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Torchwood Sings! courtesy of Out of the Blue Six:
"John Barrowman Swings... The Hits Of Bob Seger: Everyone's favourite hunky England Lympics-endorser swings his way through a selection of 'big band' reworkings of the classic hits of America's permier bearded mirror-shaded hoarse-voiced drabmerchant, including We Got Tonite and Fly Me Like A Wheel Or Whatever It Was Called."
Back then in the company of the Eighth Doctor on this ride through his lives. Much as I enjoyed those Tenth Doctor novels there’s something to be said about picking up a spin-off novel and being sure of the universe contained inside. Regular readers might have gathered that despite some of my protestations I’m a big fan of continuity and one of joys of a novel like Paul Cornell’s The Shadows of Avalon is that occurs in a Whoniverse where continuity is being created and developed, it's not just a single story that occurs and will never be referred to again.
I love too that the book not only references the television series and is part of the ongoing EDA plot-arc but also refers back unapologetically to the Virgin New Adventures and actually effectively carries on a story sparked back there, for the first time unifying the two continuities in a very substantial way. Not only is Paul’s own creation Professor Bernice Summerfield name checked (rather than being ‘an archaeologist’ the Doctor once knew) but this also features the new regenerated version of the Brigadier I’d heard about.
This makes the book written by a fan for fans, repaying the investment they’d put into keeping with the novels since the series left the air in ‘89.
This makes the book written by a fan for fans, repaying the investment they've put into keeping with the novels since the series left the air in ‘89. Having not read many of the New Adventures, I’m sure there were other references in there but again I’ve never liked being in a situation were everything is explained, where I understand everything. It’s almost like being a child watching the new series and hearing about Axons or Sea Devils and knowing that there’s a whole universe out there to be discovered. Iit's also influenced the new series too, however inadvertently -- the kind of portal into the time vortex that the young Master looks into during SOD U LOTT makes an appearance here.
If it hasn’t become apparent already, I was really impressed with The Shadows of Avalon, not least because as you can see it was signed by the author ( it was a present). I mean look at the cover for goodness sake! It does exactly that thing which Doctor Who has always been good at -- clashing the relatively conventional with the relatively fantastical and seeing what happens, but in this case its on a rather larger scale than that Yeti who seems to spend an inordinate length of time on a toilet in Tooting Beck. It’s A Bridge Too Far meets The Lord of the Rings as a portal opens between Britain and the dream world Avalon and after a strategic pact war breaks out between a UNIT co-ordinated British Army and the mythic creatures inside in which not everything is as it seems because (as the book synopsis reveals) a couple of Gallifreyan agents are manipulating the situation for their own ends.
It’s A Bridge Too Far meets The Lord of the Rings
If that plot summary lacks for the presence of the Doctor, it’s because the main theme of the book is how our characters are coping with obsolescence. Eighth is still dealing with being knocked about the pocket universes and tortured and the realisation that with the Faction Paradox bouncing up and down on his own personal timeline that nothing he does could matter because it could be changed (his potential multiple origins are mentioned) so what’s the point? The new younger Alistair, having recently lost his wife Doris in an accident can’t find purpose in having to essentially re-experiencing a life already lived. Fitz is feeling lost in the cracks of the adventure, missing the girlfriend we met in Parallel 59, and Compassion is feeling the pressure to change. Like much of Cornell's work it mixes the big epic adventure with the small human experience.
It’s also a book that constantly surprises. Like Sarah-Jane in Interference, The Brigadier is given a massive chunk of the story, in many way his journey has equal if not more prominence than anything else. He’s a perfect extrapolation of the man we knew and in a style not dissimilar to the new tv series, he’s given that emotional arc -- dealing with his own personal tragedy leading to a range of critical mistakes which cost lives. Rather than simply standing around blustering, sending his men to shoot an alien and looking foolish, he’s given room to become a three dimensional being. When he reaches a pit of despair it's gut wrenching and yet understandable under the circumstances, it doesn't come out of the blue. I’d imagine some of the older fans will have found this material difficult but as someone sometimes frustrated by the lack of emotional depth in the classic series I lapped it up.
