Saturday 28 February 2015

On living long and prospering

It's given to very few of us to become genuinely iconic.  I'm not sure the conditions exist to do that in cultural terms these days; there's no real centre ground any more which attracts families and social classes of all stripes.  TV viewers are offered their own niche channels and the only real communal events are live.  Even then it's largely sport and there exist large swathes of the population who don't enjoy that.  Everything's fractured and it's all too easy to exist in your own niche.  Cutting across demographics, media and cultures is now somewhere between difficult and impossible.

That wasn't the case in the 1960s of course.  There were infinitely less channels, less diversity in less combinations.  In the UK you had three TV channels at best, in the US the situation was practically little different.  Radio had equally little choice, despite the late 60s advent of Radio 1.  So there was almost a forced homogenity to culture where everything had to be shared and the channels had to try to appeal to as many people as possible (for the BBC this was actually embedded in their charter). Therefore the times before the pro-infinite choice 1980s created these genuine icons.  Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson were probably the last great heyday before the final one-off flare of the Spice Girls in the 1990s.  Many of the these icons came from the the 1970s (the likes of Bowie, Led Zeppelin and dubious TV personalities) but most came from the 1960s, the cultural founding point of post-war culture (prize exception: Elvis, obviously).  The Beatles and the Stones bestrode the music scene, the Daleks, Hancock and the Steptoes bestrode TV along with Coronation Street.  But across the shared culture of the UK and US?  Over time, one series mutated to assume an iconic status in both, one in which it also became a shorthand for science-fiction: Star Trek (yes I know Doctor Who's getting there now but it's really just catching up).

You can probably catch my drift on what this post's about now.  Yesterday I got home from work and checked Facebook to discover Leonard Nimoy had passed away.  Yes, he'd been Paris in Mission: Impossible and had a frankly daftly wide ranging career covering all sorts of other artistic pursuits (photography, poetry, music and far more).  But he was known primarily as Spock, the half-human half-Vulcan green blooded first officer of the Starship Enterprise.  Together with William Shatner and DeForest Kelley they drove the original series of Trek, expertly finding the line between drama and high camp which gives the series a charm it still retains.  This isn't to downplay the likes of James Doohan , Nichelle Nicholls, George Takei and Walter Koenig, who all contribute to the show's success, but Kirk, Bones and Spock are clearly the main characters and accordingly get more screen time.  And of those Kirk and Spock are the iconic ones, the main guys you pick on if you're parodying the show.  Shatner and Nimoy, Cultural icons who've been instantly recognisable for three generations, inspired convention, novels, cosplay, fanfic, songs... properly iconic.

At some level we thought they'd live forever.  But they don't, they're as mortal as the rest of us, human.  Shatner's flaws of ego are well documented but culturally he remains a joyous, self-aware presence.  Nimoy was perhaps not the showman Shatner still is, he was too cerebral a presence but he was an always engaging presence on Twitter, offering to be everyone's grandfather and dispensing wisdom in 140 or so tweets.  That he ended every tweet with LLAP - the Trek farewell, Live long and prosper - was endearing.  Nimoy seemed to have a genuine belief that humanity could better itself, practising what Trek preached.  By all accounts - and there are plenty this weekend from friends, fans and casual acquaintances alike - he was every bit as wise and friendly in real life.  It's always wonderful to know that heroes are actually worthy of adoration.

It's hard not to read his last few tweets and not believe he knew the end was nigh.  Without having known him it was tough to tell whether it was accumulated wisdom and the humanity acquired over a lifetime being dispensed or a message.  In retrospect they were the same messages my granddad was giving us when accumulated decades of smoking caught up with him. Life's shorter than we think and they were in the departure lounge even if they didn't quite know when their flight was leaving.  Four days before he died, his last public words came via Twitter, a ready made epitaph:




And on Friday he was gone.  It didn't seem right, the surreal feeling when you hear a friend you haven't seen for a while  is gone.  For me it kind of felt like it did when John Peel died, a cornerstone of growing up vanished and gone.

