Wednesday 29 February 2012

Polidori's Leap Year (I'm a believer)

I never remember February 29ths - or at least I don't recall any specific ones in my life so far. So this time I thought I would sling something on my Blog, then in four years time I can look back and see what I was up to...

Alas, we've lost Davy Jones at 66. Cue flashes of the only three Monkees tracks anyone remembers (Daydream Believer, I'm A Believer and Last Train To Clarksville - only one of which he sang lead on) and remembrances of countless school holidays watching endless repeats of The Monkees on TV while we munched our Shreddies. I remember watching it simply because it was on and there was nothing better on at the time. Occasionally it was funny the way they goofed around, those crazy American (and token Brit) lads, but I was always painfully aware that this was from my parents' era and the music was old-fashioned. I prefered The Banana Splits...

I've re-read John Polidori's The Vampyre: A Tale (1819) this evening - partly because it's in the edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein I'm about to tackle (Penguin, 1991) and partly because I haven't been allowed access to the lounge to watch my 'UNIT Files' DVD box set that arrived in today's post!

Polidori's short story comes with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron, which is often suggested as inspiring Polidori's piece since the two gentlemen travelled in Europe together for a time before Byron got sick of Polidori's argumentative attitude (this, it seems, was Polidori's way of preparing for a life as a medical doctor). Byron's 'Fragment' should be treated simply as that - a piece of ephemera to be relegated to the writer's occasional scribblings. On its own it's a very unsatisfactory piece.

The Vampyre is a much more accomplished work of Gothic melodrama and it is clear even to the casual reader that it inspired Le Fanu and Stoker to develop some of the ideas more fully later in the century. It's difficult for us these days, I think, to imagine a world without Dracula - particularly considering the popularity of Stephenie Meyer and her many copiers. But this is where it all started.

At 30 pages it's not a long story, but at the same time it's as long as it needs to be. It has no pretence beyond its fruity melodrama as it lurches towards its predictable conclusion, but it's a competently composed work of prose and not a shilling shocker or a penny dreadful by any means. It's appended to Frankenstein instead of Dracula because Byron and Polidori were there in the French Alps with the Shelleys when they traded ghost stories. Critics are keen to attach social commentary to many of the longer pieces of classic Gothic literature, but what is most noteworthy here is the pyschological hold that Lord Ruthven has over Aubrey. This tale is as much of psychological horror as it is of actual horror. If Lord Ruthven was based on Byron and Aubrey on Polidori himself (as is suggested) then this is a bold statement about the relationship between the two men and no mistake.

It's also gratifying to note that vampyres in the early Nineteenth Century upheld the sanctity of marriage before feasting - although Byron's rakish reputation would suggest that he didn't share the fictional Ruthven's view. Maybe Polidori was making a subtle point here? I suspect it fell on deaf ears...   

Wednesday 22 February 2012

A Doctor Who season in print: 24, somewhat off Target...

No doubt you'll all be eager to know what I read between Volumes I&II of Ferdinand Count Fathom..? Yeah, I know, as if..!

Last year I started reading / re-reading the Virgin Doctor Who New Adventures books from the early 90s, in order. I've not got very far yet. Then when I was in close proximity to my old Target novelisations over Christmas I thought I'd skip back and do the 7th Doctor stories in print from the start, to see if there were any 'seeds' sown for the NAs before the Timewyrm came came about. Also I don't think I read all of these books when I bought them at the time. So, recently I finished the Season 24 stories and here's what I thought of them all:

Time and The Rani, by Pip & Jane Baker. Put simply this is the worst Target novelisation I've ever read. It also has the most uninspiring cover of any Target novelisation I've seen (and that includes Earthshock & Terminus!) I have some affection for the TV version of this story - it's fun, camp and easy on the eye. I liked McCoy straight away and visually the episodes have impact. On the page it's a great opportunity for the verbose Bakers to expand and develop the story and the vocabulary of their readers. They don't. The prose is dull, and often condescending - even for a book aimed at children / young teens. Why do the Tetraps speak English, but write in backwards English (as the authors point out to us needlessly)? Do they also read backwards? Is this important or just the authors trying to find a clever gimmick? I'm betting my entire fortune that it's the latter. It's possible that P&J's word processor developed a fault in the draft stage, adding an unnecessary exclamation mark to the end of every line of speech and inner thought given to the Rani. Either that or she's constantly got her eyebrows raised. I'll have to watch Kate O'Mara's performance more closely on the DVD to check, but I suspect that this is another instance of lazy, careless writing from a pair of uninspired old hacks who couldn't be arsed to take any pride in what they were doing, just to fulfil a contract and pay for the next week's shopping. It's only for the kids after all, and what do they care?

