Sometimes it just happens this way. In 2011 we lost Nichaolas Courtney and Elizabeth Sladen in close succession, who played two of the most enduring characters in Doctor Who's history. Now in 2012 we've lost the two single-seasoners, Caroline John at 72 and now Mary Tamm at 62, both from cancer and both not so long-lived in terms of air time but no less loved in fan circles.
Thankfully, although most of the obituaries I've seen have picked on Doctor Who as her headline 'big role' they've generally put it into context within a long and varied career in films, TV and theatre. I, then, don't feel quite so bad about focussing only on her time as Romana in Doctor Who.
Mary Tamm was simply gorgeous - she'd make a potato sack look glam (and sexy!)
I know it's a shallow point of view, but it's the truth. She was also clearly very intelligent, savvy, focussed and capable - and that's essentially why she only did the one season of Doctor Who.
I have vivid memories of her time on the show from when I was a small boy - mainly cliffhangers, it must be said, presumably because they're usually the dramatic highpoints that stay in the memory from one week to the next (as Mary Whitehouse used to complain). I don't remember Leela leaving and I don't remember Romana arriving - these details weren't important to four year old me. It didn't matter who was travelling with the Doctor, it just mattered that they were his friend and that they had to be saved from the monsters or baddies. In many respects I think my juvenile thoughts matched the philosophy of the show at the time too - it was very much caught up in a format that worked for the viewer but didn't necessarily allow the actors involved much scope or variation. Coupled with that you have Tom Baker as a dominant leading man, very conscious of his status, not necessarily open to sharing the limelight too evenly and there's a show which some could argue would just go through the motions year after year unless something radical changed.
I think the 'Key To Time' umbrella theme was an attempt around this, but it's doomed to failure by the format, so it's never going to be a race against time or a single-minded quest, it's a ramble with a purpose. The Trial of a Time Lord eight years later was twelve parts shorter but still suffered in the same way and was ultimately just as unsuccessful, such was the hold of the old series format.
If you watch the new series you'll find that often the companion / assistant (there's a whole semantic argument there!) will either do something that drives the story forward or do something key to bring about the resolution. It didn't happen that often in the Classic series, as Romana's first two stories show. It could be argued, I suppose, that she's 'learning the ropes' in The Ribos Operation and The Pirate Planet, because Romana really comes into her own in The Stones of Blood and particularly The Androids of Tara - easily the character's (and Mary Tamm's) best story, and probably the most polished piece of the season. The Power of Kroll has the Doctor and Romana playing the double-act most of the time so Romana doesn't get to build on her Taran progress and The Armageddon Factor leaves her for too long with too little to do when it could have been a major showpiece for to end the season.
Mary Tamm often said she left because the show was too formulaic and there was nothing else for the character to do other than go through the motions again for another year, so there was nothing else for her to do as an actor other than go through the motions again for another year - which she didn't want to do. It's a shame, but you can't fault her logic and she wasn't at a point in her career when she could look on it as 'at least it's work'. I respect her a lot for that. She left behind quite a legacy though: six stories, interlinked and adding to the progressive mythos of the world of Doctor Who without relying on established continuity from previous seasons.
The Ribos Operation is a story that's really grown on me in recent viewings. Robert Holmes paints a very rich picture, with some wonderful characters. Paul Seed as the Graff Vynda-K steals the show with a perfectly pitched performance and some great eye acting. There's some nice material at the beginning where the Doctor and Romana are getting the measure of each other but it's sadly hampered by some dreadful editing or dreadful direction, it's not clear which. I'd favour the latter, since George Spenton-Foster seemed to struggle with TARDIS interior scenes in Image of The Fendahl the previous year. He also didn't know how to effectively shoot the shrivenzale either, or it wouldn't be seen as clearly as it is considering how convincing it isn't. Since she's just been allocated to assist the Doctor as a kind of job it would have been nice, I think, for Romana to have had a skill or piece of knowledge that helped them succeed in this first story - to give her more of an impact and to remind the Doctor why he needs a companion.
The Pirate Planet is another wonderful, energetic and witty script - this time from newcomer Douglas Adams (better watch out for him, he shows promise!) If you're going on script quality alone you'd have to agree Mary Tamm made the right decision to join the programme at this point - two excellent stories to start the season. The visuals sometimes fail to live up to the promise, but we're Doctor Who fans and by the left earlobe of the Sky Demon, Mr Fibuli, we can forgive that! Apart from a few nice moments on her own with Mr Fibuli and the Captain and the damaged field integrator, Romana is still at best learning to be the Doctor's companion / assitant here though, and reducing what's going on to an academic commentary rather than driving the story forward. Again this makes it difficult for the character to have much of an impact. Visually she's gorgeous, and we care for her as we do all the Doctor's friends, but it's the Pirate Captian and Mr Fibuli who steal the show this time around.
The Stones of Blood is Romana's coming of age story - as well as being the programme's 100th story. It's from another newby, David Fisher, but he pulls a real plumb out of the pie. It's got a bit of everything this story, and Romana's knowledge and independance are finally put to good use on the quest. Susan Engel is very controlled and underplays her role a lot so as not to draw too much attention to herself as baddie in disguise. Consequently Mary Tamm and Beatrix Lehmann shine.
This is continued into David Fisher's other contribution, The Androids of Tara, where a petulant Doctor decides to take a break for fishing and Romana shoots off and finds the fourth segment straight away - only then to get caught up in the politics of the land because she so closely resembles the Princess Strella. This is Peter Jeffrey's show, as the villainous Count Grendel, but Mary Tamm makes a considerable impact and you can tell she's appreciating being more central to the story, not an external commentator or passive agent. Having found the segment so early there's no sense of her wanting to head off while others are in danger - she's taken on the Doctor's values and is happy to stay and fight for the underdog.
The Power Of Kroll is Robert Holmes' second contribution to this season and has often been much-maligned. This is a shame as I for one love it and think it shows some of his best work. After the colourful character excesses of The Ribos Operation this one is much straighter, much more contained and with a real sense of menace at times. It doesn't offer Romana much to do except adopt the standard companion role, but it does ask some pertinent questions about the treatment of aboriginal peoples and deities in the line of alleged capitalist progress. It has some great film work and also offers John Leeson a rare on-screen role since K9 doesn't feature and he was already contracted. Kroll steals the show in this one! Graham Williams was a bold man, knowing how difficult it was to make convincing gigantic monsters yet still requesting one anyway. He'd think again the following year after Creature From The Pit though, I'm sure..!
That's five decent stories on the trot. The final one must be a cracking season finale mustn't it? Enter Bob Baker and Dave Martin. Hmmm...
The Armageddon Factor promises much but delivers hardly anything. Romana and the Doctor are parted for much of it but it's almost as if the writers didn't know what to do with Mary Tamm's character so they ignored her to focus on the 'funny' stuff they liked with the Doctor, K9 and the wet characters they'd created themselves. The Shadow is an excellent villain and shows much promise. The emaciated guards look good too. The Black Guardian when he appears is also fab - hence I suppose his return some years later. But the whole thing lacks drama, atmosphere and intensity. It's like people have given up, or they're mistaking the filming for the end of season party. Barry Jackson and Davyd Harries are almost unforgiveable in their unnecessarily comedic performances. Lalla Ward gets some nice moments but Ian Saynor as Merak just gets wetter and wetter as the episodes continue to a point beyond comprehension.
The shame is that there's enough ideas and promise in the mix to make this an amazing six parter, but somehow it just drags. It's hardly surprising, I think, given material of this quality, that Mary Tamm opted to leave and that's the biggest shame, going out on a whimper that could and should so easily have been a massive dramatic highpoint.
The 'Key To Time' season is known for the first use of an umbrella theme or story arc in the classic series, for bringing in Douglas Adams and for Mary Tamm. Whatever her motives for leaving, the fact that she's intrinsically linked to this one season makes it a shrewd move and has assured her a prominent place in the history of the prgramme. Her character was loved and continues to be loved. Even if she'd done nothing else in her professional career Mary was loved and she will continue to be loved by us all now that she's been taken from us.
Mary Tamm - thank you for those Saturday teatimes in 1978. They will live with me forever x
Sunday 29 July 2012
Tuesday 17 July 2012
Jon Lord - in memoriam
So, the legendary Jon Lord has passed on at the tender age of 71. I never met him, but I saw him perform live enough times to know that the recordings he laid down for posterity were a true reflection of his awesome talent.
I'm writing this while the DVD of the original 1969 Concerto for Group & Orchestra plays in the background - the perfect example of the worlds that Jon Lord straddles. Has he gone to join the great rock band in the sky, or the great orchestra in the sky? I suspect he's gone to shake things up a bit and get them all playing together instead!
I know the media is generally populist by nature, so all the obituaries are highlighting Smoke On The Water and the 'big' albums Machine Head and Deep Purple In Rock. It seems such a shame to reduce Jon Lord's talent and musical gift to being a co-writer of the track with 'that' riff, brilliant as it may be. That was Ritchie Blackmore's territory. Yes, Lord's ferocious and idiosyncratic playing revolutionised the role of the Hammond organ in the fledgling arena of rock / metal music, and he was the perfect foil to balance the brilliance of Blackmore on the other side of the stage in those early years. I think the world of music owes him a debt for that. Check out the way he rocks his organ and makes pure noise, both melodic and fitting within the context of the performance. Early live tracks such as Mandrake Root, Wring That Neck, Lazy and Speed King wouldn't have half the brilliance or excitement if it was only Ritchie Blackmore playing.
