I was watching 'On Target - Terrance Dicks' on the Doctor Who The Monster of Peladon DVD this morning and something Paul Cornell said really made me think.
I've recently been revisiting some of the early books in the Target range, including their re-prints of the three mid-1960s books originally published by Frederick Muller: Doctor Who and The Daleks by David Whittaker, Doctor Who and The Zarbi by Bill Strutton and Doctor Who and The Crusaders again by David Whittaker.
When discussing how the Target books came into being Paul Cornell said that these three re-print titles came from an earlier, much more basic age of children's story telling - the inference being that the newer TV adaptations that Terrance and others were embarking on was more developed and progressive.
I disagree with this entirely.
What marks these three titles out as extra special in my view is how bold, challenging and 'adult' they are in so many respects. They come from a different era, when roles, values and standards were different - but then the TV shows they were based on did too, and to us now in the (cough, erm) enlightened 21st Century many of the 1970s and 80s Target books display outmoded views and opinions that need contextualising as well.
To pick a few examples from these pioneering 60s novelisations, the way David Whittaker develops the romantic relationship between Ian and Barbara across both his books is never patronising or simple, and none of the later Target books dared to treat any of the companions in the same way. By the end of The Crusaders I was bemoaning the fact that more stories hadn't been written and published at the time - at least The Chase to finish off Ian and Barbara's story.
Bill Strutton doesn't follow Whittaker's romantic ideals, but he extertly manages to show how the Menoptra aren't naturally friendly and trusting towards our stranded heroes - this has to be built through mutual struggle towards the same ends. It's an alien world with alien cultures and alien values. The Menoptra and Optera are anthropomorphised, but there is little reason for them to trust to TARDIS crew and not look upon them as another obstacle to them reclaiming their planet. We the reader know otherwise, but in an age where the TV Doctor and his companions are very easily accepted almost everywhere they go in order to keep the stories moving at pace it is refreshing to be reminded of the differences that may prevent groups of well-meaning species to automatically bond.
Both authors are far more cavalier with their source material than the Target books would quickly become as they were churned out, factory style. Strutton makes one wonder how heavily his TV scripts were edited by Dennis Spooner, since the controlling intelligence here is no longer called The Animus and the Menoptra device isn't an 'isoptope', amongst other alterations. They don't change the story, but they're telling in their differences. Whittaker had already script-edited The Daleks for TV and adapted it for the cinema, so it's no wonder he takes a different approach to the novelisation and at the same time chooses to bring the 'crew' together in a different way - subtely different to, yet also similar to, the TV version from the previous story An Unearthly Child. It works for the narrative style, but Barbara loses out as a character - we never really get to know her, unfortunately. This is rectified in The Crusaders, told in a more standard third-person style and where much of the peril and action involves Barbara and her struggle with El-Akir - a violent and potentially sexual struggle that the narrative doesn't shy away from. It's a lyrical and often powerful TV drama. As a novel this is heightened many fold.
These early novelisations are not constrained by a low page count, but at the same time they're not overly long - they feel like they're allowed to be as long and in-depth as they need to be. This, at least was carried over into the early original Target books too, as were the wonderful illustrations. The Daleks, being the longest TV story of the three, is economical by telling the story completely from Ian Chesterton's viewpoint - an experiment never again attempted in the range. The Crusaders, on the other hand, takes the opportunity to develop its story and action in ways that the TV series could never have allowed at the time.
There is little sense of cosiness about any of these three books, and in my opinion little sense of them being written for children at all - intelligent teenagers, perhaps, or young adults. But whereas I recall loving The Auton Invasion and Day of The Daleks from the early Target books as a child, for example, I missed a lot of the subtlety of The Daleks in my quest for spectacle, and I couldn't get engaged by The Zarbi or The Crusaders at all. Reading them now I'm not surprised. I think the very opposite of what Paul Cornell claims is true: if these books were written for children they were written in such a way as not to conceal or heavily sugarcoat any of the harsh and emotional realities of life, not to patronise and very firmly to trust the reader. You didn't have to have watched the TV show first to enjoy these books. Yes the lead character is often referred to as 'Doctor Who', just like in the annuals and comic strips of the time - but then Target allowed Gerry Davis to do this in his Tomb of The Cybermen novelisation out of nowhere in 1978, so there was clearly no hard and fast rule on the subject. It's not enough to convince me to dismiss these books as unsophisticated. I believe these are three of the most powerful and well-written books in the whole Doctor Who range.
Sunday, 24 March 2013
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
A Doctor Who Season in print: 23 - The Trial of A Time Lord
This will probably be my last one of these, as it's the last series of four stories I can write about. Have I left the best till last?
Season 23 was one long 14-part Doctor Who story, The Trial of A Time Lord, where - surprise surprise - The Doctor was put on trial for his life. But it was split into several sections or 'stories', by several writers, and so these were all adapted as separate books (albeit branded with a Trial of A Time Lord cover flash). So we've got:
The Mysterious Planet, by Terrance Dicks
Mindwarp, by Philip Martin
Terror of The Vervoids, by Pip & Jane Baker
The Ultimate Foe, by Pip & Jane Baker
They weren't published together, or in story order either. But the real shame is that there's no editorial continuity, so each book exists both as an individual entity in its own right and yet still attempts to be part of the larger whole story.
But is that a bad thing, and does it work?
First up, but published second, is The Mysterious Planet, written by Robert Holmes and adapted by Terrance Dicks. This was a pretty flat and unremarkable four episodes on TV but I think it suits the page much better. This is Terrance Dicks' only Sixth Doctor adaptation and there's a real sense that he's relished the challenge and also that he very much respects Holmes' script. Holmes had died by this point, so perhaps for Dicks this was a kind of personal tribute. It suits the length (127 pages) and it's a pleasant, relaxed read that trundles along nicely. It sets the scene for the Trial well enough at the beginning, pitching the menage a trois inter-play between The Doctor, The Valeyard and The Inquisitor, and some of the dramatic high points that appear forced on TV are much easier to stomach on the page. It's an exceptionally verbal and witty script in places, and this comes across very effectively in Dicks' novelisation. For example Glitz and Dibber have a habit of talking about what they're doing or going to do, rather than just getting on and doing it - in a sort of witty self-promotional commentary. Whereas this can be frustrating on TV it suits the prose medium much better. Merdeen's duality also sits more comfortably on the page, giving us access to his thoughts, and there's more of a sense of Drathro's purpose and problem - the robot actually creates pathos at times! This is a great start to the season and Dicks has brought years of experience to a deceptively simple and unpretentious read.
Next up, but published last, is Mindwarp by Philip Martin. Again this was a great read, with a slightly longer page count (142 pages) and some effective development of the TV script in places. We now have Zon, Keeper of the Record of Time activating the Matrix screen and running the evidence, not the Valeyard himself. Mindwarp is a very uncomfortable story, with an unpleasant job to do - no less the case on the page than on the screen. This is possibly the adaptation where the story itself and its part within the Trial are most at odds. In the Trial we have to join the story when it's already underway, because it's being presented as evidence. The Doctor tells Peri (us, effectively) at the start that he's actively following up a mystery over arms supplies. The novelisation follows this, but there wouldn't be anything stopping Martin from adding a prologue chapter outlining the action we've missed. After all, he gives us an epilogue offering a (far more plausible) alternative 'happy' ending to Peri's story than the TV version did. Mindwarp is a very colourful, visual TV story and it's to Martin's credit that the novelisation also feels the same. It could be argued that there's too much going on; Sil, having dominated Vengeance On Varos the previous season, is a bit lost within the mix here and is reduced to a comedic supporting role, which is a shame. But since the story is so unpleasant the comedy is necessary to try to balance it. However, nothing can balance the horror of The Doctor abandoning Peri and allowing her to be operated on: it is the ultimate failure from the hero who fought death itself to save her from an infection just after they met.
The Trial scenes, inter-cutting the main action, are often lumpy and graceless as The Doctor rants and makes childish gibes at The Valeyard but this is as much symptomatic of the length of the Trial story as much as any failings by the writer. Needless to say Zon, Keeper of the Record of Time does not appear again after this book.
Despite the unpleasant storyline this is a great read that rattles along with pace and energy and occasionally wit, like The Mysterious Planet.
Third in line, but published first, is the case for the defence:Terror of The Vervoids, by Pip & Jane Baker. I was wary of this book, following my experiences last year with their Time And The Rani novelisation which was without equal the worst, most patronising Target book I've read. I managed to keep a relatively open mind, though, and I'm glad I did because this was another enjoyable read. Three out of three so far.
A trial is not necessarily the best setting for a Doctor Who story if evidence is being presented and you're trying to tell a story at the same time without giving everything away to the reader early on when some detail is challenged. That happens at least once here, where the Doctor has to answer 'the murderer', rather than giving the character's name. The Bakers do allow a moment for The Inquisitor to reveal that she's interested in the mystery being played out on the Matrix screen but there's definitely artistic licence being shown throughout all these books so far in that respect. There's an interesting attempt by the authors to treat this as a proper murder mystery novel, as well, with occasional comments from an omniscient narrator, and this adds to the charm and the readability of the book - particularly when building Professor Lasky's background just before her death. At 144 pages it's the longest of the four novelisations, and like its two predecessors it's an often unchallenging and fun read, with only occasional moments of verbal diarrhoea over the scientists and the specialist subjects of their studies.
What is a shame, and it's difficult to pinpoint if this is the fault of the Bakers or producer John Nathan-Turner who 'created' the character, is that Mel Bush only comes across as a cipher and never as a proper believable character. She is whatever the situation requires her to be and spurts words in a way that no one would ever naturally speak. Little character traits are shoe-horned in and accompanied with brief, clumsy explanations just so the audience knows. Fortunately this doesn't ruin the book because the Sixth Doctor is possibly the best he's ever been on the Hyperion III: wonderfully understated, calm and at times scheming. Unfortunately this cannot describe the courtroom sequences which continue to break up the story without feeling that they add much to the over-arching story. Regardless, at this point I'd have welcomed a volume that combined all three books and told the whole story (moving the Mindwarp Epilogue to the very end, of course).
With only two episodes left, it couldn't all go wrong with the final book The Ultimate Foe could it? This was the third of the four books to be published, and it's well known amongst fandom what a tortured birth the story had. The novelisation is again by Pip & Jane Baker, although the first half of the story (episode 13 of Trial) was written by the ailing Robert Holmes and script editor Eric Saward. Saward then had a falling out with producer JN-T and withdrew his episode 14 script. So the producer had to bring in another writer to try to finish the story in a different way to what Holmes & Saward had planned, but using the same characters and sets. Having been reliable in the recent past JN-T brought in eccentric Bakers who did their best to pick up from the episode 13 cliff hanger and bring things to a happy conclusion in a way that met JN-T's wishes. Tough call.
