Review: Instruments of Darkness - Gary Russell

Gary Russell made me think!  No, really, he did a good thing!  279 pages weren't wasted!  It's a miracle!

Courtesy: doctorwhoreviews.co.uk

During his time writing Past Doctor Adventures, Russell made it a personal crusade to redeem the then-pilloried Sixth incarnation of the Time Lord, fleshing out the lurid continuity of the Colin Baker era.  First came Mel's official introductory story, Business Unusual - which I enjoyed - and eventually a real regeneration for Doc 6 in the form of the immortal Spiral Scratch.

It's campaigns like these that, despite the best of intentions, have earned Russell his reputation as a purveyor of the highest order of fanwank.

That said, however, despite myriad failings, Instruments of Darkness is a reasonable sequel to Business Unusual.

Irritations include a marginalised and relatively-poorly-characterised Doctor, reliance on continuity (although it's much better than some of the author's previous work), stylistic inconsistencies, dialogue peeled straight from the Star Wars prequels and Russell indulging his  Bond fetish.  Naming a pair of female assassins Ms de Menour and Ms (Mal) Feasance?  Inserting a piece about the Doctor introducing Fleming to the ornithologist on whom Bond was based?  The cult-series mix is simply too much for an admittedly-pulpy premise to bear.

But in spite of these elements, Russell deftly portrays a series of interconnected characters whose reliance upon each other is notable.  Throughout the text, couplets emerge where each member is completely dependent on the other - for existence, validation, love.  Even the Doctor is not immune as he encounters the companion that wasn't, Evelyn Smythe; and in fact only Mel appears immune.

This symbiosis is woven unobtrusively throughout and only it hits the reader with real force when it becomes apparent at the novel's conclusion.  It's sweetly juxtaposed with the climactic fireworks brought about by some old-school Doctor trickery reminiscent of Pyramids of Mars.

Tennis balls.

Discontinuity Guide's review of Instruments of Darkness

Review: Elisabeth Sladen - An autobiography

When Elisabeth Sladen passed away in April 2011, I was shocked and upset than at the death of any other of my childhood fiction stalwarts.  She consistent, intriguing and still on TV, but her death shook me up more so than even that of her co-star (and my then-hero) Jon Pertwee in 1996, despite that occurring in the midst of my teen-angsty-crying-at-the-drop-of-a-hat phase.

Her most notable role by far was as Doctor Who's best ever companion, Sarah Jane Smith, a role she played, on-and-off for nearly forty years. Her autobiography, released posthumously, is an interesting work which speaks volumes - in hushed tones - about the woman who would have preferred to be known as Elisabeth Miller.  Of course due to the vagaries of Equity, the UK actor's guild, that wasn't ever a possibility but contributes to the defining theme of her memoir, of someone utterly at home in family settings.

Review: Original Sin - Andy Lane

Original Sin provided some interesting twists for Virgin series of Doctor Who New Adventures.  It features one of the Original Series' finest baddies and was the second time in that series that the Doctor took a new companion(s) onto the TARDIS.  The nature of these two new companions - Adjudicators Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej - then provided new enlightenment into the dystopian future that the NA authors loved so well.

The New Adventures carried on - at least initially - Sylvester McCoy's mysterious portrayal of the Doctor, the dark, cryptic Time Lord who served as "Time's Champion".  Because Original Sin takes place directly after that arc's key story Human Nature - where the Doctor becomes more aware of his actions' ramifications on his human friends, and thus less mysterious - the characterisation of the Doctor is very much of a likeable, but knowledgeable imp.  Newbies Cwej and Forrester are interesting and likeable enough, with Forrester particularly having the kind of emotional baggage that made Who writers in the mid-90s salivate.  While Benny - the most consistently drawn character in the entire Virgin NA series - is understandably her usual self, for a change there are actually some minor characters worth noting - in this case, the insane Doctor Zebulon Pryce.

However, it is in the characterisation of the chief villain that I was most disappointed.  Without revealing too much, he is maniacal rather than megalomanic, unhinged rather than calculating and desperate when opportunistic is much more to established type.  Personally, I don't mind when "Greatest Hits" bad guys are brought back, but prefer to see them written as they were in their original appearance: to be believable, they must command the same consistency as we expect from portrayals of the Doctor and his buddies.

