Other guests include Susan Twist off of Doctor Who, Rob Shearman (writer of Dalek), Jonathan Carley (Big Finish's War Doctor), Mark Griffiths (BBC Books etc), and Georgia Cook and Fio Trethewey (also BBC Books and Big Finish and whatnot).
Tickets and further details here.
Sometime around February 1946, a young man called Jack Blunt is released from prison and finds himself offered a job assisting Book. Jack's an orphan, left with only a photograph of his father and not even his name. Soon he's caught up in the Books' lives and their investigations of murder.
The novelisation largely follows the events of the three two-part TV stories but its peppered with additional details. For example, it is bookended by letters from 1962, 14 years after the events seen on screen and giving some hints about what is still to come. We also glimpse a bit more of Trottie in the war and Book takes a haunting journey on a train.
When books are mentioned, we often learn their publisher and bindings - and so gain something of the way Book classifies his world. We're told the second adventure takes place in August 1946 six months after the first (p. 129), and that the third story occurs "weeks" later, so in September.
It's also peppered with bits of real history, such as the other roles taken by film extras Linda and Barbara:
"The David Lean Great Expectations condemns them to the cutting-room floor." (p. 160)
As with the TV series, it's all good fun but the cosy crimes are given an edge by the real social history. In that sense, it's got something, I think, of the feel of Call the Midwife: just the thing for a Sunday evening in front of the box. A second series is now in production and I hope it can be seen more widely than on the relatively limited channel U&Alibi because it is a delight.
See also:
Peter Grant and his extended family are in Scotland on holiday and to look into alleged sightings of a huge panther - or, melanistic leopard to be precise. As well as liaising with the local police to investigate this “weird bollocks”, Peter must also wrangle his parents, his toddler twins, his river goddess partner, and apprentice Abigail — who tells half of this story herself.
It’s smart and funny, and kept be guessing to the end. As always, I’m in awe of Ben’s ability to create such a vast range of rich characters, and how he grounds the fantastic elements in the mundane. The details — from the stone which built Aberdeen to the differences in police procedure and legislation once you cross the Border, are exemplary. I’ve been learning lots about scuba diving over the last year (as the Lord of Chaos is doing a course in it) and so found the threat at the end particularly tense.
There are loads of nerdy references, the Doctor Who ones including Daleks (p. 26), Peter’s explanation of his job,
“I deal with the odd, the unexplained, anything on earth…” (p. 108).
and what might be a reference to one of Ben’s own Doctor Who stories, in using the word “obstreperous” (p. 153). I wonder, too, if there’s an echo of Doctor Who and the Sea Devils by Malcolm Hulke in some of what goes on here.
It’s fun to pick up on this stuff and the other nerdery (such as Abigail working out the physics of mermaids). And it’s fun following character’s personal lives — the impact on Peter of being a dad, the love lives of Abigail and of Indigo the fox, the hints we get about Dr Abdul Walid’s early, wild years.
So many detectives have terrible personal lives and rub people up the wrong way. Peter is a charmer (literally!) and peacemaker, and it makes him and his world very engaging company.
Rivers of London novels I've also blogged about:
Rivers of London novellas:
You can now listen to my talk, "The Unseen Terrance Dicks", and lots of the other contributions, as episodes of the Hamster with a Blunt Penknife podcast:
Target Book Club Part One on Apple, Podbean, Spotify
"There is a village in England that all us know, even if we have never set foot there. The village that comes to our minds when we think of cricket on the green on a Sunday in July; when we see a honeysuckled cottage painted on the lid of a tin of biscuits; when we put our hands together and say, 'Here's the church and here's the steeple.'"It really exists." (p. 125)
This village is in the New Forest, near where I grew up. Characters speak of the bright lights and bustle of Southampton, where I went to school. But this particular village is familiar from a whole load of other sources, too - Larkwhistle here in 1944 owes something to Bramley End in Went the Day Well (a film released in 1942 but set after the end of the Second World War, so told to us from the future). Meanwhile, local pub the Fleur-de-Lys is straight out of Doctor Who and the Android Invasion (1975), in which the real-life East Hagbourne doubled for fictional Devesham.