Having had such a messy conception what The Ultimate Foe really needs is a completely different writer to adapt it as a novel, someone who can look at it all dispassionately and even it out. I'm reminded of Terrance Dicks novelising Season 7's The Ambassadors of Death, rather than David Whittaker or Malcolm Hulke who were too close to the pain of it. But we don't get that here. Terrance Dicks would have been the obvious choice too. No, instead we get the Bakers practically crucifying Holmes and Saward's work, which takes up about a third of the 126 page book, before developing their own ending which met JN-T's requirement and resolves everything happily.
The story can't help but feel uneven, but is it any good? Terror of The Vervoids leaves us with a cliff hanger, where The Doctor is charged with genocide. Then lots of things happen at the beginning of The Ultimate Foe - probably too many things. The Master appears in the Matrix having the time of his life, The Valeyard is revealed to be a future evil incarnation of The Doctor, Mel and Glitz are transported to the Courtroom to help The Doctor and things suddenly move inside the Matrix, recalling 1976's The Deadly Assassin. It all sounds a bit nuts really. Sabalom Glitz was previously a strong, proactive character in The Mysterious Planet, with a dim side-kick. Here, solo, he becomes a comedy stooge both for The Doctor and The Master. Mel is served no better as a character here than she was in Terror of The Vervoids. Even worse for her, as she's officially the new companion, Glitz is taken into the Matrix by The Doctor to help him with the main action leaving her standing around looking up The Master's nose on the Matrix screen. It's all a bit of a mess and it's not clear what The Valeyard is looking to achieve from hiding away in the Matrix.
Unenviably, the Bakers pick up this mess but their solution is to throw a dictionary at it while the characters wander around for pages not really doing anything and continually avoiding each other so they can spurt ridiculous dialogue. They have a lot to squeeze in - except they don't in fairness; it's virtually all padding, going nowhere and explaining nothing. It could all have been a lot simpler and the ending much less hurried but they procrastinate and prevaricate and it all gets very rushed at the end which is not to the story's benefit.
A word of advice to P&J from an experienced reader from a young age: there is a difference between educating or inspiring young people to improve their vocabulary through an entertaining read, and an author coming across as being utterly pretentious and conceited. That's how the Bakers appear here, with their attempts at minimal word count but maximum syllable count. I could cope with thremmatologists and agronomists in Terror of the Vervoids, even The Mark of The Rani's 'apposite epithets', but The Ultimate Foe takes this to a whole new level and the bottom line is that nobody speaks that way in real life, or in the established worlds of Doctor Who up to that point or since! Such is their quest for long or silly words to try to confuse the readers with, and increase dictionary sales, that they give us a 'megabyte modem' which The Valeyard is using inside the Matrix to try to assassinate the Courtroom jury - presumably he's going to shock them with the disgraceful images he's downloading off the Internet. Hmmm.
It's not as bad a read as Time And The Rani, but it's still a shame because up to now the books detailing The Trial of A Time Lord have been really enjoyable. Unfortunately this final instalment is just a wordy mess and is a really unsatisfactory conclusion.
Perhaps it's because this season came at a time of (and as a result of) massive upheaval for the TV series, or perhaps there wasn't a procedure of heavy editorial involvement in the Target range at the time, but for four linked books telling one long story I can only see it as a shame that there's no stylistic consistency throughout all the books, no conscious attempt at narrative continuity between them and only very little attempt to expand on what was seen on TV. They are, in the main, very enjoyable reads, but in keeping with the TV episodes themselves the Trial story over all lacks cohesion and punch - never more so than in its conclusion.
Season 23 was one long 14-part Doctor Who story, The Trial of A Time Lord, where - surprise surprise - The Doctor was put on trial for his life. But it was split into several sections or 'stories', by several writers, and so these were all adapted as separate books (albeit branded with a Trial of A Time Lord cover flash). So we've got:
The Mysterious Planet, by Terrance Dicks
Mindwarp, by Philip Martin
Terror of The Vervoids, by Pip & Jane Baker
The Ultimate Foe, by Pip & Jane Baker
They weren't published together, or in story order either. But the real shame is that there's no editorial continuity, so each book exists both as an individual entity in its own right and yet still attempts to be part of the larger whole story.
But is that a bad thing, and does it work?
First up, but published second, is The Mysterious Planet, written by Robert Holmes and adapted by Terrance Dicks. This was a pretty flat and unremarkable four episodes on TV but I think it suits the page much better. This is Terrance Dicks' only Sixth Doctor adaptation and there's a real sense that he's relished the challenge and also that he very much respects Holmes' script. Holmes had died by this point, so perhaps for Dicks this was a kind of personal tribute. It suits the length (127 pages) and it's a pleasant, relaxed read that trundles along nicely. It sets the scene for the Trial well enough at the beginning, pitching the menage a trois inter-play between The Doctor, The Valeyard and The Inquisitor, and some of the dramatic high points that appear forced on TV are much easier to stomach on the page. It's an exceptionally verbal and witty script in places, and this comes across very effectively in Dicks' novelisation. For example Glitz and Dibber have a habit of talking about what they're doing or going to do, rather than just getting on and doing it - in a sort of witty self-promotional commentary. Whereas this can be frustrating on TV it suits the prose medium much better. Merdeen's duality also sits more comfortably on the page, giving us access to his thoughts, and there's more of a sense of Drathro's purpose and problem - the robot actually creates pathos at times! This is a great start to the season and Dicks has brought years of experience to a deceptively simple and unpretentious read.
Next up, but published last, is Mindwarp by Philip Martin. Again this was a great read, with a slightly longer page count (142 pages) and some effective development of the TV script in places. We now have Zon, Keeper of the Record of Time activating the Matrix screen and running the evidence, not the Valeyard himself. Mindwarp is a very uncomfortable story, with an unpleasant job to do - no less the case on the page than on the screen. This is possibly the adaptation where the story itself and its part within the Trial are most at odds. In the Trial we have to join the story when it's already underway, because it's being presented as evidence. The Doctor tells Peri (us, effectively) at the start that he's actively following up a mystery over arms supplies. The novelisation follows this, but there wouldn't be anything stopping Martin from adding a prologue chapter outlining the action we've missed. After all, he gives us an epilogue offering a (far more plausible) alternative 'happy' ending to Peri's story than the TV version did. Mindwarp is a very colourful, visual TV story and it's to Martin's credit that the novelisation also feels the same. It could be argued that there's too much going on; Sil, having dominated Vengeance On Varos the previous season, is a bit lost within the mix here and is reduced to a comedic supporting role, which is a shame. But since the story is so unpleasant the comedy is necessary to try to balance it. However, nothing can balance the horror of The Doctor abandoning Peri and allowing her to be operated on: it is the ultimate failure from the hero who fought death itself to save her from an infection just after they met.
The Trial scenes, inter-cutting the main action, are often lumpy and graceless as The Doctor rants and makes childish gibes at The Valeyard but this is as much symptomatic of the length of the Trial story as much as any failings by the writer. Needless to say Zon, Keeper of the Record of Time does not appear again after this book.
Despite the unpleasant storyline this is a great read that rattles along with pace and energy and occasionally wit, like The Mysterious Planet.
Third in line, but published first, is the case for the defence:Terror of The Vervoids, by Pip & Jane Baker. I was wary of this book, following my experiences last year with their Time And The Rani novelisation which was without equal the worst, most patronising Target book I've read. I managed to keep a relatively open mind, though, and I'm glad I did because this was another enjoyable read. Three out of three so far.
A trial is not necessarily the best setting for a Doctor Who story if evidence is being presented and you're trying to tell a story at the same time without giving everything away to the reader early on when some detail is challenged. That happens at least once here, where the Doctor has to answer 'the murderer', rather than giving the character's name. The Bakers do allow a moment for The Inquisitor to reveal that she's interested in the mystery being played out on the Matrix screen but there's definitely artistic licence being shown throughout all these books so far in that respect. There's an interesting attempt by the authors to treat this as a proper murder mystery novel, as well, with occasional comments from an omniscient narrator, and this adds to the charm and the readability of the book - particularly when building Professor Lasky's background just before her death. At 144 pages it's the longest of the four novelisations, and like its two predecessors it's an often unchallenging and fun read, with only occasional moments of verbal diarrhoea over the scientists and the specialist subjects of their studies.
What is a shame, and it's difficult to pinpoint if this is the fault of the Bakers or producer John Nathan-Turner who 'created' the character, is that Mel Bush only comes across as a cipher and never as a proper believable character. She is whatever the situation requires her to be and spurts words in a way that no one would ever naturally speak. Little character traits are shoe-horned in and accompanied with brief, clumsy explanations just so the audience knows. Fortunately this doesn't ruin the book because the Sixth Doctor is possibly the best he's ever been on the Hyperion III: wonderfully understated, calm and at times scheming. Unfortunately this cannot describe the courtroom sequences which continue to break up the story without feeling that they add much to the over-arching story. Regardless, at this point I'd have welcomed a volume that combined all three books and told the whole story (moving the Mindwarp Epilogue to the very end, of course).
With only two episodes left, it couldn't all go wrong with the final book The Ultimate Foe could it? This was the third of the four books to be published, and it's well known amongst fandom what a tortured birth the story had. The novelisation is again by Pip & Jane Baker, although the first half of the story (episode 13 of Trial) was written by the ailing Robert Holmes and script editor Eric Saward. Saward then had a falling out with producer JN-T and withdrew his episode 14 script. So the producer had to bring in another writer to try to finish the story in a different way to what Holmes & Saward had planned, but using the same characters and sets. Having been reliable in the recent past JN-T brought in eccentric Bakers who did their best to pick up from the episode 13 cliff hanger and bring things to a happy conclusion in a way that met JN-T's wishes. Tough call.
Having had such a messy conception what The Ultimate Foe really needs is a completely different writer to adapt it as a novel, someone who can look at it all dispassionately and even it out. I'm reminded of Terrance Dicks novelising Season 7's The Ambassadors of Death, rather than David Whittaker or Malcolm Hulke who were too close to the pain of it. But we don't get that here. Terrance Dicks would have been the obvious choice too. No, instead we get the Bakers practically crucifying Holmes and Saward's work, which takes up about a third of the 126 page book, before developing their own ending which met JN-T's requirement and resolves everything happily.
The story can't help but feel uneven, but is it any good? Terror of The Vervoids leaves us with a cliff hanger, where The Doctor is charged with genocide. Then lots of things happen at the beginning of The Ultimate Foe - probably too many things. The Master appears in the Matrix having the time of his life, The Valeyard is revealed to be a future evil incarnation of The Doctor, Mel and Glitz are transported to the Courtroom to help The Doctor and things suddenly move inside the Matrix, recalling 1976's The Deadly Assassin. It all sounds a bit nuts really. Sabalom Glitz was previously a strong, proactive character in The Mysterious Planet, with a dim side-kick. Here, solo, he becomes a comedy stooge both for The Doctor and The Master. Mel is served no better as a character here than she was in Terror of The Vervoids. Even worse for her, as she's officially the new companion, Glitz is taken into the Matrix by The Doctor to help him with the main action leaving her standing around looking up The Master's nose on the Matrix screen. It's all a bit of a mess and it's not clear what The Valeyard is looking to achieve from hiding away in the Matrix.