I stumbled upon Deep Purple as an early teen listening to rock music and looking for something more worthwhile than the over-produced MTV cock-rock of Bon Jovi, Def Leppard or Whitesnake. I found Led Zeppelin, which lead me to Deep Purple as contemporaries. I was also back-tracking a bit from Rainbow and Whitesnake and found Deep Purple again that way. My best mate had their limp 1988 live album Nobody's Perfect which sounded OK but didn't really shake our world. Then my dad bought a CD player and I decided to get something to play on it and the compilation 24 Carat Purple was a good price at the time. This was a mixture of early studio and live material and it really blew me away - particularly Speed King and the 1972 Japanese live versions of Smoke On The Water and Black Night. I was hooked. I loved Blackmore's virtuoso guitar and Gillan's powerful vocals. As I've got older I've grown to appreciate Jon Lord's contribution much more.
What has kept me faithful to Purple over the years is that on the whole I've enjoyed the other work that the band members have done outside of the group. The Purple 'family', if you will. Not so much Ian Gillan, I'll admit. Jon Lord's solo work outside of the group I've found to be the most mature, engaging and enjoyable. I'm not a fan of the work he did with Tony Ashton immediately post-Purple, but his years with Whitesnake showed a great discipline in a band much more rigidly controlled than Purple had been and he was instrumental (pun unavoidable) in their blues-rock sound before David Geffen got his hands on Coverdale's crotch and sent it Stateside to get glossy.
Lord's major contribution, and his eventual reason for leaving Deep Purple in 2002, is his classical work as both performer and composer. This is some of the music I value the most and, I suspect, was the work he was the most proud of.
There were dabbles in the late 60s with the Concerto and some of the early Purple album tracks have orchestral sections - check out Anthem on The Book of Taleisyn (1968) and April on Deep Purple (1969) which are both brilliant. (While you're at it, check out Blind on Deep Purple, a fabulous Lord solo-penned track with a great harpsichord sound.) I appreciate that after this time Purple were aiming at a full bodied rock / metal sound but it's a shame they didn't keep some of the variety these early albums show.
In the 70s we get The Gemini Suite (which nearly blew Deep Purple apart at the time) and some solo projects from Lord with 1974's Windows and the follow-up Sarabande (1975) - all good grounding for his return to the genre in the late 90s and onwards with Pictured Within (1999), Beyond The Notes (2004), The Durham Concerto (2007), Boom of the Tingling Strings (2008) and To Notice Such Things (2010). Most recently he's been working on a studio version of his original Concerto For Group and Orchestra. Already having two live versions of this (1969 & 1999) I doubt I'll rush out to get this; I haven't picked up the re-released studio version of The Gemini Suite either. The 1970 Purple live version is gorgeous enough, if understated. I'm a fan, but I can't afford to be a completist collector!
It's difficult for anyone with a major commercial contribution to the music industry to be remembered for anything more than that. I only hope that the more specialised media obituaries pay due respect to the wonderful classical work he has created, and remember that when he led Deep Purple down the Concerto path in 1969 it wasn't done as a gimmick, but as a real experiment. Many bands have done it since and many have done it as a fad or publicity stunt. The Concerto and the original Gemini Suite at the very least stand as major compositions of artistic integrity and major contributions to Twentieth Century music.
Many will mourn the fact that we'll never see Deep Purple MkII or MkIII reformed now. An era of possibility has ended. But we have what we have recorded for posterity.
Thank you Jon Lord, may your music live on forever.
I'm writing this while the DVD of the original 1969 Concerto for Group & Orchestra plays in the background - the perfect example of the worlds that Jon Lord straddles. Has he gone to join the great rock band in the sky, or the great orchestra in the sky? I suspect he's gone to shake things up a bit and get them all playing together instead!
I know the media is generally populist by nature, so all the obituaries are highlighting Smoke On The Water and the 'big' albums Machine Head and Deep Purple In Rock. It seems such a shame to reduce Jon Lord's talent and musical gift to being a co-writer of the track with 'that' riff, brilliant as it may be. That was Ritchie Blackmore's territory. Yes, Lord's ferocious and idiosyncratic playing revolutionised the role of the Hammond organ in the fledgling arena of rock / metal music, and he was the perfect foil to balance the brilliance of Blackmore on the other side of the stage in those early years. I think the world of music owes him a debt for that. Check out the way he rocks his organ and makes pure noise, both melodic and fitting within the context of the performance. Early live tracks such as Mandrake Root, Wring That Neck, Lazy and Speed King wouldn't have half the brilliance or excitement if it was only Ritchie Blackmore playing.
I stumbled upon Deep Purple as an early teen listening to rock music and looking for something more worthwhile than the over-produced MTV cock-rock of Bon Jovi, Def Leppard or Whitesnake. I found Led Zeppelin, which lead me to Deep Purple as contemporaries. I was also back-tracking a bit from Rainbow and Whitesnake and found Deep Purple again that way. My best mate had their limp 1988 live album Nobody's Perfect which sounded OK but didn't really shake our world. Then my dad bought a CD player and I decided to get something to play on it and the compilation 24 Carat Purple was a good price at the time. This was a mixture of early studio and live material and it really blew me away - particularly Speed King and the 1972 Japanese live versions of Smoke On The Water and Black Night. I was hooked. I loved Blackmore's virtuoso guitar and Gillan's powerful vocals. As I've got older I've grown to appreciate Jon Lord's contribution much more.
What has kept me faithful to Purple over the years is that on the whole I've enjoyed the other work that the band members have done outside of the group. The Purple 'family', if you will. Not so much Ian Gillan, I'll admit. Jon Lord's solo work outside of the group I've found to be the most mature, engaging and enjoyable. I'm not a fan of the work he did with Tony Ashton immediately post-Purple, but his years with Whitesnake showed a great discipline in a band much more rigidly controlled than Purple had been and he was instrumental (pun unavoidable) in their blues-rock sound before David Geffen got his hands on Coverdale's crotch and sent it Stateside to get glossy.
Lord's major contribution, and his eventual reason for leaving Deep Purple in 2002, is his classical work as both performer and composer. This is some of the music I value the most and, I suspect, was the work he was the most proud of.
There were dabbles in the late 60s with the Concerto and some of the early Purple album tracks have orchestral sections - check out Anthem on The Book of Taleisyn (1968) and April on Deep Purple (1969) which are both brilliant. (While you're at it, check out Blind on Deep Purple, a fabulous Lord solo-penned track with a great harpsichord sound.) I appreciate that after this time Purple were aiming at a full bodied rock / metal sound but it's a shame they didn't keep some of the variety these early albums show.
In the 70s we get The Gemini Suite (which nearly blew Deep Purple apart at the time) and some solo projects from Lord with 1974's Windows and the follow-up Sarabande (1975) - all good grounding for his return to the genre in the late 90s and onwards with Pictured Within (1999), Beyond The Notes (2004), The Durham Concerto (2007), Boom of the Tingling Strings (2008) and To Notice Such Things (2010). Most recently he's been working on a studio version of his original Concerto For Group and Orchestra. Already having two live versions of this (1969 & 1999) I doubt I'll rush out to get this; I haven't picked up the re-released studio version of The Gemini Suite either. The 1970 Purple live version is gorgeous enough, if understated. I'm a fan, but I can't afford to be a completist collector!
It's difficult for anyone with a major commercial contribution to the music industry to be remembered for anything more than that. I only hope that the more specialised media obituaries pay due respect to the wonderful classical work he has created, and remember that when he led Deep Purple down the Concerto path in 1969 it wasn't done as a gimmick, but as a real experiment. Many bands have done it since and many have done it as a fad or publicity stunt. The Concerto and the original Gemini Suite at the very least stand as major compositions of artistic integrity and major contributions to Twentieth Century music.
Many will mourn the fact that we'll never see Deep Purple MkII or MkIII reformed now. An era of possibility has ended. But we have what we have recorded for posterity.
Thank you Jon Lord, may your music live on forever.
Sunday 8 July 2012
A Doctor Who season in print: 26 - Ace high.
I may not have finished the 'New Adventures' yet, but at least I've now caught up with where they started after finishing the Season 26 Target novelisations. Things were starting to head the way of the NAs in Season 25 as the 'Cartmel Masterplan' got underway. Season 26 is as much about Ace as it is the Doctor. This produced some great TV at the time, but what happened to them when they got turned into novelisations..? I think they served to steer the Virgin ship firmly into the NA harbour...
So, this time around we have:
Battlefield, by Marc Platt (from the TV adventure by Ben Aaronovitch)
Ghost Light by Marc Platt (from his own TV adventure this time!)
The Curse of Fenric, by Ian Briggs, and
Survival, by Rona Munro
General note: excellent cover illustrations all round - top marks Alister Pearson.
Battlefield. This was the last of the season novelisations to be published (no. 152 in the Target Doctor Who library). This may have had something to do with Ben Aaronovitch struggling with it and eventually giving up and asking Marc Platt to write it instead. I'd have liked an introduction from either of them just to know if the embellishments are all Platt's work or based on discussions between the two - credit where credit's due, after all. I struggled with the start of this book in all honesty, so I can sympathise with Mr Aaronovitch. As I struggled with it I recalled that I'd struggled with it years ago as well. I don't know why particularly; it all adds flesh to the characters and settings, so maybe it's Marc Platt's prose that I was uncomfortable with? Target are pushing the length boundaries at last - this book clocks in at 172 pages, only 50 or so short of the early NAs. There are clear moments when TV dialogue is missing or paraphrased, or the story is adapated slightly rather than followed religiously, and this is to the benefit of the novel so it's not just a script to page translation. All the characters benefit from Platt's distanced consideration of what Aaronovitch had given them to say and do. We don't need all the dialogue, necessarily, (it helps not to hear McCoy's shouting, which is embarrassing at the best of times) and many reading the book would (like me) have an off-air video taped copy anyway. One particular point reading this, which is true for most of the season, is that there is background and contextualising information given about the characters and settings which enhance the enjoyment of the TV programme, but which were missing on screen. This means you can enjoy the TV version more having read the book, but this shouldn't be the case so that's a slapped wrist to the production team.