Social media gets much maligned these days, how it's about spreading half-truths, misunderstandings, falsehoods and people simply venting their spleen.  It can be all of that but it can also be the biggest community we've got.  And when an icon passes away we don't have to retreat into our own incomprehension, poking at a fresh absence the way we poke the gap left by a newly removed tooth with our tongue instinctively.  We can share our memories, our joy and sadness.  And what our icons meant to us.  At times like this social media comes into its own, a seriously beautiful thing, a kind of group hug across the world.  I spent much of Friday evening looking at random tributes, retweets and Facebook statuses. From people who knew him, from strangers who'd just watched the odd episode of Trek.  And in some way Nimoy's life and/or work had touched them, given them some degree of joy or comfort.  Really, if any of us have such a global impact, one that can even lead Barack Obama to pay tribute when we pass, can we ask to have done more with our lives?  Whatever Nimoy's human failings (and he will have had some, like any of us), his presence has benefited a lot of people as a whole.  A geek character who became a geek icon, who helped a lot of outsiders.  Who blessed a lot of childhoods with good memories.  And maybe that way a kind of immortality lies.  Positive effects which ripple outwards.  We've no way of knowing how long the  legacy of Star Trek will last - currently 49 years and still a cultural touchstone - but perhaps that's not the point.  Perhaps Nimoy's immortality lies in his actions and his positive use of his fame to make the world better in a lot of ways.  Perhaps in that way icons can live forever.

In the meantime, as Nathan Fillion tweeted in tribute - 'I have been, and always will be, your fan.'  And there's only one appropriate clip to attach here.


RIP.  And thank you.

What I've Caught Up On In February

Part 2 in a probable monthly series.  It's a tad shorter than the first one as a) I've been in work and not had time off and b) been writing; my free time's been a tad more limited.  And there's overlap with the first one due to being parts of ongoing series. So, without comment what's been passing through my eyes and ears to my brain this month...

Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe
Bitter Lake
Wolf Hall
Cucumber
Banana
The Casual Vacancy
The War Lords (AJP Taylor history series)
Tropic Thunder
Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Adventures Season 2
Ultimate Spider-Man: The Death of Spider-Man
Thor: Tales of Asgard
Lady Stardust (edited by Art Critic Panda)

Tuesday 17 February 2015

More War

As promised... hints and teasers for each story in the Seasons of War anthology...

Preface - Nick Briggs pays tribute to the late Paul Spragg, who played a key role in the anthology coming together

Epilogue - Warsmiths by Matt Fitton - Where else does a book about a war that's scrambled time start? Two Time Lords meet in a bleak, lonely place and replay a dilemma from the Doctor's past. Featuring an unnamed cameo from a Big Finish character...

I. Karn by Declan May - What happened after the regeneration we saw in Night of the Doctor? And just how different from the old Doctor is this new incarnation?

Crowsnest Past by Warren Frey - Strange creatures lurk in the land around a lonely Canadian town. Can the Doctor discover what they want? And can he learn how to shotgun?

The Eight Minute War by Lee Rawlings - The story of the Doctor's army.  But has he overestimated his own capabilities?  Featuring the finest use of Louis Armstrong in a story in many a year.

Everything In Its Right Place by J.R. Southall - Who is Alice? And what's this place where the Earth should be?

II. Corsair by Declan May - Meet the Corsair, the Doctor's old friend as mentioned in The Doctor's Wife.

The Ambassador from Wolf-Rayet 134 - The Lobopods have an ability that might turn the course of the War. But first the ambassadors of two worlds must come to an understanding...

The Amber Room by Simon Brett and John Davies - Leo Dunning is in his last tour of duty.  Or he was until he found himself in the company of Dave who's telling him that his world never existed...

The Celephas Gift by Andrew Smith - The Doctor crashlands on Muranius, a brutal, repressed world where he must unravel the secrets of a Gift visited upon the planet from the skies...

The Girl With Purple Hair (in three parts) by Declan May and John Davies -Who is Jenny Shirt?  And what fate awaits her?

An Historical Curiosity by Matthew Sweet - The Doctor meets Shakespeare.  And wins.

Here Comes the Doctor by Christopher Bryant  - Doctor no more, now a Patient.  What secrets lie in the depths of The Hospital? And what will be the consequences of their discovery?

Your Move by John Peel - The Daleks have wiped out the Movellans to stop anyone using their great War Computer against them. Now they want to destroy the Computer too.  And a certain Gallifreyan wants to help them...

III. Sonnet by Jenny Colgan - Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Disjecta Membra by Elton Townend-Jones - Who is the mysterious man Cass keeps glimpsing in the corner of her eye?

IV. Loop by Declan May - A young man meets his older self.

The Holdover by Daniel Wealands - The Holdover: A safe haven for refugees from the Time War.  Or is it?

Climbing the Mountain by Lance Parkin - Countless worlds burn in the flames of the Time War.  Can a former Doctor perform triage to save worlds?

Gardening by Sami Kelsh - There are places of beauty and tranquility, delicately balanced.  But the War must touch even those...

Sleepwalking to Paradise by Dan Barratt - A Coma Ship lies on a temporal fault line.  Can the Time Lord solve the mystery of the faultline and save the ship from the Daleks?

