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...

Past Doctor Adventure 25: City at World's End, by Christopher Bulis

A question occurred to me as I sat down to write this: why does a novel get roughly the same number of words in review as a short story? It takes a lot longer to experience, so why haven't I got more to write?

I think the answer lies in the nature of my reviews and the nature of books. A novel has more room for plot, for characters and for the setting than a short story - but I don't describe any of those in detail. This is partly because I don't assume that my readers have read what I'm reviewing (unlike my TV reviews, where I'm guessing most will have seen them) and partly because I find enough to waffle on about without potted summaries. As the preceding 127 words prove.

On with City at World's End, then, and let's start with the cover. It's very blue, and - to be frank - a bit rubbish. The artist has obviously chosen to give up on realism in order to display the main features of the setting (the threatening moon and the vast ship at the heart of the city) dramatically, which is fine; but the resulting image is badly balanced, full of features that look less dramatic than the description in the text, and, basically, it doesn't work. In fact, the best bit of the cover to me when I saw it was the name of the author, since I had a lot of good things to say about Bulis' writing when I reviewed The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Which also had a poor cover, now I come to think about it.

Still, a cover's just a cover when all's said and done, and you don't have to look at it for long (in fact, most people will see the spine far more often), so what about the story?

As regular readers will have gathered, I like mysteries; and this is a particularly good book for those. Rather than having a big one at the start and then avoiding solving it for the bulk of the story, Bulis keeps handing us solutions but introducing new mysteries at the same time. What's with the dummies? Where is Barbara? What is happening with Susan? Where are the missing NC2s? What is the thing with the red eyes? The list goes on, and I lost track of some introduced early (to which I thought I knew the answer), allowing me to be surprised at the end. A very neat trick.

Also good are the main characters' voices, though the dialogue is perhaps not quite as sparkling as in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The supporting cast are mostly stereotypes, and it feels like there's less of an excuse for that this time; and while the ideas behind the setting are good it turns out to be duller than it sounds. The story also gets pretty violent towards the end, which is justified given the context but still a bit of a turn-off for me. On the other other hand it's definitely a page-turner that kept me wanting to read more, and it made me care about what happened to some of the locals as well as the regulars.

So, a mixed bag. One thing I noted as I read was how my imagining of the action changed. Possibly prompted by the cover, I saw the prologue with 1980s graphics (or maybe 90s - there was a touch of the Babylon Fives about it); but once we got into the main story I pictured it in black and white, until the final couple of chapters when colour came back. Perhaps this was the tone of the writing? Certainly the parts I saw in monochrome were the kind of image I could imagine being attempted in the 1960s (although, frankly, they couldn't have pulled it off), whereas the others would have been impossible.

Actually, some parts of the story were eminently achievable. I know this because they were achieved! There are a number of events that are straight repeats from televised stories. When Ian opens a door and nearly falls down because there's no floor the other side, for example, or Susan getting hurt early on, or a regular (this time Barbara) groping along a darkened tunnel, or the Doctor having an animated discussion with a fellow scientist... I suspect this was a conscious decision, but either way I don't know quite how I feel about it. It was quaint the first time, but grated slightly after that.

Overall, a fun read that I would recommend - but with caveats. It's in no way a bad book, but it somehow didn't quite live up to my expectations.

An Expanding Universe, Part 6: The Past Doctor Adventures
As mentioned last time, a key feature of Who book publishing is the way it has switched between the BBC and other houses. One of the transitions followed the 1996 TV Movie, when the corporation decided to bring it back in-house. They were fairly canny in how they did this, taking a lot of the features they saw as good in Virgin's line (along with several of the writers), and even some of the plotlines. One key idea was the split into ongoing 'current Doctor' stories (the Eighth Doctor Adventures replacing the New Adventures) and 'past Doctor' stories (PDAs replacing MAs), though the PDAs were less distinguishable than their predecessors. 76 were published between 1997 and 2005, when the BBC decided to concentrate exclusively on the new series.

Published:
Date: September 1999
ISBN: 978-0563555797

Rating:
Mine: 6.5/10.
2011 Gallifrey Base Non-Dynamic Rankings: 6.13, 43rd out of 76 Past Doctor Adventures, 178th out of 286 overall.

Next Time:
That's two future stories in a row, so let's go for something different. How about considering Who Discovered America?

Audio Short Trips 1.1: Rise and Fall, by George Mann

My parents had trouble getting me to learn to read; it didn't help that I hated school and my teacher at the time was, to be frank, useless. If I get to the Pertwee years you'll hear more about how I was finally persuaded but that's irrelevant right now, because the bit I want to tell you about is my own six-year-old reasoning. After she'd finally got me started, my mother asked me what the problem had been. I explained that I couldn't see the point of learning to read, because if I wanted a story mum or dad would either read one to me or make one up. Which is logical, you must admit.

Skip forward forty years and, perhaps unsurprisingly, you find me a keen listener of audiobooks. I was also a fan of Big Finish's audio dramas; so why was I reluctant to give the audio short trips a shot? Probably it was due to limited funds making me more conservative in my choices. Again you'll have to wait to find out what changed my mind - but this time, only for a few paragraphs.