Unenviably, the Bakers pick up this mess but their solution is to throw a dictionary at it while the characters wander around for pages not really doing anything and continually avoiding each other so they can spurt ridiculous dialogue. They have a lot to squeeze in - except they don't in fairness; it's virtually all padding, going nowhere and explaining nothing. It could all have been a lot simpler and the ending much less hurried but they procrastinate and prevaricate and it all gets very rushed at the end which is not to the story's benefit.
A word of advice to P&J from an experienced reader from a young age: there is a difference between educating or inspiring young people to improve their vocabulary through an entertaining read, and an author coming across as being utterly pretentious and conceited. That's how the Bakers appear here, with their attempts at minimal word count but maximum syllable count. I could cope with thremmatologists and agronomists in Terror of the Vervoids, even The Mark of The Rani's 'apposite epithets', but The Ultimate Foe takes this to a whole new level and the bottom line is that nobody speaks that way in real life, or in the established worlds of Doctor Who up to that point or since! Such is their quest for long or silly words to try to confuse the readers with, and increase dictionary sales, that they give us a 'megabyte modem' which The Valeyard is using inside the Matrix to try to assassinate the Courtroom jury - presumably he's going to shock them with the disgraceful images he's downloading off the Internet. Hmmm.
It's not as bad a read as Time And The Rani, but it's still a shame because up to now the books detailing The Trial of A Time Lord have been really enjoyable. Unfortunately this final instalment is just a wordy mess and is a really unsatisfactory conclusion.
Perhaps it's because this season came at a time of (and as a result of) massive upheaval for the TV series, or perhaps there wasn't a procedure of heavy editorial involvement in the Target range at the time, but for four linked books telling one long story I can only see it as a shame that there's no stylistic consistency throughout all the books, no conscious attempt at narrative continuity between them and only very little attempt to expand on what was seen on TV. They are, in the main, very enjoyable reads, but in keeping with the TV episodes themselves the Trial story over all lacks cohesion and punch - never more so than in its conclusion.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books
I've tried to set myself something of a Christmas tradition these last couple of (married) years, and read an edition of Dickens' Christmas stories each December. In 2011 I read the Penguin Classics A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings, so in 2012 I chose A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford Classics, 2006, edited by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst). The plan is to rotate these two each year until I get sick of them. We'll see how long that lasts...
So, this Season's 500 page tome contained the full set of Dickens' annual Christmas books, originally published separately and then gathered into a collection by the author in 1852. We get A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Cricket On The Hearth (1845), The Battle Of Life (1846) and The Haunted Man (1848). 1847 was missed, we're told in the introduction, because Charlie was too busy working on Dombey and Son.
A quick side comment on the illustrations: these are gorgeous, and do much to enhance the charm and appeal of the various texts. Dickens prose is often florid and picturesque anyway, but these occasional and expressive line drawings add that extra dimension and really encourage the reader's imagination.
But back to the words:
A Christmas Carol is for many of us our first experience of Charles Dickens, and I'm sure for far too many of us is the only experience of Charles Dickens too - either in book form or the endless round of TV, film and stage adaptations. It's evolved into a piece of pure Christmas folklore these days, with the characters having settled in to the public psyche and taken on a life of their own beyond the confines of the story. Scrooge himself is now a descriptive term, readily interchangeable for 'miserly' and it undoubtedly comes as a shock to some that the word / name hails from this story.
So much of what we consider to be 'Christmas', as depicted in images on cards and in songs, comes from this story - or rather was first gathered and captured in this story. I wouldn't want to claim that Dickens invented what we now think of as Christmas, but he did a hell of a lot to cement much of its romantic imagery in our consciousness.
The Christmas Carol story is brilliant. Purely, simply brilliant. It has atmosphere aplenty, it tugs at the heartstrings, it paints so many wonderful pictures and it rockets along at quite a pace. The only occasion when a modern reader might baulk these days is over the length of time it takes for Scrooge to realise that he's dead in the future when it's plainly obvious to all as soon as he's taken there. Unfortunately for Ebenezer he needs to be shown his gravestone before he accepts the fact. But other than this psychological quibble it is possibly the perfect Christmas yarn, the perfect ghost story and the perfect 'feel good' tale.
I don't see myself tiring of reading this story each year at all.
The downside of A Christmas Carol being so good, and coming first, is that Dickens set himself an almost impossible task in attempting to match it each year. If this Oxford Classics book does anything it shows that, frankly, he failed. In fact, it's not surprising that after four valiant attempts he decided to leave it and just dedicate a special seasonal issue of Household Words, his periodical, to Christmas-related stories instead. There he could share the pain with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and various other contributors of varying literary skill.
The Chimes presents us with 'Trotty' Veck, a street courier / messenger for hire, who likes hot tripe and worries about his daughter and potential future son-in-law. My first reaction was 'I don't like his name'. I'm not proud of that as a critical response, but as a reader looking for some Christmas-time escapism it immediately put me at odds with the text and prevented me from getting fully immersed in the world - which is where I wanted to be. So much of Dickens' work is full of wonderfully expressive character names. Trotty Veck is not a good example. He's also a fool and it's difficult to sympathise with him. There's a supernatural element where Veck has apparently died and is shown the future by the goblins who live in the 'Chimes', the local Church bells, but it never has any of the heart-warming appeal of the Carol and I found my attention wandering. Of course it all works out fine in the end, and Trotty hasn't died - it's all a tripe-induced bad dream, and he and his daughter manage to help some strangers to what will hopefully be a better life with Veck's landlady below. There's a moral in the story, apparently, but it was lost on this reader because I felt at odds with the text the whole time.
What off-balanced me completely was that on the last page Dickens suddenly comes over all self aware, questioning his and the reader's perceptions over the text we've just read. It's all very Sternean, and I can't help but feel the whole piece would have had more charm and appeal if Dickens had taken the playful or unreliable narrator role throughout instead. This 'afterword' comes across, instead, like a knowing wink from an orator, closing a public presentation (and one now is put in mind of Dickens own public readings of A Christmas Carol.)
The Cricket On The Hearth was an improvement, inasmuch as it held my attention, but again the world it depicts didn't reach out to me as a reader and I found the characters and their situations difficult to empathise with. Dickens, in glorious Nineteenth Century fashion, was prone to verbosity and over-description and I started to feel a bit fatigued by over-writing during this story. There's no supernatural involvement this time - although the title and the introduction lead one to expect some input from the cricket at some juncture - but there's also no overtly Christmassy feel to the story. It's quite a sweet story as it turns out, and it shows the value of trust and deep love in a marriage - presumably not just at Christmas though. Again we're given characters of lowly status in the world, with Dickens writing moral lessons for the common man, but none of the characters are particularly vivid or endearing and, alas, none of the names really stood out.
I really struggled with The Battle Of Life more than any of the stories. If I hadn't been determined to finish the collection this would have made me give up. To me it was 80-odd pages of words, failing to interest or engage me at all and with nothing to do with celebrating Christmas - and I don't get what the title has to do with the story specifically. The characters lacked definition and I found it tiring continually having to remind myself of settings and relationships because I found no interest in them or their situation. Does this story constitute a valuable addition to the English literary canon? Not in my view. I can only hope that in two years time when I pick it up again I'm a more enlightened reader.
We're back on supernatural ground with the final story The Haunted Man. It starts off wonderfully, with a gorgeous atmosphere and I was really quite taken from page one. It has a psychological punch which adds interest, but it still has a tendency to wander and ramble, and it requires considerable concentration on the part of the reader to keep tabs on who is where and how everyone fits together. This story was also included in the Penguin Classics edition I'd read the previous year, so I was already familiar with it, but I don't think that made me fonder of it, or that I found it easier to read this time around.
Maybe my mistake was in reading them all one after another - could I have 'Dickensed' myself out? Perhaps next year I should split the stories up with other reads in between, or only read one per year? Or perhaps I should have thought 'I wonder why these other stories aren't as well known as A Christmas Carol?'
These stories were collected together by Dickens as 'The Christmas Books' in 1852, so he was actively encouraging comparison and comment, and for them to be looked at as a whole. A Christmas Carol is a good length story, not too florid but not too concise. The Chimes, The Cricket On the Hearth and The Battle Of Life all feel too long and rambling to me. The Haunted Man is better at holding its length and maintaining interest, but I think it's a shame when a story or novella feels laboured and drawn out. The other clear point for me is that the later books don't offer any further Christmas trappings or folklore (at least not that's been handed down through the years); they don't build on any established myths or create any of their own, they're merely novellas published around Christmas time but not subscribing themselves to any obvious Christmas celebrations.
Dickens imagined himself something of a social campaigner, highlighting the plight of the poor and the general inequality of life - largely through his own personal experiences. But he was a realist too: he satirises, he jibes and pokes away through his creative writing where he can also make a successful living, rather than jeopardising his position with more forceful campaigning. These Christmas stories are very representative of that side of Dickens - they have a didactic purpose, painting pictures of life in various strata, and can be seen as homilies in many ways. But whereas in his novels Dickens had the space to develop characters and build situations I don't believe this novella length was a comfortable medium for him: his work falls between two stools, not having enough space and time to develop strong central characters with clear and original messages, whilst at the same time wanting to pack too much in, thus overcrowding the short capacity and leaving the reader befuddled at times. All except A Christmas Carol, of course, in which he gets everything right.
All things considered, these lesser known Christmas stories have value and interest from a bibliographical or contextual perspective, and they add value to collections of Dickens shorter published works these days, but truly there is only one Christmas Book and that is A Christmas Carol.
So, this Season's 500 page tome contained the full set of Dickens' annual Christmas books, originally published separately and then gathered into a collection by the author in 1852. We get A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Cricket On The Hearth (1845), The Battle Of Life (1846) and The Haunted Man (1848). 1847 was missed, we're told in the introduction, because Charlie was too busy working on Dombey and Son.
A quick side comment on the illustrations: these are gorgeous, and do much to enhance the charm and appeal of the various texts. Dickens prose is often florid and picturesque anyway, but these occasional and expressive line drawings add that extra dimension and really encourage the reader's imagination.
But back to the words:
A Christmas Carol is for many of us our first experience of Charles Dickens, and I'm sure for far too many of us is the only experience of Charles Dickens too - either in book form or the endless round of TV, film and stage adaptations. It's evolved into a piece of pure Christmas folklore these days, with the characters having settled in to the public psyche and taken on a life of their own beyond the confines of the story. Scrooge himself is now a descriptive term, readily interchangeable for 'miserly' and it undoubtedly comes as a shock to some that the word / name hails from this story.
