This Girl I Used To Know - Single White Who Fan: The Life And Times of Jackie Jenkins

I only knew Jackie Jenkins for a couple of years - appropriately, fannishly we only met once a month, where she told me about what had gone on in her life. We laughed about the little things that we did, that all fans do. And then, suddenly she was gone. Upped and left one summer day in 1999, running off after another man. I could've told her he'd be no good for her. She blew back in briefly on a winter's night in 2004 before disappearing again. I thought she'd gone for good.

And yet she didn't. She came back one last time for a few days of good company, letting me know what she's been up to and how happy she is now. An old friend returning, laughing, finally happy and lighting up the room again.

This is a series of postcards from the inter-series years, when we had to make own entertainment. We began being hopeful, but ended up jaded and cynical about any official pronouncement, even when we had the show back for one night in 1996. I was there when the New Adventures began, and for the publication of the last BBC book. I was there for BBV and Big Finish. And I was there for DWM all the way, from the days of David Burton's claims of being the new Doctor to Christopher Eccleston actually being the new Doctor. When the BBC took the toys they gave us away, we made our own entertainment.

DWM was simply magnificent during the wilderness years, adapting to the absence of a parent show with wit and style. It became effectively a professional fanzine, given as much to new fiction (the comic strip and NA previews) and opinion pieces as the interviews, news and making of pieces that had always been its staple diet. The magazine shamelessly hired the best fan writers, becoming by the fans and for the fans as the novel and audio ranges also became. That's primarily due to the editorships of the two Garys, Russell and Gillatt, who had the foresight to realise that the magazine needed changes with a lack of new material from the parent show. That it survived, prospered and eventually became the world's best-selling SF magazine after the launch of the new series is to their eternal credit.

The Jackie Jenkins column was part of Gary Gillatt's vision for the magazine. The natural comparison would be to Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones Diary, then a novel based on the columns Fielding had written for the Independent and Daily Telegraph. I'll freely admit that I couldn't stand Bridget Jones then and I can't now, reading through the odd column in the university library copies of the paper and wondering with the callow naivety of youth who the hell read this rubbish.

And then along came the Jackie Jenkins column to educate me.

The problem with me reading the odd Bridget Jones column was that it wasn't anything I'd experienced and frankly, given the subject matter, was pretty unlikely to experience. Jackie Jenkins may have been of the opposite sex but as re-reading the columns reminded me, often managed to nail the foibles of fandom precisely as well as providing a story to reward anyone paying attention. Going back to them over a decade later they seem even wiser, funnier and truer than I'd remembered them being. I think it's because I can look at those fannish eccentricities now and see them for what they are rather than cringing and falsely denying that I'd ever done anything like that. Incompetently hacking away towards attempting to get published? Recording any snippets with actors who had a speaking part in the series? Searching Ceefax for vague rumours? Such was the lot of the 90s fan, and Jackie reminds those of us who were there for Doctor Who's 1990s of all our yesterdays almost too painfully.

But such a series of observations alone would be nothing more than the written equivalent of a Tim Vine routine - a series of jokes which might be funny by themselves but don't necessarily relate or build to a greater whole and therefore don't really satisfy. Instead, by giving Jackie a life outside fandom the series gets a depth and coherence that's held up surprisingly well over the years. It's a simple but classic boyfriend-girlfriend tale spiced up by the presence of a bad boy. Yeah it's very Bridget Jones but it's better because it's lensed through the prism of Doctor Who and it's a scientific fact that any story can be improved by introducing a Doctor Who element. How much better would Bridget Jones have been if her bessie mates were fans and the Hugh Grant bad boy was comparable to the Master? It's have been halfway watchable anyway... There may be the odd continuity smudge about when she became a fan but hey, what's a Doctor Who related book without some finer continuity points to argue about? And can we argue about which dates are canon please?

The new diaries are a mixed bag - those related to the show itself coming back don't fascinate anything as much as the ones which continue Jackie's story. The 2007 entry which apparently resolves the Darren storyline (for at least four years anyway) and the 2010 entry, which strikes an appropriate note of hope, are the highlights for me, almost certainly because as the story's gone on I found myself far more interested in Jackie and her life than the Doctor Who content.

So thanks Jackie. Thanks for coming back one last time and reminding me of the good times. You were fantastic. And you know what...?

Nah, I'm not going there.

Everything Picture #5 Time Lord Redux

Once more unto the breach in my tragically completist quest to own all the Doctor Who novels... these are the third batch to feature Matt Smith's Doctor and his companions.

