Everything Picture 6 - Timey Wimey Remix

Even if you removed the cover images and the names and descriptions of the Doctor and his companions from the text, you could easily tell these books are based on Moffat's version of Doctor Who - all of them play tricks with time and all three take place in different time zones, although all three come up with very different variations on the timey-wimey theme.

Touched by an Angel comes across as an attempt to rewrite One Day as a Doctor Who novel via (I assume) the Highway to Heaven-esque US TV show from which the book steals its title.  Given that much of the best Doctor Who is stolen from recognisable stories, it's a matter of taste as to whether you think it's a good thing or not - many of the best stories have been openly based on obvious antecedents.  Morris opens the novel with the tragedy that forms the book's MacGuffin, a woman called Rebecca dying a meaningless early death in an accident on a minor country road.  Morris' way of integrating One Day into the Doctor Who format is to make the story about Mark, Rebecca's husband, being offered the chance to prevent the accident via a mysterious letter from a Magwitch style benefactor.  And the price of one man's happiness?  The end of Earth's history just to provide a feast for a band of Weeping Angels.  It's well executed stuff, with the Morris using the Angels as the omnipresent threat they were in Blink and Mark and Rebecca being as convincing as they need to be to carry the novel.  Morris perhaps overdoes the use of pop music as shorthand to show when the book's set, and takes a turn to the saccharine for the ending but the book retains enough charm to more than compensate for those faults.

My previous encounters with George Mann were both via short story, one in the Short Trips collection Transmissions and the other from Obverse Books' Iris Abroad. It's a rarity for me to say that I enjoyed both as Doctor Who can be a difficult format to condense into a short story.  Mann's short story experience isn't quite as irrelevant as it may seem, as with the other two books here it's shaped around one main guest character who the author spends plenty of time establishing.  Angelchrist is an Edwardian adventurer in the literary lineage of Professor Challenger or Allen Quartermain, a one man forerunner of UNIT.  As such, he couldn't really fail to be thoroughly entertaining and you can easily imagine a veteran British character actor making a memorable success of the part were he ever translated to screen.  The antagonists of the book are the Squall, a hive mind creature that resembles a gargoyle and feeds on minds.  Of course, if they manage to spread their infection beyond the confines of the part of London we meet them in they'll suck the Earth dry and irrevocably change galactic history.  They're an ingenious and effective race, and I wouldn't be sorry to see them make a return appearance.  The major paradox is perhaps a little too straightforwardly resolved for my taste, but again, it's a flaw overcome by some good prose and excellent characterisation.

The final book in this batch is easily the best to feature Matt Smith's Doctor, perhaps even the best of the NSAs full stop.  Doctor Who's previous satire about the monetary system, The Sunmakers, was something of a sour attack by Robert Holmes on the tax system of the 1970s, the usual profusion of droll lines not concealing an ill disguised ire on the part of the writer which blunted the satiric intent.  Naomi Alderman's satire is equally as unsubtle, perhaps less, but as it's less judgemental it works much better.  Alderman uses the notion of a satirical portrayal of the banking practices to underpin the whole novel, letting it feed into everything from the nature of her villains to the settings, characters and resolution.  The temptation offered by the villains - more time - is one few people could refuse, a desired convenience out of our current technological reach.  And as it's one you can imagine normal humans falling for in a heartbeat, there's already a note of verisimilitude to characters that, say, everyone in the world having the same satnav system doesn't really provide.  You can sympathise with the characters because they're acting in a believable way from the start.  Alderman's use of the regulars to take a sly poke at corporate culture is ingenious too - it uses our familiarity with them, and Amy and Rory's normality, to point out the little idiocies that build up in any workplace, particularly high powered ones.  Alderman delivers a solid gold idea wrapped up in a rollicking adventure with a soupcon of wit.

In short then, easily the best batch of books the NSAs have yet delivered.  The future's bright... unless, of course, it's destroyed by dastardly aliens...

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.

Shooty Blog Thing 2: This Time It's Personal

I'm shamelessly stealing an idea from Graeme Burk's excellent and insightful gem, geek or rare bug blog regarding his new book Time Unincorporated 2, and doing a kind of Making Of... with regards to my articles for the first Shooty book. Because a) it's a very nice idea, b) it's here to remind me c) it's the only way to talk about my articles and d) to get me thinking about my own writing.

Before I start, I'd push any readers of this blog toward Graeme's book. He's been responsible for ten very fine years of DWIN's own fanzine Enlightenment, and I know from experience and reading said zine that he's an exceptionally high quality editor. Buy it. Now.

Right... one by one, the blogging equivalent of a DVD commentary.


"Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story" (2009) was the first of three pieces commissioned for the book. One thing Paul's always been very keen on is that Shooty covers all forms of Doctor Who; novels, novelisations, comics, cigarette cards and so forth. Part of that was that he wanted a small piece on Benny to accompany two other articles he'd already selected to go in the book. We'd already talked about this, but Paul's original plan of a year's break in between issues of his fanzine put paid to that. In preparing for it I read DWM's review, which is a good, straightforward overview of the contents - I'd expect no less from Matt Michael. But it didn't necessarily sell me on it. And then I sat there looking at a blank Word document for ages, to find the right angle. One of the things I love about fanzines is that they can go where official magazines fear to tread, so I wanted to convey exactly why I adored both the character of Benny and the book - I might not have the chance again! If you like, I wanted it to balance head and heart in a way that I didn't think the DWM review quite did, balancing fannish love with some analysis. Simon Guerrier and Lisa Bowerman both adored it, which was a rather lovely ego boost.

