The Last Pharaoh - Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett (Thebes Publishing, 2015)

Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett’s The Last Pharaoh, the debut release from Thebes Publishing, arrives on the Who fiction scene during something like a period of renaissance.  It’s hard to deny that the official BBC novel releases have been underwhelming in the main, while the special e-short stories from Big Name Authors have been patchy in quality.  But on the plus side, the recent charity Seasons of War collection was excellent and it’s been surrounded by more than a trickle of other unlicensed anthologies.  Add to that, the launch of the Candy Jar’s Lethbridge-Stewart series, while plagued with release problems to date, could turn into a worthwhile addition to the prose ranks in the right hands (the appearance of David McIntee’s entry will be very welcome in that respect). 

What they’ve all been (with the honourable exception of Seasons of War) is very traditionally constructed books – and ‘The Last Pharaoh’ is a novel in similar vein.  But if you’re now thinking of Chris Bulis’ interminable Virgin titles, don’t!  This is nothing like that…

Actually, perhaps now would be a good point to explain about rad and trad Doctor Who books for the three people reading this who need an explanation?

Back in the bad old days, Doctor Who book fandom split into two distinct camps – the rad and the trad.  The former was the domain of Lawrence Miles, Dave Stone and Jim Mortimore, with multiple realities, dead Doctors and, you know, sex and swearing and shit.  The former attracted writers and readers more comfortable with, well, traditional style stories, in which the Doctor and a plucky assistant or two battled evil in the Home Counties.  They both had their good and bad points (and certainly didn’t deserve to be the basis for one jihad after another on radw and related newsgroups, mailing lists and web fora.

Anyway…

‘The Last Pharaoh’ kicks off a series of books featuring Erimem, the forgotten Egyptian Pharaoh from the Big Finish series of audio plays.  I’m afraid I don’t listen to those, so can’t say if the last audio fits in with the first novel in any way, but all that really matters is that Erimem turns up in modern England and quickly teams up Ibrahim, an Egyptian Professor, and sundry students and staff from the University.  Cue the type of set-up adventure all series need, in which the main characters are established, a means of continuing the story is acquired and so on.  In some hands, that would involve a slew of info-dumping, but McLaughlin and Bartlett know the character and know how to write, and as a result, I found myself knowing everything I needed about Eminem and chums without even noticing, like some kind of literary osmosis.  The plot is solid, without being flashy (exactly what you want from an introductory novel) but also not without some very pleasing surprises and some interesting misdirections (at one point, I thought the First Doctor was about to make an appearance!).  Best of all, the authors can write historical characters (not as easy as you might think) and present intriguing instances of both famous and unknown people from the distant past, which really fleshes out the text and brings the various settings to life.

The cover art is excellent, and unusually for any book I barely spotted an actual typo (though there were a handful of points at which entire words were missing – perhaps those small sections were late additions to the manuscript?).  All in all, a very worthwhile addition to the Who spin-off world, and an enjoyable read in its own right.  I wish I’d taken advantage of the subscription now!

Highly recommended.

The Unofficial Doctor Who Book Guide - Chris Stone (Long Scarf, 2015)

One thing Doctor Who books seem to do better than anyone is to provide touching introductions, and the Doctor Who Book Guide continues that happy tradition with a fittingly nostalgic Foreword from author Iain McLaughlin.  Nostalgic and true, as it happens – as he rightly says ‘[w]ithout those Target books we would never have had Professor Nightshade or Faction Paradox’ and, for me, as much a fan nowadays of Doctor Who in print as Doctor Who on screen, that’s a pretty impressive thing to be able to say.  More than any other genre franchise – more, perhaps, than any tv show of any sort ever – Doctor Who books are genuinely indispensable to anyone who wants to gain full value from their fandom.

It’s that indispensability, in fact, which elevates this guide above other, apparently similar titles.  Unlike, say, a recent guide to the distinctly finite Doctor Who dvd range which, while damn pretty, should really have been a website not a book, there’s enough range and diversity in Doctor Who books to support a title which only lists the different editions of each publication.  This is a useful book, which in the end is the best thing you can possibly say about a reference title.

So, having established  that the existence of the Book Guide is not some dubious madness on the part of the author, what of the contents?

Well, it starts off with an excellent introduction from Christopher Stone in which, amongst other arcane matters, he explains what  that ’10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1’ thing at the start of books means, why 1984 editions of the Target books might not even exist, and just price tag clipping does to the value of your treasured pink Pertwee Annual!  It’s all good stuff, and interesting, but having examined the added extras, let’s mix metaphors wildly and move onto the meat of the thing…

Each book has a section devoted to it, including images of each edition of the book in question, with a box out breakdown beneath of such details as cover price, spine colour, ISBN, publisher and date.  Lest that sound a bit dry, Stone has also attempted, with varying degrees of success, it’s fair to say, to add a bit of colour to each entry with mocked up newspaper reports, quotes, background information and the like.  It can be a bit repetitive when several new editions in a row have the exact same cover (An Unearthly Child, first out of the  blocks, for instance, starts with five near identical covers.!) but it’s difficult to blame the author for doing exactly what he said he would do, and show everything!   

