-1993, George Street Junior High School

Frankly I think Doctor Who is what got me through Junior High School without resorting to self-harm or Computer Club (which is worse?).  It’s hard enough I imagine getting through your teenage years when your interests match those of kids around you, but I just never could manage to click with the general populace (some things never change).  Although I did gravitate towards band and was happy to quickly progress into the senior band, although this was mainly since I could actually lift the baritone sax since I was taller than most other kids.

Life lesson: You don’t need to work hard to succeed, you just need to do crap nobody else wants and totally half-ass it.

And slowly I got to become better at this thing called “socializing”, to the point that by the time I got to high school I actually had mustered a few friends.  Of course my Who-love was kept strictly hidden, so that for instance my new paperback of the novelisation for “Full Circle” carefully put in the part of my back-pack where there was no danger of it accidentally falling out for all to see.

Mid-1993, the Band Room

I remember one day, in grade 9 I think, when I was in the band room talking to Julie Pope and conversation moved to various TV-shows.  I’d known Julie since the 3^rd grade, and we’d always been friends-ish but didn’t see each other outside of school.  We got talking about various shows, and I think discussing Monty Python and other UK shows when I mentioned getting a recent Doctor Who video with a main baddy who wandered around Cambridge in a tight white sparkly outfit, silver cape and giant floppy hat.  Oh, and his brain sucking ball.

I seem to remember:

Julie: I never really saw Dr.Who, but she sounds like quite the villain.

Me: No, it’s a guy.

Julie: BWAHAHAHAHA. Are you serious?!!

Me: I can lend you the tape and prove it.

And that was that.  I lent her “Shada” (“That outfit was the greatest thing ever”) and I she lent me a tape from the US of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” which I took home and found to be the most hilarious thing in the history of forever (and it’s still pretty damn funny).  And we became very good friends, and she was basically my rock for the next few years.

And more importantly I was out (so to speak); I was a known “Doctor Who” fan.  And amazingly I found some friends who would humour me and occasionally watch a Doctor Who video.  Mainly from an ironic sardonic sort of way, but hey, I’d take it. 

I guess this is the point where your average individual would then move away from the show since there was all of the hijinks of high school, right?

Well the main problem there is that the whole “dating” thing just wasn’t working (I figured out the problem eventually…) and I couldn’t find those kids they show in educational videos that dispense drugs and lead you down a path to ruin. Of course those kids probably lurked in the engineering wing of high school, which is a place never to tread.

So with no other recourse in how to waste my teenage years (to the normal means of sex and drugs) I was (happily) left with Who.

Plus they’d started publishing the New Adventures, so even though there’d been no new TV-show since 1989 I still had new stories.

1996, Fredericton High School & UNB

1996 was a big year.  I graduated from high-school. Plus a couple of other things…

The first of my big Doctor Who memories for 1996 involves The TV-Movie.  That magical night when after 7 years the show was coming back, and this time as a huge big-budget American-produced extravaganza which would *of course* be made into a full series!!!

It was trounced in the US ratings by an episode of Roseanne and nothing more happened.

But still, at the time it was terrifically exciting and I’d been looking forward to it airing for months.  And *of course* that ended up being the night that I had to go to a school function where I was one of around 20 kids receiving an award for enriched studies out of an 800-strong graduating class.

Yes, I was/am the sort who took harder than needed classes in high-school, and then when deciding I wanted this award for my troubles and seeing I had to have a certain amount of volunteering I operated cameras for the local cable-station at hockey games for a few months.  Oh and a cooking show that gave me food poisoning.  Let it not be said that I don’t work for what I want.

I have memories of having to shake a lot of teachers’ hands and stand in front of people being given a leather-bound certificate (and the Vice-Principal mispronounced my name and gave total pissy-face when I yelled out the correction to the entire room).  Oh, and I think Mom saying to someone “Andrew’s annoyed since he’s missing *Doctor Who*” with that sigh which always accompanied the name of the show.

But Doctor Who was to have an even greater bearing on my life later in the year…

With growing up in a small-town (as well as generally being not a fan of “the outdoors”, I’ve gotten better since then) I found that I had a strong pull toward new fangled inventions such as “The Internet” and got myself a dial-up connection starting around 1995 I believe.  The first thing I remember doing was finding some Doctor Who pictures or sounds and downloading them.  Then soon afterwards I came across some sort of gay youth information/groups online and suddenly that whole “dating girls not working” thing made sense. 