"Craggles Rocked!"(2007) I'll get to the story of how Paul and I met in a moment or two, but the origins of this lie in a splendid afternoon spent in a bar in Swansea. The December 2007 issue of Shooty was due to come out around a year after Craig Hinton's death and Paul wanted a tribute to him for that issue. Since we'd both know Craig a little and first known each other from the infamous Jade Pagoda mailing list I was his natural choice to write this one. It was originally going to be around a thousand words shorter but it sprawled a bit and, as is ever the way with fanzines, there was enough space to turn it into the issue's centrepiece. Paul's little epilogue to the piece is probably my favourite piece of his, a lovely personal counterpoint to the review of Craig's professional work.

Licence Denied (2007) Paul and I were acquaintances rather than friends prior to a Sunday afternoon bonding session at Regenerations over a few Guinnesses - we'd been on mailing lists and met briefly at Battlefield in Coventry in 2002. But I asked a mutual acquaintance to reintroduce us that afternoon, and we spent the entire afternoon in the bar whilst friends came and went around us simply talking about what we loved about Doctor Who. We grew up adoring the Target novels, encountered the New Adventures at precisely the right time and didn't care about which stories counted and which didn't, we just loved a good story. And one of the things we bonded over was Paul Cornell's Licence Denied, a fanzine collection from 1997 - it was the inspiration for Shooty. Paul was initially reluctant as Shooty already had a significant review section, but I persuaded him in that it wouldn't quite be a review but more of a ten years on tribute. I smile when I reread the last line about a second volume being the only thing that's lacking now - there's two volumes of fanzine writings published since with three more that I know of on the way.

'And Cut It... Now!' (2008)Prompted by what I'd heard about new series fans not being particularly interested in the old series. One of Paul's ideas with Shooty was to introduce new series fans to the wider Doctor Who universe, so that got me musing on how we might be able to get new fans to watch the old episodes. For me it falls victim to my usual thing of not giving myself room to explore the topic fully and I think it could do with a rewrite or two, but I stand by the sentiment.

Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing (2009) The second of three original commissions. This was commissioned as part of a review section to tie in with Hirst Books' other title being launched around the same time as Shooty, Colin Baker's 'Look Who's Talking'. I'd written an eulogy for the end of the Short Trips range a few months earlier, so Paul asked me to pick my favourite Sixth Doctor story from the range and talk about it for about 1,500 words. This is one of my favourite Doctor Who short stories, the Doctor touching the life of an ordinary person and how he doesn't quite understand human emotions and domesticity so it was a fairly simple choice.

It's All About Unfinished Business (2009) The final one of my new pieces for the book. I originally pitched it to Paul as a companion piece to the review section, dealing exclusively on the rehabilitation of the Sixth Doctor in novels, short stories and audios, but when I'd barely got to dealing with The Twin Dilemma 2,000 words in it was clear it was going to be broader than that. To set the context it needed to detail exactly why the character needed rehabilitating. Writing this also helped me crystallise a few ideas about Colin's era in my own head. Probably my favourite piece.

'Alien Bodies: The End Was Nigh' (2008) If you're at all familiar with the Eighth DOctor Adventures you'll know of the reverence Alien Bodies is held in. This is my shot at slaughtering a sacred cow, almost playing devil's advocate.

'Tennant's Hamlet' (2008) What it says on the tin - a review of the production of Hamlet David Tennant did between the end of Season Four and the Specials. I thought it might be too New Series foor Paul to include given Tennant's involvement, but as he rightly pointed out, 400 year old material falls within Shooty's remit of widening cultural boundaries.

'Iris? Iris? Who The Heck Is Iris?'(2009) One of the rare occasions Paul commissioned me to write a specific piece for the fanzine itself, intended as a lead for the large section he was devoting to Iris and Obverse Books launching their range of books based around the exploits of the character. Always fun to try to introduce and sell your passions.

'Missing Pieces' (2009) I've always been fascinated by the way Doctor Who fans in particular fill in gaps - if there's no new Who on the telly, we (collectively) write our own. I like to think having to reconstruct the missing stories in our own head is one of the reasons for the creative fecundity of Who fans, part of the inspiration for this was to explore that. It's also my tribute to the Target range that I devoured so avidly when young.

'Short Trips: The End of the Road?' (2009) There's nothing so tragic in art as audience indifference. The Short Trips range had always seemed a distant third to the novels and audios but ended up the last original fiction range still standing, and the last that had (at times) an open submission policy. It seemed the end of an era to my mind, and it's an attempt to make people care.

'Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus' (2009) Review of Obverse Books' launch title. Deliberately avoided mentioning every story since I think that's almost trying to curry favour with all the authors and (to use a technical term) a bit wanky.

Stay Tuned...

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.