Where the book comes into its own though is with the more obscure titles – after five very similar aUC covers, we have the cover to ‘Doctor Who entre en scene’ and ‘Doctor Who und das kind von der sternem’, neither of which I can recall seeing before, and both of which I now, in my half-daft collector way, want…

Any negatives, I hear you ask?  Well, one or two of the cover images could do with sharpening up (but the edition I have is a pre-publication one, so it’s entirely possible the author is already aware of this) and a couple of the background pictures are somewhat distracting from the main text.  Other than that my main gripe was that I wasn’t sure what was real and what was damn clever fakery in the additional material – was there really a belief that the novelisation of ‘Galaxy 4’ was good enough to justify a major marketing campaign?

All in all, an excellent idea which, on the basis of this early draft, will make a welcome addition to any Who book fans shelves.  I’ll definitely be picking up a copy…

The Unofficial Doctor Who Book Guide is available for pre-order in softback and hardback

http://sandholes.wix.com/drwhobookguide

The Hartnell Years - things which occur to me...

So that's the Hartnell Years done.  Starting way back two months ago with a policeman in the fog (played by Reg Cranfield, fact fans), I watched the Doctor collapse on the floor of the TARDIS last night and morph into someone else entirely. And now I feel strangely but genuinely bereft, as though my beloved Grandfather has run away and my granny re-married a little mop-haired git, who tries too hard to be pals.

But I suppose, glass half full and all that.  I've never watched the series in order from the start before, and viewed this way Hartnell - already my joint-favourite Doctor - has been elevated to a position from which he can just about see previous fellow front-runner Jon Pertwee with a telescope, light years behind.  I've watched the three and a bit Hartnell seasons in a variety of formats - straight audio from 'Marco Polo', Loose Cannon recons for the likes of Myth Makers and Reign of Terror, damn clever animated photos for Mission to the Unknown, really bad animation for The Crusades - and a mix of dvd and vhs rips for the rest.  Plus reading all the Hartnell short stories in the annuals and Short Trips collections.  It's quite a lot to experience, but barely a moment dragged and the vast majority was, frankly and without hyperbole, wonderful.

Ian and Barbara's touching, astonishing, touching, beautiful, touching love affair is the absolute highlight, moving from friendship as Ian wanders unannounced into Babs' classroom in 'An Unearthly Child', through open affection and the sort of loving bickering which all real couples do, all the way to the post-coital scenes in The Romans parts 1 and 4 ('The Slave Traders' and 'Inferno' episodes of Serial M for purists). It's brilliantly done over an extended period, helped enormously by two actors who are, in my opinion, as good as the series has ever been lucky enough to have in all its 50 year history.  But even taking away the romance (and who could doubt they end up together after seeing that montage at the end of 'The Chase'?) these are two genuine characters in a way which the series later abandoned altogether (compare Ian to Ace - a character who sounds, looks and acts utterly unlike any real person of the same age, but who was lauded by fans in the 80s as a return to proper characterisation).  They learn and grow over the course of their travels and so do we, the viewers - not just by learning about Cathay and the reign of terror and the like, but also about the way the show changes format and outlook.  What started off as effectively a hostile kidnap, mellows into friendship and respect, and the series reflects this change, becoming less about trying to get back to Earth and more about experiencing the universe, less about staying out of danger and moving on quickly and more about seeking out people in need of help.

Ian and Barbara could have set the tone and established the  template for all companions to come, but unfortunately - possibly simply because Carole Ann Ford left first and so was replaced like-for-like first - writers chose to use Susan, sadly played by a far less able actor, as the ideal companion instead.  And for all that she's the alien, not Ian and Barbara, she's far more generically written than they - a screamer and a crier, prone to falling over and giving up the ghost, whiny and moany and a bit of a pin in the arse a lot of the time.  At least the producers also kept elements of the Susan of the first episode or of The Aztecs, refusing to marry some stranger; the best we can hope for for quite some time to come is that along with companion as screamer we also get companion as fighter.  Even then there's a gradual but noticeable growing preference for the Screamer over the Fighter which isn't overcome until the appearance of Zoe in 'The Wheel in Space' - Vicki to Dodo to Polly to Victoria is a descent from feisty to frightened, and even Zoe is a prototype for a better assistant in Liz Shaw.