Ghost Light. If I had any concerns over Marc Platt's prose they vanished with this novelisation. It is brilliant. I can't fault the book, but it does make me fault the TV version for the reasons specified above! And it's little things too, like calling Josiah the 'Survey Agent' a bit more, to clarify his position in the crew. Platt said at the time that he wanted the TV version to be 'definitive' but he felt the book would be instead. That's true. The TV version is gorgeous and brilliant to watch, and the book is gorgeous and brilliant as well - just with some necessary explanations thrown in.
The Curse of Fenric. Wow. This season is just getting better and better. Here we have another story that was wonderful to watch on TV but too dense and rich for its four episodes. The book allows Ian Briggs the room to let the story breathe (at a whopping 188 pages no less!) and, since the books have been getting more and more 'grown up' of late, the author can allow two of his main characters to be gay on the page where this was avoided on TV - presumably because TV drama just wasn't 'going there' at that time. Again, there are little touches which would have assisted the viewer of the TV version - like revealing that the mysterious word INGIGER that the Ultima machine prints off at the end of episode three is in fact the name of the Ancient Haemovore. That's fine, so somebody needs to call him/her Ingiger and not the Ancient One all the time!!!
The Curse of Fenric is easily the most adult book of the range since David Whittaker's first Dalek story novelisation back in the 1960s. It shows them confidently heading in a new direction, one that would need the NAs for further fulfillment. But there are factors which prevent this book from being perfect. I would dispute that anyone, ever, would actually say the line 'Cor, look, Professor! It's a sprog!' (page 57) seriously in conversation, no matter what their background. It's no wonder it was changed in the TV version to a line with some kind of integrity. Also whilst I applaud Briggs for developing the homosexual side of Judson and Millington's relationship it messes up the end where the 'pawns' start working together. Millington now shoots Vershinnin dead, then shoots Bates when he enters afterwards. Bates' line to Ace, as he lies dying next to Vershinnin's corpse is therefore meaningless - the pawns had previously joined forces against Millington. In this version they haven't, yet Bates still says it so Ace can still go to Sorin and unwittingly reveal the winning chess move. It would have been easy enough for Millington to have been shot, but come round later and drag himself off to die at Judson's side.
Survival. On TV this was probably the best story of the season because, besides being a great story, it fitted it's allotted length and didn't hide any secrets away from the viewer. It's the most disappointing of the season's novelisations, though, which is a shame. Rona Munro has little to add beyond what was said and shown on screen - the nameless planet of the Cheetah People is not described with anything like the brilliance with which it was realised on TV, for example. After the rest of the season in print this is something of a letdown, really. There are some additional scenes, some character-building moments - and the latter part of the story is far more brutal than could have been shown on screen, but that's about it. As it's somewhat iconic now, I don't see why Munro didn't include Andrew Cartmel's final speech as the Doctor and Ace walk off into the distance. Her own ending does the same job, but it's bland and lacks charm. Since Peter Darvill-Evans adds a post-script warning readers that although there's no new TV Doctor Who planned there will be a few more Target books (mopping up the odds and ends of yester-year) and then a whole new range of 'New Adventures' in a year or so, it seems even more of a shame that we lose the lyrical final speech about them having work to do.
Bring on the Timewyrm!
So, this time around we have:
Battlefield, by Marc Platt (from the TV adventure by Ben Aaronovitch)
Ghost Light by Marc Platt (from his own TV adventure this time!)
The Curse of Fenric, by Ian Briggs, and
Survival, by Rona Munro
General note: excellent cover illustrations all round - top marks Alister Pearson.
Battlefield. This was the last of the season novelisations to be published (no. 152 in the Target Doctor Who library). This may have had something to do with Ben Aaronovitch struggling with it and eventually giving up and asking Marc Platt to write it instead. I'd have liked an introduction from either of them just to know if the embellishments are all Platt's work or based on discussions between the two - credit where credit's due, after all. I struggled with the start of this book in all honesty, so I can sympathise with Mr Aaronovitch. As I struggled with it I recalled that I'd struggled with it years ago as well. I don't know why particularly; it all adds flesh to the characters and settings, so maybe it's Marc Platt's prose that I was uncomfortable with? Target are pushing the length boundaries at last - this book clocks in at 172 pages, only 50 or so short of the early NAs. There are clear moments when TV dialogue is missing or paraphrased, or the story is adapated slightly rather than followed religiously, and this is to the benefit of the novel so it's not just a script to page translation. All the characters benefit from Platt's distanced consideration of what Aaronovitch had given them to say and do. We don't need all the dialogue, necessarily, (it helps not to hear McCoy's shouting, which is embarrassing at the best of times) and many reading the book would (like me) have an off-air video taped copy anyway. One particular point reading this, which is true for most of the season, is that there is background and contextualising information given about the characters and settings which enhance the enjoyment of the TV programme, but which were missing on screen. This means you can enjoy the TV version more having read the book, but this shouldn't be the case so that's a slapped wrist to the production team.
Ghost Light. If I had any concerns over Marc Platt's prose they vanished with this novelisation. It is brilliant. I can't fault the book, but it does make me fault the TV version for the reasons specified above! And it's little things too, like calling Josiah the 'Survey Agent' a bit more, to clarify his position in the crew. Platt said at the time that he wanted the TV version to be 'definitive' but he felt the book would be instead. That's true. The TV version is gorgeous and brilliant to watch, and the book is gorgeous and brilliant as well - just with some necessary explanations thrown in.
The Curse of Fenric. Wow. This season is just getting better and better. Here we have another story that was wonderful to watch on TV but too dense and rich for its four episodes. The book allows Ian Briggs the room to let the story breathe (at a whopping 188 pages no less!) and, since the books have been getting more and more 'grown up' of late, the author can allow two of his main characters to be gay on the page where this was avoided on TV - presumably because TV drama just wasn't 'going there' at that time. Again, there are little touches which would have assisted the viewer of the TV version - like revealing that the mysterious word INGIGER that the Ultima machine prints off at the end of episode three is in fact the name of the Ancient Haemovore. That's fine, so somebody needs to call him/her Ingiger and not the Ancient One all the time!!!
The Curse of Fenric is easily the most adult book of the range since David Whittaker's first Dalek story novelisation back in the 1960s. It shows them confidently heading in a new direction, one that would need the NAs for further fulfillment. But there are factors which prevent this book from being perfect. I would dispute that anyone, ever, would actually say the line 'Cor, look, Professor! It's a sprog!' (page 57) seriously in conversation, no matter what their background. It's no wonder it was changed in the TV version to a line with some kind of integrity. Also whilst I applaud Briggs for developing the homosexual side of Judson and Millington's relationship it messes up the end where the 'pawns' start working together. Millington now shoots Vershinnin dead, then shoots Bates when he enters afterwards. Bates' line to Ace, as he lies dying next to Vershinnin's corpse is therefore meaningless - the pawns had previously joined forces against Millington. In this version they haven't, yet Bates still says it so Ace can still go to Sorin and unwittingly reveal the winning chess move. It would have been easy enough for Millington to have been shot, but come round later and drag himself off to die at Judson's side.
Survival. On TV this was probably the best story of the season because, besides being a great story, it fitted it's allotted length and didn't hide any secrets away from the viewer. It's the most disappointing of the season's novelisations, though, which is a shame. Rona Munro has little to add beyond what was said and shown on screen - the nameless planet of the Cheetah People is not described with anything like the brilliance with which it was realised on TV, for example. After the rest of the season in print this is something of a letdown, really. There are some additional scenes, some character-building moments - and the latter part of the story is far more brutal than could have been shown on screen, but that's about it. As it's somewhat iconic now, I don't see why Munro didn't include Andrew Cartmel's final speech as the Doctor and Ace walk off into the distance. Her own ending does the same job, but it's bland and lacks charm. Since Peter Darvill-Evans adds a post-script warning readers that although there's no new TV Doctor Who planned there will be a few more Target books (mopping up the odds and ends of yester-year) and then a whole new range of 'New Adventures' in a year or so, it seems even more of a shame that we lose the lyrical final speech about them having work to do.
Bring on the Timewyrm!
Sherlock Holmes: selected stories from an imposed chronology
I've just finished reading the Oxford Classics collection Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories, edited with an introduction by S.C. Roberts.
I figured this must be an old collection, and I was right - first published 1951. Most academics these days aren't fustian enough to adopt their initials instead of their first names - plus it only works if you have two or three first names. I just have the one, so I would look silly. Alas, I can only aspire to the heady heights of ancient historian and sometime TV presenter A.J.P. Taylor, for example.