So much of what we consider to be 'Christmas', as depicted in images on cards and in songs, comes from this story - or rather was first gathered and captured in this story. I wouldn't want to claim that Dickens invented what we now think of as Christmas, but he did a hell of a lot to cement much of its romantic imagery in our consciousness.
The Christmas Carol story is brilliant. Purely, simply brilliant. It has atmosphere aplenty, it tugs at the heartstrings, it paints so many wonderful pictures and it rockets along at quite a pace. The only occasion when a modern reader might baulk these days is over the length of time it takes for Scrooge to realise that he's dead in the future when it's plainly obvious to all as soon as he's taken there. Unfortunately for Ebenezer he needs to be shown his gravestone before he accepts the fact. But other than this psychological quibble it is possibly the perfect Christmas yarn, the perfect ghost story and the perfect 'feel good' tale.
I don't see myself tiring of reading this story each year at all.
The downside of A Christmas Carol being so good, and coming first, is that Dickens set himself an almost impossible task in attempting to match it each year. If this Oxford Classics book does anything it shows that, frankly, he failed. In fact, it's not surprising that after four valiant attempts he decided to leave it and just dedicate a special seasonal issue of Household Words, his periodical, to Christmas-related stories instead. There he could share the pain with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and various other contributors of varying literary skill.
The Chimes presents us with 'Trotty' Veck, a street courier / messenger for hire, who likes hot tripe and worries about his daughter and potential future son-in-law. My first reaction was 'I don't like his name'. I'm not proud of that as a critical response, but as a reader looking for some Christmas-time escapism it immediately put me at odds with the text and prevented me from getting fully immersed in the world - which is where I wanted to be. So much of Dickens' work is full of wonderfully expressive character names. Trotty Veck is not a good example. He's also a fool and it's difficult to sympathise with him. There's a supernatural element where Veck has apparently died and is shown the future by the goblins who live in the 'Chimes', the local Church bells, but it never has any of the heart-warming appeal of the Carol and I found my attention wandering. Of course it all works out fine in the end, and Trotty hasn't died - it's all a tripe-induced bad dream, and he and his daughter manage to help some strangers to what will hopefully be a better life with Veck's landlady below. There's a moral in the story, apparently, but it was lost on this reader because I felt at odds with the text the whole time.
What off-balanced me completely was that on the last page Dickens suddenly comes over all self aware, questioning his and the reader's perceptions over the text we've just read. It's all very Sternean, and I can't help but feel the whole piece would have had more charm and appeal if Dickens had taken the playful or unreliable narrator role throughout instead. This 'afterword' comes across, instead, like a knowing wink from an orator, closing a public presentation (and one now is put in mind of Dickens own public readings of A Christmas Carol.)
The Cricket On The Hearth was an improvement, inasmuch as it held my attention, but again the world it depicts didn't reach out to me as a reader and I found the characters and their situations difficult to empathise with. Dickens, in glorious Nineteenth Century fashion, was prone to verbosity and over-description and I started to feel a bit fatigued by over-writing during this story. There's no supernatural involvement this time - although the title and the introduction lead one to expect some input from the cricket at some juncture - but there's also no overtly Christmassy feel to the story. It's quite a sweet story as it turns out, and it shows the value of trust and deep love in a marriage - presumably not just at Christmas though. Again we're given characters of lowly status in the world, with Dickens writing moral lessons for the common man, but none of the characters are particularly vivid or endearing and, alas, none of the names really stood out.
I really struggled with The Battle Of Life more than any of the stories. If I hadn't been determined to finish the collection this would have made me give up. To me it was 80-odd pages of words, failing to interest or engage me at all and with nothing to do with celebrating Christmas - and I don't get what the title has to do with the story specifically. The characters lacked definition and I found it tiring continually having to remind myself of settings and relationships because I found no interest in them or their situation. Does this story constitute a valuable addition to the English literary canon? Not in my view. I can only hope that in two years time when I pick it up again I'm a more enlightened reader.
We're back on supernatural ground with the final story The Haunted Man. It starts off wonderfully, with a gorgeous atmosphere and I was really quite taken from page one. It has a psychological punch which adds interest, but it still has a tendency to wander and ramble, and it requires considerable concentration on the part of the reader to keep tabs on who is where and how everyone fits together. This story was also included in the Penguin Classics edition I'd read the previous year, so I was already familiar with it, but I don't think that made me fonder of it, or that I found it easier to read this time around.
Maybe my mistake was in reading them all one after another - could I have 'Dickensed' myself out? Perhaps next year I should split the stories up with other reads in between, or only read one per year? Or perhaps I should have thought 'I wonder why these other stories aren't as well known as A Christmas Carol?'
These stories were collected together by Dickens as 'The Christmas Books' in 1852, so he was actively encouraging comparison and comment, and for them to be looked at as a whole. A Christmas Carol is a good length story, not too florid but not too concise. The Chimes, The Cricket On the Hearth and The Battle Of Life all feel too long and rambling to me. The Haunted Man is better at holding its length and maintaining interest, but I think it's a shame when a story or novella feels laboured and drawn out. The other clear point for me is that the later books don't offer any further Christmas trappings or folklore (at least not that's been handed down through the years); they don't build on any established myths or create any of their own, they're merely novellas published around Christmas time but not subscribing themselves to any obvious Christmas celebrations.
Dickens imagined himself something of a social campaigner, highlighting the plight of the poor and the general inequality of life - largely through his own personal experiences. But he was a realist too: he satirises, he jibes and pokes away through his creative writing where he can also make a successful living, rather than jeopardising his position with more forceful campaigning. These Christmas stories are very representative of that side of Dickens - they have a didactic purpose, painting pictures of life in various strata, and can be seen as homilies in many ways. But whereas in his novels Dickens had the space to develop characters and build situations I don't believe this novella length was a comfortable medium for him: his work falls between two stools, not having enough space and time to develop strong central characters with clear and original messages, whilst at the same time wanting to pack too much in, thus overcrowding the short capacity and leaving the reader befuddled at times. All except A Christmas Carol, of course, in which he gets everything right.
All things considered, these lesser known Christmas stories have value and interest from a bibliographical or contextual perspective, and they add value to collections of Dickens shorter published works these days, but truly there is only one Christmas Book and that is A Christmas Carol.
Monday, 7 January 2013
Doctor Who series 7 reviews: The Snowmen
I think it's clear by now that the Doctor Who Christmas Specials work best when they have a purpose, and they're not trying to just be 'Specials'. Easily the best of the bunch have been 2005's The Christmas Invasion, introducing David Tennant as The Doctor, 2010's The End of Time 2-parter, seeing out David Tennant's Doctor, and now 2012's The Snowmen introducing, or continuing to introduce, the mystery that is new companion Clara Oswin Oswald - played wonderfully by Jenna-Louise Coleman.
Despite her appearance in the brilliant Season 7 opener Asylum of The Daleks this is very much a jumping-on point for the series, post-Ponds. We have a new theme arrangement, new titles, new Doctor costume and new TARDIS interior.
- New theme: fine, but I do miss the powerful diddly-dum because it's not all about the woo-oos.
- New titles: wow! There's a hell of a lot going on there, including (at last!) the Doctor's face appearing briefly. The final section is very reminiscent of the split-screen effect diamond-shaped time tunnel used in the latter Jon Pertwee and the Tom Baker titles. Nice!
- New Doctor costume: another tick for me. I always preferred a longer coat on The Doctor. Again, there's much detail and hidden layers - much like the Time Lord himself I guess.
- New TARDIS interior: Yes, I like this - but then I haven't yet seen one that I didn't really like at all (even the washing up bowl walls used for The Time Monster). My only grumble is probably a standard fanboy niggle: there aren't enough roundels! Just the one line around the walls, not all over the place like they used to be. But it's an interesting design, a bit more regimented than recent efforts, with visible edges and corners, and maintaining the different height levels gives flexibility. It also looks more functional and user-friendly - particularly more so than the Eccleston / Tennant 'coral' version with its ethereal fish tank lighting.
So, the episode itself: it's difficult to say too much really because I really enjoyed it and there's a tendency to gush and be over-enthusiastic to the point of sycophancy. So I'll be brief and only touch on those aspects that really stood out.
The episode had a level of style and visual quality that we've come to expect from recent episodes. Saul Metzstein has already proven himself to be a stand-out director within the current bunch.
Commander Strax, Madame Vastra & Jenny have appeared before but were served much better this time than in A Good Man Goes To War (2011). The humour from Strax is wonderful because it comes directly from his character, and isn't forced. Could this weird triumvirate be the next spin-off now Torchwood has disappeared up its own hell-hole? They certainly look great in Victorian garb.
Richard E. Grant spent a bit too long talking through his teeth for my liking, but he was still generally good value and Ian McKellen was excellent as the disembodied voice of the Great Intelligence, a Classic villain returning after 44 years. It's pleasing that in our high-tech world something that is only a large globe with some plastic snow blowing around in it can be so effective as a visual embodiment of 'evil'; very Jules Verne, I thought.
Having avoided the spoilers it was great fun working out that it was actually the Great Intelligence behind it all - although the episode title becomes an obvious feed once you know (for the uninitiated the original Intelligence story was called The Abominable Snowmen). I particularly enjoyed the scene where Grant became an animated cadaver; such staples of horror are always memorable and his frozen face added to the effect immensely.
The Snowmen monsters themselves were fun, however I think they would have looked scarier with no teeth, just a gaping maw - I felt this when I forst saw the pre-publicity images. But then the show has quite recently done the whole empty mouth effect with the Silents so I can understand them not wanting to go down that road again.
Matt Smith was once again on fire in this episode. Frankly I wasn't that impressed with the prequel shown back in November - it didn't whet my appetite and I wasn't moved by the moody Doctor at all. In the episode proper, though, Smith quickly got out of his funk and gave the usual tour de force - particularly when dressed as Sherlock Holmes and in all of his scenes opposite Richard E. Grant.
Jenna-Louise Coleman stole the show though. There was so much going on in her performance, she was incredibly watchable - full of fun, energy and sparkle. It's no wonder she so easily pulled the Doctor out of his 'retirement'. Her confidence and ability was never more prominent than in the 'one word' scene with Madame Vastra & Jenny. A gorgeously written and perfectly played set-piece where the power shifts wonderfully from Vastra to Clara as the conversation progresses. And yes, the final word 'Pond' was loaded and worked on various levels. But at least any Amy and Rory memories this may have engendered were left to the audience to fill in themselves (should they choose) without the kind of laboured soul-searching that would accompany 10th Doctor memories of Rose, for example.