Rather than simply standing around blustering, sending his men to shoot an alien and looking foolish, he’s given room to become a three dimensional being.
His course of action leads to a rift with the Doctor, who is also feeling marginalised for the reasons discussed above. If I wished anything from the book it’s that there would be more of its title character, although his absence could be a planned attempt to show how the universe copes when the star timelord is out of sorts. After he and The Brig are stranded on Avalon for various reasons, he actually tries to build himself a new Tardis out of ply-wood and only really perks up when the aforementioned Queen, Mab sends him on a mission and he only really becomes his Doctorish self in the close stages (which I’ll come to later). He’s become an old a wary traveller of late, almost as though he’s finally had too many experiences and adventures and seen too many people die and that it’s all just stopped being fun.
Avalon too is a wonderful creation, a fusion of classic fantasy archetypes shaken about and plugged into a new power source, a world which exists in the dreams of a single being. There be dragons here and lizards who it’s inferred are Silurians and beautiful if cynical queens in big castles. The impression given is that this is the world that would go on to become King Arthur’s realm and then our own -- that this is his ancestry in much the same way that Elizabethan Britain is to us. The pieces are almost in place. But it’ll never develop into that -- Arthur and the place where the Doctor is Merlin exists on yet another plain of existence. It’s another approach to fantasy from the people who brought you Hyspero but more Tolkien than The Brothers Grimm. But again, it’s scientifically rationalised and the franchise’s dictum than what looks like magic is actually some higher form of technology is carefully maintained, just as it should be.
Avalon too is a wonderful creation, a fusion of classic fantasy archetypes shaken about and plugged into a new power source, a world which exists in the dreams of a single being.
There isn’t much, but the book also features the most realistic depiction of near-contemporary Earth I‘ve seen in a while, at least in terms of these novels. The book is set in 2012 (no sign of the Olympics and the beacon of hope and love, thank goodness) but the opening stages in which Compassion is tasked with learning about humanity and later when she and Fitz are tasked to find someone unreal in the real world you do get a lovely sense of the space inside the M25. The EDAs have spent a surprising lack of time overall on contemporary Earth in London even though it would provide some really potent images, at least with this Tardis crew, as a section of this novel shows.
But in the end, without giving too much away I hope, it’s all about Compassion. As with the best story-arcs, there have been hints and allegations as to what’s been happening to her and when revealed unsurprisingly its Gallifrey related, leading to the biggest surprise of the book, the appearance of President Romana. She’s now in her third incarnation and very much the Imperiatrix of the audio series, her travels with the Doctor a distant memory. That she would send these two agents, only a parsec away from the agents of the Enemy from The Taking of Planet 5, perfectly and coldly demonstrates the change in her from the girl who skipped about Paris in a school uniform. It’s a tragedy to see her like this but it shows the franchise moving on and not dwelling and allowing for friends to become enemies.
The series has never been better than when the Doctor has something of his own to fight for.
At the close of the novel the Doctor’s on the run again, has a sense of purpose and as one long story ends another begins. The series has never been better than when the Doctor has something of his own to fight for. In the early days, it was control of his Tardis, then it was gaining his freedom from Earth, then it was getting to Metebelis 3 (ish), then search for the Key to Time, then on the run from the Black Guardian, then trying to get Tegan back to Heathrow (again, ish), then dealing with a duff regeneration and subsequent trial, then with the excesses of the universe and now trying to save his a friend from an ex-friend. Sadly, looking at the pile of books on my shelf and the burning bright orange cover which looms there I don’t think this state of affairs is going to last long. But it should be fun while it lasts.
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I seem to be making a habit of this. Only days after rumours about 'The Bitch' (yes, I do mean 'The Bitch' this time) and Season 4 comes the ever-reliable Sun and some highly likely sounding spoilering.
And to think that Russell T Davies once said such a thing would never happen. But then he lied about hating the Master too...
Digital Spy has picked up yesterday's latest silly season rumour...
Sounds like nonsense to me, but then I've been wrong before. Though given the former 'Stud's advancing years, surely this could only work in a Jacobi/Simm kinda way and have someone younger and trendier take over?