If Carole-Anne Ford is patchy, and William Russell and Jackie Hill brilliant, Hartnell is, at times, awesome.  Years of character acting had given Hartnell exactly the skill set required for Dr Who, and a love of the character and the affection he engendered in the audience, meant that the actor puts everything he has into the role with, at times, quite wonderful results.  Look at the suspicious and dangerous Doctor of the first serial - not when he thinks about bashing a fallen enemy's brains in, since that seems reasonably sensible in the circumstances, but in the way he calculates that kidnapping Ian and Barbara is the best thing for him, and then does it.  That he then selfishly risks their lives in The Daleks is no surprise, but the change over the next few years is - this is the only Doctor in the classic series who actually changes (leaving aside the change in Colin Baker's Doctor from vicious psycho to good friend, a move so ineptly handled that I'm still not looking forward to reaching season 22) and the only Doctor in the entire series who changes in an interesting way (Tennant's descent into being a selfish shit being so dull that I may pay someone to drag themselves through his final year on my behalf).  By the time Susan leaves he's capable of the most touching moments and of putting someone else's interests first, and losing Ian and Babs, and his initial angry reaction, is played perfectly.  He's a wonder all round and the fan myth that he was past it by the end of his tenure is arrant nonsense, as anyone who watches 'The Tenth Planet' can see.

There are so many little moments which I could highlight as my favourite that it could soon grow tedious, so here's a selection:

•  Hartnell inside a Dalek saying 'I am the Master' in 'The Space Museum'
• Ian's coughing fit just before the revelation that the water is poisonous in The Sensorites, which I assumed was a mistake which the actors has ad-libbed around.
• That montage at the end of 'The Chase'
• Hartnell's hat in 'Reign of Terror'
• The Sensorite at the window of the ship, floating in space
• The design of the Robomen in 'Dalek Invasion of Earth' - so much better than the leather clad clones in the movie version
• That Barbara was wrong in The Aztecs and because of that the Doctor loses and John Ringway's character wins.
• Not shying away from the horror of Viking invasion in The Time Meddler
• The delegates in Dalek Master Plan
• Hartnell facing down a War Machine.
• The wit of 'The Myth Makers', 'The Romans' and 'The Gunfighters' - Doctor Who can be broad comedy as well as all the other things it can be.
• That everyone, including Peter Haining, was wrong about Galaxy 4 and The Gunfighters - both great.
• The Cybermen in The Tenth Planet - still the creepiest aliens in Doctor Who history.
• Every mention of 'Doctor Who', but particularly episode title 'The Death of Doctor Who' - that's his name and I much prefer it being used as a name than being some dull and asinine arc for Steven Moffat.

I'll shut up now though because I can think of something brilliant in every Hartnell story - even my least favourite, The Web Planet, where the design is fantastic, at least, and the Carcinome being a space hairdryer is inspired - anyway, I have Troughton to watch now....

Bye bye Barbara and Ian!

Ian and Barbara are gone!  They selfishly shot off at the end of The Chase leaving the Doctor covering his hurt with bad temper and new girl Vicki spouting platitudes about it being all right in the end.  Shut up!  What do you know, you Joaney-come-lately?  Ian and Barbara have been there since the beginning, arguing, bickering and fighting, laughing and loving and shagging, getting on with things in a very British manner and emerging triumphant alongside the Doctor, Susan and the viewer.  I love them both.

They were shagging, incidentally, for those who care to debate.  I reckon they were at it even before they joined the TARDIS.  She's all together too comfy in his classroom when she pops into discuss Susan, and he too willing to bundle her in his car and drive alone with her in the fog.  Hoping to find nothing to investigate no doubt, then back to his bedsit for spam fritters on a plate balanced on their knees and a swift bit of nookie on the fold down bed in the other room.  Then drive Babs home as she fixes herself up in the car mirror, and hope her mum doesn't notice that her hair's askew and her face a bit flushed, still.

Still don't believe me?  How about that bit in The Romans when the Doctor and Vicki are still on their way from Rome.  If that's not a post-coital Ian sending Babs to make him a drink, then crashing waves on rocks in black and white movies aren't symbols of coitus either.  Only a couple could bicker like they do in the corridors of  The Space Museum, only a boyfriend would be allowed to slip his hand inside a lady's waistband as Ian does with Barbara on the ledge of the Mechanoid City, and only prospective life partners would run through Regents Park hand in hand  as they do at the very end.

I supect they'll end up a slightly odd elderly couple.  No kids, but an absolute fascination with each other. A love of one another's company to the exclusion of everybody else's, and a reserve which is difficult to pentetrate even a little and impossible to penetrate fully.  And all the while the two of them looking at the stars, wondering if they'll ever get another visit.

Not for the moment, they won't - after battling deadly Daleks, evil Administrators, vicious plant life and giant bastards they've flitted back to the sixties in the Daleks' ludicrously named DARDIS.  I console myself that at least it's 1965, not 1963 - that'll teach that selfish pair to leave the Doctor and me!

Fourth Doctor Adventures!

Co-incidentally, I've read two new adventures of the fourth incarnation of Doctor Who (Tom Baker, for th eperosn readin gthis who doesn't already know!) in the past few months.  One of them is a big-money, big-splash hardback adapatation of the 'classic' lost story, 'Shada' by current tv writer Gareth Roberts, based on a script by the late Douglas Adam.  The other is a Lulu published paperback (very loose) adaptation of the even more lost, Baker and Marter script 'Doctor Who Meets Scratchman' by author and blogger Nick Campbell.