But I digress.  Through my meanderings online I’d started chatting (IRC Chat, if that still means anything to anyone) with various guys in distant parts of Canada and the US (like I could find anyone in New Brunswick, well until it turned out that there were like 10 gay guys I went to high school with). 

But I had been chatting with one guy who lived on Vancouver Island but had relocated to Winnipeg.  One day I get a message saying “oh, a friend of a friend here likes that stupid old show you like”, or something to that effect.  Now who could this “friend of a friend” be?

No prizes for the correct answer, it was Phil. 

So, Phil and I ended up emailing, and then talking on the phone, and then we moved to Australia.

I think I missed a couple of steps there, but I’m sure you can fill in the rest.

But yes, based on a mutual love of Doctor Who we started an on-going relationship with only a mere 3000 kilometres between us.  After all, he had some videos I was missing and I had the last novelisations he needed.  I do still sometimes say that we didn’t so much start dating as much as “complete each other’s collections”.

1997-2004, Winnipeg & Dartmouth

During this period my interest in Who had started to wane.  After over a decade with no new show and the various spin-offs becoming increasingly awful it was starting to finally become a fondly remembered part of my past.  I’d still get the DVDs but otherwise it was a slowly declining interest in my life (since I had exciting things like full-time employment, retirement savings and home-loans to occupy my time…ugh…).

But then in 2003 the BBC announce they’re bringing back Doctor Who, to air sometime in 2005…

2005, New Zealand

It had been 6 months since we left Canada for Noo Zilnd, in an unlikely plot-twist.  It’s been almost 2 years since the announcement that the BBC would be bringing Doctor Who back to TV and I have no idea what to expect.  There have been some pictures on the Internet, but still a sense of “we’ve been here before and it didn’t work”.  But still as a worst case we’d at least have 13 completely new episodes, even if they’re awful.

“The show” coming back just did not compute, it didn’t make sense.

But it was actually being made, I’d see pictures online and everything.  Some random named Christopher Eccleston would be The Doctor and a “Billie Piper” would be Rose.  But slowly Easter 2005 (the start date) approached.  Then news emerged that the first episode had mysteriously been leaked 3 weeks early and I could watch it now!

Except, Phil was away for a couple of days and I had to wait… 

I wanted to surprise him so didn’t say that there was a copy out, and I somehow managed to keep myself from watching it (ok, so I looked at the first couple of minutes.  It was so fast and new, with Billie Piper being all normal in London!  Where were the space aliens?  Where was the technobabble?  Where did they find these production values?!!). 

Eventually Phil returned, I believe from the bogan-filled wastes of Wellington, and I sat him down to watch what I claimed was “that new Farscape mini-series” (we eventually watched that in 2012).  Except that upon starting the file SURPRISE it was a leaked copy of “Rose”!

So we sat there watching the first new Doctor Who in almost a decade.  Seeing Billie Piper (who we’d never heard of) face an army of killer shop-window dummies, watching a strange new Doctor who wore a leather jacket and could be anybody off the street but at the same time is completely The Doctor, see Doctor Who as a properly made show mainstream show for the first time ever.  It was sincere, it was completely modern and it was not “ironic” what-so-ever, thank God. 

My only comment afterwards was “That was Doctor Who”, not words ever thought to be uttered again.  It wasn’t trying to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Trek or Desperate Housewives, it had managed to take what the heart of the show and drag it into the 21^st-century. 

However I didn’t *really* fall in love with the new show until our second “date” when I got to see “The End of the World”.  If “Rose” was Doctor Who launching the platform then this was reaching the stratosphere.  Colourful, insane and very funny (oh how I still adore the perfection of “Toxic” joke) I was completely enthralled.  Here was Doctor Who that everyone else could see was just as good as I thought it was.  No rose-tinted glasses (pun not intended) needed.

But, “my show” was back and better than ever.  And far from being a disaster it ended up with massive ratings in the UK and was guaranteed a long run.  Even colleagues at work were talking about it (“I wonder if they’ll bring Daleks back?” “I remember the yeti scared me when I was a kid.” “I’d totally root Billie Piper”).

Later in 2005

David Tennant starts his stint as The Doctor and I suffer the bizarre confusion of the mixing of my childhood hero with “I’d like a bit of that”. 

