I read this story to my children last night. They enjoyed it, despite my rubbish impression of the First Doctor (I can do a good David Tennant and my Patrick Troughton's not too bad, but the rest range from inconsistent to unrecognisable). There were a couple of laugh-out-loud moments, always a good sign if at appropriate times.
(Be warned, this review has somewhat bigger spoilers than usual for the story under review, and also for The Chimes of Midnight. They start in two paragraphs' time; after that it's not safe to read until you get to the 'expanding universe' section. Caveat lector!)
My wife's family used to go to Poole, a seaside town in Dorset, most years when she was growing up. I went there on occasion, but no single county held our allegiance: Wales was our only regular holiday zone. Her family tended to be hotel-goers while mine were mostly campers. Keetch's story is set in the fictional Dorset town of Keelmouth in 1933, centred on the eponymous guesthouse. It's an idyllic seaside setting, and 1933 was in real history noted for having an exceptionally fine summer. I like it when authors do their research, and this makes a nice symmetry with Time and Relative, which used as part of its background the exceptionally bleak winter of 1962-3.
Like Quinnis, the setting is a very important part of this story. Dorset has a particular feel all its own, and (at least in the 1970s) seemed to be living behind the times. Bide-a-Wee acknowledges this, and ties Dorset's most famous fictional sons and daughters into the Whoniverse, hooray! In fact, the first laugh-out-loud moment was when we were told that Susan had gone off with four children and a dog, one of whom owned an island; and the second was when she came back telling implausible tales of smugglers and treasure. Have a lashing of ginger beer on me!
Most of the characters are definite caricatures, particularly the Retired Soldier, the Spinster and the Nice Old Lady Who Runs the Guesthouse. There's nothing wrong with this if done right, and the way it is handled here bears close comparison with The Chimes of Midnight, in that there is a valid timey-wimey reason for the inhabitants being as they are. I missed this on first reading, but when I spotted it I enjoyed the story even more.
In retrospect, the presence of the Famous Five was a definite clue. Based on publication they first got together in 1942 and continued on into the 1960s, but their adventures spanned only five years; and the setting does feel prewar to me, so they are in effect victims of the same time distortion.
The writing style is engaging, the plot sufficient, and this remains my favourite story from the book. What more needs to be said?
An Expanding Universe, Part 4: Short Trips
When I was getting back into Who in 2006 after a long break, one of the things I did was to keep my eyes open for related fiction at the local library. Most of the books were RTD era, of course, but there were some published in the interregnum; and among these were two of Big Finish's Short Trips collections. I read them, and although they were full of companions (and even Doctors) I didn't know, I generally enjoyed the experience. One - Repercussions - was subsequently 'lost' by a borrower; the other was Past Tense, which I have read again, now with enough experience to judge from a position of knowledge. I have a couple more ordered from other libraries in Sheffield.
The 'Short Trips' series was started by the BBC back in 1998; they published three volumes before Big Finish took over. All are out of print, and while the first three can be found for around a fiver the later ones are generally pretty costly. Which means that, given all the other Who material there is for me to buy, I will likely be reviewing only those Big Finish ones I can get from the library.
A Confused Chronology, part 2: Inserting Bide-a-Wee
The TV series was bad enough when it came to writers ignoring established details of the Whoniverse, but by the 1990s there were dozens of writers producing stories in different media simultaneously, with little or no chance of keeping up with the material already out there. What hope is there of being able to insert a story like this uncontroversially into the Doctor's timeline?
There are certainly clues that this is one of the last stops before Totter's Lane 1963. The Doctor promises Susan that they will stay on Twentieth Century Earth, "albeit in a later era where the music might be more to her taste." And his concerns for her seem more in line with what he was thinking at the end of Quinnis than at the beginning; just before they returned from the Fourth Universe the Doctor said to Susan, "you need some stability, young lady! Proper teachers, and friends of your own age! We must see what we can do about that." Keelmouth provided part of his prescription, and was in fact quite a good first attempt.
So, how much of a squeeze is it? Susan says, "I think the next place we landed, Grandfather and me, was London, in the summer of 1963." Well, we know some of that contradicts other stories anyway, since they'd been in London for more than a couple of months at the time of An Unearthly Child. Perhaps Susan's memory isn't as perfect as she sometimes likes to believe - or perhaps she's just not concentrating? Whatever, considering the "I think" at the start of her statement (and the equivocal evidence of serial C's "four or five journeys" comment), I believe Keelmouth sits better between Quinnis and Totter's Lane than before their interuniversal detour. It's not perfect, but I'm sticking to it.
Published:
Date: March 2004
ISBN: 1-844-35046-0
Rating:
9/10.
Next Time:
We'll start the post-season-1 reviews with another short trip, this time on audio: Rise and Fall.
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