And amongst all this there's a further mystery for us fans: why didn't / couldn't the Doctor quite remember the Great Intelligence? It was mentioned and almost thrown away towards the end, but this eagle-eared viewer spotted it straight away. Is this a seed for a forthcoming story arc? Tennant's Doctor had no trouble remembering the Macra back in Season 3 and they're contemporaneous with the Yeti and the Great Intelligence. Tricky. Is this another of Moffatt's little games?
Some people have observed that the ending was a bit rushed, or convenient. That's very symptomatic of the series as a whole since its return, and sometimes (as in The Fires of Pompeii) it bugs me but here it didn't seem out of place or sudden.
What was impressive about the ending, though, was the way it set up the mystery for the remainder of this series (and beyond..?) about who or what these Clara / Oswin characters are and how or why they're relating to the Doctor. I'm rather excited about the whole thing - so roll on the Spring!
Despite her appearance in the brilliant Season 7 opener Asylum of The Daleks this is very much a jumping-on point for the series, post-Ponds. We have a new theme arrangement, new titles, new Doctor costume and new TARDIS interior.
- New theme: fine, but I do miss the powerful diddly-dum because it's not all about the woo-oos.
- New titles: wow! There's a hell of a lot going on there, including (at last!) the Doctor's face appearing briefly. The final section is very reminiscent of the split-screen effect diamond-shaped time tunnel used in the latter Jon Pertwee and the Tom Baker titles. Nice!
- New Doctor costume: another tick for me. I always preferred a longer coat on The Doctor. Again, there's much detail and hidden layers - much like the Time Lord himself I guess.
- New TARDIS interior: Yes, I like this - but then I haven't yet seen one that I didn't really like at all (even the washing up bowl walls used for The Time Monster). My only grumble is probably a standard fanboy niggle: there aren't enough roundels! Just the one line around the walls, not all over the place like they used to be. But it's an interesting design, a bit more regimented than recent efforts, with visible edges and corners, and maintaining the different height levels gives flexibility. It also looks more functional and user-friendly - particularly more so than the Eccleston / Tennant 'coral' version with its ethereal fish tank lighting.
So, the episode itself: it's difficult to say too much really because I really enjoyed it and there's a tendency to gush and be over-enthusiastic to the point of sycophancy. So I'll be brief and only touch on those aspects that really stood out.
The episode had a level of style and visual quality that we've come to expect from recent episodes. Saul Metzstein has already proven himself to be a stand-out director within the current bunch.
Commander Strax, Madame Vastra & Jenny have appeared before but were served much better this time than in A Good Man Goes To War (2011). The humour from Strax is wonderful because it comes directly from his character, and isn't forced. Could this weird triumvirate be the next spin-off now Torchwood has disappeared up its own hell-hole? They certainly look great in Victorian garb.
Richard E. Grant spent a bit too long talking through his teeth for my liking, but he was still generally good value and Ian McKellen was excellent as the disembodied voice of the Great Intelligence, a Classic villain returning after 44 years. It's pleasing that in our high-tech world something that is only a large globe with some plastic snow blowing around in it can be so effective as a visual embodiment of 'evil'; very Jules Verne, I thought.
Having avoided the spoilers it was great fun working out that it was actually the Great Intelligence behind it all - although the episode title becomes an obvious feed once you know (for the uninitiated the original Intelligence story was called The Abominable Snowmen). I particularly enjoyed the scene where Grant became an animated cadaver; such staples of horror are always memorable and his frozen face added to the effect immensely.
The Snowmen monsters themselves were fun, however I think they would have looked scarier with no teeth, just a gaping maw - I felt this when I forst saw the pre-publicity images. But then the show has quite recently done the whole empty mouth effect with the Silents so I can understand them not wanting to go down that road again.
Matt Smith was once again on fire in this episode. Frankly I wasn't that impressed with the prequel shown back in November - it didn't whet my appetite and I wasn't moved by the moody Doctor at all. In the episode proper, though, Smith quickly got out of his funk and gave the usual tour de force - particularly when dressed as Sherlock Holmes and in all of his scenes opposite Richard E. Grant.
Jenna-Louise Coleman stole the show though. There was so much going on in her performance, she was incredibly watchable - full of fun, energy and sparkle. It's no wonder she so easily pulled the Doctor out of his 'retirement'. Her confidence and ability was never more prominent than in the 'one word' scene with Madame Vastra & Jenny. A gorgeously written and perfectly played set-piece where the power shifts wonderfully from Vastra to Clara as the conversation progresses. And yes, the final word 'Pond' was loaded and worked on various levels. But at least any Amy and Rory memories this may have engendered were left to the audience to fill in themselves (should they choose) without the kind of laboured soul-searching that would accompany 10th Doctor memories of Rose, for example.
And amongst all this there's a further mystery for us fans: why didn't / couldn't the Doctor quite remember the Great Intelligence? It was mentioned and almost thrown away towards the end, but this eagle-eared viewer spotted it straight away. Is this a seed for a forthcoming story arc? Tennant's Doctor had no trouble remembering the Macra back in Season 3 and they're contemporaneous with the Yeti and the Great Intelligence. Tricky. Is this another of Moffatt's little games?
Some people have observed that the ending was a bit rushed, or convenient. That's very symptomatic of the series as a whole since its return, and sometimes (as in The Fires of Pompeii) it bugs me but here it didn't seem out of place or sudden.
What was impressive about the ending, though, was the way it set up the mystery for the remainder of this series (and beyond..?) about who or what these Clara / Oswin characters are and how or why they're relating to the Doctor. I'm rather excited about the whole thing - so roll on the Spring!
Friday, 28 December 2012
Right Royle let-down
Dear Royles,
No more please. Stop spoiling it.
Thanks.
Christmas Day 2012 has given us a new Royle Family Christmas Special: Barbara's Old Ring. I wasn't impressed, and neither were those around me who have loved this series for years. If material of this quality is all that Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash can write these days, and if the regular actors involved can't be sufficiently bothered, then why should the viewing public be presented with any more of these?
It's a shame, because The Royle Family used to be a well-observed, amusing and, at times, bitter-sweet sitcom about 'real' people. But the actual series are long since past and it's now stuck in that 'Christmas Special' world, where special is rarely an apposite description. Given characters I've previously believed in, and whom the writers, actors and directors have developed as realistically as possible, it's very annoying do find them doing stupid or silly unrealistic things purely for the sake of a laugh in the script: the upshot is these moments are rarely funny because they break that fourth wall, and turn a realistic show into Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.
The Royle Family, on the whole, managed to avoid any of that all the way through three excellent series and the first 'special' The Queen of Sheba. That would have been a great place to end it all, to quit on a high - but because it went well and was popular the producers obviously thought (and still think?) there's further mileage in more Christmas editions. So next up in 2008 we had The New Sofa where we find that Denise & Dave's two young kids have been conveniently packed off somewhere (social services would be best, alas) and the couple have lost all grasp of reality in trying to prepare the Christmas lunch they're hosting. It's a pretty awful episode, frankly, and impossible to believe in.
The Golden Egg Cup followed in 2009. This time we're expected to believe that Jim and Barbara have been married for 50 years. 50?! So what were they, twelve when they got married? Sue Johnston and Ricky Tomlinson just didn't look old enough to have been married that long, and nothing about the Royles suggests they'd be the sort of couple who'd have waited ten years or so to start a family (neither of them being career people). Denise may be 40ish but she's not 50ish. So, we can assume the producers had an idea and made the characters fit around it. Great.
2010 and by now a 'special' has become an annual event. This episode, Joe's Crackers, was something of a return to form, but possibly only because it focused a lot more on neighbour Joe and his inability to come to terms with the death of his wife Mary. Could it be that the Royle's themselves have lost their charm? I think it was probably worth considering.
2011, if the Internet is to be believed, was missed because Aherne & Cash couldn't finish the script in time. If 2012 has given us the script they couldn't finish last year maybe they should have held back another year, or scrapped it completely and tried again?
Barbara's Old Ring. Is this a crude joke? Or is it just offered up in case anyone wants to make it a crude joke? It's unnecessary either way, and unfortunately sets the tone for the episode as a whole. With Geoffrey Hughes having passed away earlier this year we're given a replacement for Twiggy in 'Cadging' Carol from next door - a ferocious and appalling woman played brilliantly by Lorraine Bruce. She is the only source of energy in the whole thing, and one of only two actors who look like they really want to be there (the other is Joe, the other neighbour, played by Peter Martin.)
Other than introducing Carol we're presented this time with a collection of disparate half-baked ideas that fade in and out as their time comes and goes but don't go anywhere or work cohesively as a whole: Dave's got erectile problems - ho ho ho - cue what seemed like hours of appalling cheap gags at his expense and a brief reprise towards the end with a pair of puddings that look too much like breasts to be actual Christmas puddings. Dave also has a terrible Dragon's Den idea which is wheeled in, delivered and then features no more. It has a vague connection to Barbara's lost wedding ring, which is mentioned from time to time but doesn't appear to be causing her or anyone else much in the way of concern. Then Jim wins £100 on an old scratch card which was found down the back of the sofa with some random comedy items that could have been there for up to 30 years. We have to assume the scratch card isn't that old, since it would have expired long ago. Jim then keeps his winnings down his Y-fronts for nothing more than comedy horror value. On top of all this Joe next door decides he wants to put an entry in a local lonely hearts column.
All through this collection of 'sketches' Tomlinson, Johnston, Cash and Aherne sit there like they're about to fall asleep through boredom, giving the emptiest, soulless, laziest performances you're likely to see on TV this Christmas. There's no sense of connection or affection between the characters any more; they're no longer a family, just a group of people talking to each other. They're running purely on auto-pilot, that's all, and with Aherne directing from in front of the camera there's no one to remind the actors that they do still need to work to connect as characters on screen. It's an insult to those faithful fans and viewers who still want to see more of this family that they should be given material this poor as a reward.
Things perk up a bit when - surprise surprise - Joe pops in from next door and tells us about his search for a new partner via a lonely hearts advert. Some of this was really very funny, but a poor pay-off for what had gone before and nowhere near enough to lift the episode above dreadful.
Basically the show has lost the grip on authenticity which was the root of its original charm: Jim sits there in his Y-fronts while his trousers are washed for nothing more than shock value - yes, he only has one pair of trousers (except the smart trousers he wears later on). It's gross but it's not funny. Barbara was always someone with a bit more of a grip on normal life than the others, even if she did very easily put up with her 'lot', but she's now lost that: she doesn't comment on Jim sitting around with no trousers on when they have company, she talks to Joe's dates about Jim's drying Y-fronts and their skid marks: shock comedy, minus the comedy. What would have been funnier is if Joe's date had found the underpants discarded on her chair, and Barbara had to rescue them and explain. Denise's self-centred concept of life has now spread so that even the grandparents don't ask where her kids are anymore - either that or Cash and Aherne have forgotten they're supposed to have them. That kind of fatuous 'family chat' they did so well in front of the TV years ago lends itself to enquiries after kids and work and general health, so there's no exuse for leaving the kids out and we can only assume the writers couldn't think of what to say about them.