As you'd expect from me, I'll state up front that one of the main things Rise and Fall has going for it is William Russell's voice. It's coupled with some lyrical prose that gives him an opportunity to shine, and some very effective sound work. This is a story you can just lie back and enjoy listening to, letting the sound of it drift through your head.

Or, if you prefer, you could pay attention to the story. No, really; I don't mind, and actually it's worth paying attention to. I can't say too much without giving the game away, but Mann has come up with a neat little idea that fits in well with both the short story format and the experimental nature of early Who. This is the only time in the show's history that such a story would really work, and there's also no way this could have been realised on TV in any era - it has some similarities with sections of George Pal's film version of The Time Machine, but the focus is very different. It also has similarities with some of the 'Doctor-lite' episodes of the new series, particularly Love and Monsters or Blink, in that the TARDIS crew are not actively involved in events for much of the story but their presence is felt strongly throughout.

Or at least, the presence of Ian and the Doctor. Susan and Barbara are both sidelined early on, which I often object to, but in this case it doesn't matter, and it's a boon when the reader is Russell. This is a very personal story, but one where any of the crew could have been the main participants. It's also a grand, sweeping story; how you see it depends so much on perspective.

And that's all I want to say.

An Expanding Universe, Part 5: Audio Short Trips
As we shall see again very soon, The history of Who publishing has been marked by oscillations between periods when the BBC has handled it largely in-house and periods when they grant licenses to prolific publishers such as Virgin. In 2009, Big Finish lost its license to produce the Short Trips book series. Since they still had the rights to produce audiobooks they decided to experiment with continuing the range in this format. To encourage buyers they released the first story as a free sample - combined with a great sale, it convinced me to buy the lot; and while it might not do the same for you it's well worth the time to download and listen.

Published:
Date: November 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84435-547-1

Rating:
9/10.

Next Time:
Since I finished reading it last night, and since the order of the stories in this gap is a matter for debate anyway, I might as well move on to City at World's End.

---

Short Trips, Past Tense 9.09: Bide-a-Wee, by Anthony Keetch

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.

CC5.6b: Quinnis, Episode 2: The Plain of Despair

Unfortunately, another thing this story has in common with its TV counterparts is that the ending doesn't quite match up to the beginning. For one thing, all the mysteries are resolved too quickly. The end of the previous episode revealed why the town is built as it is, and we're not far into this one before we learn about Meedla, the bad luck birds, and why the plain is out of bounds. After that it becomes more of a straight action story, which is not my favourite form.

I say straight; but a big plus is that the style of action is - well, I'm not sure of the exact word, but perhaps baroque? Or ornamental? Whatever. It's probably what reminded me of Space: 1889; this is a story more in the tradition of Jack Vance or Michael Moorcock than the forms of science fiction commonly seen in Who. And again, ornithopters are something that would be hard to pull off on TV. So it may be action, but it is at least original action.

The soundscape is even more notable this time, not so much for the ambience as for the arrangement of voices. It really helps with the atmosphere. And speaking of voices, it's about time I said something about the performances.

Carole Ann Ford is the narrator, and she gives a very different performance to William Russell's. I've yet to hear anyone who can make a narration feel as natural as Russell, but Ford does well enough; and there are some aspects of her performance that are even better. One is the recapturing of the main character's voice. Ford manages to recreate the breathless excitement of the young Susan, contrasting it with the more worldly-wise and settled Susan post-serial-K. She is also adept at using different voices for the guest cast, making them distinct enough to be instantly recognisable; quite a feat. On the other hand, her version of Susan's grandfather lacks something. It's passable, but not up to the standard of her other voices - though to be fair it is very hard to do decent cross-gender impressions.

I should probably say a little bit more about Ford's other characters. Marc Platt based a lot of his imagery on a trip to Namibia, and this is reinforced by Ford's choice of an African accent for the Quinnissians. This isn't too much of a problem until the arrival of Parch in episode 2, who sounds non-African, has more sophisticated tools, and comments condescendingly on the locals' superstitions regarding the shrazer. The parallels are obvious. Still, I don't detect any racist intent: it's a lot better than using exclusively BBC English, and in-universe it's the TARDIS having her little joke (like the Eastender market traders of Pompeii in the Tenth Doctor's era).

Meanwhile, Tara-Louise Kaye, Ford's real-life daughter, is the other reader. This is a tricky role for both writer and performer; we have the artifice of older Susan telling a story of her adventures as a teenager, and really there's no room for a different voice within that narrative. Because of this I prefer the second voice to be from the framing story, as in Shadow of the Past or Frostfire (the first two CCs I heard). Still, putting that bias to one side for the moment, Kaye gives a good performance as the impish Meedla, and it does add variety.