An affinity for hyperactive skinny guys you say? If only I could get Phil to wear a suit more often/ever…

2006-2012, New Zealand/Australia

I increasingly see advertisements and total penetration of Doctor Who into society.  Cybermen and Daleks on buses.  Big posters featuring the Tardis and Catherine Tate all around the place.  Ood in The Warehouse.  Facebook updates of “OMFG Doctor Who this week!”

I start to find that people I know have become increasingly obsessive about the show.  I could start having an “Are they a Doctor Who fan?” criteria for friendship, not a deal-breaker by any means but will induce swift and sharp judgment.

However I have also discovered that all Doctor Who fans are insane, it’s just a matter of finding the ones who can be productive rather than destructive with their psychosis.

Now

So, Doctor Who is 50.  It isn’t the forgotten relic of 2003 (the 40^th anniversary) or the sad and cheap joke of 1993 (the 30^th).  I’m living in a world where those kids who watched and loved the show now make it.  Where the criticism of “The Cool” wasn’t enough to stop people embracing what they love and creating something great.  Where I can say to myself that I was right and completely justified in my interests, despite being the teasing and being the odd one out.  I was right and the rest of the planet was wrong. 

So there.

Why do I continue to love the show?  Because it’s shaped and validated my life.  It’s made friends for me, it’s given me 17 years (so far) with my partner, it’s allowed me the opportunity to live across the globe and the confidence to remember that I love what I love, regardless of those who don’t agree.  

It’s Shakespeare and Dolly Parton, Fantasy Sports Leagues and model trains, Death Metal and My Little Pony and anything else you love that make other people go “why would you like *that*?!!” It’s my reminder to say “F*ck’ em, I know what I’m doing”.

Plus it’s still the best thing on TV.  Forever.

But mainly it’s that silly little tv-show that’s given me my big wide world.  Doctor Who is after all bigger on the inside.

EDA #25 & 26: Interference

Interference: Book One & Interference: Book Two by Lawrence Miles

In Brief: Wibbly-wobbly. Timey-Wimey.  The past, the present, the future.  Not necessarily in that order. Sarah Jane & K9 appear. Fitz does, and then doesn't. Sam leaves. History is changed, except that it isn't.

Sorry, I realise this entry is probably all over the place but I don't have the energy to go in and do an edit, this is all very stream of consciousness.

Interference is a big (2 books worth!) bold (it decides to just re-write a large part of the series' history) and complicated (makes the 2011 series look positively linear) mess of a novel. It's brimming with some great ideas, wonderful writing and an unfortunate problem of not really having a story to tell. As with a certain current producer of the show Lawrence Miles is very good at being very clever, but makes putting little things like character and story.

It's not to say that I didn't enjoy Interference, because I did. It's easily in the top 5 Eighth Doctor books that I've read so far (admittedly not a difficult challenge) and has a verve and willingness to push the range in a new direction.  As noted with many of the past 25 books there's been a real problem of most authors sticking to a fairly narrow status-quo when it comes to Who during this period.  So having an example of some experimentation is welcome.

Of course the problem is that what was a shake-up for Doctor Who in 1999/2000 is today meaningless, as we have a series which has been back on TV for 8 years now and has almost completely discarded the output of the novel range, particularly the Eighth Doctor books. So having a plot-thread which involves multiple-doctors and the effect of future actions impacting the past isn't novel or really very interesting anymore. It really just reinforced what a blind-alley this range of books were, and that they really served no purpose other than bringing in a bit of annuity revenue to the BBC. Any quality to the range's output is purely by accident rather than design.

So what do we have here? Well Interference does feel like the range is finally trying to correct some of its mistakes, in particular in adding some overarching plot-threads and finally disposing with Sam. Sam's departure is surprisingly low-key, after years travelling she has simply decided to return to Earth basically at the same point she left in 1996. It's an appropriately non-descript ending for such a stultifying character. It was obvious early on that none of the range's authors could *really* get her to work, despite a few faint glimmers. So ditching her is long overdue.

In her place joining The Doctor and Fitz is a rather strange character named Compassion, who is a member of the race known as The Remote who are at the heart of events in the book (trying to sell futuristic arms to the UN in order to disrupt the timelines and get the attention of the Time Lords for a reason which I've sort of forgotten). Not quite sure what to make of her yet as she was fairly minor in the book.