Denise, Dave, Jim and Barbara have now become a bog standard 'comedy quartet' instead of being real people. You might as well have them running Rene's cafe in Allo Allo. They do and say whatever the episode needs them to; they've lost any consistency. The sequences with them dressed as waiting staff, helping Joe with his various dates and holding up conversation cue cards is like something out of Are You Being Served? It's funny, but it's forced and it's not in keeping with the originality and believability that the programme built its legacy on.
The biggest shame that springs from this comes at the end, when Barbara finally confronts Jim about his scratch card winnings at the Christmas dinner table, in front of the neighbours and Denise & Dave (their kids? Pfff! No...) only to find that he'd bought her a new ring with (some of) the winnings and hidden it in her slice of figgy pud. It should be a real 'ahhh' tear-jerker moment, but the episode has been so uneven and lacklustre, there's been no emotional connection for the audience with anyone, or apparently between anyone in the show either, that the climax trips the audience rather than sweeping them off their feet and frankly you just don't believe it.
Speaking of climaxes, would a middle-aged couple so obviously leave the Christmas dinner table mid-meal to go upstairs in their parents house and have sex? Obviously Denise and Dave would, but only for the disappointment of coming back straight away thanks to Dave's 'hilarious' erectile disfunction. Ho ho ho...
If the BBC are going to insist on giving us more of these, please take it back to character-led observational comedy, not situation-led where the characters are forced to fit in.
No more please. Stop spoiling it.
Thanks.
Christmas Day 2012 has given us a new Royle Family Christmas Special: Barbara's Old Ring. I wasn't impressed, and neither were those around me who have loved this series for years. If material of this quality is all that Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash can write these days, and if the regular actors involved can't be sufficiently bothered, then why should the viewing public be presented with any more of these?
It's a shame, because The Royle Family used to be a well-observed, amusing and, at times, bitter-sweet sitcom about 'real' people. But the actual series are long since past and it's now stuck in that 'Christmas Special' world, where special is rarely an apposite description. Given characters I've previously believed in, and whom the writers, actors and directors have developed as realistically as possible, it's very annoying do find them doing stupid or silly unrealistic things purely for the sake of a laugh in the script: the upshot is these moments are rarely funny because they break that fourth wall, and turn a realistic show into Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.
The Royle Family, on the whole, managed to avoid any of that all the way through three excellent series and the first 'special' The Queen of Sheba. That would have been a great place to end it all, to quit on a high - but because it went well and was popular the producers obviously thought (and still think?) there's further mileage in more Christmas editions. So next up in 2008 we had The New Sofa where we find that Denise & Dave's two young kids have been conveniently packed off somewhere (social services would be best, alas) and the couple have lost all grasp of reality in trying to prepare the Christmas lunch they're hosting. It's a pretty awful episode, frankly, and impossible to believe in.
The Golden Egg Cup followed in 2009. This time we're expected to believe that Jim and Barbara have been married for 50 years. 50?! So what were they, twelve when they got married? Sue Johnston and Ricky Tomlinson just didn't look old enough to have been married that long, and nothing about the Royles suggests they'd be the sort of couple who'd have waited ten years or so to start a family (neither of them being career people). Denise may be 40ish but she's not 50ish. So, we can assume the producers had an idea and made the characters fit around it. Great.
2010 and by now a 'special' has become an annual event. This episode, Joe's Crackers, was something of a return to form, but possibly only because it focused a lot more on neighbour Joe and his inability to come to terms with the death of his wife Mary. Could it be that the Royle's themselves have lost their charm? I think it was probably worth considering.
2011, if the Internet is to be believed, was missed because Aherne & Cash couldn't finish the script in time. If 2012 has given us the script they couldn't finish last year maybe they should have held back another year, or scrapped it completely and tried again?
Barbara's Old Ring. Is this a crude joke? Or is it just offered up in case anyone wants to make it a crude joke? It's unnecessary either way, and unfortunately sets the tone for the episode as a whole. With Geoffrey Hughes having passed away earlier this year we're given a replacement for Twiggy in 'Cadging' Carol from next door - a ferocious and appalling woman played brilliantly by Lorraine Bruce. She is the only source of energy in the whole thing, and one of only two actors who look like they really want to be there (the other is Joe, the other neighbour, played by Peter Martin.)
Other than introducing Carol we're presented this time with a collection of disparate half-baked ideas that fade in and out as their time comes and goes but don't go anywhere or work cohesively as a whole: Dave's got erectile problems - ho ho ho - cue what seemed like hours of appalling cheap gags at his expense and a brief reprise towards the end with a pair of puddings that look too much like breasts to be actual Christmas puddings. Dave also has a terrible Dragon's Den idea which is wheeled in, delivered and then features no more. It has a vague connection to Barbara's lost wedding ring, which is mentioned from time to time but doesn't appear to be causing her or anyone else much in the way of concern. Then Jim wins £100 on an old scratch card which was found down the back of the sofa with some random comedy items that could have been there for up to 30 years. We have to assume the scratch card isn't that old, since it would have expired long ago. Jim then keeps his winnings down his Y-fronts for nothing more than comedy horror value. On top of all this Joe next door decides he wants to put an entry in a local lonely hearts column.
All through this collection of 'sketches' Tomlinson, Johnston, Cash and Aherne sit there like they're about to fall asleep through boredom, giving the emptiest, soulless, laziest performances you're likely to see on TV this Christmas. There's no sense of connection or affection between the characters any more; they're no longer a family, just a group of people talking to each other. They're running purely on auto-pilot, that's all, and with Aherne directing from in front of the camera there's no one to remind the actors that they do still need to work to connect as characters on screen. It's an insult to those faithful fans and viewers who still want to see more of this family that they should be given material this poor as a reward.
Things perk up a bit when - surprise surprise - Joe pops in from next door and tells us about his search for a new partner via a lonely hearts advert. Some of this was really very funny, but a poor pay-off for what had gone before and nowhere near enough to lift the episode above dreadful.
Basically the show has lost the grip on authenticity which was the root of its original charm: Jim sits there in his Y-fronts while his trousers are washed for nothing more than shock value - yes, he only has one pair of trousers (except the smart trousers he wears later on). It's gross but it's not funny. Barbara was always someone with a bit more of a grip on normal life than the others, even if she did very easily put up with her 'lot', but she's now lost that: she doesn't comment on Jim sitting around with no trousers on when they have company, she talks to Joe's dates about Jim's drying Y-fronts and their skid marks: shock comedy, minus the comedy. What would have been funnier is if Joe's date had found the underpants discarded on her chair, and Barbara had to rescue them and explain. Denise's self-centred concept of life has now spread so that even the grandparents don't ask where her kids are anymore - either that or Cash and Aherne have forgotten they're supposed to have them. That kind of fatuous 'family chat' they did so well in front of the TV years ago lends itself to enquiries after kids and work and general health, so there's no exuse for leaving the kids out and we can only assume the writers couldn't think of what to say about them.
Denise, Dave, Jim and Barbara have now become a bog standard 'comedy quartet' instead of being real people. You might as well have them running Rene's cafe in Allo Allo. They do and say whatever the episode needs them to; they've lost any consistency. The sequences with them dressed as waiting staff, helping Joe with his various dates and holding up conversation cue cards is like something out of Are You Being Served? It's funny, but it's forced and it's not in keeping with the originality and believability that the programme built its legacy on.
The biggest shame that springs from this comes at the end, when Barbara finally confronts Jim about his scratch card winnings at the Christmas dinner table, in front of the neighbours and Denise & Dave (their kids? Pfff! No...) only to find that he'd bought her a new ring with (some of) the winnings and hidden it in her slice of figgy pud. It should be a real 'ahhh' tear-jerker moment, but the episode has been so uneven and lacklustre, there's been no emotional connection for the audience with anyone, or apparently between anyone in the show either, that the climax trips the audience rather than sweeping them off their feet and frankly you just don't believe it.
Speaking of climaxes, would a middle-aged couple so obviously leave the Christmas dinner table mid-meal to go upstairs in their parents house and have sex? Obviously Denise and Dave would, but only for the disappointment of coming back straight away thanks to Dave's 'hilarious' erectile disfunction. Ho ho ho...
If the BBC are going to insist on giving us more of these, please take it back to character-led observational comedy, not situation-led where the characters are forced to fit in.
Sunday, 25 November 2012
A Doctor Who season in print: 7 - a brave new world!
I haven't done one of these in a while, but recently I've been munching my way through some old Target Doctor Who novelisations before I have to get rid of them (due to space restrictions) and as Season 7 is short on stories (but not on episodes) I thought it was worth another Blog article.
So, this time around we get two of the earliest Target books:
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1974, 156 pages - with illustrations!)
Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke (pub. 1974, 158 pages - with illustrations!)
And then two more from when they were fully established:
The Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1987, 144 pages)
Inferno, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1984, 126 pages)
This is generally considered to be one of the best seasons of Classic Doctor Who - gritty, consistent, shocking and challenging, before a kind of cosy 'comfort' set in to the Pertwee era. Is this matched by the books?
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion was televised as Spearhead From Space. Target felt it needed a punchier, more dramatic title. The same with (Doctor Who and) The Silurians which became Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters in print. there are several early examples of this title changing tendency (mainly Malcolm Hulke books, admittedly) and it does give some of them a certain frisson but the idea was quickly dropped. The other claim to fame that these two books have is that they are the first two authentic Target novelisations and really set the bar for what was to follow. 1973 saw Target re-printing the three 1960s novelisations of David Whittaker's The Daleks and The Crusaders and Bill Strutton's The Zarbi. Fuelled by enthusiasm for the opportunity Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke then produced some of the most readable prose 'adaptations' of any of the TV stories.
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion is a lovingly expanded adaptation of Spearhead From Space. It's like Dicks has revisited Robert Holmes' story and Derek Martinus' direction and thought 'how can I build on this to flesh it out a bit and give it more of an over all coherency?' We get a prologue from the end of The War Games (which I'm surprised the DVDs haven't offered as an extra), we get thoughtful character backgrounds, explanations (like why Madame Tussauds would have a dull exhibition of senior civil servants and military men, for example!) and expansions on what was televised - particularly building the episode one cliff hanger and developing the 'octopus' at the end - and it's all so simply yet well-written it just picks you up and carries you along. Liz Shaw doesn't get much more of a look in than she does on TV, unfortunately, but it's possible that Dicks struggled with this anyway, knowing his preference for heroine-tied-to-the-railway-lines type companions. You can't help but feel a tad short-changed at some of the 110 page 4th & 5th Doctor books that Dicks would later come out with when he was churning them out month on month and clearly didn't have the time or the creative energy to apply the same level of care and thought. But here he was very much writing what he knew directly, and it's a great place to start the range.
Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters is a slightly different kettle of fish, yet just as brilliant in its own way. Hulke has clearly picked and chosen what he wanted from his TV scripts, or thought specifically about what would work best in print and what was needed from the televised story. The 'Silurians' here are Reptile Men instead, and they have names and characters beyond the Young Silurian / Old Silurian ciphers on TV. You'd be hard pushed to find more powerful moments of pathos and character than 'Old' Okdel's tears and his willing acceptance of his own death at the hand of 'Young' Morka. The story is essentially the same as on TV, but some of the details are different. What we may lose in detail, though, is made up for through creative narrative and point of view story-telling. Doctor Quinn and Miss Dawson are having a terribly protracted innocent courtship, and they benefit from further development in print - as does Doctor Meredith. Doctor Lawrence, on the other hand, is nowhere near as objectionable on the page as he is on screen and this is perhaps a shame - as is his altered demise. There doesn't appear to be any benefit to making Hawkins a sergeant rather than a captain in the book, or for changing Major Baker to Major Barker (being more familiar with the TV version I gave up trying to auto-correct myself after a while). Whereas The Auton Invasion built the story up, The Cave Monsters had seven episodes to fit in so it's down to strategic cutting to make it fit into a length that would sufficiently appeal to children without being too stodgy. It's major achievement, though, is in humanising the monsters, giving them clearly defined and individual characters in a way that the TV programme hadn't really achieved up to that point.
The Ambassadors of Death comes much later in the run of books. The illustrations are long gone, so this is all text. By this point we'd been through a severe page limitation and were emerging out the other side. Terrance Dicks' output had diminished considerably since in many cases the original TV scriptwriters were choosing to adapt their own work, so Dicks and Nigel Robinson between them were mopping up any earlier gaps. This was one such gap.
Overall Terrance was probably the best person to write this novel. Many have regretted Malcolm Hulke passing away and never having got his teeth into this script, which was largely written by him and script assistant Trevor Ray although credited to David Whittaker. But Hulke was probably too close to such a troubled script. Dicks, as script editor, gave the final polish to all of it and evened out the various contributors' work.
This book is pretty standard fare. It's not quite a simple script-to-page effort with the occasional token descriptive passage, but it displays little of the adaptive energy and enthusiasm of The Auton Invasion from 13 years earlier. It still succeeds because it's a cracking story with some great characters, concepts and action sequences. Simply reflecting these on the page is enough to give this book appeal. Some might have felt this was a good opportunity to give the story proper 'closure' at the end, but it's faithful to the abrupt televised version and we leave it half way down a page as the Doctor leaves Liz and the others to negotiate the safe return of the alien ambassadors. The middle episodes don't feel like they lose much from the story being curtailed to 144 pages and Dicks is very economical in places where action sequences which take several minutes on screen can be dealt with in a brief paragraph on the page, without the reader feeling that they're being rushed or missing out on anything.
My favourite part of the book is a typo on page 40:
'The guard fell, and the same brown-gloved hand took his eyes and opened the door of the cell.' Ouch! Very King Lear. I assume 'eyes' should have been 'keys', since there's no indication it was a retinal scan lock!
Inferno is another similar adaptation, but from three years earlier when 128 pages was the maximum length. How do you get seven of the best TV episodes ever into 128 pages and do them justice? Answer: make it 126 pages of very small type. Inferno, like Ambassadors of Death, is a great read almost simply because it's such a good story, but Season 7 gives us a useful comparison between the early years of the Target range and it's established adolescent period. All four books are great reads, but all four treat their source material in a slightly different way. Inferno's quirk of adaptation comes when The Doctor is in the parallel universe. On TV we get occasional reminders of what our friends are up to in the 'real world', and this may have been felt a necessity by the production team in case of any chance first time viewers not understanding what was going on. In the book we get one 'cut back' early on and then that's it, we keep with the fascist world and see that adventure through to the end. The 'missing' sequences are briefly referenced after the Doctor returns to 'our' universe but not gone into in any detail - nor do they need to be either; the Doctor is having an adventure on a parallel Earth, that's what we're interested in and that's what the author is focusing on. It also serves as a self-editing technique for the story, since some detail still has to be compromised to ensure it fits comfortably into it's limited page numbers - but at least it's done in a thoughtful, creative way that benefits the narrative. If it had been a shorter story it possible that Dicks may have been tempted to write a farewell scene for Liz Shaw at the end, or offer some hints that she would be returning to Cambridge. Considering what's been done since - particularly Gary Russell's Virgin MA The Scales of Injustice - I think it's good that he followed the TV version faithfully and ends Liz Shaw's adventures with her smiling away at the departing backs of the Doctor and the Brigadier.
My only query is why Dicks shied away from called the mutants Primords. The name isn't used on TV but it's what the creatures are credited as at the ends of the episodes. Dicks' just called the creatures 'mutations'. I guess if you call them Primords you're identifying them as a specific individual species, whereas Dicks' view is very much that these are mutations of mankind, not a different species altogether.
All these stories are excellent and are challenging works of telefantasy / sci-fi which have much to offer the reader as an alternative to watching them on TV. They highlight many of the considerable strengths of the Target range, as well as some of it's occasionally more frustrating limitations. I would recommend reading all these books, although at the moment only The Auton Invasion and The Cave Monsters are readily available as they've been re-published in recent BBC Books editions.
So, this time around we get two of the earliest Target books:
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1974, 156 pages - with illustrations!)
Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke (pub. 1974, 158 pages - with illustrations!)
And then two more from when they were fully established:
The Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1987, 144 pages)
Inferno, by Terrance Dicks (pub. 1984, 126 pages)
This is generally considered to be one of the best seasons of Classic Doctor Who - gritty, consistent, shocking and challenging, before a kind of cosy 'comfort' set in to the Pertwee era. Is this matched by the books?
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion was televised as Spearhead From Space. Target felt it needed a punchier, more dramatic title. The same with (Doctor Who and) The Silurians which became Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters in print. there are several early examples of this title changing tendency (mainly Malcolm Hulke books, admittedly) and it does give some of them a certain frisson but the idea was quickly dropped. The other claim to fame that these two books have is that they are the first two authentic Target novelisations and really set the bar for what was to follow. 1973 saw Target re-printing the three 1960s novelisations of David Whittaker's The Daleks and The Crusaders and Bill Strutton's The Zarbi. Fuelled by enthusiasm for the opportunity Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke then produced some of the most readable prose 'adaptations' of any of the TV stories.
Doctor Who and The Auton Invasion is a lovingly expanded adaptation of Spearhead From Space. It's like Dicks has revisited Robert Holmes' story and Derek Martinus' direction and thought 'how can I build on this to flesh it out a bit and give it more of an over all coherency?' We get a prologue from the end of The War Games (which I'm surprised the DVDs haven't offered as an extra), we get thoughtful character backgrounds, explanations (like why Madame Tussauds would have a dull exhibition of senior civil servants and military men, for example!) and expansions on what was televised - particularly building the episode one cliff hanger and developing the 'octopus' at the end - and it's all so simply yet well-written it just picks you up and carries you along. Liz Shaw doesn't get much more of a look in than she does on TV, unfortunately, but it's possible that Dicks struggled with this anyway, knowing his preference for heroine-tied-to-the-railway-lines type companions. You can't help but feel a tad short-changed at some of the 110 page 4th & 5th Doctor books that Dicks would later come out with when he was churning them out month on month and clearly didn't have the time or the creative energy to apply the same level of care and thought. But here he was very much writing what he knew directly, and it's a great place to start the range.
Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters is a slightly different kettle of fish, yet just as brilliant in its own way. Hulke has clearly picked and chosen what he wanted from his TV scripts, or thought specifically about what would work best in print and what was needed from the televised story. The 'Silurians' here are Reptile Men instead, and they have names and characters beyond the Young Silurian / Old Silurian ciphers on TV. You'd be hard pushed to find more powerful moments of pathos and character than 'Old' Okdel's tears and his willing acceptance of his own death at the hand of 'Young' Morka. The story is essentially the same as on TV, but some of the details are different. What we may lose in detail, though, is made up for through creative narrative and point of view story-telling. Doctor Quinn and Miss Dawson are having a terribly protracted innocent courtship, and they benefit from further development in print - as does Doctor Meredith. Doctor Lawrence, on the other hand, is nowhere near as objectionable on the page as he is on screen and this is perhaps a shame - as is his altered demise. There doesn't appear to be any benefit to making Hawkins a sergeant rather than a captain in the book, or for changing Major Baker to Major Barker (being more familiar with the TV version I gave up trying to auto-correct myself after a while). Whereas The Auton Invasion built the story up, The Cave Monsters had seven episodes to fit in so it's down to strategic cutting to make it fit into a length that would sufficiently appeal to children without being too stodgy. It's major achievement, though, is in humanising the monsters, giving them clearly defined and individual characters in a way that the TV programme hadn't really achieved up to that point.
The Ambassadors of Death comes much later in the run of books. The illustrations are long gone, so this is all text. By this point we'd been through a severe page limitation and were emerging out the other side. Terrance Dicks' output had diminished considerably since in many cases the original TV scriptwriters were choosing to adapt their own work, so Dicks and Nigel Robinson between them were mopping up any earlier gaps. This was one such gap.
Overall Terrance was probably the best person to write this novel. Many have regretted Malcolm Hulke passing away and never having got his teeth into this script, which was largely written by him and script assistant Trevor Ray although credited to David Whittaker. But Hulke was probably too close to such a troubled script. Dicks, as script editor, gave the final polish to all of it and evened out the various contributors' work.
This book is pretty standard fare. It's not quite a simple script-to-page effort with the occasional token descriptive passage, but it displays little of the adaptive energy and enthusiasm of The Auton Invasion from 13 years earlier. It still succeeds because it's a cracking story with some great characters, concepts and action sequences. Simply reflecting these on the page is enough to give this book appeal. Some might have felt this was a good opportunity to give the story proper 'closure' at the end, but it's faithful to the abrupt televised version and we leave it half way down a page as the Doctor leaves Liz and the others to negotiate the safe return of the alien ambassadors. The middle episodes don't feel like they lose much from the story being curtailed to 144 pages and Dicks is very economical in places where action sequences which take several minutes on screen can be dealt with in a brief paragraph on the page, without the reader feeling that they're being rushed or missing out on anything.
My favourite part of the book is a typo on page 40:
'The guard fell, and the same brown-gloved hand took his eyes and opened the door of the cell.' Ouch! Very King Lear. I assume 'eyes' should have been 'keys', since there's no indication it was a retinal scan lock!