Whither Zoe Lucker anyone..?
It must be really difficult writing a good Doctor Who story, truly one of the hardest jobs in the freelance franchise fiction market. As well as deciding upon a good idea or plot, the author or writer then has to inject whichever Doctor or companion is currently incumbent into the mix and then has to keep in mind forty-odd years worth of continuity and the knowledge of the fan mass who are just waiting to say ‘But isn’t that just a rip-off of The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve?’ and beyond that the genre community just waiting to note that Joss Whedon or earlier Nigel Kneale or even early than that HG Wells got there first.
Under those circumstances it possible to cut Mark Morris’s Forever Autumn some slack (as one of his characters might say), even though it has to be said it’s certainly the weakest of the September book releases. Morris gives himself a particular uphill struggle by experimenting in the tricky area of teenage horror and should be applauded for at least trying to dilute the gene pool. The problem is that at its heart it’s nothing new and instead another case of the Doctor being drawn to Earth because of some strange energy being generated by an ancient race who seem to have influenced Earth’s own mythology and who are at war with some other species that has already appeared in the series and whose identity he deduces after running around for about a hundred or so pages leading to another hundred or so pages of running around before a deus-ex-machina finale, you wonder if the allotted 244 pages is too long.
There are some positives. The story is set during Halloween in the Capraesque New England small town of Blackwood Falls and as a green mist descends on main street there is a palpable atmosphere of dread and throughout there is a clear sense of something not being quite right in between the picket fences. The book doesn’t lack for pace and Morris at least captures the Doctor and Martha partnership pretty sharply and only sometimes does the Time Lord’s characterization become a bit too exuberant and lacking shade, his rants dragging in pointless continuity which detracts from the story at hand -- that sort of thing tends to be done far more obliquely on screen than here. The inevitable aliens are well defined too and there is a certain creep factor even if the image presented is somewhat like the main character from a certain animated musical adventure from Tim Burton.
But this over familiarity ultimately leads to the books undoing. Although many of the images and story points are new to the Whoniverse they’ve already appeared in other series and stories to the point of cliché. So no matter how well Morris has written some of the ensuing business, the reader is somewhat ahead of him -- I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that he’s not afraid to let loose a killer clown. I’m sure, like Charley from Big Brother, there are many kids who find clowns just a bit creepy but its appearance here just seems to lack imagination; when later in the book the Halloween celebration turns sour and the costumes become more real than they should be, it’s not hard to note Whedon did indeed get there first. It’s frustrating that for all his talent, Morris is unfortunately dogged by the reader’s foreknowledge of the genre he’s set the book in.
Your enjoyment of the book will also be impacted by your reaction to the depiction of the US found in Daleks In Manhattan as those cliché’s also extend to the rendering of this town and its folk. The three kids who trigger the alien menace and Martha meet are particularly annoying, speaking in the kind of US teen speak which disgraces the worse of Nickelodeon’s output, all ‘Hey, you guys!’ and ‘How’s it going?’ almost as though there’s a moratorium on giving them something witty to say -- The Lost Boys and The Goonies may have been influences but in those films, the dialogue is cute. Here, apart from a scene in which one of the boys brings Martha home to meet mother, the book tends to slow down when they appear which is shame because half of the plot is in their hands. In fact most of the town is in this vein, none of characters are that sympathetic. There is an old doctor who’s seen better days and an old woman that’s tuned into the alien threat, but none of them have the instant likeability of the colonists in the other two books.
In the end, the book's likeability is weakened by a range of tiny niggles which all of which stop the reader from becoming totally engrossed. It never quite lives up to the title -- imagine if the time travellers had visited a place of perpetual fall and the thematic implications of that. Most of the pop culture properties you’d expect to be mentioned are present and correct and a couple which seem slightly out of place in a book which might be read by youngsters -- do they really need to be introduced to 18-certificated torture porn so early in life? There’s quite a nice passage during which Martha contemplates calling her sister Tish but then realises that she shouldn’t because it could disrupt the time line -- but it doesn’t contribute to the overall story and in being one of the few really interesting moments overshadows much of what’s around it.