I was going to call this collection a non-academic read, a collection for those who just want to read the stories and to hell with the bibliogrphical aparatus that goes with it. S.C. Roberts certainly gives us none of that, or any explanatory notes to interrupt the flow. But in 1951 this could have been where Holmes studies were focussing at the time. In his introduction, Roberts presents us with a chronology of Holmes, a life story of him as a real person. The selection of stories is given to us as a snapshot of Holmes' life and career, covering much of the salient points and times of importance. We don't get A Study In Scarlet, or The Final Problem, although we appreciate the resolution of them through the other stories. What we do get is as follows:
Silver Blaze, The Speckled Band, The Sign of Four, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Naval Treaty, The Blue Carbuncle, The Greek Interpreter, The Red-Headed League, The Empty House, The Missing Three-Quarter and His Last Bow.
It's a fair and varied selection which shows that the stories aren't just about solving crimes and riddles, and how life isn't always a struggle against wickedness and evil - as in The Missing Three-Quarter. Sometimes the stories are more about 'fleshing out' the characters of Holmes or Watson, and solving the crime is just a side-effect, as with The Empty House.
I have seen various attempts to inflict a definite chronology on the Holmes stories, despite Conan Doyle himself having no real regard for it. There is an in-built desire in fans and enthusiasts to do this and, let's face it, it's Conan Doyle's fault for creating two characters that have so successfully leapt off the page and taken the public imagination by storm. They have to be treated as real people and we want to follow their lives through from their first meeting to the end of their lives or careers. It doesn't matter that the stories don't fit a clear chronology, we'll make them fit!
This Selected Stories is an attempt at just that, in line with the biographical introduction. It works here - but that's because it's only a selection. If one read this book first, before attacking the main body of work I fear the reader would be disappointed at the lack of obvious order the stories take in their collections, and where the novels fit in. But if it didn't matter to Conan Doyle why should it matter to us? Why can't we just take the stories as they are, as we encounter them? Why do we have to create lists? I guess it's an off-shoot of being a fan, you read these things over and over and then you naturally try to piece together the jigsaw of the lives of Holmes and Watson - it's now an in-built obsession of an age seeking definition and audibility in everything we do. The age of the statistician and book-keeper, the age of the nerd.
Whilst I really enjoyed the collection, I have to treat the rationale behind it with some scepticism. I feel that sixty one years after S.C. Roberts set out with his agenda maybe his work itself needs editing, or at least contextualising, to remind the innocent reader (possibly lured in by the brilliance of the recent BBC TV series) that they should enjoy the stories as stories, and not try to impose a biographical regime on the brilliantly haphazard world of art..? Let the reader make up their own mind, and be guided by Doctor Watson, not Doctor S.C.Holarly-Theory.
That's my view, anyway!
I figured this must be an old collection, and I was right - first published 1951. Most academics these days aren't fustian enough to adopt their initials instead of their first names - plus it only works if you have two or three first names. I just have the one, so I would look silly. Alas, I can only aspire to the heady heights of ancient historian and sometime TV presenter A.J.P. Taylor, for example.
I was going to call this collection a non-academic read, a collection for those who just want to read the stories and to hell with the bibliogrphical aparatus that goes with it. S.C. Roberts certainly gives us none of that, or any explanatory notes to interrupt the flow. But in 1951 this could have been where Holmes studies were focussing at the time. In his introduction, Roberts presents us with a chronology of Holmes, a life story of him as a real person. The selection of stories is given to us as a snapshot of Holmes' life and career, covering much of the salient points and times of importance. We don't get A Study In Scarlet, or The Final Problem, although we appreciate the resolution of them through the other stories. What we do get is as follows:
Silver Blaze, The Speckled Band, The Sign of Four, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Naval Treaty, The Blue Carbuncle, The Greek Interpreter, The Red-Headed League, The Empty House, The Missing Three-Quarter and His Last Bow.
It's a fair and varied selection which shows that the stories aren't just about solving crimes and riddles, and how life isn't always a struggle against wickedness and evil - as in The Missing Three-Quarter. Sometimes the stories are more about 'fleshing out' the characters of Holmes or Watson, and solving the crime is just a side-effect, as with The Empty House.
I have seen various attempts to inflict a definite chronology on the Holmes stories, despite Conan Doyle himself having no real regard for it. There is an in-built desire in fans and enthusiasts to do this and, let's face it, it's Conan Doyle's fault for creating two characters that have so successfully leapt off the page and taken the public imagination by storm. They have to be treated as real people and we want to follow their lives through from their first meeting to the end of their lives or careers. It doesn't matter that the stories don't fit a clear chronology, we'll make them fit!
This Selected Stories is an attempt at just that, in line with the biographical introduction. It works here - but that's because it's only a selection. If one read this book first, before attacking the main body of work I fear the reader would be disappointed at the lack of obvious order the stories take in their collections, and where the novels fit in. But if it didn't matter to Conan Doyle why should it matter to us? Why can't we just take the stories as they are, as we encounter them? Why do we have to create lists? I guess it's an off-shoot of being a fan, you read these things over and over and then you naturally try to piece together the jigsaw of the lives of Holmes and Watson - it's now an in-built obsession of an age seeking definition and audibility in everything we do. The age of the statistician and book-keeper, the age of the nerd.
Whilst I really enjoyed the collection, I have to treat the rationale behind it with some scepticism. I feel that sixty one years after S.C. Roberts set out with his agenda maybe his work itself needs editing, or at least contextualising, to remind the innocent reader (possibly lured in by the brilliance of the recent BBC TV series) that they should enjoy the stories as stories, and not try to impose a biographical regime on the brilliantly haphazard world of art..? Let the reader make up their own mind, and be guided by Doctor Watson, not Doctor S.C.Holarly-Theory.
That's my view, anyway!
Sunday 1 July 2012
Caroline John: Liz Shaw and the problems of being a Doctor Who companion
So, Caroline John is the first Doctor Who companion actor to pass away since I started this Blog. In fairness to Caroline I know she did a lot of work outside of Doctor Who but it is through the character of Doctor Elizabeth Shaw that most of us know her and have appreciated her as a performer - both in the 1970 TV series and in the P.R.O.B.E. videos of the 1990s, as well as more recently in the Big Finish Companion Chronicles CDs. I wanted to post something to honour Caroline's memory, but instead I found myself reconsidering Liz Shaw and the impact she had on the show.
I've recently re-watched Spearhead From Space and Inferno, read the Virgin 'Missing Adventures' The Eye of The Giant by Christopher Bulis and The Scales of Injustice by Gary Russell and also The Devil Goblins From Neptune by Keith Topping & Martin Day, which kicked off the BBC 'Past Doctor Adventures' range in 1997.
One thing is clear to me: Caroline John was a very capable actor and Elizabeth Shaw was a very capable character, but I don't think either of them were well-served by Doctor Who at the time. From the character's perspective this has been slightly rectified by the books. From the actor's and the character's perspectives the P.R.O.B.E. videos and the Big Finish Companion Chronicles have allowed both to shine more effectively outside of the format restrictions of Doctor Who.
There's any amount of discomfort about Caroline only getting a TV role because she sent Shaun Sutton a publicity shot of herself in a bikini, having worked for several years with the cream of the acting profession at the National Theatre and RSC. Janet Fielding would have a field day with that nugget. At least the BBC then didn't give her a bimbo role to play, so some ground was made up there. Enter Doctor Elizabeth Shaw, scientific advisor to UNIT - allegedly.
Season 7 of Doctor Who is famous for being unlike almost any other season in the show's original run, and vastly different from those that preceded it. Besides being in colour for the first time it's grittier, more serious and jam-packed with seven-part stories that both thrill the viewer and try the patience. Producer Derrick Sherwin decided that the Doctor should be exiled to Earth, so he'd need a family unit around him - UNIT in fact, which had been given a dry run the season before in The Invasion. Having set this up, Sherwin then moved on to other projects straight away, leaving incoming producer Barry Letts to pick up the pieces of his ideas and the rest the season. Letts didn't like the set up, neither did script editor Terrance Dicks who'd also served under Sherwin - that's not a good start.
I think the problem was that Sherwin's ideas were only half thought through: they'd restricted the format, not actually changed it. It's still recogniseably Doctor Who: the Doctor faces the dangers but they come to him, not him going to them, he now has an organisation behind him, but even so he still has a 'companion' to act as the viewer's reference. That could be anyone from UNIT, as it turns out it's an attractive young female. It's ensemble, but not ensemble enough, if you see what I mean - it's still Doctor Who not Torchwood.
Liz Shaw quickly becomes a victim of this format because her role within UNIT vanishes before she can even take it. She hasn't even got her feet under the lab bench before the Doctor arrives and effectively supercedes her, so she assumes the role of assistant, automatically fulfilling what the established format demands - which wasn't as proactive then as it could be. For example in Spearhead From Space in the waxworks museum Liz is happy to ask the Doctor if the models are really plastic when she could easily reach out and touch one and decide for herself. She's supposed to be an intelligent, proactive woman. That would still tell the audience that the models are plastic and we would still know what's going on, it doesn't have to come from the Doctor. It's a minor point, but it struck me on re-watching it because it shows unnecessary subserviency. The shame is that none of the Season 7 stories really make the best use of Liz as a character. She's hastily introduced in Spearhead From Space as an unwilling, slightly frosty recruit before the Doctor wakes up, but he's always going to be the main focus and she's not given much impact before the Doctor takes over in episode 3. Liz is bullied into answering the phones in Doctor Who and The Silurians rather than helping to find the cure for the plague. The Ambassadors of Death probably makes the best use of her, kidnapped for her skills to help the captured aliens. Inferno is largely considered the pick of the already excellent bunch, but she is very much the assistant in this and it's the worst story for Liz. The saving grace is the alternative universe material where Caroline gets to shine as an actor, playing the jack-booted Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw. It's something of a relief, I think, that they didn't try to tack a leaving scene on to the end of Inferno, as Liz didn't play a sufficiently significant role to justify it.