Paradise Towers by Stephen Wyatt. This is the start of a series of excellent covers for the McCoy range by Alister Pearson, with a nice brooding Doctor centre-stage. I had high hopes for this book. I have a generally good opinion of the TV version until epsiode four when Richard Briers turns his ham dial up to 11 while everyone else is still bubbling away at 8. So without that distraction did the book succeed? Not really. Without the actors bringing the lines to life the characters and the humour falls a bit flat and I started to question plot holes and logic that hadn't really occurred to me while watching it - like how long had everyone been there? A long time, it's suggested. So why isn't everyone much older? Or were the Kangs left there as babies, to drag themselves into adolescence? Middle-aged Kangs might have been much more disturbing... Kroagnon's lair sounds much better on the page - far grander than the pair of neon broccoli florets atop a piece of unlit rostrum that we got on TV, and more happens when the hairdryer descends over the Chief Caretaker to suck out his brain. But overall I felt that the book added little to what had been achieved on screen and this was a shame.

Delta and The Bannermen, By Malcolm Kohll. This was a quick and enjoyable read, and has the best printing error of the whole Target range:
'The Doctor suddenly realized that the shelf he was peeing over was an inch-deep in dust.' (page 54)
That would surely have warranted a 15 certificate for the DVD!
Kohll has thought about the novel and injected some ideas and scenes beyond a basic script-to-page exercise, fleshing out some of the characters more fully - particularly Billy and Burton, and adding a whole lot of extra stuff at the beginning about the Bannermen and the toll station. This was the first story this season where the author has taken advantage of the opportunities of the printed page over the limitations of the TV screen. Developing characters and aspects of the story is one thing, but having the Bannermen turn from evil bullies into a basket weaving collective at the end, because they don't fancy being mercenaries anymore now Gavrok's dead, is a bit too far out of leftfield all of a sudden. I wanted to smile but it jarred too much, like the author was forcibly trying to be wacky and humorous - and it was out of keeping with the other 130-odd pages of the book. The novelisations have definitely improved as the season has progressed so far though.  

Finally we come to Dragonfire, by Ian Briggs. The best cover so far, by a long shot. This was considered the pick of a duff bunch at the time, although Delta and the Bannermen seems to be more highly regarded now. The last time I watched this on video (before I donated it to a charity shop) a few years back I was appalled at how bad it was, with shoddy performances from normally excellent actors - like a bad kids TV comedy programme. Although I liked Ace at the time with hindsight I've often felt she was a bad choice for a companion - she's a screwed-up kid with issues and attitude. You can't write effectively for someone like that in the kind of programme that Doctor Who was back then (or ever was or will be?) and Dragonfire was a fine example of pantomime expressions and the limitations of 'bog off bilge-breath'-type dreadful teenage curses.
Imagine my delight, then, to discover that this book was excellent - worlds better than the other three offerings and worlds better than the TV version. Briggs is an intelligent, thoughtful writer who (like Kohll, but more successfully) has really considered how best to adapt his story to the novel form and what possibilities this offers him for development, explanation, background and atmosphere - so we get bucketloads of each. He even explains the cliffhanging cliffhanger, making it a sensible idea! There's no denying that Glitz got worse with each return appearance in the show, and he really is a pantomime brokersman here, waiting to have a custard pie thrust in his face by the Dame. But I actually cared about most if not all of the other characters on Svartos; I felt Belazs' frustration, Kane's simmering hatred - I never got any of that from the TV version.

What is unfortunately very clear from these novelisations, though, is that no one really knew who Mel Bush was. She never comes to life on the page. It's a shame, as subsequently the Big Finish audios and some of the BBC PDAs have done the character far more justice and allowed her to 'live' a bit. Here she does a lot of posturing, delivers a lot of opinions, and wanders off doing her own thing so the Doctor can get involved in other action with more interesting characters. I just don't believe the production office at the time thought her through well enough. She was a gimmick, a two-dimensional tool for publicity - in short she was Bonnie Langford, not Mel Bush.

What's also great about these Target novelisations is that at around 140 pages they're a good short read on the commute to and from work (if you don't mind being seen reading this kind of thing in public!) and getting through a book every other day keeps them fresh.

Tuesday 21 February 2012

Fathoming Count Ferdinand

It only struck me as I started to read Tobias Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753) that it had been well over a year since I'd read any Eighteenth Century fiction and, just as importantly, ages since I'd read a truly scholarly introductory essay. That's pretty bad for me. Paul-Gabriel Bouce's introduction was the perfect wake-up call - I don't recall reading a piece that felt quite so intellectual about a work of fiction for a long time now.