As for the arc I'd mentioned it involves more of Faction Paradox, which is an off-shoot of the Time Lords who revel in creating temporal paradoxes and are reacting due to a future Time War which is mentioned a few times (no, not *that* Time War). Unfortunately I have a suspicion that much like other books which had some good ideas very little will actually be done with most that are put into play here.

What else to talk about? Hmm, the Eighth Doctor is actually not really in the book much since he spends most of both novels being tortured in North America. Both books end with a large section with the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane on the planet Dust which ends with a change to set continuity (the Doctor regenerates here into the 4th and unknowingly becomes an agent of the Faction).

Sarah Jane and K9 are in the book too, although having her meet The Doctor again here is a very different experience to what we saw in "School Reunion". With the book being very "for the fans" there's little emotional heft to the meeting, but this just wasn't something that Doctor Who did at the time. This is The Doctor meeting his previous companion who has her own life, not the slightly soap-opera rekindling of past longing we saw on TV. For some I'm sure this is preferable, but is a good demonstration of the evolution that has happened to the show from these books into the new series.

I realised I've been a bit all over the place talking about this book. That really has to do with the fact that Interference is itself rather scattered. It's still very good, but after all of the flurry of ideas and events is said and done there's actually surprisingly little to talk about. It's one author's attempt to shake up a somewhat stagnant range of books but little else. Still, definitely one of the better entries in the series.

EDA #24 Autumn Mist

Autumn Mist by David A. McIntee

In Brief: The Doctor, Fitz and Sam land in WW2 and encounter Nazis, Fairies and Rifts.


After a bit of a break I've jumped back on the 8DA band-wagon, I think the part of me that needs completeness ensured that sooner or later I'd start up with the books again.  However I was a little concerned coming into Autumn Mist since I'd found the author's entries in the New Adventures to be some of the more *ahem* challenging entries in that series (First Frontier in particular took me ages to get through).  While McIntee is very good at his historical research and detailed descriptions his characterization and plotting had been poor in the past, making for some of the least enjoyable of the New Adventures.

With these low expectations in mind I approached Autumn Mist with some trepidation.  After having taken less time to get through the book than expected I have to say that over all the novel is surprisingly...average.  It wasn't horrible and had a couple of actual good parts, but overall it was just very unmemorable and rather dull.  Other than the regulars no other characters really stood out so long passages involving one bland soldier talking to another bland soldier were a bit rough.  And while his descriptions of various tanks and hardware is good there's very little in terms of how anyone physically appears.  It leads to the normal problem I've had with his writing that everyone sort of blurs together and figuring out who is doing what is extremely difficult.

The plot itself is rather slight, with the actual story not really starting until well after the half-way point.  Normally I can cope with padding (this *is* Doctor Who after all) if it's at least *interesting* padding, but here we have too many chapters of The Doctor, Fitz and Sam being separated and joining up with various groups of Germans, Americans and English soldiers and various battles with the main mystery being the disappearance of bodies. 

However I did appreciate the half-way mark of the book ending with Sam being fatally shot.

The resolution to her injuries (*spoiler* she doesn't die) has the novel shift away from the dreary first half into a somewhat whimsical tale of fairies from another dimension (who do you think has been taking the bodies?).  Or perhaps it just gets silly.  It turns out that the fairies have been stealing bodies to up their numbers since a large rift in space/time (are there any other kind?) has been damaging their dimension.  While I wouldn't call the "Evil fairies vs. good fairies" sections particularly good at least there's more incident rather than the aimless wandering, being captured/escaping interspersed with descriptions of firearms.

Unfortunately the ending is very poor as The Doctor seals the rift through a technobabble method involving an air-craft character and the main baddy reveals that his big reason behind everything was...that he didn't have much else to do.  All after a big battle-scene that turns out to be almost completely pointless. 

But overall Autumn Mist isn't horrible, just not very good.  And like much of the 8DA series I'm already forgetting it every happened...

EDA #23 Unnatural History

Unnatural History by Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman

In Brief: The Doctor and Sam's pasts are becoming unstuck due to a scar in space-time. To fix the scar, located in San Francisco, may mean sacrificing the Tardis as well as dealing with misplaced unicorns, hungry Krakens and an Unnaturalist who cannot abide anything which doesn't make sense (particularly The Doctor's entire life).