I liked them both a great deal, I must say.  The Baker-era has not been brilliantly served in novel format, I think, though the high points - Steven Marley's Managra, say - have been pretty high indeed.  But both of these examples illustrate in their own way the strength of the TV show at the time they were initally conceived and which authors should use far more when writing for the Baker Doctor now.

They are very different though.

'Shada' is an big budget production, with Gareth Roberts - an able prose writer but, I think, a better dramatist - bringing both bow strings to bear on Adams' script, to generally pleasing effect.  It's a book designed to appeal to the casual Who fan, the sort of people who watch the new series on telly and who know the name 'Douglas Adams' from somewhere or other.  It's funny at times while overly obvious at others, clever but also clumsy and well-written but unsure if it's a Target novelisation or a Douglas Adams' book.  I didn't care for the gushing over the genius of Adams towards the end, which felt forced and out of place, but for all that it's a decent rendition of a certain point in TV time and very welcome amongst the bland uniformity of much of the Who prose output since the TV series lurched back onto the screens.

'Doctor Who meets Scratchman', on the other hand, reads like the fabulous but slightly scary love-child of Paul Magrs and Terrance Dicks, midwived by Barbara Euphan Todd and Rosemary Sutcliff.  It's a Cajun stew of a novel, full of peculiar textures and odd tastes, alive with an outpouring of ideas, and so obviously in love with the whole era that it's virtually palpable as you read.  From the Target style cover featuring Vincent Price as Scratchman all the way to the last page which promises the upcoming 'Dr Who Discovers the Miners', this book is a proper wallow in something actually wonderful, in the real sense of the word.  At times while readng it, lying on my bed with the rain battering on the window, I disappeared into 1975 again, with Tom striding about, cabbage companion to hand, and Sarah and Harry to the rear, the sexiest couple on TV.  I can easily picture myself slipping this book into place on the long shelf which ran above my bed when I was ten, in between 'Revenge of the Cybermen' and 'Terror of the Zygons', then mentally hugging myself as I considered the every growing rank of spines, each little adventure mine to keep and re-visit whenever I want. There's something genuinely brilliant in a book which can conjure up that kind of memory so clearly, I think.

The Prison in Space (Nothing at the End of the Lane, 2011)

It's an odd mix, this second script book from the team behind "Nothing at the End of the Lane", the excellent, if occasional, Doctor Who history/restoration/archive magazine.

On the one hand, the scripts for the failed Troughton story, 'Prison in Space', is presented over hundreds of pages, with every page lovingly scanned in, as is, at the rate of one page to...well, one page.  Presumably this is for reasons for verisimilitude, and archive telly fans are notoriously anal about exactitude.  

Speaking personally, I would much rather see each page typed out on a PC and everything run together (in the style of pretty much every other script book ever) possibly with annotations running alongside.  That would lessen the unnecessarily huge page count, allow the cost to drop (from its current, steep £17 for a Lulu paperback) and make it considerably more readable.

But I digress.  Alongside this very precise exactitude, and unwillingness to make any allowances for the 21st century, the publishers have decided to go down the same path as early Big Finish audio releases and pretend that, in some way, this discarded script was in fact never discarded but, rather, is a part of Doctor Who in the exact same way as, for instance, The Dominators.  As a result, the script gets the Time Team treatment, which is pointless but harmless and occasionally amusing, as the four - generally interesting - participants act as though 'Prison in Space' is something they can see on screen together and not just something they've all read separately.

Of far more interest, though, is the wonderful Andrew Pixley's piece on a year in Doctor Who, which serves both to frame the circumstances surrounding the abortive attempt to bring 'Prison' to screen and to show that the eventual breakdown in communications stemmed - as it tends to in real life - from a series of stubbornnesses (sic) and misunderstandings on both sides.

Other than that, the book contains a reasonable review of the script by Jonny Morris, a somewhat erratically proofed article by Richard Bignall, and an excellent, if necessarily brief, look at two other rejected scripts (both in a far less advanced state than 'Prison' when cancelled).

All in all, this - like 'Farewell Great Macedon' which preceded it in this script book series - is an intriguing look at a lost story though, unlike that earlier Hartnell script, I very much doubt anyone is ever likely to describe this as a 'lost classic'. 

Away from the content of the main script, though, there's a mixed bag of supporting articles and the book in general is somewhat over-priced for what it contains.  Still, all fans of the show should thank Richard Bignall et al for taking the time to bring this to print - I very much prefer that it exists than if it did not.

Now if they could turn to some more modern scripts - Chris Bidmead has at least one which I'd love to see in print...

Seeing I - Jon Blum and Kate Orman (1998)

Prompted by a discussion on a mailing list about whether a great Dr Who book series with authors hand-picked by, well, us would ameliorate in any way the pain of the cancellation of the TV series, I read Seeing I over the last few days, the first EDA I've read for a while.

And it was great.