Gary Russell writes a very moving leaving scene for her at the end of The Scales of Injustice instead, having built it up throughout the book with some astute observations and offering Liz the chance to come out from the Doctor's shadow and do great work on her own. It's something of a shame, then, that The Devil Goblins From Neptune which is set after, was written after but comes from a different range, doesn't acknowledge this and bring Liz back in from some other work elsewhere. The latter is easily the best read of the three Season 7 books, but it's frustrating that it ignores earlier works and also disregards the received wisdom that UNIT stories take place a few years in the future. Everything in this book is 1970, so that's chronology out the window then!
Basically the format of the TV show in 1970, not having changed in essence, only in appearance, demanded a subservient companion - like Jo Grant - not necessarily female or weak, but someone who would take the role of the audience and needed certain things explaining. Derek Sherwin should have realised this and found a way around putting Liz Shaw in that role, which was not in her character. Barry Letts came in, reviewed what he'd been left with, decided what he could do with it and set about changing it so that it fitted his ideas instead. Result: we lost Liz Shaw and the stories got less gritty.
I believe the character of Liz was an unfortunate victim of the show trying to find it's new direction and of ideas not being fully thought through before being put into practice. She would have worked much better as a colleague occasionally brought in for assistance or given her own subplots to follow if the UNIT idea was more fully developed as an ensemble. But the character clearly struck a chord with fans and she has endured in her own spin-offs. This is much down to the performance of Caroline John as it is to those who created the character and wrote for her.
In the original novels the authors are keen to show Liz using her skills and her knowledge to both assist the Doctor and to drive the stories forward. She gets subplots doing her own thing, and also gets decent character moments showing a life outside UNIT and pondering whether she's getting the most out of a life as second fiddle to the Doctor. As an actor Caroline John was clearly thinking the same as she came to the end of her year's contract and decided she wouldn't be back for another series (baby notwithstanding) - although Barry Letts had made his decision regardless of these factors anyway.
It's interesting to note something similar happened several years later when Mary Tamm had the same experience as Romana. The format of the show, then, wouldn't allow for the companion to stand at the same level as the Doctor. That started to change with the 7th Doctor and Ace and is very much the case with the new series on TV. It's striking the balance between the audience having the necessary information they need and allowing the companions to be more than mere ciphers.
I'm glad that Liz Shaw got to be more than that eventually, and that Caroline John could make that journey with her. Thank you for those times.
I've recently re-watched Spearhead From Space and Inferno, read the Virgin 'Missing Adventures' The Eye of The Giant by Christopher Bulis and The Scales of Injustice by Gary Russell and also The Devil Goblins From Neptune by Keith Topping & Martin Day, which kicked off the BBC 'Past Doctor Adventures' range in 1997.
One thing is clear to me: Caroline John was a very capable actor and Elizabeth Shaw was a very capable character, but I don't think either of them were well-served by Doctor Who at the time. From the character's perspective this has been slightly rectified by the books. From the actor's and the character's perspectives the P.R.O.B.E. videos and the Big Finish Companion Chronicles have allowed both to shine more effectively outside of the format restrictions of Doctor Who.
There's any amount of discomfort about Caroline only getting a TV role because she sent Shaun Sutton a publicity shot of herself in a bikini, having worked for several years with the cream of the acting profession at the National Theatre and RSC. Janet Fielding would have a field day with that nugget. At least the BBC then didn't give her a bimbo role to play, so some ground was made up there. Enter Doctor Elizabeth Shaw, scientific advisor to UNIT - allegedly.
Season 7 of Doctor Who is famous for being unlike almost any other season in the show's original run, and vastly different from those that preceded it. Besides being in colour for the first time it's grittier, more serious and jam-packed with seven-part stories that both thrill the viewer and try the patience. Producer Derrick Sherwin decided that the Doctor should be exiled to Earth, so he'd need a family unit around him - UNIT in fact, which had been given a dry run the season before in The Invasion. Having set this up, Sherwin then moved on to other projects straight away, leaving incoming producer Barry Letts to pick up the pieces of his ideas and the rest the season. Letts didn't like the set up, neither did script editor Terrance Dicks who'd also served under Sherwin - that's not a good start.
I think the problem was that Sherwin's ideas were only half thought through: they'd restricted the format, not actually changed it. It's still recogniseably Doctor Who: the Doctor faces the dangers but they come to him, not him going to them, he now has an organisation behind him, but even so he still has a 'companion' to act as the viewer's reference. That could be anyone from UNIT, as it turns out it's an attractive young female. It's ensemble, but not ensemble enough, if you see what I mean - it's still Doctor Who not Torchwood.
Liz Shaw quickly becomes a victim of this format because her role within UNIT vanishes before she can even take it. She hasn't even got her feet under the lab bench before the Doctor arrives and effectively supercedes her, so she assumes the role of assistant, automatically fulfilling what the established format demands - which wasn't as proactive then as it could be. For example in Spearhead From Space in the waxworks museum Liz is happy to ask the Doctor if the models are really plastic when she could easily reach out and touch one and decide for herself. She's supposed to be an intelligent, proactive woman. That would still tell the audience that the models are plastic and we would still know what's going on, it doesn't have to come from the Doctor. It's a minor point, but it struck me on re-watching it because it shows unnecessary subserviency. The shame is that none of the Season 7 stories really make the best use of Liz as a character. She's hastily introduced in Spearhead From Space as an unwilling, slightly frosty recruit before the Doctor wakes up, but he's always going to be the main focus and she's not given much impact before the Doctor takes over in episode 3. Liz is bullied into answering the phones in Doctor Who and The Silurians rather than helping to find the cure for the plague. The Ambassadors of Death probably makes the best use of her, kidnapped for her skills to help the captured aliens. Inferno is largely considered the pick of the already excellent bunch, but she is very much the assistant in this and it's the worst story for Liz. The saving grace is the alternative universe material where Caroline gets to shine as an actor, playing the jack-booted Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw. It's something of a relief, I think, that they didn't try to tack a leaving scene on to the end of Inferno, as Liz didn't play a sufficiently significant role to justify it.
Gary Russell writes a very moving leaving scene for her at the end of The Scales of Injustice instead, having built it up throughout the book with some astute observations and offering Liz the chance to come out from the Doctor's shadow and do great work on her own. It's something of a shame, then, that The Devil Goblins From Neptune which is set after, was written after but comes from a different range, doesn't acknowledge this and bring Liz back in from some other work elsewhere. The latter is easily the best read of the three Season 7 books, but it's frustrating that it ignores earlier works and also disregards the received wisdom that UNIT stories take place a few years in the future. Everything in this book is 1970, so that's chronology out the window then!
Basically the format of the TV show in 1970, not having changed in essence, only in appearance, demanded a subservient companion - like Jo Grant - not necessarily female or weak, but someone who would take the role of the audience and needed certain things explaining. Derek Sherwin should have realised this and found a way around putting Liz Shaw in that role, which was not in her character. Barry Letts came in, reviewed what he'd been left with, decided what he could do with it and set about changing it so that it fitted his ideas instead. Result: we lost Liz Shaw and the stories got less gritty.
I believe the character of Liz was an unfortunate victim of the show trying to find it's new direction and of ideas not being fully thought through before being put into practice. She would have worked much better as a colleague occasionally brought in for assistance or given her own subplots to follow if the UNIT idea was more fully developed as an ensemble. But the character clearly struck a chord with fans and she has endured in her own spin-offs. This is much down to the performance of Caroline John as it is to those who created the character and wrote for her.
In the original novels the authors are keen to show Liz using her skills and her knowledge to both assist the Doctor and to drive the stories forward. She gets subplots doing her own thing, and also gets decent character moments showing a life outside UNIT and pondering whether she's getting the most out of a life as second fiddle to the Doctor. As an actor Caroline John was clearly thinking the same as she came to the end of her year's contract and decided she wouldn't be back for another series (baby notwithstanding) - although Barry Letts had made his decision regardless of these factors anyway.
It's interesting to note something similar happened several years later when Mary Tamm had the same experience as Romana. The format of the show, then, wouldn't allow for the companion to stand at the same level as the Doctor. That started to change with the 7th Doctor and Ace and is very much the case with the new series on TV. It's striking the balance between the audience having the necessary information they need and allowing the companions to be more than mere ciphers.
I'm glad that Liz Shaw got to be more than that eventually, and that Caroline John could make that journey with her. Thank you for those times.
Charlton Heston in Planet of The Apes: all-American hero or image model for the Bee Gees?
An episode of The Simpsons shown during last week has Selma marry Troy McClure (you may remember him from such things as...) who subsequently gets the Charlton Heston role in a musical theatre version of Planet of The Apes. It's an excellent episode and the rendition of Falco's Rock Me Amadeus 'Dr Zaius, Dr Zaius' is brilliantly memorable - if not annoyingly so!
Having seen this it seemed apt to re-watch the original film, which I hadn't watched for a few years now and my wife had never seen. I recalled being struck by the bleakness of the early part of the film and the long scenes and landscape pans which I don't think you'd get nowadays with Hollywood's penchant for pace and continuous cutting. I appreciated all that again this time, and the fact that it's nearly 25 minutes in before you see anyone other than the spaceship crew, but what struck me most this time was what an unsavoury, posturing caricature Charlton Heston is - and I can't understand why I'd never realised it before!