Original Sin recreates a fondly-remembered bad guy simply because the author could, and then credits him as being behind the scenes of several high-profile Who enemies.  To do so partially and needlessly negates seminal stories such as Robot and, *cough* Invasion of the Dinosaurs.  Given lackadaisical characterisation and throwaway continuity, the book would have been better served with a new adversary.

Courtesy: en.wikipedia.org

As we've noted here before, much of early 90s Who was written by fans.  This brought with it good and bad points - the series was in the hands of people who genuinely cared about its direction, but given six-book story arcs and the occasional slavish reliance on continuity, the series became less accessible to the casual reader.  Who fans enjoy and relish the series history, but to become dependent on it - as the series itself did in the early '80s (thank you, Ian Levine) - is fanboy folly.  That those fanboys were apparently all devotees of William Gibson and Alan Moore is painfully apparent.

Occasionally, references to continuity were thrown in because they seemed like a good idea at the time (as in this case); became major characters (Irving Braxiatel) and sometimes were the premise of entire story arcs.   

Unfortunately, Original Sin is one of these novels where continuity becomes a major point in an otherwise quite open and intriguing plot.  There are several plot holes - especially a critical one concerning the impracticalities of the returning villain's far-reaching robot control - and some knowledge of Who's Earth Empire is required to fully understand the context of the novel.  Lane's writing style is interesting, but fails to fully engage the reader.  This means that with the undercurrent of technological terms (and complex Hith names that must be filed under "Seemed like a good idea at the time") at times makes progress hard slog.

In toto, the book seems as if Lane had a series of good ideas which were only tenuously connected and threw them together to create a novel which, while working, doesn't thrive.  It's a worthwhile read - if only to meet the new guys Cwej and Forrester - but feels like it should be more than it is.

Tennis Balls.

For more Doctor Who reviews, visit Who. Reviewed.

Review: Doctor Who: City at World's End - Christopher Bulis

Since receiving my first Doctor Who novelization in 1986 (the much-misunderstood The Gunfighters), I’ve managed to collect a rather surprising amount of Who-related books; fiction and non-fiction, real-world production information and plain, simple fantasy. I don’t read them much anymore (this is the first Who book reviewed on BwB), but occasionally delve into one to really get a feel for my teen years again.

And City at World’s End is almost certainly the worst Doctor Who novel I’ve read, and I’ve read the ultimate testament to fanboy continuity-geekdom, War of the Daleks. City, by Christopher Bulis, was one of the earlier BBC Books attempts to carry on the Doctor’s adventures while the TV show was on hiatus between 1989-2005.

Who took on a life of it’s own after the ’89 cancellation, as books describing “Missing” or “New” adventures of the Time Lord were published by various enterprises. Many of these (cough, War of the Daleks, cough) came straight from fanboys and were astonishing in their ability to turn one line of dialogue from a single episode broadcast in 1973 into entire 279-page novels. (For some reason, novelizations of the original serials – two 23-minute long episodes or ten - were almost always fit into 127-page books; for the New/Missing adventures it’s 279).

It’s this kind of backstory which explains the Who dichotomy. Because of it’s wonderfully simply and unique format, Who-fiction can be purely derivative stuff, completely original – and is often both. Take for example the 2007 broadcast stories “Human Nature” and “Family of the Blood”. These stories were written by Paul Cornell, who adapted his 1995 novel “Human Nature” to suit the reimagined series’ head honcho Russell T. Davies’ story arc allowing the Doctor’s nemesis to be re-born.

It turns out that the Master appeared in a story (Utopia) very much like this one – a group of humans building a rocket to escape their world’s apocalypse, all the time under threat by hostile aliens. I hope RTD wasn’t aware of this book when plotting Utopia, because the series deserves much better. City at World’s End is an appalling piece of fiction – even if, in embryo, the idea has merit.

City is remarkably poorly put together. It’s as transparent as a glass of water and features several (alleged) subplots which are both boring, useless – thus, utterly flawed – before they all converge nowhere. Typical Whoniverse “religion is blind and corrupt” themes (cf. 1984’s Planet of Fire) aren’t so much hinted at as shouted from the mountain tops. There’s nothing wrong with a simple plot, as long as it’s paced well – a great example of this is the early Bond novels.