James Goss proved himself thoroughly on the Torchwood novel series before being allowed a go at the parent series. He's responsible for my favourite books in the series, making Torchwood in print as witty and thrilling as it only rarely is on screen. Dead of Winter is his second published Doctor Who story after an entry in one of Big Finish's Short Trips collection, Snapshots. It's set off the beaten historical track and, to a degree, prefigures the Gangers two parter from the 2011 season. The humour's only slightly toned down, but it's as clever a tale as you'd expect from Goss with what initially seems like mischaracterisation being a deftly executed plot point. And it also has a heartbreaking twist in relation to one of the narrators along with some wonderfully spooky imagery. Early spoiler - it's my favourite of the batch.

Una McCormack returns with her second Who book, The Way Through The Woods, following last year's The King's Dragon. It was a promising debut, with a fine premise perhaps only falling apart slightly when explanations were needed. The same problem rears its head here - the set up is fabulous, with inexplicable disappearances linked to an area everyone mysteriously avoids. The scenes with the Doctor in the police station are beautifully executed, as perfect a depiction of Matt Smith as you'll find in print. The trouble is whilst they're funny, they only serve to stop the Doctor from getting to the heart of the trouble early as it'd be a much shorter book if he wasn't somehow held back from the action. Again though, it's the prosaic SF explanation for what's going on that lets things down a little. That aside, it's another good, if not quite outstanding, effort from McCormack.

Hunter's Moon is the sort of Doctor Who adventure I don't tend to have much time for. Doctor Who can do pure SF, much as it can do historical drama, loves stories, high fantasy and pretty much anything else. It just tends to fall down when writers interpret the show as straight SF. I've not heard Finch's other Doctor Who story, an adaptation of his father's unmade script Leviathan, so I don't know if it's a misconception that dogs other stories. Hunter's Moon is certainly competently executed and exciting enough (though personally I think it would've been more effective had the prologue and first chapter been swapped round), with effective bad guys who might well have been memorable on TV if cast well. As I say though, it's a type of Doctor Who story I don't find overly engaging, having little to mark it out from other stories set on Earthlike colonies. But if you do like Who as an out and out SF show, it's perfect for you.

Overall then, a nicely balanced set of books covering historical, contemporary and SF settings and maintaining a good standard for Eleveth Doctor books. Trouble is, the next batch are a mere two months away after this release, so there's little time to savour them. Unless, of course, you've got a time machine.

Cz- Cz- Cz- Cz- Cz- Cz- Czech It Out - Short Trips: Destination Prague edited by Steven Savile

There was a small tragedy in Doctor Who fandom towards the end of last year. Big Finish lost its licence for Doctor Who short story collections early in the year, meaning there was no longer any printed Who fiction based on the old series in regular production. And at the end of December they sold off all remaning stock, meaning there was officially no 'old series' Doctor Who fiction in print. It was a low key fizzling out to nineteen years of existence in the written word that, for a while, was the only thing that kept Doctor Who going; an official ongoing narrative that seemed impossibly exciting to those of us who'd grown up on the Target books.

It hadn't been that for a long time of course, firstly the BBC took the licence back from Virgin without entirely seeming to understand what had made the books so exciting (and understaffing the range massively), then Big Finish happened along to steal some thunder and cause fandom to schism over why their respective media were better. Then the BBC Books range quietly ended in the wake of the success of the Russell T Davies driven revival; Telos lost their novella licence and suddenly the Short Trips range, almost unnoticed, became the last classic series books. By their nature they were never the ongoing narrative that the New Adventures and Eighth Doctor Adventures had been, they were in essence the eventual triumph of the Missing Adventures. They started off with stories familiar to fans, but as they went on began to introduce other voices into the mix, ones new to Doctor Who. That culminated in the likes of the How The Doctor Changed My Life collection, consisting entirely of first time authors.

Destination Prague falls squarely into the camp of introducing new and different voices. Of the authors here I only recognised three from their previous Doctor Who work, one from a then twelve year old short story, one from a short story in the same range two books prior to this and one from a new series novel that came out after this was published. So those voices certainly weren't tapped out, and the rest may have fresh things to say. Call me insane, but I quite like the thrill of reading new writers and seeing what they can come up with; that applies to both Doctor Who and my wider reading. And if I see a familiar name having a go at Doctor Who for the first time, it's an extra thrill - I heartily approved of seeing Mike W Barr's name given his involvement in one of my favourite graphic novels of the mid 80s, Camelot 3000.

I'm still not certain that the overarching theme was a good idea. Prague's a beautiful city, albeit ones I've got bad memories of as I was miserably ill during my one trip there. Being confined to a hotel room with only the Simpsons in Czech to alleviate the misery isn't my idea of fun, particularly when I wasn't in a fit state to concentrate on my book. Plus it's diffcult to understand why we've never seen the Doctor reminisce about Prague before when it's apparently been such a big part of his lives. As a theme though, setting the stories in and around a foreign city is a sound idea, particularly when it comes with a rich history such as Prague's. The trouble there though is that you've a bunch of British, American and Australian authors who often seem to be relying on research rather than experience, not really capturing the essence of the city but playing around with the things that made the city famous instead. Familiar places and names recur - the likes of Rabbi Loew, Tyco Brache and Kafka, and the Astronomical Clock seems to get visited by every Doctor a couple of times over. And the second part of the theme, Prague's future, is difficult to extrapolate without knowing the city intimately. The stories sometimes become slightly SF generic, there's often nothing to stop this being almost any city in the world. And this being about Prague's future is slightly limiting on authors; it cleaves rigidly to the perception of Doctor Who as an SF show when really it can be much, much broader than that. That might be a difference in how the show's perceived by UK fans and how the rest of the world (including the broader UK population)sees the show though.