Turner's an American 'jock', a braggart, clearly perceptive and intelligent; basically one of those guys who's good at sports and just about everything, and gets lots of sex to boot - the rest of us can only despise him. While he drags on his cigars and tells his fellow crewmen why they're crap and he isn't the viewer can only imagine the hell of being stuck on a long space journey with this person who is less a character and more a collection of opinions and role-playing characteristics performed with gusto, great teeth and pert buttocks.
Poor old Landon - he's the interesting one, the guy who didn't want to go but didn't have the guts not to go; the one who's missing his family and has to suffer unrealistic facial hair and what increasingly looks like a toupee the longer he stays on screen. He gets lobotomised, while the other crewmember, Dodge, ends up as a taxidermist's model on display in one of the film's most unsettling scenes. But they're not box office are they - or at least they weren't in 1968. The world wants to see macho, the world wants to see Charlton Heston in a loin cloth.
There's hardly a single line of Taylor's dialogue (either clothed or unclothed) that's driven with any believable emotion or passion. This is clear from the film's two most famous lines:
'Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!' which, as my wife pointed out, was not the most sensible thing he could have said at the time, and
'You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!'
Or maybe with the second quote it's just the way he delivers it? Internalised it might have been very strong, but he yells it like he expects the Statue of Liberty to agree with him.
His bragging about women while he's imprisoned is uncomfortable listening now, whereas I'm sure in the mysogynist late 60s it was fine - although his thoughts on how Ms Stuart may have ended up being 'used' by her three 'Adams' if she'd survived the journey is presumably more perceptive than NASA's when they sent a crew of three middle-aged males and one youthful, attractive blonde female. He's not too randy a bugger though - he seems to be waiting for after the end of the film before he shows Nova his manliness. He won't mate on demand for the enjoyment of the apes, but he still keeps his 'woman' close by for the remainder, in case he does get the urge. That's good forward planning.
Watching Turner as he postures around the bleak landscape, all tanned and grinning his perfect teeth, golden locks a-flowing, it suddenly occurred to me that he looks like a combination of all the Bee Gees rolled into one. The only possible conclusion from this is that the brothers Gibb saw Planet of The Apes around the time of its original release and decided that this was the look for them when they re-invented themselves in the mid-70s. Therefore disco can be completely blamed on Charlton Heston.
Overall it's a highly entertaining film - but possibly not for the reasons Franklin J. Schaffner intended. Turner character and dialogue aside, the apes look excellent and are surprisingly expressive and facially characterful. Occasionally Roddy McDowell sounds like he's talking out of a rubber mask but Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans never do and are particularly good.
I guess the best thing about the film is the cinematography. It looks gorgeous, it's all so bleak and ravaged and hopeless - although if that's only 1200 years in the future you'd expect there to be more signs of man's previous existence seeing we've made such an impact on our environment. Perhaps our downfall was a natural one, which returned the planet to a more pure, natural state? If so that would hint that man was not the architect of his own downfall, which is what the film suggests.
Certainly you wouldn't expect a civilisation made up of Turners to survive - after all, once they've shagged all the good looking women and smoked all the cigars and run out of 'nerds' to bully, what else are they going to do but blow themselves up?!
Having seen this it seemed apt to re-watch the original film, which I hadn't watched for a few years now and my wife had never seen. I recalled being struck by the bleakness of the early part of the film and the long scenes and landscape pans which I don't think you'd get nowadays with Hollywood's penchant for pace and continuous cutting. I appreciated all that again this time, and the fact that it's nearly 25 minutes in before you see anyone other than the spaceship crew, but what struck me most this time was what an unsavoury, posturing caricature Charlton Heston is - and I can't understand why I'd never realised it before!
Turner's an American 'jock', a braggart, clearly perceptive and intelligent; basically one of those guys who's good at sports and just about everything, and gets lots of sex to boot - the rest of us can only despise him. While he drags on his cigars and tells his fellow crewmen why they're crap and he isn't the viewer can only imagine the hell of being stuck on a long space journey with this person who is less a character and more a collection of opinions and role-playing characteristics performed with gusto, great teeth and pert buttocks.
Poor old Landon - he's the interesting one, the guy who didn't want to go but didn't have the guts not to go; the one who's missing his family and has to suffer unrealistic facial hair and what increasingly looks like a toupee the longer he stays on screen. He gets lobotomised, while the other crewmember, Dodge, ends up as a taxidermist's model on display in one of the film's most unsettling scenes. But they're not box office are they - or at least they weren't in 1968. The world wants to see macho, the world wants to see Charlton Heston in a loin cloth.
There's hardly a single line of Taylor's dialogue (either clothed or unclothed) that's driven with any believable emotion or passion. This is clear from the film's two most famous lines:
'Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!' which, as my wife pointed out, was not the most sensible thing he could have said at the time, and
'You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!'
Or maybe with the second quote it's just the way he delivers it? Internalised it might have been very strong, but he yells it like he expects the Statue of Liberty to agree with him.
His bragging about women while he's imprisoned is uncomfortable listening now, whereas I'm sure in the mysogynist late 60s it was fine - although his thoughts on how Ms Stuart may have ended up being 'used' by her three 'Adams' if she'd survived the journey is presumably more perceptive than NASA's when they sent a crew of three middle-aged males and one youthful, attractive blonde female. He's not too randy a bugger though - he seems to be waiting for after the end of the film before he shows Nova his manliness. He won't mate on demand for the enjoyment of the apes, but he still keeps his 'woman' close by for the remainder, in case he does get the urge. That's good forward planning.
Watching Turner as he postures around the bleak landscape, all tanned and grinning his perfect teeth, golden locks a-flowing, it suddenly occurred to me that he looks like a combination of all the Bee Gees rolled into one. The only possible conclusion from this is that the brothers Gibb saw Planet of The Apes around the time of its original release and decided that this was the look for them when they re-invented themselves in the mid-70s. Therefore disco can be completely blamed on Charlton Heston.
Overall it's a highly entertaining film - but possibly not for the reasons Franklin J. Schaffner intended. Turner character and dialogue aside, the apes look excellent and are surprisingly expressive and facially characterful. Occasionally Roddy McDowell sounds like he's talking out of a rubber mask but Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans never do and are particularly good.
I guess the best thing about the film is the cinematography. It looks gorgeous, it's all so bleak and ravaged and hopeless - although if that's only 1200 years in the future you'd expect there to be more signs of man's previous existence seeing we've made such an impact on our environment. Perhaps our downfall was a natural one, which returned the planet to a more pure, natural state? If so that would hint that man was not the architect of his own downfall, which is what the film suggests.
Certainly you wouldn't expect a civilisation made up of Turners to survive - after all, once they've shagged all the good looking women and smoked all the cigars and run out of 'nerds' to bully, what else are they going to do but blow themselves up?!
Catching up with the New Adventures...
I continue to make my way slowly through the Virgin Doctor Who 'New Adventures' books from the early-mid 1990s. I only read about a dozen of them back in the day - something of a random selection that I picked up or borrowed. I was probably the right age for them at the time too, being a late teenager when Virgin started publishing them. Some of them were great, but not enough (I felt at the time) and they didn't reflect the TV programme I'd grown to love, so I thought. When Seasons 25 & 26 had raised the bar considerably in terms of TV Who it's surprising now when I look back on it all to see how quickly in print form I fell out of love with the scheming 7th Doctor and particularly Ace. They still frustrate me at times now too, but I'm mature or patient enough to bear with them and see where the books are going. Conflict alone does not make good drama - particularly when it involves empowered adults who are able to make choices and decisions that could end that conflict. I think that's when I get most frustrated with Ace...
Anyway...
Recently I've completed the story arc from Jim Mortimore's Blood Heat to Paul Cornell's No Future. It's embodies considerable conflict but it's probably the most satisfactory of the arcs so far.
The Timewyrm books were, no doubt, slightly hampered by being the first of the range and needing to bring the readers in without being too far off the mark from the recent Target novelisations. So they're considerably shorter than later efforts. John Peel's Genesys is a competent piece without being challenging. Terrance Dicks' Exodus is wonderful - a great read and a great story. Nigel Robinson's Apocalypse, on the other hand, is simply dreadful, 200 pages of woefulness and a firm contender for the worst book of the range. The only thing that may save it is that it's so short. Paul Cornell's Revelation I despised at the time, and it put me off the range completely at a very early stage. I found it to be unrecognisable babble. I wasn't in to high concept science fiction so this was just total nonsense to me. Thank God for second opinions. This time around I adored it!
Because of my adverse reaction to Timewyrm: Revelation I didn't go anywhere near the Cat's Cradle trilogy. Looking back now I'm glad. I think Marc Platt's Time's Crucible, deconstructing the TARDIS in a similar way to how the Doctor had been deconstructed in Paul Cornell's book, would have been too much for me to cope with. It was a tough read now. But there's a clear message that these books aren't just telling stories, they're exploring concepts and relationships as well. Andrew Cartmel's Warhead I also struggled with. I didn't recognise his versions of the Doctor or Ace and I didn't get where the reader's sympathies are supposed to be. That said, I'd happily go back and read it again rather than just dismiss it out of hand. Online reviews had led me to believe that Andrew Hunt's Witch Mark was brilliant, the true start of the 'New Adventures'. Hmmm. Not so for this reader. I have issues with stories that take the Doctor Who world into faerie-type lands where there's 'magic' and other powers that don't relate to 'our' world. I didn't enjoy this or David McIntee's Autumn Mist in the BBC Eighth Doctor range. Paul Cornell's EDA Shadows of Avalon is another tricky one, and Torchwood did it on TV in Small Worlds in season one. But I'm aware that this is an issue of personal taste and comfort and I can't use it as a basis to criticise competent writers, so I won't. They're well-written and intelligent books, I just don't like the concepts.
