Sunday 25 November 2012

A Doctor Who season in print: 7 - a brave new world!

I haven't done one of these in a while, but recently I've been munching my way through some old Target Doctor Who novelisations before I have to get rid of them (due to space restrictions) and as Season 7 is short on stories (but not on episodes) I thought it was worth another Blog article.
So, this time around we get two of the earliest Target books:
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1974, 156 pages - with illustrations!)
Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke (pub. 1974, 158 pages - with illustrations!)
And then two more from when they were fully established:
The Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1987, 144 pages)
Inferno, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1984, 126 pages)

This is generally considered to be one of the best seasons of Classic Doctor Who - gritty, consistent, shocking and challenging, before a kind of cosy 'comfort' set in to the Pertwee era. Is this matched by the books?

Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion was televised as Spearhead From Space. Target felt it needed a punchier, more dramatic title. The same with (Doctor Who and) The Silurians which became Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters in print. there are several early examples of this title changing tendency (mainly Malcolm Hulke books, admittedly) and it does give some of them a certain frisson but the idea was quickly dropped. The other claim to fame that these two books have is that they are the first two authentic Target novelisations and really set the bar for what was to follow. 1973 saw Target re-printing the three 1960s novelisations of David Whittaker's The Daleks and The Crusaders and Bill Strutton's The Zarbi. Fuelled by enthusiasm for the opportunity Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke then produced some of the most readable prose 'adaptations' of any of the TV stories.

Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion is a lovingly expanded adaptation of Spearhead From Space. It's like Dicks has revisited Robert Holmes' story and Derek Martinus' direction and thought 'how can I build on this to flesh it out a bit and give it more of an over all coherency?' We get a prologue from the end of The War Games (which I'm surprised the DVDs haven't offered as an extra), we get thoughtful character backgrounds, explanations (like why Madame Tussauds would have a dull exhibition of senior civil servants and military men, for example!) and expansions on what was televised - particularly building the episode one cliff hanger and developing the 'octopus' at the end - and it's all so simply yet well-written it just picks you up and carries you along. Liz Shaw doesn't get much more of a look in than she does on TV, unfortunately, but it's possible that Dicks struggled with this anyway, knowing his preference for heroine-tied-to-the-railway-lines type companions. You can't help but feel a tad short-changed at some of the 110 page 4th & 5th Doctor books that Dicks would later come out with when he was churning them out month on month and clearly didn't have the time or the creative energy to apply the same level of care and thought. But here he was very much writing what he knew directly, and it's a great place to start the range.

Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters is a slightly different kettle of fish, yet just as brilliant in its own way. Hulke has clearly picked and chosen what he wanted from his TV scripts, or thought specifically about what would work best in print and what was needed from the televised story. The 'Silurians' here are Reptile Men instead, and they have names and characters beyond the Young Silurian / Old Silurian ciphers on TV. You'd be hard pushed to find more powerful moments of pathos and character than 'Old' Okdel's tears and his willing acceptance of his own death at the hand of 'Young' Morka. The story is essentially the same as on TV, but some of the details are different. What we may lose in detail, though, is made up for through creative narrative and point of view story-telling. Doctor Quinn and Miss Dawson are having a terribly protracted innocent courtship, and they benefit from further development in print - as does Doctor Meredith. Doctor Lawrence, on the other hand, is nowhere near as objectionable on the page as he is on screen and this is perhaps a shame - as is his altered demise. There doesn't appear to be any benefit to making Hawkins a sergeant rather than a captain in the book, or for changing Major Baker to Major Barker (being more familiar with the TV version I gave up trying to auto-correct myself after a while). Whereas The Auton Invasion built the story up, The Cave Monsters had seven episodes to fit in so it's down to strategic cutting to make it fit into a length that would sufficiently appeal to children without being too stodgy. It's major achievement, though, is in humanising the monsters, giving them clearly defined and individual characters in a way that the TV programme hadn't really achieved up to that point.