My favourite stories here do manage to avoid teling straight SF stories though. Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis succesfully use their story, War in a Time of Peace, to obliquely look at today. Stephen Dedman's Nanomorphosis ponders Kafka's literary concepts becoming reality and Todd McCaffrey's The Dragons of Prague is splendidly absurd, though the demouement is a little sudden and the prose itself is a little crude in places. Both manage a fine job of capturing Tom Baker's Doctor though, something that's eluded a hell of a lot of other Who writers. Actually, I found the second half of the collection very strong, the last seven stories all successful in telling different types of story - James Swallow's tale has a lovely elegaic atmosphere, Kevin Killiany's Men of the Earth has cockroaches and zombies - double points there! - and Fable Fusion uses what I assume is genuine Czech folklore as a starting point. I'm not entirely sure I'd have chosen opener Midnight at the Cafe of the Black Madonna as the representation for the Best of Short Trips collection, it seemes solid rather than inspired.

Strangely though, when I came to look back at the stories to write the review I found myself thinking more fondly of the first half of the book, even if the stories hadn't stood out to me at the time. The credits at the back of the book indicate the autors have extensive professional experience elsewhere, and it shows in the quality of the stories. There's nothing poor here, only the odd moment where the dialogue seems a little odd for certain Doctors, and the lack of Doctor Who experience doesn't show in retreading ideas but rather in minor details jarring with previously told tales. Not that such things bother me overly, I'm of the Robert Holmes school that thinks a good story takes priority over continuity details. If I'm going to level a charge, I'd say that I was never quite sure if there was a consistent timeline worked out for Prague's future - it may be a consequence of having the tales range over a vast timescale from 2012 to 848,988 though. And there weren't really any little details carried over from story to story that gave the collection a cohesive feel, the odd reference to other exploits in the collection slipped in might have made all the difference. And while it's obviously a choice on the part of editor Steven Savile, I wouldn't have minded a story or two set firmly in Prague's history, something to give readers a taste of the city's history and fully exploit the setting, rather than a second hand flavour. I suppose it stops writiers lazily homing in on obvious targets though, so I'm all for that. The book often feels like Savile's pushed his writers rather than settling for 'this'll do' at any point.

This ended up feeling like one of the stronger collections then, expereinced short story writers not falling prey to a trap Big Finish collections seem prone to, but understanding that a good short story isn't simply a cut down adventure (it can be, but that's rare). Well worth tracking down via the likes of Amazon Marketplace or eBay.

The Jesus Lizards - Doctor Who: The Creed of the Kromon

It's a fairly good job that Gary Russell asked Philip Martin to make the titular monsters insectoid rather than reptilian, otherwise this would seem even more of a retread of Martin's 80s TV scripts. Rapacious aliens, companions transforming, a Doctor pretending to cooperate with the enemy while encouraging a rebellion and a lot of corridor running? It's definitely been done before. This time though, there's no particular depth, lacking the sort of moral question Varos (TV violence) and Mindwarp (genetic engineering) posed.It's saved to a degree by one of the best thought through and realised races to appear in the Big Finish range, writing, acting and sound design combining to present a convincing alien society. Martin's script is at times overly focused on the Kromon society to the detriment of the story. He also doesn't quite seem to have the hang of writing audio drama, falling into melodrama and the trap of having the characters tell us things we can't see. The acting rescues this to a large degree though, Dan Hogarth and Steven Perring being particularly good in multiple roles. If you want a Doctor Who story that fairly slavishly evokes what the series was remembered as, Kromon is ideal. Not bad, but appropriately for a stereotypical story, fairly average.

Back to Life - Doctor Who: Project Lazarus by Mark Wright and Cavan Scott

This is so relentlessly morose and depressing it's almost teenage. Still, it's a solid sequel to the authors' first audio enlivened by the clever structure of the story and a well executed twist.

New New Adventure: The Dark Flame

Fairly standard Doctor Who runaround with an ancient evil being resurrected. Doesn't quite manage to resurrect the spirit of the New Adventures, feeling more of a pastiche than a tribute, and let down with some clumsy audio writing (characters telling you what they can see and infodumping like mad) and a horrible performance from Sophie Aldred. Overall a passable waste of a couple of hours, albeit one you'll probably have trouble remembering much about a few hours later.