Filled with hope from all the positivity surrounding Mark Gatiss' Nightshade this is another one that I bought at the time. This is also another one that really disappointed me at the time, but goodness only knows why because I couldn't put it down this time! A wonderful addition to the range. I think what I may have disliked first time around was the programme being meta-textual, with Nightshade clearly being Doctor Who itself. I think all that does is highlight inadequacies in myself from the time...
Paul Cornell's second outing is another one that I will have to go back and visit again in the future. Love and War never quite did it for me in the way that I expected it would. Nightshade ends on such a good note, almost a cliffhanger, that it's disappointing not to find Love and War continuing directly from there. I was, however, glad to see Ace leave at the end even if I wasn't entirely convinced why Bernice Summerfield would want to go off with the Doctor.
I can see what Ben Aaronovitch was trying to do with Transit, but I still didn't like it! It's an attempt to write a Doctor Who cyberpunk novel, in the style of William Gibson and the Neuromancer stories. My biggest frustration with it was that Benny has so little to do having only just joined the Doctor. Wham, she's out at the beginning and then back at the end. It's a book that assumes that it'll be read a few times, I believe, and that readers will get more out of it with subsequent readings as they know where it's going and understand what's going on. Maybe. Trouble is, it needs to make you want to re-read it and Transit doesn't. It also, I think, assumes that only Doctor Who fans are buying the NAs, not general sci-fi readers. This is probably true, but still a dangerous conceit in my view.
I seem to have read an awful lot of Gareth Roberts books of late. The Highest Science was his first and was also the first of his old ones that I picked up. It's refreshing to get to know Benny a bit more at last, and the slightly humorous, slightly rubbishy but still dangerous Chelonians. I feel that this novel is trying a bit too hard and consequently doesn't really impress as much as it should. One only has to pick up any of his 'Missing Adventures' to see Roberts in full, confident flow and they're much better for it.
The Pit. Oh dear. Online reviews had led me to expect little from this book and on this occasion they were right. I had to have a break from the NAs after this dreadful effort from Neil Penswick. Another strong contender for worst of the range. It had no spark, no energy, just dull prose - possibly inflated with its own sense of (misguided) self-importance.
Deceit finds range editor Peter Darvill-Evans publishing a belated manifesto for the NAs and laying down some ground rules. Presumably it had taken publication of a dozen or so titles for them to decide on this manifesto. It's a good, solid sci-fi read and shows that, at a basic level, the range is sturdy and reliable. Ace is back, with less of the annoying Professors and 'bog off bilge-breaths' of yester-tales, but still with issues - oh joy, oh rapture. Now she's a sexy killer and weapons expert in figure-hugging body armour. She still doesn't trust the Doctor and she clearly doesn't like Benny very much, but she decides to stay with them anyway. I don't think this can be truly reconciled from any of their perspectives - they all have to need each other somehow, and we need to know that - so we have to take it as a given. I just hope the range doesn't force too many of these on us.
I think 'sturdy' and 'solid' are the only way I can describe the next few books too. Lucifer Rising, White Darkness and Shadowmind were all enjoyable reads but with nothing outstanding in my view. This is good for the range, if not necessarily for the individual authors who need to find that something 'extra' to take their work above the reliable base level set so far.
Birthright was another book I picked up at the time, because I bought Iceberg (thanks to the lure of the Cybermen!) and I remember as I started reading Iceberg it became obvious I should read Birthright first, since they're connected. Unlike the others I revisited, I didn't enjoy Birthright as much this time - but I can't explain why. It's one that I've read several times over the years and always enjoyed before. Nigel Robinson has certainly made a better hash of it than he did with Timewyrm: Apocalypse, and it's very atmospheric in places if still a little short and spartan at times. This may have to go down as a Gambrell mystery...
And while Benny and Ace are off 'bonding' on a distant world the Doctor has gone off with another bit of the TARDIS to make a new friend and battle some frozen Cybermen left over from The Tenth Planet. David Banks was very much Mr Cyber at the time and Iceberg is a pretty decent read in my opinion, taking it above the level of its immediate predecessors. Based on this I'd like to know why Banks didn't write any further books for the range.
This brings me to the next 'story arc', which thankfully didn't have an umbrella title so it feels less formal. The resolution of this arc has been something of a long-standing mystery to me, since I picked up Blood Heat and The Dimension Riders cheap in a charity shop years ago, and was leant The Left-Handed Hummingbird but didn't get to grips with the others until recently!
Blood Heat: this is great. Sometimes I think it's just ticking boxes - like the inclusion of Jo Grant, but in the main it's a cracking read and it's a tribute to Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks that the Silurians and Sea Devils have been so successfully fleshed out in other fiction from the basic characters and civilisation they laid down in the early 1970s.
The Dimension Riders feels at times like Shada from an Oxford perspective but again it's a great book and the cover is particularly brilliant. This is another title I've enjoyed each time I've re-read it.
Kate Orman is one of those NA authors that posterity has already taught us we must love. The Left-Handed Hummingbird is still the only one of her NAs that I've read, although I've read all her (and Jon Blum's) EDAs. There's a kind of a theme here, but the first time I read this about 5 or 6 years ago I struggled with it and really couldn't see what the fuss was about. This time I adored it and zipped through it like nobody's business - not always pronouncing each syllable of the Aztec names to myself, I will admit! Again, I can't explain why I enjoyed it the second time around. Maybe it is purely a familiarity thing?
Steve Lyons was up next. Recent experiences with Steve's work had not been favourable: The Space Age was a weak addition to the EDAs (a short story at best, stretched to novel length) and his 6th Doctor & Grant MAs Time of Your Life and Killing Ground were pretty awful. Conundrum was his first Who novel and is thankfully much better. It's full of energy and life, and plays with the reader as an active character which is a refreshing change considering how introspective most of the NAs have been up to this point. But that's Lyons using the print medium as a key aspect of his story, not just as the means to tell his story. What the reader comes to question after a while, though, is - to whom is the 'author' writing this? Who is the story for? This is a textual intrigue that leads the reader into the final chapter of the arc...
Paul Cornell is back for a third stab at the NAs with No Future to close this arc, so expect emotion, depth, drama and conflict. That's pretty much what we do get. What we also get is an apparent total breakdown in the relationship between Ace and the Doctor and the return of the Meddling Monk - now given a proper name, Mortimus. This is another excellent book and the bar has clearly been raised from Iceberg onwards so the range authors will have to work hard to maintain this quality if excellent is to remain the base standard.
There were times during much of this story arc where I was questionning why Benny and Ace would stay with the Doctor if they both hated him (and each other) so much. The issue gets raised, but never concluded and the more it arises the less of an impact it has if nothing results from it. It's interesting that my allegiance all the time was with the Doctor - it's him I relate to and sympathise with, not the companions. Their emotional responses and issues were often difficult to rationalise with the lives they'd chosen to live. That's why simply having 'conflict' in these books doesn't always provide drama or make them challenging and powerful reads - the conflict has to go somewhere, even if it's away, and be resolved otherwise it becomes dull and predictable or just plain annoying as the bickering between the 6th Doctor and Peri did on TV in Season 22.
It was rewarding, then, to find that Cornell, even though writing a third-person narrative, had deliberately not allowed the reader access to all of Ace and the Doctor's thoughts or faithfully reported all the goings on and all that was said, so it is a pleasant surprise at the end when it all works out and everyone seems to be happy and friends again. Nice coup Mr Unreliable Narrator!
It's even more rewarding, and refreshing, to begin Gareth Roberts' Tragedy Day with the TARDIS crew still smiling and friends, as they should be if they're adventuring together. It comes like a breath of fresh air, as if a terrible weight has been lifted from the NAs. These changes are necessary to give the range life and keep it fresh - too much of the same month on month and it becomes banal and unbelieveable. Drama isn't built out of conflict, it's the mixture of light, darkness and shade. Gareth Roberts gives us a little bit of all of these in his second NA, but to be honest I think there's a little too much in the mix in this book. It's not a bad book - and better than The Highest Science - but it's not quite at the same level as the previous half dozen NAs. He writes for the regulars very well, but I was expecting an additional twist towards the end that never came and the mix of humour and drama never quite felt comfortable - unlike in his MAs and his new series scripts where it has worked very well.
And that's as far as I've got so far. Next up is Gary Russell's Legacy. Looks like I'm off back to Peladon for a bit then...
Anyway...
Recently I've completed the story arc from Jim Mortimore's Blood Heat to Paul Cornell's No Future. It's embodies considerable conflict but it's probably the most satisfactory of the arcs so far.
The Timewyrm books were, no doubt, slightly hampered by being the first of the range and needing to bring the readers in without being too far off the mark from the recent Target novelisations. So they're considerably shorter than later efforts. John Peel's Genesys is a competent piece without being challenging. Terrance Dicks' Exodus is wonderful - a great read and a great story. Nigel Robinson's Apocalypse, on the other hand, is simply dreadful, 200 pages of woefulness and a firm contender for the worst book of the range. The only thing that may save it is that it's so short. Paul Cornell's Revelation I despised at the time, and it put me off the range completely at a very early stage. I found it to be unrecognisable babble. I wasn't in to high concept science fiction so this was just total nonsense to me. Thank God for second opinions. This time around I adored it!