Unnatural History, despite being one of the better entries in the 8DA, took me a long time to get through. Looking back it seems I finished the last novel in late April, so it's been 2-1/2 months to get through 250 pages. There are a few reasons for this such as my pre-bed "reading time" is now filled with working through episode of "Dark Shadows" but mainly my interest in the series has severely waned since moving from the 7th to 8th-Doctor books. I've mentioned before that there's a palpable sense of these books being a step backwards, and while there are some good entries (and Unnatural Historyis one of them) it's just a bit depressing working through a range which has little ambition beyond just pushing out a book every month. They for the most part remind me of those terrible Star Trek tie-in books which are forced to tread water for the most part so as to not counter anything happening on the TV-show. Unfortunately here there's no actual show so the limited scope of the books is all the more annoying.

But enough about the range, as mentioned the book itself is actually very good. Kate Orman just doesn't put out a novel which is any less than very good, her 8DA entries may actually be stronger than those in the NAs strangely enough. She (and husband Jon) really seem to "get" the possibilities of the more active Paul McGann version of The Doctor. The Doctor here is much closer to the manic 10th & 11th versions in being a whirlwind of energy but managing to turn deadly serious in a heart(s)-beat. This improvement in characterization is central to the book itself working, since the plot hinges on The Doctor's past and how it all stacks up or rather doesn't. The centre of the plot hinges on the events of the TV Movie and how the almost destruction of the Tardis (and the world) at the time left a scar in space-time with strands of The Doctor's "biodata" strewn throughout San Francisco. The scar is also attracting beasts from all over the universe and beyond. 

Orman & Blum are some of the few writers who can manage to make the character of Sam work, although by essentially "removing" her the story by having her come in contact with the scar and being replaced with a version who never met The Doctor. However I have to suspect that "Dark Sam" (due to her black hair) is the authors' piss-take of the regular character by having her be far more interesting and well-developed. Here is a Sam who has a dead-end job, a history of drug abuse, is cut off from her parents and generally with little ambition in life. This "less perfect" version of the character really highlights how the original had hobbled the series. Gone is the irritating Right-on! girl of the late-90s and instead we have your average person who works in a shop (now why does that seem familiar?) coming in contact with the world of Doctor Who. Sam is just far too generic and without an actress involved to give a sense of reality (or push the character as written into a new direction) to her the result has so far not worked.

Of course even sometimes having an actress involved doesn't help as evidenced this year by the walking cardboard that is Clara.

The other bit theme of the book is around the continuity of The Doctor and how there's no way to actually correlate the character's history. The point that Blum & Orman make is that it doesn't end up being the past which is important but rather who someone is in the present. Being a series about time-travel it makes sense that the past can change, despite the potential paradox. Post-2005 this is covered over with a handy "Time War" but back in 1999 such matters were still huge within the realms of Internet newsgroups. And the response here, as The Doctor faces an Unnaturalist who wants to only have one history for the character, is a big "Who cares?". Do we need the history of the show to make sense? Of course we don't, nor should it.

Of course many out there disagree, particularly those who insist the show will end after the 13th-Doctor because of what one story made in 1976 said.

So overall Unnatural History was a surprisingly good entry in a series which it seems is finally on an upswing. If there's a fault it's that perhaps the story was a tad too meandering, which sort of kept me from finishing it for a while. The threat of a Kraken destroying San Francisco felt a bit tacked on, since every other challenge was on a more personal level. But still, I think I'll make more of an effort to work through the series again, especially since I know there's a big shake-up to the regulars coming in just another couple of books...

EDA #22 Dominion

Dominion by Nick Walters

In Brief: The Tardis encounters a wormhole and Sam is thrown into a pocket universe known as The Dominion. Meanwhile Fitz and The Doctor get involved in shady goings-on in late-90s Sweden, which is being over-run by impossible creatures.

I'm still struggling with why I'm reading these books. The 8DA are nowhere near as fun as working through the New Adventures had been, although the strange thing is that it's the quality hasn't varied nearly as much. There were some really awful NAs, and overall possibly more of them than in the later series. However the general setting since we got into the Paul McGann version of The Doctor has been "bland". It's just somewhat sad reading these books since Doctor Who seems held in stasis, nobody in 1999 sure of the right way to go forward. I've been regularly reading the excellent blog The Tardis Eruditorum which has taken on the impressive task of analyzing the overall story of the show as it exists in popular culture. The last few months has been going over highlights of "The Wilderness Years", where the show was off-air from 1990 to 2004. The blog's author has put into words much better than I ever could the feeling towards these books, but basically it comes down to the sense that there were a lot of authors wanting to do their take on Doctor Who, but no one ensuring that there was an overall thrust to the series.