Guerre by Alan P Jack and Declan May - John Smith finds himself in France during the First World War.  But this war is about to be invaded by an even greater one...

V, Lady Leela by Declan May - A Time War.  A warrior of the Sevateem.  What can she do but fight?

Making Endings by Nick Mellish - A man haunted by his past life finds himself hunted by the Sentimonocks.  Can an old man write him a happy ending?

The Book of Dead Time by David Carrington -  Jenny Shirt's old friend takes her to a most unusual library in search of a book that the Daleks might decimate the planet to possess...

Driftwood by Simon Brett - Gabrielle lives on a world where much of the debris of the Time War washes up with her grandfather and a most unusual friend.  Why does Azrael want a teacup so badly?

The Ingenious Gentleman by Alan Ronald - "In which a man striving to become worthy of a title, meets a man who no longer is."

Fall by Matt Barber -  The Doctor has a problem, one he can only solve by calling on one of his oldest friends.

Always Face the Curtain with a Bow by Jon Arnold -  This'll be me then... The Daleks need information from their old nemesis, and they've set up a most unusual prison to get it.  But will their prisoner give them the information they want?  I'll blog about this story at some point soon, but suffice to say I'm deeply proud of it.

Help A Stranded Time Traveller by Matthew Sylvester - The Seller has been commissioned to find the TARDIS.  But a tired old tramp doesn't want him to get it.

Storage Wars by Paul Driscoll - Samuel Stockton has won a lorryload of old treasures from an old scrapyard in Shoreditch on the TV show Storage Wars.  One of which is of intense interest to an old vagrant...

The Postman by John Davies - Even in a Time War letters must go to the families of the bereaved.  The Postman is taking a break from the War to deliver these letters.  But in a war of confused chronology, do the letters always arrive at the right time?

The Thief of All Ways by Elliot Thorpe - Why is Claudia being hunted by an old man?  And what has it to do with a Dalek superweapon?

The Time Lord Who Came To Tea by Paul Driscoll - Wartime can inflict horrific degradations on some places.  Jericho is sacrificing everything so that Arcadia may live... what can you eat when supplies run low?

The Nightmare Child by Declan May - The Doctor seeks out Davros in the womb of the dread Nightmare Child...

Meals On Wheels by Paul Magrs  -Volunteering to deliver Meals on Wheels Jackie Tyler meets a most cantankerous and unusual old man...

Time Enough For War by Jim Mortimore and Simon Brett- What is the ultimate weapon?

Doctor Death by Barnaby Eaton-Jones -  Jenny Shirt meets the Doctor for one last adventure.

The Beach by Gary Russell - On an Australian beach a most unusual deal comes to its conclusion.

The Moments In Between by George Mann - What does a TARDIS do when it disapproves of its owner's actions?  Featuring Cinder from Engines of War.

Prologue - The Horde of Travesties by Declan May - And the mangled chronologies end at a beginning where the Doctor is haunted by a deal he had to make...

The Director's Tale - Andy Robinson recounts how he came to direct a film that went from promo to a fully fledged story in its own right.

So what are you waiting for?  Go donate to a fine and worthy cause here and get yourself a free copy!








We Want War!

Seasons of War to be specific.


Just in case you need background here:  This all begins in the last moments of the finale of Doctor Who's 2013 run, the back end of the split seventh season.  In the last few moments of The Name of the Doctor, with Clara having rescued the Doctor from the Great Intelligence's attempt to destroy his timeline, the Doctor rescues Clara herself from his own collapsing timeline. But there they see a mysterious figure, the 'one who broke the promise'. An old man who did what he did 'in the name of peace and sanity'.  But not in the name of the Doctor...

It introduced the War Doctor; the Doctor who fought in the Time War.  A man the Doctor deliberately tried to forget.  In reality the character's an elegant solution to the problem of Christopher Eccleston not wanting to appear in the 50th anniversary special - in actuality it's far more than that given they got one of the finest actors on this or any other planet, John Hurt, to play him.  It was a memorable appearance, Hurt playing off David Tennant and Matt Smith as the exasperated older brother quite wonderfully and switching from witty banter to gravitas in a heartbeat.  Or couple of heartbeats.  The War Doctor was to reappear just once more, in George Mann's novel Engines of War which details the incident leading up to the events seen in Day of the Doctor.

Such a waste.

Cue Declan May, looking for a way to raise money for a charity which had helped his family and many other families, Caudwell Children. The exuberant and talented Mr May hit upon the idea of telling stories of the Time War, tales of this Doctor we'd barely seen.  And so, after chats with Paul Spragg of Big Finish he embarked upon a quest to find the writers to make it all happen, by hook, by crook and by an open submissions process.