It's a mix of spy story, murder mystery and romance, neatly acknowledging its sources from the dog called Wimsey after Dorothy L Sayers's detective to more than one Sherlock Holmes reference.
"That's a bit dog-that-didn't bark, isn't it?" (p. 154)
The blurb of the book says it is "perfect for fans of Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime". The church of St Cedd surely owes something to Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, and at one point there's a joke from Doctor Who and the State of Decay; I think the author of that story, Terrance Dicks, would have loved this.
As for the plot: it's 1944 and Normandy has been invaded, the last act of the war under way. But Jill Metcalfe and her father then receive bad news from a rather good-looking American officer, Jack Strafford. While they're reeling from the shock, word comes of a dead body under a tree. It's not just any body, or just any tree - and soon Jack and Jill are working together to solve a murder and to catch a spy, which may or may not be related...
The book rattles along - I finished it in a day - by turns funny and real and harrowing. You feel the loss, and the great depths of emotion in this apparently quiet, conventional setting. Oh, and the back-flap tells us what is surely another influence on this: Matthew's forthcoming book The Great Dictator (haha!) is a biography of Barbara Cartland.
The book is him sharing what he knows, the facts gleaned from decades of research and some shrewd deductions, plus his analysis based on long years of consideration. I especially like how good he is at probing sources: he says when he thinks an anecdote has been embellished; he also says when he isn’t sure what to conclude.
There’s lots of factual information here that I didn’t know and there are lots of fresh insights that open up this old TV show. It’s also very engaging — for example in Toby’s increasing exasperation with the Daily Mail’s TV journalist of the time, Peter Black. (By chance, I once gave Toby a copy of Black’s book, The Mirror in the Corner; I wonder what he made of it.)
The serial was broadcast live in six episodes. The first two episodes were recorded and survive; the rest went out once and were then lost to the ether. What hadn’t occurred to me before I read Toby’s book is that at least some of episodes 3 to 6 were recorded — even if those recordings have now been lost. They each featured a small amount of pre-filmed material, detailed by Toby. It also seems that producer Rudolph Cartier filmed a little of each instalment up to episode 5 to act as a “trailer” or story-so-far at the start of the subsequent episode (pp. 168-9).
The chances of this material having survived are next to zero, but sometimes — just sometimes — this kind of thing turns up.
Indeed, Toby has turned up a load of archive material never seen before, including a roll of film from studio rehearsals on episodes 1 to 5, the images in very good condition and presented beautifully here. Reader, I have pored over these thrilling, vivid glimpses of what is otherwise lost to us. I should also like an illustrated version of the script - or even a whole comic strip - done by Robert Hack, whose artwork features here.
Toby has also gathered a wealth of sources to tell a detailed story. What we learn is set nicely in context — how this serial compared to other TV productions of the time, how people watched and engaged with it, and where it sits in the history of science-fiction and horror. Much is made of the fact that nothing like this had been seen on television preciously. That meant I was struck by the line at the end of Episode 1, when a reporter responds to the sight of astronaut Victor Caroon emerging from his rocket,
“That suit they wear, it is like the comic magazines after all,” (p. 70).
That is surely a reference to the Eagle and Dan Dare, pilot of the future, who dons a kind of diving gear in space. His comic strip adventures launched in 1950 but he perfectly exemplifies the kind of “New Elizabethan” hero referred to and then undercut in the serial. Quatermass is, I think, a kind of anti-Dan Dare.
Later, Toby notes that in L’esperimento Quatermass (Mondadori, 1978) — an Italian translation of the script book of the serial — a small change was made to the spoof, 3D sci-fi film playing in the cinema visited by Victor.