I've always wondered just a little at the enormous amount of praise that Kate Orman's New Adventures get, since for me they were each a teensy bit plodding, a tiny bit dull and lacking in humour. Equally, Jon Blum seems at times to be the most unfairly overlooked of Who authors, with his short stories being some of the best around (his Iris short in 'Wildthyme on Top' is exceptional, for instance) and 'Fallen Gods' being one of the best of the generally excellent Telos novellas. The insinuation that I've seen several times that Blum only gets gigs because he's married to Orman appears to be the wildest baloney to me, therefore.

Together, in fact, I think they work perfectly. The poetry of Blum's writing is anchored by the anxiety in Orman's and tied more securely to a recognisable, solid plot than is the case in his other work, while Orman's earnestness is pleasantly diluted by Blum's wit. Some of the individual phrases and sentences are as good as anything in the books (or on the television for that matter) and while it feels as though you can tell who wrote what - 'the aliens reached for her with hands made of angles' is surely Blum, and 'she thought of rows of babies wired up drip-feeders for a life-time, their eyes never opening because there was no-one inside to look out' seems equally plainly to be Orman - the mix works well. And 'the metal...broke with the sound of an accordion being murdered' is as laugh out loud funny a line as Steven Moffat ever penned, never mind lesser writers of the TV show.

There's even some precognition of the current tv story arc, with the Doctor telling an alien threat 'You know who I am' and expecting them to flee on the basis of that recognition. Incidentally, the alien threat kept reminding me of Lance Parkin's Eyeless, and not just because of the name. Reading The Eyeless, the debt to Paul Magrs Glassmen of Valcea (from The Blue Angel) was fairly massively obvious, but Parkin owes an equal debt to Orman and Blum for inspiration, I think - truly there's nothing new under the Who sun :)

Doctor Who and the Cybermen - Gerry Davis (Target Paperback, 1975)

Wester Hailes, 1980 or '81. All concrete and metal, our world really was just half a dozen streets and a bit of wasteland. Plus acres of empty car parks.

Michelle Haig was the Gala Princess. She was going out with me until the Incident of the Big Stone in the Corn Field (about which possibly more another day).

I had my picture taken by the local newspaper in my posh Heriots' uniform and black national health specs before the start of first year, less than jauntily leaning against the harling covered wall of our stair. I look a bit odd, but I suspect I was secretly rather worried someone would see me and come over and belt me one. Plus I was going to school without anyone I knew.

My Granny Betty, who lived downstairs from us, got out of what was her death bed and got dressed for the first time in weeks, and sat up in her big winged back chair, fag in hand, just to see me in my uniform. She died two days later and for years I thought I'd killed her.

My parents had split up that summer. Me and Scott had been playing Japs and Commandoes on The Hill and my mum appeared at the bottom of our stair and shouted for me to come over. 'I'm leaving your dad' she'd said and I'd said 'see you later' to Scott and we'd all gone round to John Armitage's house, because he had a car and could give us a lift to my granny's house.

So it was rubbish sort of time, full of the bad sort of change (the only sort you get when you're eleven) and full of people disappearing.

The Gala was one beautiful warm Saturday that summer, with a parade round the scheme and Michelle in her plastic tiara and pink puffy dress, and I went down to the local high school where there was (in my mind's eye) the biggest jumble sale ever. Table after table stacked high with home baking and old clothes, boxes of Jimmy Shand and Darts albums underneath in the shade, and a massive collection of old paint tables joined together, covered in books, all five and ten pence each.

And lying on the top, upside down but still instantly recognisable was Doctor Who and Cybermen by Gerry Davis. Ten pee and it was mine.

It had the wrong cyberman on the front cover and the story it was based on was actually called The Moonbase, but I didn't find that out for years. What I did was run away home with it and throw myself on my bed. Above my head a long white shelf stretched the length of the wall, containing every single book I owned, each of which I'd read a hundred times each.

All the Who books - twenty or so, I should think - were in strict chronological order, as decreed by Peter Haining, then about the same number again of books I'd got out the library and loved enough to buy instead of buying an LP. So I heard the Owl Call My Name was there, and Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost and Little House in the Big Woods. I can still see the yellow cover of the first Flashman book and a Sharpe novel my nana gave me, leaning up against an Asimov short story collection and, I should think, all of James Blish's Star Trek 'novelisations' (bought in an addictive fashion, week after week, every time I had the forty-five pence or whatever, from the old Science Ficiton Bookshop in Clerk Street - a poky, dirty, dusty shop, filled with revolving metal stands jammed with American paperbacks with little notches out the cover and riotously expensive cash-ins about the making of Empire Strikes Back and Buck Rogers).

I spent that afternoon reading Doctor Who and the Cybermen, all the while feeling an actual physical pleasure in my gut at the story and the fact it was a Second Doctor one. A little bit of something from out of history, an anchor in an unsettling and unfixed sort of world, which I could slip securely into place on my shelf once I'd done, ready for me to read again and again.