The Ambassadors of Death comes much later in the run of books. The illustrations are long gone, so this is all text. By this point we'd been through a severe page limitation and were emerging out the other side. Terrance Dicks' output had diminished considerably since in many cases the original TV scriptwriters were choosing to adapt their own work, so Dicks and Nigel Robinson between them were mopping up any earlier gaps. This was one such gap.
Overall Terrance was probably the best person to write this novel. Many have regretted Malcolm Hulke passing away and never having got his teeth into this script, which was largely written by him and script assistant Trevor Ray although credited to David Whittaker. But Hulke was probably too close to such a troubled script. Dicks, as script editor, gave the final polish to all of it and evened out the various contributors' work.
This book is pretty standard fare. It's not quite a simple script-to-page effort with the occasional token descriptive passage, but it displays little of the adaptive energy and enthusiasm of The Auton Invasion from 13 years earlier. It still succeeds because it's a cracking story with some great characters, concepts and action sequences. Simply reflecting these on the page is enough to give this book appeal. Some might have felt this was a good opportunity to give the story proper 'closure' at the end, but it's faithful to the abrupt televised version and we leave it half way down a page as the Doctor leaves Liz and the others to negotiate the safe return of the alien ambassadors. The middle episodes don't feel like they lose much from the story being curtailed to 144 pages and Dicks is very economical in places where action sequences which take several minutes on screen can be dealt with in a brief paragraph on the page, without the reader feeling that they're being rushed or missing out on anything.
My favourite part of the book is a typo on page 40:
'The guard fell, and the same brown-gloved hand took his eyes and opened the door of the cell.' Ouch! Very King Lear. I assume 'eyes' should have been 'keys', since there's no indication it was a retinal scan lock!

Inferno is another similar adaptation, but from three years earlier when 128 pages was the maximum length. How do you get seven of the best TV episodes ever into 128 pages and do them justice? Answer: make it 126 pages of very small type. Inferno, like Ambassadors of Death, is a great read almost simply because it's such a good story, but Season 7 gives us a useful comparison between the early years of the Target range and it's established adolescent period. All four books are great reads, but all four treat their source material in a slightly different way. Inferno's quirk of adaptation comes when The Doctor is in the parallel universe. On TV we get occasional reminders of what our friends are up to in the 'real world', and this may have been felt a necessity by the production team in case of any chance first time viewers not understanding what was going on. In the book we get one 'cut back' early on and then that's it, we keep with the fascist world and see that adventure through to the end. The 'missing' sequences are briefly referenced after the Doctor returns to 'our' universe but not gone into in any detail - nor do they need to be either; the Doctor is having an adventure on a parallel Earth, that's what we're interested in and that's what the author is focusing on. It also serves as a self-editing technique for the story, since some detail still has to be compromised to ensure it fits comfortably into it's limited page numbers - but at least it's done in a thoughtful, creative way that benefits the narrative. If it had been a shorter story it possible that Dicks may have been tempted to write a farewell scene for Liz Shaw at the end, or offer some hints that she would be returning to Cambridge. Considering what's been done since - particularly Gary Russell's Virgin MA The Scales of Injustice - I think it's good that he followed the TV version faithfully and ends Liz Shaw's adventures with her smiling away at the departing backs of the Doctor and the Brigadier.
My only query is why Dicks shied away from called the mutants Primords. The name isn't used on TV but it's what the creatures are credited as at the ends of the episodes. Dicks' just called the creatures 'mutations'. I guess if you call them Primords you're identifying them as a specific individual species, whereas Dicks' view is very much that these are mutations of mankind, not a different species altogether.
 
All these stories are excellent and are challenging works of telefantasy / sci-fi which have much to offer the reader as an alternative to watching them on TV. They highlight many of the considerable strengths of the Target range, as well as some of it's occasionally more frustrating limitations. I would recommend reading all these books, although at the moment only The Auton Invasion and The Cave Monsters are readily available as they've been re-published in recent BBC Books editions.

Sunday 11 November 2012

Red Dwarf X: The Beginning

'I challenge you to a duel across time and space!'