“The Space Girl (Ragazza Spaziale) doesn’t call the Lieutenant ‘Chuck’ as in the UK version, but ‘Jim’,” (p. 269).
That’s a random change, I thought. Unless it’s a reference to the well-known Jim Kirk from Star Trek, updating the allusion to (what was seen as) a contemporary example of hokey sci-fi.
Toby is especially good at keeping the focus on the people involved, the contributions made by cast and crew to both the original production and recounting how it was made. A last section, detailing what they all went on to do after Quatermass, is compelling — like the serial itself, Toby gives them a last bow.
But what I was most taken by, I think, was what the leading man — the first Quatermass — brought to the role in particular.
Toby tells us that Reginald Tate made his TV debut in March 1937, which was less than six months after the start of the BBC’s regular TV service. He appeared in an exact from the stage version of Jane Eyre in which he was appearing at the time in London’s West End. Tate played Mr Rochester, a role he’d had since the stage production began in Malvern the previous year. Toby tells us he played Rochester again on stage in Leeds in 1946 (p. 65) and on TV in 1948 (p. 66). He then performed as Rochester once more, for BBC Radio, at the same time as he was in production on The Quatermass Experiment. He told the Evening Standard at the time that,
“The transition [between the two roles] is not very great. The two seem to have characters in common” (p. 70).
Toby describes Quatermass as a troubled, guilt-ridden figure, trying to put right what he got terribly wrong — in this case, sending three men into space to devastating effect that now imperils the whole Earth. I don’t think writer Nigel Kneale had any thought of Mr Rochester when he wrote it; but that’s what Tate brought to his performance.
It’s another example of how the leading man of this new kind of TV drama — a pilot of the future, in his own way — is anchored in the past. The ideas are new but the emotional heft of the serial is an echo from the past…
For example, in the 1971 Doctor Who story Terror of the Autons, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and two of his officers drive a pale blue Austin Maxi, registration POF 61OG, which is involved in an action sequence in Episode 3. The shape of it, the boxy way it moves, the guttural sound of the engine, are all very distinctive of the time. “Gosh,” I thought, watching a bit today while fact-checking something something else, “I’d forgotten cars sounded like that…”
The sound of the past, once so prevalent and now a detail from history.
On the commentary recorded for the DVD release, producer Barry Letts and actors Nicholas Courtney and Katy Manning joke about the incongruity of such an ordinary car in the midst of an alien invasion. Basically, they ask, why doesn’t the heroic Brig drive something more, well, manly?
I think something quite interesting* is going on here. This car we see on screen isn’t ordinary at all.
The Austin Maxi was the first car to be launched by the newly formed British Leyland Motor Corporation. That was on 24 April 1969 — less than 18 months before this particular model featured in scenes filmed for Doctor Who in September 1970. It’s brand new — and also more than that, too.
Around this time, British Leyland’s publicity people seem to have loaned several Austin Maxis to BBC productions, surely as a means of subliminal advertising. The idea, of course, was to make the new model of car familiar to viewers, encouraging them to buy one. In that sense, this is the car of tomorrow — the next model that viewers’ will themselves drive. And that fits with this story, and Doctor Who of the time, being set in the very near future.
That’s why, I think, that in September 1970 it didn’t seem incongruous to the production team for Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart of the UN’s Intelligence Taskforce to drive into battle in a five-door hatchback. At least, it wasn’t incongruous enough for them to put him behind the wheel of something else.
The irony is that the subliminal advertising worked. People did become familiar with and buy Austin Maxis, so this particular model took on a range of associations as an ordinary, family car. It was once the aspirational new car of the future. That it now feels incongruous is a sign of how much we’ve moved on.
See also
Sadie Green meets Sam Masur (later Mazur) in hospital when they’re both children. They’re each going through some horrible, serious stuff at the time but bond while playing computer games. Sadie has also not been entirely honest with Sam. Despite a falling out, they reconnect during college and collaborate on a game of their own…
We follow them for two decades through the highs and lows of their lives, the loves and losses and games.