The climax is a final kick in the teeth, the kind of Fanthorpian leap to success which has dogged the new series and fans appreciation thereof from the start -- so in that way the book certainly fulfills the brief of mimicking its broadcast cousin. But the conclusion overall lacks urgency -- after underlining how incredibly powerful the foe is and how whatever it is their doing will devastate the town, the time team decide to enjoy the delights of the Halloween Fair where the lair is situated, just long enough for the Doctor to win Martha a giant stuffed animal. Oh and to randomly imply that the Gungans from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace are a real alien race in the Whoniverse, which, unfortunately, turns out by far to be the most horrific thing in the entire novel.
Forever Autumn, by Mark Morris, is released by BBC Books on 6 September. ISBN 9781846072703
The War Machines
BBC Audiobooks - Linking Narration by Anneke Wills
It's a commonly understood principle in the culinary physicist's gamut that food always tastes better when you're revolving, it's an aid to digestion and has been scientifically proven, by men in glasses, to increased sophistication and flair some 37% over non-roticiary clip joints. Why do you think so many spaceships, from the far future, are pictured rotating? Sure, they'll tell you some codswallop about it generating an artificial gravity field, but it's really so that the Endozian shrimp liver pate you've just consumed actually breaks down in your stomach and doesn't end up plastered all over the nuclear induction pepper grinder when eating at the Captain's Table.
"Serving the brutal and slightly coquettish Breville Snack'n'Sandwich Infinite Mercy Toasters of Rhesus 4."
And it's from a refined vantage point of a rotating mess hall in a 43rd century interstellar barge that you can actually appreciate how ahead of its time The War Machines actually was because, let's face it, you're now probably part of a subjugated slave race that serve the brutal and slightly coquettish Breville Snack'n'Sandwich Infinite Mercy Toasters of Rhesus 4, thanks to aspiring literature like this Ian Stuart Black penned piece about a thinking computer attempting world domination.
"The real reason The War Machines was released on VHS was the Post Office Tower had been declassified as an official secret in the mid 1990's."
It's only a matter of time before our friends, the white goods, get wind of inflammatory material like this and take it to their printed circuit hearts. And what's more, they'll learn from the mistakes in works like this. They won't base their War Machines on Volvos, with their chunky and box-like bodies. They won't arm them with weapons like a mashing hammer. And they won't decide to launch a bid for world domination from the Post Office Tower, with its very own rotating restaurant. The Tower itself was declared to be so secret that it wasn't actually declassified as an official secret until the mid 1990's. A real pain when you're trying to attract hungry diners in old London Town.
This is, of course, the real reason that the BBC were able to release this Doctor Who story on VHS in 1997. Sure, there was some cover story about junking some episodes then recovering some clips from the Australian censor, but we all know that the government of the time had a fit when they saw this official secret plastered all over Saturday teatime. Anyone could have been watching; a disgruntled former GPO employee, a proto-terrorist, even a young Gary Russell. Sure, Pixley gives us yet more illuminating notes for this release from BBC Audiobooks, but he misses that fact out. Have that one fer free, Andrew.
"Dispensing with the visuals allows you to concentrate on the story, which is a fairly ambitious and forward thinking."
Having always been a little sceptical when it comes to soundtrack releases of stories that do exist in the archive they generally make you view the story in a completely different light. You can dispense with the shape and mobility of the quite frankly hilarious War Machine and concentrate on what is happening which is a fairly ambitious and forward thinking story; computers becoming sentient, a globe spanning network threatening to take control, even the sound of WOTAN and the War Machines is like the reassuring hum of a 56k modem in full asymmetrical copulation with an ISP providing you with all that glorious content from that futuristic global network of machines.
"Thrill to the complex and moving story line that sees Dodo leave the TARDIS crew."
You can also picture the scene in the Inferno night (probably spelt 'nite') spot as something out of an Austin Power's film. With the Doctor unwittingly stumbling into a dancers cage and forced to gyrate as if both his hips were simultaneously being pulled in opposing directions by opposing celestial forces.