It's a shame this book is out of print. On the whole I'm quite snobbish about the editions of Classic novels I read. Generally, I feel, the Oxford World's Classics editions have the more carefully edited and thoroughly annotated texts, with great introductions. However, now and again Penguin Classics produce a title to match and this, from 1990, is one such in my view.

Having slogged my degenerated brain through the introduction and Smollett's turgid and unhilarious self-dedication I settled down for my laugh-a-sentence jaunt through this rogue's life, remembering how much I'd enjoyed Roderick Random (1748) some years back. After a few pages I remembered that some years back I'd also tried to read Peregrine Pickle (1751) but had given up quite early on - possibly because I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it at the time, or possibly because I thought it was rubbish (I can't remember now). I intend to have another go at that lengthy beast in the future.

Fathom is also a hefty length and is very densely written. Although the chapters are often quite short (good for commuting) you have to concentrate on what you're reading (not always good for commuting). The writer does rely on the reader recollecting certain episodes for the ending and I may not have helped myself by taking a break between volumes I and II, but since I raced through the second volume much more speedily than I did the first I feel the break was worthwhile and my mind returned to the text and the language in a more open and accessible way. Last time I read Sterne's Tristram Shandy I felt afterwards that I would have enjoyed it more if I'd taken a break along the way - these 'novels' were often originally published in separate volumes after all.

As Monsieur Bouce advises in the introduction, Fathom hasn't had the greatest respect from literary scholars since it first appeared and has not often been reprinted since. It's easy to see why, I feel. I didn't hate the book, but I certainly loathed the protagonist and his dupes and by the end I also loathed Smollett for dragging me through the whole affair to what is a rather open and unsatisfactory ending. I wanted blood but I got a rumbly tummy, effectively.

I expected grime, filth and chamber-pot humour with picaresque adventures, but the story lurches from one scam to the next like Dick Dastardly in an episode of Wacky Races. Yes, occasionally the scammer gets scammed and you find yourself begrudgingly feeling sorry for him, but the law of diminishing returns hangs heavy over the book as a whole and the longer it goes on, the more he steals and the more women he deflowers the more our credulity is stretched. We get the point early on, then it gets repeatedly hammered home for the next four hundred pages. There is very little in the way of 'light' to balance Fathom's 'dark'. By the time the 'hero' Melvil finds his backbone, and we meet the first benevolent Jew in English fiction, it's all a bit late in the day really and I'd given up caring either way.

My credulity was stretched most by Fathom's deciding, having failed to impress in English high society, to move to the provinces and become a doctor of medicine after reading a couple of books on the subject. Cue some hilarious instances where his complete lack of knowledge and experience cause risible effects? Spontaneous vomiting over the vicar as he reads the last rites? No. With amazing luck Fathom actually becomes pretty good. I've no doubt charlatans like this abounded in olden days, and Smollett himself was a doctor as well as a writer, but there may be some irony here that has just got lost over time.

I don't want to give away too much, so I won't mention any more about the story or the characters, only to say that in keeping with much fiction of the time the main protagonist is well-drawn (even if his motives are questionable) but the cast around him are very much ciphers.

I doubt there is any hidden agenda in the fact that Fathom could dupe and scam and diddle his way across Europe from Hungary, but England proved to be his match and his downfall. Smollett was a Scot, but he was trying to make his way in London and this piece of flattery presumably assisted these endeavours.

So, would I recommend this book to anyone? I'd recommend the edition, with its fine introduction and plentiful notes, but I'd recommend the book with caution - but after all, this is only my opinion...  
 

Sunday 19 February 2012

Turbo Tina!

Turbo Tina takes on the Graspatrons!

Big hands, naughty words, sexually alluring aliens, teenage grumbles and the Prince Regent - it's all in there.

I'd be doing myself a disservice if I didn't make this my first proper post. It's a radio sci-fi comedy thing that's been kicking around in my life for a few years now. There's some info about the show, background bumph and a pilot episode recording to listen to here at http://turbotina.tk/

Feedback / comments so far have been very positive. Please listen and tell me what you think...

Hello world!

This is going to be an outlet for reviews, comments, opinions on books, TV shows, films, music and general stuff - possibly with a bit of real life thrown in now and again for good measure.

Expect a lot of Doctor Who-related bits, and Eighteenth-Century novel reviews. I'm currently reading Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom so that will be up soon, plus I've just been watching the DVD release of Day of The Daleks, series one of The Inbetweeners and the movie Paul.

So, more to follow...