The result is the sense that the overall narrative hasn't been going forward, just standing in place not wanting to change too much.

At least the good decision to bring in an alternative to Sam was taken, as the character of Fitz has given the authors a better anchor for the books. It's similar to how Benny worked better than Ace in the New Adventures.

But to the book itself. It actually wasn't bad, having a good mystery and set of memorable characters. New to the series author Nick Walters makes the smart decision to sideline Sam for most of the book and develop The Doctor and Fitz, so that their relationship has a chance to cement properly. Walters is also good at capturing a good feel for his settings, so that the sparseness of Sweden if nicely contrasted to the wonders of the pocket-universe Dominion.

However the book in being from the late-90s has a *very* noticeable X-Files feel to it with secretive government organisations being the main source of problems facing The Doctor & Co. Even UNIT is not the friendly team it once was, with it all having a slight Torchwood vibe.

Overall the book is a decent if somewhat morose romp, although again one which doesn't seem to in any way really add to the series. I guess I should be happy though that thankfully the quality of the books has greatly increased, considering how awful the beginning of the run was. Dominion ranks as being bordering on very good, which I think is enough to keep me going for now. 

EDA #21 Revolution Man

Revolution Man by Paul Leonard

In Brief: A space drug gives hippies superpowers and they almost destroy the world.

Revolution Man was alright but had the problem of giving away its central mystery (the source of the super-powers) too early in the book. So without any sort of mystery everything just sort of meandered along through the late-60s until the story just sort of stops after the main antagonist (a rock-star/cult-leader) is shot and killed by The Doctor. 

While this ending sounds rather shocking the problem is that there's just no build-up to it. Also, the Eighth Doctor books are all so self-contained that there's no sense that anything that happens will have an impact on the rest of the range. The Doctor will still be a somewhat ditzy adventurer, Sam will still be an arrogant whiner and Fitz will still be the bumbling fool. 

I'm also not sure what Paul Leonard was trying to say in the book. He's definitely anti-anarchy since the book is very critical of the peace/love movement of the 60s, but does that mean that the best way for humanity is to adhere to the status quo? It's all rather muddled. Thankfully at least his prose is decent.

That's pretty much all I have to say about Revolution Man, as with most of the series I've already pretty much forgotten about it.

EDA #20 Demontage

Demontage by Justin Richards

In Brief: Space Casino! Empires on the verge of war! Killer Painting Monsters!

Demontage is a slow meander of a book. The fist half or so is relatively plotless and aimless as The Doctor, Sam and Fitz wander around a giant space casino that's located between Human and Canvine (think big dog-men) IN SPACE! A load of somewhat forgettable characters are introduced but little seems to happen.

I suspect that Richards was trying his hand at a little bit of "world-building" but without much success since his "world" just isn't very interesting. He's a decent enough writer, his New Adventure Theatre of War was fairly good (his 8DA Option Lock not so much) but here he just can't manage to rise above competent. The second half of the book, where "stuff happens" is definitely stronger. He's good at building up a plot and characters so that (almost) everything and everybody serves a purpose by the end of the book. But it's not enough to raise the novel to more than "not awful".

Overall Demontage sits with the majority of the 8th-Doctor stories in being competent but highly unmemorable. Sam at least isn't too annoying and "right-on 90s!" (I think most authors are just writing her as Generic Companion #2 by this stage, with a lot of books removing her from the action much of the time). However Fitz is showing promise. It's obvious that Richards is much more comfortable writing for a less "perfect" companion, who gets things wrong and is somewhat on the back-foot in facing events. I suspect one of the great unsolved mysteries of Who-dom will remain the decision of BBC Books to lumber the early 8DA with such a boring character as Sam, which when combined with the "less-complex" 8th-Doctor led to the dullest series' leads in any medium.

But back to book. It thankfully ends better than it begins, with a plot by some nefarious art-dealers to kill the president using animated painting-monsters thwarted.

FYI a flame-thrower is particularly effecting against painting-monsters.

However again we've got an entry in the series that does nothing more than simply exist. It doesn't push any boundaries, try anything new or develop the regular characters whatsoever. It's frustrating that 20 books into the Eighth Doctor Adventures there's been absolutely no development. I can't think of another similar period of time (almost 2 years) where the series stayed so still.

No wonder I'm bored.