Three Great BF Audios (as stated half a decade ago)

[Three positive Big Finish reviews that I just rescued from the Jade Pagoda Audio archives of 2005 and post here with very minor tweaks because I've been too busy tonight to write anything new]

Spare Parts - Marc Platt

Spare Parts has, quite justifiably I think, been held up by fans of Big Finish as a prime example of how good the audio format can be. Written by Marc Platt , one of Who's biggest names/mythmakers, and featuring the origins of the Cybermen, it's an obvious one to claim as a highpoint in the early BF range.

The writing itself is first-rate; Platt has a good ear for dialogue and - unlike some BF plays - the various characters can easily be told from one another due to the things they say and the way they say them, rather than because everyone uses everyone else's names every time they speak (nothing worse than the 'So what do you think Doctor?'. 'Well Dravid I think that..', 'Oh look here comes Jonquar' style of writing). Additionally, there is an emotional depth to some scenes which is both unexpected and welcome (and, to be frank, not often greatly in evidence in the original series). The scene where a newly converted Cyberman attempts to go back home to her family, for instance, is genuinely moving in a a way that the TV series very rarely managed.

The acting too is excellent throughout - Davison turns in his best audio performance; Sarah Sutton is perfectly competent and the supporting cast fill their roles with aplomb (Pamela Binns as Sisterman Constant is particularly effective). The sound quality is also good - again unlike some of the earlier BF output, everyone can be heard clearly - a particular pleasure especially when the cybermen talk in their sing-song Tenth Planet voices. The only downside in this respect is the voice of the Cyber-Planner which can be quite hard to understand at times.

With all this praise, I best think of someting negative to say about Spare Parts or lose my well-earned reputation as a curmedgeon. Let's see.

The final twist in the plot - that the Mondasians use the 5th Doctor as a template for the new Cyber race - is merely clever, rather than good. In fact, this kind of thing - attempting to tie two apparently unrelated elements of an oeuvre into one another - has always seemed to me to be one of the signs of the death-knell of a series.

In sf book terms i's Isaac Asimov's last few sad novels, where - in the space of over a thousand pages per book - he tried to shoehorn his three main storylines (the Foundation; the Empire and the Robot storie) into one universe, all interlinked and interconnected. The result is a cluttered, strained and - most importantly - unnecessary mess. Just as Asimov's stories stand up fine by themselves, so there is no need to make the Doctor any more linked to the Cybermen than as their implacable foe. It simply smacks of fanwank at its most damaging - far more so in fact than Gary Russell's less well written and more often lambasted efforts - to make him have an organic link to them (and - on another level entirely - that's ignoring the in fiction 'fact' that future Doctors appear to have forgotten this link during Killing Ground, Attack of the Cybermen and Silver Nemesis - you would think he'd have mentioned it at some point).

Given that Spare Parts was the 34th release from Big Finish and had been followed by some very continuity heavy audios, maybe this last is another reason to be glad that a new television series arrived, before Doctor Who disappeared, cybersnake-like, up its own behind.

Spare Parts can be ordered here.

Davros - Lance Parkin

I stuck this audio in the car cd player with a huge raft of expectation, given that I had adored Lance Parkin's nove, The Infinity Doctors and thought Terry Malloy the best Davros.

In the main I wasn't disappointed - Malloy is immense and gives one of the finest performances of any type in Who history. Rather than the cliche ridden meglomaniac of, say, Remembrance, this is a well rounded character who for a fair length of time does seem genuine in his desire to change but who, even when he fails andreverts to type, never comes across as merely a ranting voice.

That part of this high quality is down to the excellence of the writing is undeniable - Davros' extended speech describing the torture of his 90 years floating alone in space, only for it to be revealed that all of the terror, fear and horror took place in merely the first second of his imprisonment is, perhaps, not terribly original, but it is commendably well written (and played). Similarly the flashback scenes set on Skaro, with Davros falling in love, being asked to commit suicide, or visiting the woman he has betrayed as she awaits execution are all very believable and slot into the main body of the narrative seamlessly.

As an added bonus, there's a sly dig at David Irving, the Hitler apologist historian, in the character of Lorraine Baines who has written several popular, but ill-informed books on Davros and who Parkin paints as a deluded fool (even her name as first presented - LRS Baines - is an anagram of 'brainless') whose eyes are only slowly opened to Davros' real nature and who pays the price in terms of arrest at the end of the play.

Which brings us, rather neatly to the big let-down of the audio, which as with Spare Parts is the ending. I once pitched a pretty rubbish outline to Big Finish where the TARDIS kicks the Doctor out for, amongst other things, always allowing people to suffer in his place. Sadly, Parkin uses this most cliched of Who cliches to reach a satisfying conclusion - Kim, the underacted computer bod, kills herself so that the Doctor can, without guilt, crash the ship she and Davros are on and so prevent him unleashing his dastardly program on an unsuspecting galaxy.