Pity is, we’ve covered most of our review space and haven’t even gotten to the words yet. The “adventure” is headlined by the original TARDIS crew of the Doctor (as portrayed by William Hartnell), his granddaughter Susan as well as English schoolteachers Ian and Barbara. Hartnell, whose mannerisms should make writing for him a relative doddle (as compared to the real, as opposed to remembered, Tom Baker years) is characterized less as a gentleman traveler and speaks words like a bored telephone sales operative.

Bulis throws about verbs like a ham-fisted bun vendor and completely fails to apply any sense of urgency to what we’re told is a desperate situation. He even trots out that “give every clue it’s a main character, but don’t refer to them by name until the very end of the chapter” hackneyed crap. The prelude (and first half of the book) were of such stunning shoddiness that I only continued reading so as to see a) how bad it could get and b) how much I could pan it in a review.

Much of these flaws can be repaired, however, given a good editing job. Unfortunately, being able to poke so many holes is almost every aspect of the book means the editor (at that time one of Stephen Cole or Justin Richards) must have been on a horrible deadline, as the book is laughably incoherent. By now, the series (of books) was obviously being run by the fan-boys on Adamsian-style deadlines.

In short, the book doesn’t deserve even half of the column inches I’ve devoted to it. Sorry. Who fiction can be very good – try Davies’ Damaged Goods or even Terrance Dicks’ Players – but this is just awful. Don’t let it put you off, but don’t bother to read it. No balls.

For more Doctor Who reviews, visit Who. Reviewed.

Review: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot, by Craig Ferguson

Craig Ferguson is a funny guy - unless you're Jimmy Fallon, you don't get a late-night talk show by being boring. He's also a guy who went through the wringer with alcohol and debt before he finally making it as a comic actor/writer after fifteen years on the second string. His gift with words isn't in his ability to weave together long, fluid narratives - it's an uncanny expository ability which allows you to see - simply and with a minimum of fuss - exactly where he comes from. His ability to explain alcoholism and how it messed up his is perhaps my defining memory from reading his autobiography, American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot.

I was first introduced to Ferguson as Lister's personified Confidence in an episode of Red Dwarf called Confidence and Paranoia. In said episode, he played a character with a deep, scheister-like mid-Atlantic accent, "like Bing Baxter, the American quiz-show host". Although aware of his work since (particularly as Mr. Wick in The Drew Carey Show), he next captured my attention when hosting an episode of his late night show last November given over to my favourite TV show, Doctor Who. The irony of a man I first knew as an American in a British Sci-Fi sitcom now being a Scot in an American TV format wasn't lost on me - it was, as he seems to be, charming.

Ferguson tries hard to sew together a fractured narrative with an overriding wish to live and work in America - the land of milk and honey (or in his early days, cocaine and Stolichnaya). Though most definitely true, it seems to me to be a muddled way of linking together his life story, but serves mostly to position his memoir for the nearly mutually exclusive British and US autobiography markets. It's always off in the distance but never real. Most of the work is heavy with hindsight and introspection where he's been able to rationalise - but not justify - the mistakes of his past, admit to his youthful shortcomings and portray them in an amusing, but touching way: descriptions of those he hurt while a misguided 1980s party-boy are particularly effective.

As much as he's spent most of the past twenty years here, was naturalised in 2009 and counts his sons as American, he's explains succinctly on closing how citizenship in a global society becomes more a state of mind, rather than a birthright - a mindset dictated often by your experiences and choices. As a new resident of the United States myself, I found this particularly poignant. Ferguson, a Scotsman with staunch Celtic roots, is able to identify with both the people of his birthplace and of his adopted homeland so well that American on Purpose becomes less a showbiz autobiography and more an inspirational piece of self-help literature.

When selecting the book, I hoped for an amusing, yet thoughtful approach from a Briton on a topic which currently vexes me. I chose well. As my life appears set to remain on these shores for the foreseeable future, my inner battle as to my (and any future kids') nationality is an issue which unsettles me in a deep, but non-violent way: I identify myself as an Aussie but accept that a full life in America demands my embracing the country - in all it's self-promoting, freedom-spouting - and occasionally gun-toting - beauty.

As my personal battle for self-identity begins, Ferguson's ends. I could do much worse than learning from his example. Footballs.