This series has ended on a real high, the kind of high that makes you hope that Dave commissions Red Dwarf XI immediately. Thankfully episode 6, The Beginning, was just as strong, funny and consistent as the previous week's Dear Dave.

OK, so we're back in Blade Runner territory, dealing with rogue simulants, but like last week's mail pod this is an acceptable recurrence: we know they occupy the area of space Red Dwarf is travelling through - so the series set itself up a long time ago for repeat confrontations. Here the rogue simulants are humorously a bit crap and camp, and less psychotic - which adds interest to them. We'd get bored if they were the same each time, after all. My only criticism (and this is probably just personal taste) was that I felt Gary Cady's Dominator Zlurth was slightly under-played and he could have cranked and camped it up a notch.

I loved the Star Wars homages - they weren't the 'nod to camera' heavy-handed references like you get in The Simpsons or Family Guy (not including their Star Wars Specials, of course!), they were there if you wanted them and they didn't make or break any scenes. I doubt you can do a spaceship hiding in an asteroid or a hologrammatic personal message these days without a large section of the audience thinking of Star Wars, so it's best to just embrace it. But it was difficult to tell if the laughter accompanying the line 'I'm not your father' was more for the sentiment or for the inversion of the Star Wars quote.

Possibly the best aspect of the episode, though, was Hogey the Roguey. What a guy, and what a performance from Richard O'Callaghan - miles away from Bertram Muffet, his clumsy romantic lead in Carry On Loving years ago.
In many ways Hogey is such an obvious comedy sci-fi character that it's amazing he's not appeared here before. And the gags worked so much better with us not being privy to the back story (unlike, I feel, the poker game with the BEGGs in Entangled). A crap, annoying, Hispanic cyborg with a ridiculous comb-over who is desperate to ease the boredom of his existence with honourable challenges is the perfect accompaniment to the Red Dwarf crew. Now we've met him, of course, and he's worked really well I fully expect him to appear again - only hopefully not as much as the over-used Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley crowd-pleasers of earlier series.

Will Rimmer's parentage situation change him in the future if the series returns? I doubt it. Nor should it. The dynamic is settled and works as it is. Was the Cat's psychoanalysis of Rimmer shoe-horned in? Possibly, but he occasionally shows moments of insight anyway, so it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination here. Plus he was playing the string on a stick game at the same time and that was a nice moment of Cat charm.

On the whole there's been little to compromise the visual impact of the series. I thought the BEGGs looked awful and Red Dwarf's drive room is a bit cramped, but otherwise everything's been fine. Maybe too much of the budget had to go on the space battle here, because the crew descending through the floor with Hogey's molecular destabiliser gun and the missiles passing through Blue Midget's bridge were less than convincing, which was a shame. Blue Midget's bridge was very similar to the Dwarf's drive room (same set redressed? Would make sense!) so again you had the crew tapping away on small keyboards at an awkward angle (they'd never be DDA compliant!) - seemingly for the Cat so that he didn't mask the camera's view of the rear of the cockpit. Bit of bad design planning there, methinks...

Overall, though, I think what marked out this episode, like last week's, was that there was just enough going on for it to have pace and energy throughout, but not so much that it had to compromise itself or cut corners. It had time for poignancy, humour and character. It could develop the villains sufficiently and most importantly there were some great gags along the way.

I'm also filled with hope for a further series because they didn't end on a cliff hanger where they could, if need be, end the series. If it did end here you'd know that they were just going to carry on as they have been, with wacky adventures. I hope, though, that we get to join them on those.

I was unsure before the series started. Back To Earth in 2009 was not an auspicious continuation of the original series, and if that was the template for things to come then I would struggle to remain a fan of the show. Also Dave (and the other UK Gold-type channels) tend to over-hype their own programmes and I get worried I've already heard all the best gags in something when I've seen the same trailer umpteen times. I think Red Dwarf X has overcome all this and it's been a solid series on the whole - not perfect by any means, but enjoyable and with some classic moments along the way. Personally I don't think we should demand any more than that. Get the basics right and anything extra special is a bonus in my view.