Far too often in Who this is the solution to a problem - first, the baddie kidnaps an innocent bystander and - by threatening to kill the bystander - is allowed to escape by the Doctor. The bystander then either sacrifices him or herself or is otherwise killed by accident and thus the Doctor is released to do what needs to be done without besmirching his delicate conscience. It even happens in the new golden age, in episodes like Tooth and Claw.

Using this plot device here simply serves to give the author an easy solution to a seemingly insoluble problem. It would have been far more satisfactory to have the initial solution - that the Doctor is able to control Davros' ship whilst it remains in the planetary atmosphere - serve as the actual solution. That the Doctor then states categorically, and with no evidence at all, that Davros survived the crash (in spite of what appears to be a panic-ridden scream of terror from Davros seconds before the explosion) merely adds a second Who cliche to the first, that of the mega villain surviving in spite of all evidence to the
contrary.

Project: Lazarus - Cav Scott and Mark Wright

And finally, a genuine 100% pleasure.

What Project: Lazarus actually made all too clear is exactly what was wrong with other BF audios from the same time. Lazarus is populated with actual real characters, created by the authors and built up into believable people, about whom we, the listeners, genuinely care (or not, as the case may be). Something like Master, which came out at the same time, has no genuine characters in it at all, merely a series of generic stereotypes - the man with the mysterious past; the blustering, rational policeman; the middle-class, philanthropist wife (plus Death, of course, but I'm sorry - much as fans of the NAs claim Death as a serious character in Who, every time he/she is mentioned I think of Terry Pratchett and his Death seated on the faithful horse, Binky). And it's very hard to become emotionally involved in the fate of such cardboard cut-outs.

In part one of Lazarus, however, the death of Carrie is genuinely moving - for once, the sacrifice of a character to allow the Doctor to escape is an emotionally involving one and, even better, the reaction of Evelyn is absolutely spot on (roaring and crying, and berating the Doctor for the fact he seems perfectly able to dismiss the death of innocents as a fact of life and quickly move on). This is adult writing, with actual consequences for implicated individuals. The discovery in part one that Evelyn has a serious heart condition has been derided elsewhere, IIRC, but I thought it was a reasonable and intelligent development, further re-inforced in part two by Sylvester McCoy's refusal to discuss Evelyn and his line that Evelyn never forgave the Sixth Doctor for allowing Carrie to die. Even the chief bad guy, Nimrod, is neither a blustering madman nor a raving sadist, but is a three dimensional character, working initially to right the wrongs of his past, but in time suborned by the task itself until he sees himself as first, an avenging angel then as the head of a shadowy group prepared to use the powers of the vampires he created to further the goals of King and Country (even when the King is long gone).

And that's just the first part of the story.

The second disc of Lazarus demonstrates another flaw in recent BF audios - writers seem to feel that there is a need for a twist, even when there isn't one to be had. I blame M. Night Shyamalan myself - after The Sixth Sense everyone seemed to think that a clever twist was a prerequisite for good plotting.

But it's not. The twist in Spare Parts was merely smart-arsed and took the shine off of an otherwise brilliant story, whilst those in Master were ridiculous - both enormously obvious and completely uneccessary. Spare Parts had no need of a shock value ending in any case - it was already brilliantly written and filled with incident and all the inclusion of the 'Doctor as prototype for the Cybermen' finale did was distract the listener from the quality writing which preceded it.

The various twists and turns in Lazarus, on the other hand, are integral to the storyline and at no point feel forced or included for shock value. The discoveries that first, the Sixth Doctor is a clone; then that there are dozens of other clones of him slowly dying in the room where Carrie was killed; and finally that the clone of the Sixth Doctor has only been alive for days, rather than the 3 years he believed are not always wholly unexpected, but they all flow without problem into the thread of the story and beautifully progress the idea of the clone's emotional growth until at the end he has become indistinguishable morally and spiritually from the Sixth Doctor.

All in all, Lazarus has jumped to become my favourite of all the BF audios - so much so that I can even forgive the writers for their (I think tongue in cheek) reference to Zagreus at the start of Twilight...

Project: Lazarus can be bought here.

Revenge of the Cybermen (1975)

I can't deny that I tend to be at the front of any crowd of irate forty something fanboys queuing up to jump up and down on the talents of Russell T Davies. It would, in fact, be the biggest lie since Nick Clegg claimed he always said he'd work with the Tories to deny that I think virtually everything Davies has done with Doctor Who has been entirely to its detriment. I'm sure he's a lovely guy, kind to animals and friend of children everywhere, but I find his writing saccharine, his plotting non-existent to the point of contempt and his characterisation as shallow and unappetising as a puddle of spilt beer. More than all of that though, I find his many little 'innovations' make my skin crawl and leave me irritated and annoyed.

The reliance on the sonic screwdriver/gun and its unfailing ability to open any door except when it can't; the way that psychic paper gets the Doctor into any building except when it doesn't; the adoration the Doctor has for humanity except when he loathes it - even the squabbling companions and their soap opera dull lives, the early painful slapstick, Davies' belief that a mysterious or hard to pronounce title/name/law is somehow more science fiction than space ships - and the introduction of the pointless and unimaginative cliff hanger.