Overall, then, this is a highly enjoyable release. The plot plays second fiddle to the setting, and this lowers my rating particularly for episode 2; but it is still strong enough to avoid sabotaging the atmosphere. The tie-in to TV history is also fun, and I smiled that the idea came from Gary Russell, continuity lover extraordinaire. I wouldn't want every Companion Chronicle to be like this, but I would be happy to see more.

Published:
Date: 23rd December 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84435-504-4

Rating:
Episode 2: 5.5/10
Overall: 7/10.

Next Time:
The postscript clearly states that it's next stop: Coal Hill, which I think is a bit of a shame (although it does mean that it is just after An Earthly Child and just before [i]An Unearthly Child,[i] which is kind of neat). Susan's original comment was that Quinnis was "four or five journeys ago", which leaves enough wiggle room to fit in one visit in between, and there's a short story I think would fit the bill very nicely. I'll be reviewing that next time before jumping back to the post-season-1 gap.

CC5.6a: Quinnis, Episode 1: The Rainmaker

The last Companion Chronicle I reviewed had a very sparse framing story; this one does not, which presents me with something of a problem. It is very explicitly set after the Eighth Doctor audio An Earthly Child, which was given away free to Big Finish subscribers; and while that is now available to buy I haven't bought or heard it yet. Moreover, it talks about Susan's life after the events of serial K, which I haven't reached in my marathon. I don't want to jump ahead of myself, but neither do I want to wait to review this until I get there. With Quinnis it wouldn't be too much of a problem since I'm reviewing the framed story out of order anyway, but there are others which would cause more difficulty (imagine skipping The Transit of Venus until after serial R).

For now, then, wherever possible I'm going to review these when we reach the appropriate time for the main narrative. The Sara Kingdom stories will probably throw this out, but those are a way off yet.

There's another decision to make, though, which I mentioned when reviewing my first Companion Chronicle: whether to divide up the reviews by episode. I originally decided not to do so this time around, but as I was writing and shot past the thousand-word barrier I changed my mind. I've split it in half, which is a compromise position since if I were doing it like a TV story (or The Transit of Venus) it would be three - one for each episode and one for the story as a whole. Here, that would be overkill.

Splitting introduces another complication, which is how to refer to the two episodes. I haven't found any official names, and while could just say 'part 1' and 'part 2', that's boring. So I've come up with my own titles; hopefully you'll find them appropriate for the story and the era.

Right, preamble out of the way; I'm leaving my comments about the performances until next time and I haven't yet figured out how to judge direction on audios, so I'll move straight on to the writing. Marc Platt is one of a group of adventurous authors who came to prominence as the classic series of Who ended. He wrote one TV script - the complex and (some say) impenetrable Ghost Light - and a few novels, including the quite frankly bizarre Lungbarrow; but the bulk of his output has been Big Finish audio scripts. When I first encountered his writing it wasn't on Doctor Who at all, though, but on an audio spin-off from the roleplaying game Space: 1889. About which, more another time - if this marathon keeps going for long enough.

The setting Platt creates for the planet Quinnis is lush, full of richly visual images. The soundscape supports this well - is that part of the director's job? - and conjures up a world too heavily-populated to be realisable on TV in the 60s. Events towards the end of the episode would be even more problematic - hard to do well even now, in fact - and this is one place the story differs from The Transit of Venus: it is not trying to mimic the original series' production.

Which is not to say it doesn't fit with the tone of the early stories. Even some of the less pleasant aspects of the first season - such as the travellers' (and especially the Doctor's) sense of superiority in the face of native 'superstition' - are given an airing, and the Doctor in particular is a man driven by circumstance in a way he ceased to be quite early on.

There's a good blend of action, mystery and what I can only describe as atmosphere. Furthermore the cliffhanger is great, introducing the events that lead Susan to comment that they nearly lost the TARDIS on Quinnis in serial C...

Rating:
8.5/10.

Next Time:
Quinnis, episode 2.

A Destiny in the Stars?: Susan's Farewell Tour

Well, the Christmas holiday didn't quite go as I'd planned. I spent far too much time having fun with friends and family to leave any space at all for writing - I really should get my priorities sorted out! I've also realised that there are a number of short stories I want to review that don't group together neatly, and five novels which will take some time to read, and, and...

The short and the long of it is that, first, I am ditching my policy of writing 500-1000 words per entry. That way, if I've only got a little to say (for instance, when reviewing a short story) I can post 250 words without feeling guilty about it. Second, I am not going to worry about keeping going with two or three posts a week, so that if (say) City at World's End is taking a long time to read I'll go with the flow and take a week off. Neither of these is ideal, but both are consistent with my goal of being gentle with myself. And if, as I hope, I get more paid work, then that can be a wholly positive thing rather than a pressure.

This section of my marathon covers the rest of Susan's time with the Doctor and the teachers, plus a few stories dealing with the aftermath before the new girl arrives. There should be forty-odd reviews, only ten of which will be of televised episodes or serials. But I'm not going to start with any of that. I promised you a pre-Unearthly Child review, and late though it is, I'm going to get it to you Friday. Or Monday. Sometime in the next week, definitely. Maybe.

Next Time:
Quinnis.