I had the fortune to be involved with a much smaller scale project with Declan in late 2013, the Twelve Doctors of Christmas. Declan wrote an extraordinary story re-creating the dash and wit of the year Douglas Adams script-edited the series, I came up with a vignette for the Christopher Eccleston's incarnation.  It was an immensely fun project which made us both a whole lot of new friends of extraorindary creativity - John Davies, Simon Brett, Lee Rawlings, Dan Barratt and others... and we agreed to be involved in the new anthology.  Who wouldn't want to? The chance to play with a new toy in the Doctor Who sandbox?  And for charity?  Sign us up!

Along the way the project expanded hugely, ending up spiralling from the original planned dozen stories to nearly 40.  And it acquired a film to go with it.  And a comic strip from Who novelist Jim Mortimore.  And contributions from Who luminaries such as Jenny Colgan, Lance Parkin, John Peel, Gary Russell, Andrew Smith and Paul Magrs.  It's ended up just under 400 pages and, as I type just over two weeks after release has raised £5,740.82 on ebook downloads alone. I've read every story and frankly it's a wonderful piece of work packed with imaginative stories, many of which couldn't be done with any other Doctor.  I'm deeply proud to have been involved.  To download it, go to Declan's Just Giving page, donate what you can and you should receive an email with a link to download it.  Or, if you're more into the hardcopy side of things, a paperback's due out sometime around April.

And if that still doesn't convince you, I'll be putting up a post with teasers for each story very soon (no spoilers though, obviously, because I'm not an utter bastard).

What I've Been Catching Up On This Year...

Nothing fancy, just a quick list of the stuff I've watched/listened/read so far this year.  If it looks a little on the intimidatingly long side that's because I had a few weeks of leave to chew up earlier in the year.  And a lot of it's catching up on stuff I've stockpiled over a good nine months or so... my experiencing of it doesn't necessarily mean I loved it, but if you want an idea of what I thought of the books or audio stories you can check out my Goodreads list of read stuff, which all have reviews attached.

So, without further ado, I have been experiencing...

Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Season 1 - Big Finish
State of Emergency: The Way We Were Britain 1970-74 - Dominic Sandbrook
BBC coverage of Glastonbury 2014
Batman Returns
Black Mirror: White Christmas
Marvellous
Motown At The BBC
BBC Proms: The Man From The Future
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Stillness and Speed: My Story - Dennis Bergkamp
Into The Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story - John Woods
Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance - Belle & Sebastian
Under the Skin
Uptown Special - Mark Ronson
Breaking Bad Season 1
Cygnus Alpha # 14
I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie - Roger Ebert
The Endless River - Pink Floyd
Inform-Educate-Entertain - Public Service Broadcasting
Hesitant Alien - Gerard Way
The Manual: How To Have A Number One The Easy Way - The KLF
Unplugged 1991 & 200: The Complete Sessions - R.E.M.
Plectrumelectrum - Prince & 3rd Eye Girl
Pep Confidential - Marti Perarnau
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler
A Little Trigger - Neil Gaiman
Art Official Age - Prince
I Never Learn - Lykke Li
We're New Here - Gil Scott Heron & Jamie XX
What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World - The Decemberists
Chubbed Up+ - Sleaford Mods
With A Little Help From My Fwends - The Flaming Lips & Heady Fwends
Blank Project - Neneh Cherry
Love, Poverty & War - Christopher Hitchens
The Man In The High Castle - Pilot Episode
Midnight In Paris
Rave Tapes - Mogwai
Syro - Aphex Twin
New World Quartets - The Brodsky Quartet
Nick Fury, Agent of Shield Part One (graphic novel)
The Life and Death of Captain Marvel Part 2
Wolf Hall (TV series)
Cucumber
Banana
John Grant and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra In Concert
Modern Times
Minion Madness
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait: An Original Soundtrack - Mogwai
They Do The Same Things Different There - Robert Shearman
Back To The Future 2
Who Is William Oyeabor? - William Oyeabor
This Is What I Do - Boy George
Blackout - Britney Spears
Good Don't Sleep - Egyptian Hip Hop
The Savoy Sessions - Fenella Fielding
(We Are) Performance - Performance
Labyrinth Soundtrack - David Bowie and Trevor Jones
Les Revenants - Mogwai
La Petite Mort - James
Rejoice! Rejoice!: Britain In the 80s - Alwyn Turner
Tin Machine - Tin Machine
Tin Machine II - Tin Machine
Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Adventures Season 2 - Big Finish
Doctor Who: Seasons of War - edited by Declan May

That last one leads me neatly on to something I've been meaning to blog about for a while...