Every one of those has, at one point or another, had me frothing at the mouth like a mentalist.

And yet...

I've been watching the brilliant Revenge of the Cybermen, one part of the greatest run of stories in the history of Doctor Who (from Ark in Space to Terror of the Zygons, inclusive, for those interested) and if you ask me it's the closest thing to proto-RTD Who we see in the show prior to the King of Wales himself turning up in 2005.

Time for a spoddy checklist...

1. Baker employs the the Sonic Screwdriver in a pretty gun-like manner, using it to to cut out a metal lock and to blast cybermats, like a scene from a BBC Dr Who on-line game. Worth noticing the amount of early-RTD style slapstick round this same door, too.

2. Harry and Sarah fill the Mickey and Rose roles thirty years early, doing all sorts of action stuff in the gaps between bickering like fond lovers (odd nobody has ever written a Past Doctor novel with that possibility as its basis, now I think about it).

3. Baker pre-empts Eccleston and Tennant's happy abuse of Mickey as he shouts 'Harry Sullivan is an imbecile' at one point, while his threat to infect Kellman with the cyber plague has a degree of sheer menace and apparent willingness to inflict pain not seen again until Eccleston with the Dalek in 2005.

4. Has there been a more RTD cliffhanger in old school Doctor Who than that between episodes one and two? The Doctor is trapped in a room filling with gas, apparently doomed to a slow, lingering death.

So he opens the door.

A more Davies' style cliffhanger it's hard to imagine...

And finally five - the 'Armageddon Convention'? Why not the 'Shadow Proclamation' instead?

Obviously I'm exaggerating for effect. In two hours of any Doctor Who story, there are bound to be a little things I could point to and claim a 21st century sensibility for, but that doesn't mean that those elements aren't there in Revenge.

But it's also more than that.

There is a bit of slapstick when the Doctor opens the first metal door, but that's all - it's not a five minute scene of Plastic Mickey acting like the robot Santa in Santa Clause 2.

The Doctor does zap a cybermat with his sonic screwdriver, but only one and not a whole host of Cybermen with one John McClane-esque shot.

The Doctor does call his male companion an idiot a couple of times and pretty obviously prefers Sarah, but he doesn't feel the need to balance that out with a ten minute speech about just how great everybody is.

The cliffhanger is still rubbish, though.

Other bits which stick in my mind...

'Fragmentise? I suppose we can't expect decent English from a machine' - a line which, in its very mundanity, gives Revenge a more genuinely futuristic feel than any number of Nightmare Childs and Jagrefesses

Some great use of one screen overlaid over another prop to give the appearance of a futuristic surveillance system.

The cybermats are rubbish, in contrast - nowhere near as effective as those seen in Tomb of the Cybermen, a fact which is most plainly made when one slithers out from under the body of a dead crewman. It should have been creepy and horrible, like some silver insect burrowing through dead flesh, instead it's faintly comical (especially if you spot the fact that every other 'corpse' is in fact a dummy).

And - most importantly of all - if the Vogans are hiding from the Cybermen, why don't all their guns fire gold?

Hornets Nest, written by Paul Magrs and starring Tom Baker (2009)

My friend Jim has the happy knack of often coming up with just the phrase perfectly to encompass all that's best about one creative endeaviour or other, and he's seldom been more on the ball than in describing this first series of BBC Tom Baker Dr Who audios as 'macabre joie de vivre'.

Appearing in the autumn and early winter of the year, the five parts of Hornets Nest felt like a second annual season of Doctor Who, following the brash and colourful television series like a cleverer and more odd elder brother. Redolent of winter evenings, drinking mulled wine by an open fire, the curtains closed and an old friend come to visit, Paul Magrs rather brilliantly managed to provide both comfort and innovation in a single, beautifully crafted package.

From the very first, I was happily dragged into the latest World of the Doctor.

Nest Cottage feels like a natural extension from the house that Pertwee built in Magrs' earlier Dr Who book, Verdigris. And of course the Doctor would have a big old dog about the place, and a housekeeper to cook his meals and argue with him. Of course he'd have old friends round for adventures now and then (but not all the time!) and of course he'd stay up all night telling stories which, in the end, become one with present reality, so that everybody is in The Most Terrible Danger!

The fact that not all of this is in place at the start of the series makes the voyage of discovery all the finer - and the manner in which that voyage takes in one deliciously creepy (macabre, even) location after another, back into the watery depths of time, is finer still.

For me - and many more like me - this is the real Sound of the Seventies; the wheezing groan of the TARDIS, the fourth Doctor barking orders at Mike Yates and anyone else who gets in his way - and the sinister rustling noise of an alien entity sliding surreptitiously into an unsuspecting but compliant human body.

Beautiful and a little bit scary - like all the best Wintery things...