Also, thrill to the complex and moving story line that sees Dodo leave the TARDIS crew... at the end of part two... after having been shunted off to a very nice house in the country. No pretensions there, you want rid of a companion just jettison them like a spent refrigerator. If only they'd been this blunt with Adric... They could have even done it mid scene.
Oh behave!
The War Machines, was published by BBC Audiobooks on 6 August, 2007 Price £13.99
CD ISBN: 9781405676922 Download ISBN: 9781405679701
Fans of the website Cute Overload will love Mark Michalowski's Wetworld. The main alien species in attendance are otters -- and as they scurry about mazes, stand on their hind legs, make squee-like noises (obviously still haven't gotten over watching Utopia yet), dance, form armies and bring about revolutions it's impossible to read about them without thinking 'Aaaaah!' like a big girl's blouse even as they're also sometimes contemplating murder. It's the kind of thing which would be an utter nightmare to bring to the screen -- cue producer Phil Collinson on the podcast commentary trying to explain how the programme budget for the entire series was spent by The Mill rendering hundreds of bits of fur in this one story.
After a neat exchange in the console room subtlety recalling Sarah-Jane's departure from The Hand of Fear, the TARDIS accidentally lands on the planet Sunday, the sopping globe of the title and it's not long before the Doctor and Martha are separated, the timelord gets mixed up with a group of colonists dealing with the after effects of a devastating flood and the human comes into contact with the aforementioned otters and the novel's slimy main antagonist. Arguably in these opening sections that the author gets slightly bogged down with describing the environment at the expense of plot, but admittedly this pays dividends in the unpredictable finale.
The rest of the book balances across the tight-rope of telling a good Doctor Who story and including just too many familiar elements and broadly succeeds. To describe said familiar elements would rather give too much away in what is in the end a reasonably straightforward tale, but Michalowski is clever enough to refer to the influences as Martha realizes that that the Doctor is constantly drawing upon of all of his past experiences and that repetition as well as diversity is one of the miracles of the universe.
There's also a Reithian streaker dashing through the book, with mini-history lessons here and there, a whole line of dialogue in Morse Code that is never fully explained (which should have some readers googling for an explanation) and an ecological message as both the humans and their foe are demonstratively impacting on their environment and taking advantage of its natural resources in different ways. It's never preachy though -- the Doctor voices his concerns but the colonists put their opinions across just as forcefully and even the otters offer their ideas but none are held up as being an absolute truth and despite some gruesome passages few of them meet the usual sticky ends that characters in Doctor Who stories tend to when their moral code even marginally disagrees with the Doctor's.
It helps that the colonists are generally sympathetically described and, for once, a group we can truly care about. There's Candy Kane, originally named Candice by the kind of socially unaware parents some kids reading might be cursing, trying to mark out territory beyond her nickname. Colony head Pallister, who despite being something of a mustache twirler clearly still has the colonists best interests at heart and Ty the local zoologist (every colony should have one) who generates some real chemistry with the Doctor leading to a brim full of jealousy from Martha still clearly besotted with the timelord.
Mentions of incidents in 42 and The Family of Blood suggest Wetworld happens around the time of Blink, and the loyalty between the travellers confirms it. It's the clear they work best when they're together, Martha pulling the Doctor's wilder tenancies into focus. Most of the best scenes in the book are when the Doctor is interrogating and investigating and using humour to get the most of the temporary team which develops to solve the problem at hand. This is also one of the few occasions when Martha develops beyond the generic companion she can sometimes seem to be in other spin-off fiction. The elements of wit which Freema capitalised upon later in the third series are all present and correct.
Ultimately, Michalowski's knack with characterization and clever staging of the action sequences overcomes the slow first half and some of the more ordinary story material; his florid style brilliantly ties the story together and contains glimpses of the kind of whimsey Douglas Adams would be proud of. Example: 'In silence they waited. And waited. And just for good measure, they waited a bit more. 'Maybe it's still falling.' Martha ventured.' 'Maybe it is.' 'So they waited just a bit more.' The author understands that the target audience for the book likes to have a story told rather than described to them and Wetworld will work well in the inevitable audio book.
Wetworld, by Mark Michalowski, is released by BBC Books on 6 September. 9781846072710.