P.S. all the way through this series I've avoided the question of Rimmer's continuity. Is he the same Rimmer that went off to be Ace Rimmer in Series VII? He seems to be the same. In Series VIII he was human again. I know all the crew had died again at the end of that series though. I think it's best not to ponder on that. Red Dwarf, like many TV sitcoms, is not a series that rewards scrutiny of continuity. I'm happy to just watch it and love it for what it is...

Sunday 4 November 2012

Red Dwarf X: Dear Dave

Dear Dave,

Thanks!

Best wishes, Tim.


Hooray! At last we have an episode of Red Dwarf X that's consistently funny and well-crafted throughout, with some classic stand-alone moments. Excellent stuff, easily the best of the series so far.

My recent concerns over the programme ignoring or strategically forgetting  that Dave Lister is the last human being alive were answered, and similarly the positive strengths of the previous week's episode continued here, with all the crew doing their own thing and only coming together when necessary.

Admittedly we've had the mail pod before and again we're back in Series I & II territory with Lister feeling sorry for himself but personally I'm happy with that slant. It makes the team (and the show) less smug (more smeg?!) which tended to afflict the later series of the original run. Some aspects of the drudgery of day-to-day life are worth revisiting and the mail pod is one of these.

Key classic moments for me were the note to Rimmer asking him to stop writing his own letters of commendation, Lister 'hitting on' the French vending machine and the Cat's charades message. The final punchline of the episode, whilst in spirit largely predictable, was delivered so perfectly by Craig Charles that it has to stand as another classic moment.

I love the occasional tell-tale signs that sitcoms like this are still recorded in front of a live audience - there's an occasional buzz, a feeling that it may not be perfect, but it's got a special little sparkle. There was one in Lemons earlier in the series where Craig Charles was clearly chuckling away as Lister and Rimmer pointed out smeg to a panicking Kryten in the drive room. This week Chris Barrie was clearly having difficulty not creasing up at the end of the charades sequence. These moments are very charming, and betray the live theatre roots of television that it's all too easy to forget these days - particularly since we've become obsessed with outtakes programmes. It's great to see a director willing to keep these moments in, but also an actor who's going to soldier through and not take the easy option of corpsing safe in the knowledge that it'll be fine because it'll go on a DVD 'Smeg Ups' section and possibly on a TV outtakes programme. Personally I hope that BBC3 have finally killed that genre through it's endless runs of 'hilarious' outtakes from Little Britain and Two Pints of Lager where lines or cues are fudged at every opportunity and greeted with a cast expletive and a roar of audience approval. How easily pleased can we possibly be?

I have a personal 'grudge' with Dear Dave in that I have a radio sci-fi comedy series called Turbo Tina shortly going into production with Sunderland REP for SparkFM (details here:  http://sunderlandrep.wordpress.com/productions/current-projects/radio-comedy-drama/)
which involves a character possibly becoming enamoured with a food dispensing machine and now Red Dwarf have pipped me to the post! But it would be churlish of me to take umbrage with this episode over that, I guess. It's clear to all that Lister's not going to re-erect the vending machine while he's lying on top of it, but do we mind? I doubt it!

There is a little niggle though, that's been with me throughout the series so far, regarding the drive room. It's a very small drive room for such a large vessel - in fact at first I assumed it was the Starbug cockpit. But also why have the crew been given such tiny keyboards to type away at while they're sitting there, and what actually are they doing? Craig Charles in particular looks really awkward and uncomfortable and just appears to be typing away because he thinks that's what you're supposed to do there, occasionally looking at the small screen nearby. Is he setting co-ordinates? Writing a novel? Playing speed solitaire? In the grand scheme of things it's not massively important, but the more time Lister and Rimmer spend in there the more I wonder what they're doing and if they've just been directed to look busy...

There's not a great deal more I can say really. That's the trouble with an episode you really enjoy from start to finish! It was very funny, well-paced, well-constructed. The crew all had plenty to do that was individual to themselves and there were some killer gags along the way.

Shame the series ends next week now things have picked up.