Inferno is another similar adaptation, but from three years earlier when 128 pages was the maximum length. How do you get seven of the best TV episodes ever into 128 pages and do them justice? Answer: make it 126 pages of very small type. Inferno, like Ambassadors of Death, is a great read almost simply because it's such a good story, but Season 7 gives us a useful comparison between the early years of the Target range and it's established adolescent period. All four books are great reads, but all four treat their source material in a slightly different way. Inferno's quirk of adaptation comes when The Doctor is in the parallel universe. On TV we get occasional reminders of what our friends are up to in the 'real world', and this may have been felt a necessity by the production team in case of any chance first time viewers not understanding what was going on. In the book we get one 'cut back' early on and then that's it, we keep with the fascist world and see that adventure through to the end. The 'missing' sequences are briefly referenced after the Doctor returns to 'our' universe but not gone into in any detail - nor do they need to be either; the Doctor is having an adventure on a parallel Earth, that's what we're interested in and that's what the author is focusing on. It also serves as a self-editing technique for the story, since some detail still has to be compromised to ensure it fits comfortably into it's limited page numbers - but at least it's done in a thoughtful, creative way that benefits the narrative. If it had been a shorter story it possible that Dicks may have been tempted to write a farewell scene for Liz Shaw at the end, or offer some hints that she would be returning to Cambridge. Considering what's been done since - particularly Gary Russell's Virgin MA The Scales of Injustice - I think it's good that he followed the TV version faithfully and ends Liz Shaw's adventures with her smiling away at the departing backs of the Doctor and the Brigadier.
My only query is why Dicks shied away from called the mutants Primords. The name isn't used on TV but it's what the creatures are credited as at the ends of the episodes. Dicks' just called the creatures 'mutations'. I guess if you call them Primords you're identifying them as a specific individual species, whereas Dicks' view is very much that these are mutations of mankind, not a different species altogether.
All these stories are excellent and are challenging works of telefantasy / sci-fi which have much to offer the reader as an alternative to watching them on TV. They highlight many of the considerable strengths of the Target range, as well as some of it's occasionally more frustrating limitations. I would recommend reading all these books, although at the moment only The Auton Invasion and The Cave Monsters are readily available as they've been re-published in recent BBC Books editions.
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Red Dwarf X: The Beginning
'I challenge you to a duel across time and space!'
This series has ended on a real high, the kind of high that makes you hope that Dave commissions Red Dwarf XI immediately. Thankfully episode 6, The Beginning, was just as strong, funny and consistent as the previous week's Dear Dave.
OK, so we're back in Blade Runner territory, dealing with rogue simulants, but like last week's mail pod this is an acceptable recurrence: we know they occupy the area of space Red Dwarf is travelling through - so the series set itself up a long time ago for repeat confrontations. Here the rogue simulants are humorously a bit crap and camp, and less psychotic - which adds interest to them. We'd get bored if they were the same each time, after all. My only criticism (and this is probably just personal taste) was that I felt Gary Cady's Dominator Zlurth was slightly under-played and he could have cranked and camped it up a notch.
I loved the Star Wars homages - they weren't the 'nod to camera' heavy-handed references like you get in The Simpsons or Family Guy (not including their Star Wars Specials, of course!), they were there if you wanted them and they didn't make or break any scenes. I doubt you can do a spaceship hiding in an asteroid or a hologrammatic personal message these days without a large section of the audience thinking of Star Wars, so it's best to just embrace it. But it was difficult to tell if the laughter accompanying the line 'I'm not your father' was more for the sentiment or for the inversion of the Star Wars quote.
Possibly the best aspect of the episode, though, was Hogey the Roguey. What a guy, and what a performance from Richard O'Callaghan - miles away from Bertram Muffet, his clumsy romantic lead in Carry On Loving years ago.
In many ways Hogey is such an obvious comedy sci-fi character that it's amazing he's not appeared here before. And the gags worked so much better with us not being privy to the back story (unlike, I feel, the poker game with the BEGGs in Entangled). A crap, annoying, Hispanic cyborg with a ridiculous comb-over who is desperate to ease the boredom of his existence with honourable challenges is the perfect accompaniment to the Red Dwarf crew. Now we've met him, of course, and he's worked really well I fully expect him to appear again - only hopefully not as much as the over-used Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley crowd-pleasers of earlier series.
Will Rimmer's parentage situation change him in the future if the series returns? I doubt it. Nor should it. The dynamic is settled and works as it is. Was the Cat's psychoanalysis of Rimmer shoe-horned in? Possibly, but he occasionally shows moments of insight anyway, so it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination here. Plus he was playing the string on a stick game at the same time and that was a nice moment of Cat charm.
On the whole there's been little to compromise the visual impact of the series. I thought the BEGGs looked awful and Red Dwarf's drive room is a bit cramped, but otherwise everything's been fine. Maybe too much of the budget had to go on the space battle here, because the crew descending through the floor with Hogey's molecular destabiliser gun and the missiles passing through Blue Midget's bridge were less than convincing, which was a shame. Blue Midget's bridge was very similar to the Dwarf's drive room (same set redressed? Would make sense!) so again you had the crew tapping away on small keyboards at an awkward angle (they'd never be DDA compliant!) - seemingly for the Cat so that he didn't mask the camera's view of the rear of the cockpit. Bit of bad design planning there, methinks...
Overall, though, I think what marked out this episode, like last week's, was that there was just enough going on for it to have pace and energy throughout, but not so much that it had to compromise itself or cut corners. It had time for poignancy, humour and character. It could develop the villains sufficiently and most importantly there were some great gags along the way.
I'm also filled with hope for a further series because they didn't end on a cliff hanger where they could, if need be, end the series. If it did end here you'd know that they were just going to carry on as they have been, with wacky adventures. I hope, though, that we get to join them on those.
I was unsure before the series started. Back To Earth in 2009 was not an auspicious continuation of the original series, and if that was the template for things to come then I would struggle to remain a fan of the show. Also Dave (and the other UK Gold-type channels) tend to over-hype their own programmes and I get worried I've already heard all the best gags in something when I've seen the same trailer umpteen times. I think Red Dwarf X has overcome all this and it's been a solid series on the whole - not perfect by any means, but enjoyable and with some classic moments along the way. Personally I don't think we should demand any more than that. Get the basics right and anything extra special is a bonus in my view.
P.S. all the way through this series I've avoided the question of Rimmer's continuity. Is he the same Rimmer that went off to be Ace Rimmer in Series VII? He seems to be the same. In Series VIII he was human again. I know all the crew had died again at the end of that series though. I think it's best not to ponder on that. Red Dwarf, like many TV sitcoms, is not a series that rewards scrutiny of continuity. I'm happy to just watch it and love it for what it is...
This series has ended on a real high, the kind of high that makes you hope that Dave commissions Red Dwarf XI immediately. Thankfully episode 6, The Beginning, was just as strong, funny and consistent as the previous week's Dear Dave.
OK, so we're back in Blade Runner territory, dealing with rogue simulants, but like last week's mail pod this is an acceptable recurrence: we know they occupy the area of space Red Dwarf is travelling through - so the series set itself up a long time ago for repeat confrontations. Here the rogue simulants are humorously a bit crap and camp, and less psychotic - which adds interest to them. We'd get bored if they were the same each time, after all. My only criticism (and this is probably just personal taste) was that I felt Gary Cady's Dominator Zlurth was slightly under-played and he could have cranked and camped it up a notch.
I loved the Star Wars homages - they weren't the 'nod to camera' heavy-handed references like you get in The Simpsons or Family Guy (not including their Star Wars Specials, of course!), they were there if you wanted them and they didn't make or break any scenes. I doubt you can do a spaceship hiding in an asteroid or a hologrammatic personal message these days without a large section of the audience thinking of Star Wars, so it's best to just embrace it. But it was difficult to tell if the laughter accompanying the line 'I'm not your father' was more for the sentiment or for the inversion of the Star Wars quote.
Possibly the best aspect of the episode, though, was Hogey the Roguey. What a guy, and what a performance from Richard O'Callaghan - miles away from Bertram Muffet, his clumsy romantic lead in Carry On Loving years ago.
In many ways Hogey is such an obvious comedy sci-fi character that it's amazing he's not appeared here before. And the gags worked so much better with us not being privy to the back story (unlike, I feel, the poker game with the BEGGs in Entangled). A crap, annoying, Hispanic cyborg with a ridiculous comb-over who is desperate to ease the boredom of his existence with honourable challenges is the perfect accompaniment to the Red Dwarf crew. Now we've met him, of course, and he's worked really well I fully expect him to appear again - only hopefully not as much as the over-used Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley crowd-pleasers of earlier series.
Will Rimmer's parentage situation change him in the future if the series returns? I doubt it. Nor should it. The dynamic is settled and works as it is. Was the Cat's psychoanalysis of Rimmer shoe-horned in? Possibly, but he occasionally shows moments of insight anyway, so it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination here. Plus he was playing the string on a stick game at the same time and that was a nice moment of Cat charm.
On the whole there's been little to compromise the visual impact of the series. I thought the BEGGs looked awful and Red Dwarf's drive room is a bit cramped, but otherwise everything's been fine. Maybe too much of the budget had to go on the space battle here, because the crew descending through the floor with Hogey's molecular destabiliser gun and the missiles passing through Blue Midget's bridge were less than convincing, which was a shame. Blue Midget's bridge was very similar to the Dwarf's drive room (same set redressed? Would make sense!) so again you had the crew tapping away on small keyboards at an awkward angle (they'd never be DDA compliant!) - seemingly for the Cat so that he didn't mask the camera's view of the rear of the cockpit. Bit of bad design planning there, methinks...
Overall, though, I think what marked out this episode, like last week's, was that there was just enough going on for it to have pace and energy throughout, but not so much that it had to compromise itself or cut corners. It had time for poignancy, humour and character. It could develop the villains sufficiently and most importantly there were some great gags along the way.
I'm also filled with hope for a further series because they didn't end on a cliff hanger where they could, if need be, end the series. If it did end here you'd know that they were just going to carry on as they have been, with wacky adventures. I hope, though, that we get to join them on those.
I was unsure before the series started. Back To Earth in 2009 was not an auspicious continuation of the original series, and if that was the template for things to come then I would struggle to remain a fan of the show. Also Dave (and the other UK Gold-type channels) tend to over-hype their own programmes and I get worried I've already heard all the best gags in something when I've seen the same trailer umpteen times. I think Red Dwarf X has overcome all this and it's been a solid series on the whole - not perfect by any means, but enjoyable and with some classic moments along the way. Personally I don't think we should demand any more than that. Get the basics right and anything extra special is a bonus in my view.
P.S. all the way through this series I've avoided the question of Rimmer's continuity. Is he the same Rimmer that went off to be Ace Rimmer in Series VII? He seems to be the same. In Series VIII he was human again. I know all the crew had died again at the end of that series though. I think it's best not to ponder on that. Red Dwarf, like many TV sitcoms, is not a series that rewards scrutiny of continuity. I'm happy to just watch it and love it for what it is...
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