Because of my adverse reaction to Timewyrm: Revelation I didn't go anywhere near the Cat's Cradle trilogy. Looking back now I'm glad. I think Marc Platt's Time's Crucible, deconstructing the TARDIS in a similar way to how the Doctor had been deconstructed in Paul Cornell's book, would have been too much for me to cope with. It was a tough read now. But there's a clear message that these books aren't just telling stories, they're exploring concepts and relationships as well. Andrew Cartmel's Warhead I also struggled with. I didn't recognise his versions of the Doctor or Ace and I didn't get where the reader's sympathies are supposed to be. That said, I'd happily go back and read it again rather than just dismiss it out of hand. Online reviews had led me to believe that Andrew Hunt's Witch Mark was brilliant, the true start of the 'New Adventures'. Hmmm. Not so for this reader. I have issues with stories that take the Doctor Who world into faerie-type lands where there's 'magic' and other powers that don't relate to 'our' world. I didn't enjoy this or David McIntee's Autumn Mist in the BBC Eighth Doctor range. Paul Cornell's EDA Shadows of Avalon is another tricky one, and Torchwood did it on TV in Small Worlds in season one. But I'm aware that this is an issue of personal taste and comfort and I can't use it as a basis to criticise competent writers, so I won't. They're well-written and intelligent books, I just don't like the concepts.
Filled with hope from all the positivity surrounding Mark Gatiss' Nightshade this is another one that I bought at the time. This is also another one that really disappointed me at the time, but goodness only knows why because I couldn't put it down this time! A wonderful addition to the range. I think what I may have disliked first time around was the programme being meta-textual, with Nightshade clearly being Doctor Who itself. I think all that does is highlight inadequacies in myself from the time...
Paul Cornell's second outing is another one that I will have to go back and visit again in the future. Love and War never quite did it for me in the way that I expected it would. Nightshade ends on such a good note, almost a cliffhanger, that it's disappointing not to find Love and War continuing directly from there. I was, however, glad to see Ace leave at the end even if I wasn't entirely convinced why Bernice Summerfield would want to go off with the Doctor.
I can see what Ben Aaronovitch was trying to do with Transit, but I still didn't like it! It's an attempt to write a Doctor Who cyberpunk novel, in the style of William Gibson and the Neuromancer stories. My biggest frustration with it was that Benny has so little to do having only just joined the Doctor. Wham, she's out at the beginning and then back at the end. It's a book that assumes that it'll be read a few times, I believe, and that readers will get more out of it with subsequent readings as they know where it's going and understand what's going on. Maybe. Trouble is, it needs to make you want to re-read it and Transit doesn't. It also, I think, assumes that only Doctor Who fans are buying the NAs, not general sci-fi readers. This is probably true, but still a dangerous conceit in my view.
I seem to have read an awful lot of Gareth Roberts books of late. The Highest Science was his first and was also the first of his old ones that I picked up. It's refreshing to get to know Benny a bit more at last, and the slightly humorous, slightly rubbishy but still dangerous Chelonians. I feel that this novel is trying a bit too hard and consequently doesn't really impress as much as it should. One only has to pick up any of his 'Missing Adventures' to see Roberts in full, confident flow and they're much better for it.
The Pit. Oh dear. Online reviews had led me to expect little from this book and on this occasion they were right. I had to have a break from the NAs after this dreadful effort from Neil Penswick. Another strong contender for worst of the range. It had no spark, no energy, just dull prose - possibly inflated with its own sense of (misguided) self-importance.
Deceit finds range editor Peter Darvill-Evans publishing a belated manifesto for the NAs and laying down some ground rules. Presumably it had taken publication of a dozen or so titles for them to decide on this manifesto. It's a good, solid sci-fi read and shows that, at a basic level, the range is sturdy and reliable. Ace is back, with less of the annoying Professors and 'bog off bilge-breaths' of yester-tales, but still with issues - oh joy, oh rapture. Now she's a sexy killer and weapons expert in figure-hugging body armour. She still doesn't trust the Doctor and she clearly doesn't like Benny very much, but she decides to stay with them anyway. I don't think this can be truly reconciled from any of their perspectives - they all have to need each other somehow, and we need to know that - so we have to take it as a given. I just hope the range doesn't force too many of these on us.
I think 'sturdy' and 'solid' are the only way I can describe the next few books too. Lucifer Rising, White Darkness and Shadowmind were all enjoyable reads but with nothing outstanding in my view. This is good for the range, if not necessarily for the individual authors who need to find that something 'extra' to take their work above the reliable base level set so far.
Birthright was another book I picked up at the time, because I bought Iceberg (thanks to the lure of the Cybermen!) and I remember as I started reading Iceberg it became obvious I should read Birthright first, since they're connected. Unlike the others I revisited, I didn't enjoy Birthright as much this time - but I can't explain why. It's one that I've read several times over the years and always enjoyed before. Nigel Robinson has certainly made a better hash of it than he did with Timewyrm: Apocalypse, and it's very atmospheric in places if still a little short and spartan at times. This may have to go down as a Gambrell mystery...
And while Benny and Ace are off 'bonding' on a distant world the Doctor has gone off with another bit of the TARDIS to make a new friend and battle some frozen Cybermen left over from The Tenth Planet. David Banks was very much Mr Cyber at the time and Iceberg is a pretty decent read in my opinion, taking it above the level of its immediate predecessors. Based on this I'd like to know why Banks didn't write any further books for the range.
This brings me to the next 'story arc', which thankfully didn't have an umbrella title so it feels less formal. The resolution of this arc has been something of a long-standing mystery to me, since I picked up Blood Heat and The Dimension Riders cheap in a charity shop years ago, and was leant The Left-Handed Hummingbird but didn't get to grips with the others until recently!
Blood Heat: this is great. Sometimes I think it's just ticking boxes - like the inclusion of Jo Grant, but in the main it's a cracking read and it's a tribute to Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks that the Silurians and Sea Devils have been so successfully fleshed out in other fiction from the basic characters and civilisation they laid down in the early 1970s.
The Dimension Riders feels at times like Shada from an Oxford perspective but again it's a great book and the cover is particularly brilliant. This is another title I've enjoyed each time I've re-read it.
Kate Orman is one of those NA authors that posterity has already taught us we must love. The Left-Handed Hummingbird is still the only one of her NAs that I've read, although I've read all her (and Jon Blum's) EDAs. There's a kind of a theme here, but the first time I read this about 5 or 6 years ago I struggled with it and really couldn't see what the fuss was about. This time I adored it and zipped through it like nobody's business - not always pronouncing each syllable of the Aztec names to myself, I will admit! Again, I can't explain why I enjoyed it the second time around. Maybe it is purely a familiarity thing?
Steve Lyons was up next. Recent experiences with Steve's work had not been favourable: The Space Age was a weak addition to the EDAs (a short story at best, stretched to novel length) and his 6th Doctor & Grant MAs Time of Your Life and Killing Ground were pretty awful. Conundrum was his first Who novel and is thankfully much better. It's full of energy and life, and plays with the reader as an active character which is a refreshing change considering how introspective most of the NAs have been up to this point. But that's Lyons using the print medium as a key aspect of his story, not just as the means to tell his story. What the reader comes to question after a while, though, is - to whom is the 'author' writing this? Who is the story for? This is a textual intrigue that leads the reader into the final chapter of the arc...
Paul Cornell is back for a third stab at the NAs with No Future to close this arc, so expect emotion, depth, drama and conflict. That's pretty much what we do get. What we also get is an apparent total breakdown in the relationship between Ace and the Doctor and the return of the Meddling Monk - now given a proper name, Mortimus. This is another excellent book and the bar has clearly been raised from Iceberg onwards so the range authors will have to work hard to maintain this quality if excellent is to remain the base standard.
There were times during much of this story arc where I was questionning why Benny and Ace would stay with the Doctor if they both hated him (and each other) so much. The issue gets raised, but never concluded and the more it arises the less of an impact it has if nothing results from it. It's interesting that my allegiance all the time was with the Doctor - it's him I relate to and sympathise with, not the companions. Their emotional responses and issues were often difficult to rationalise with the lives they'd chosen to live. That's why simply having 'conflict' in these books doesn't always provide drama or make them challenging and powerful reads - the conflict has to go somewhere, even if it's away, and be resolved otherwise it becomes dull and predictable or just plain annoying as the bickering between the 6th Doctor and Peri did on TV in Season 22.
It was rewarding, then, to find that Cornell, even though writing a third-person narrative, had deliberately not allowed the reader access to all of Ace and the Doctor's thoughts or faithfully reported all the goings on and all that was said, so it is a pleasant surprise at the end when it all works out and everyone seems to be happy and friends again. Nice coup Mr Unreliable Narrator!
It's even more rewarding, and refreshing, to begin Gareth Roberts' Tragedy Day with the TARDIS crew still smiling and friends, as they should be if they're adventuring together. It comes like a breath of fresh air, as if a terrible weight has been lifted from the NAs. These changes are necessary to give the range life and keep it fresh - too much of the same month on month and it becomes banal and unbelieveable. Drama isn't built out of conflict, it's the mixture of light, darkness and shade. Gareth Roberts gives us a little bit of all of these in his second NA, but to be honest I think there's a little too much in the mix in this book. It's not a bad book - and better than The Highest Science - but it's not quite at the same level as the previous half dozen NAs. He writes for the regulars very well, but I was expecting an additional twist towards the end that never came and the mix of humour and drama never quite felt comfortable - unlike in his MAs and his new series scripts where it has worked very well.
And that's as far as I've got so far. Next up is Gary Russell's Legacy. Looks like I'm off back to Peladon for a bit then...
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