DWM 184: Who Discovered America?, by John Lucarotti

"In the lands of the North, where the black rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long the men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale. They tell of Leif Ericsson, and how he braved the fog at the edge of the world to seek out a new land; and they tell of how he was tricked by a cunning sorceror in a magical blue longboat smaller than the smallest hut..."

That's how the story might have begun had it been written by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. The Sagas of Noggin the Nog predated the start of Doctor Who by more than four years, and ran until 1965. This isn't the place to rave about it, but it is a classic of children's TV - and the books are good too. This story isn't written by the Smallfilms team, though. When I saw the name of the author, having been generally impressed by the writing on Marco Polo and The Aztecs, I was looking forward to reading this. Another Lucarotti historical!

I bought issue 184 of Doctor Who Magazine (along with several others) off eBay a couple of months back, even though I didn't really have the money at the time. I tend to do that - get Who stuff when I see it cheap, and then put it in the cupboard until I can properly afford it. That's part of the deal in our family: you can make the most of a bargain, but you still have to wait to read/watch/listen to/play with it until you've saved up enough pocket money. In this case I didn't have to save up, though, because it became part of my Christmas Haul (along with a number of others I'll be reviewing soon).

First impressions: it's five pages, so quite a bit longer than the 'Brief Encounter' series; and even though that includes large illustrations on each page, you can do good stuff with that amount of room. The characters in the illustrations are recognisable, but by golly artist Paul Vyse has made Barbara and Susan look ugly! Still, no horns on the Vikings' helmets, so I won't be too harsh.

On to the actual text, then, and the loving detail that Lucarotti is famous for...

...is completely lacking. What was he thinking? In the very first paragraph he conflates Ericsson with his father, and completely misrepresents Eric the Red's achievement (he didn't discover Greenland, he settled it). This continues, and the story completely ignores what is known about how Vinland was discovered. This is not just a case of twisting history to accommodate the Doctor, as with Marco Polo's travels - this is failing to take account of it at all. I'm not a Viking expert (despite the picture of me below), and most of what I know about this comes from GURPS Vikings and an excellent radio adaptation of Harry Harrison's The Technicolor Time Machine; but I can spot it when the historical accuracy stinks. Ericsson is also characterised in a childish way that came across as lazy writing rather than satirical.

Still, this isn't just about the history, it's about the TARDIS crew too; so is that any better? It gets off to a bad start with the Doctor stating "curses, Chesterton, something's amiss," which doesn't sound like him to me. After that it does improve, but not dramatically. The problem is cause by a "long circuit" draining the batteries, and they need more plutonium to sort it out. As excuses go, this is in keeping with the show's desire at the time to provide technobabble explanations for the TARDIS' function; but it's still pretty dire. There is also an educational aspect to the story, and I learned something about the geography of the Atlantic coast of North America, but the useful facts are so swamped by the inaccuracies that it's worse than useless even from that perspective.

The events of this story are unbelievable, and I find it just as hard to believe that Lucarotti really wrote this rubbish. The first true stinker of the blog. Give me Noggin any day of the week.

Published:
Date: 18th March 1992
ISBN: 0957-9818

Rating:
1/10.

Next Time:
Let's stick with DWM and look at Rennigan's Record...