It’s beautifully written and wryly observed, noting changes to games and the surrounding culture over the period. It’s also full of nuance: we can see Sadie’s tutor is a manipulative predator; she learns to see that, too, but remains his friend. For all he’s a monster, he’s a person, too.
At the heart of the novel is Sam and Sadie’s sparky relationship. At best, they are funny and supportive; at worst, they are jealous or brood on perceived slights. There are several recurring jokes, such as one — based on an old computer game — that Sadie has died of dysentery, which is part of their childhood banter and then gets dropped to blinding effect again on page 440.
In fact, it is constantly smart and funny, the wit all from the perspective of particular characters so also revealing about them and their understanding of the world. For example, there’s Sam in a particular crisis wishing he could reprogram his brain in the way he might fix a game.
“Unfortunately, the human brain is every bit as closed a system as a Mac.” (p. 228)
There’s lots of telling details, too, on the games these characters play — real and imaginary — and on their respective, mixed heritage: Sam’s Korean grandparents run a pizza place in K-Town, a district Sadie has never heard of when she first meets him, though she lives in a nearby part of LA. Later, they make a game out of separate but intersecting worlds.
The novel isn’t quite in chronological order, which allows it to tease the reader with key revelations to come. We jump ahead to interviews with Sam and Sadie looking back on their life and work. Or there’s the moment on page 190 when, in a scene set in the pizza place run by Sam’s grandparents, there’s the briefest mention of a poster on the wall: a 1980s advert showing a woman drinking a Korean beer. Twelve pages later, we learn the significance of this photograph — a gut punch of a revelation.
For a book about something as apparently unserious as playing games — a viewpoint it addresses several times — it is richly profound. More than once, we see the way games help people in real-life crisis. Sometimes, games have other impacts on real life, which I won’t spoil here. But it’s all utterly compelling; I read the last 100 pages on a plane yesterday, my heart in my mouth.
On that point, I can understand why the blurb and publicity don’t make a thing about this all being about games. That might put off readers who aren’t into games (I’m not, especially) — but can still be enthralled by the story being told.
One last idle thought. In her notes and acknowledgements at the end, author Gabrielle Zevin says that in referencing life-life computer games throughout the novel,
“I chose the games that made the most sense for the story, even when the dates were slightly wrong.” (p. 481)
That may illuminate an early reference that caught my eye. We’re told that Sam’s possessions in 1995 include,
“an aging desktop computer with a Doctor Who sticker on one side and a Dungeons and Dragons sticker on the other” (p. 67)
I wonder when Sam, aged 21 at this point, got into Doctor Who — a year before the TV movie kindled a new fandom and brought many lapsed fans back from the fray. I assume he was watching late-night on PBS. Did he find other like-minded fans, in real life or online, in the way he played Dungeons and Dragons with others? And when did his interest wane? Doctor Who never gets mentioned again.
"'Big one,' the Doctor nodded. 'Well, small in scale, but big in everything else. The final bust-up between the invading Duchy of Estonia and the republic of Novgorod. Marks the end of the Northern Crusades in this region, and cements Prince Alexander Nevsky as a national hero.'
'I've never heard of it,' said Ruby.
'Your planet's had too many wars for anyone to know them all,' said the Doctor sadly. 'Still, here we are.'" (p. 30)
The distress signal has been sent by Ranavere, a 16 year-old girl from an alien culture of warriors, who has been sent to the battle as part of a coming-of-age ritual. Ranavere doesn't to fight - but it soon turns she may not have a choice. There are other aliens on the ice, some of them more of Ranavere's warmongering people and then there's something more monstrous as well...
I really enjoyed this fast-moving, lively adventure by first-time novelist Georgia Cook (who I know a bit). It deftly captures the pace and verve of the recent TV series. In fact, it's packed with set-piece moments that would be great to be able to see. This is a book that would really suit illustration - which should come as no surprise given that the author is also a designer and artist.
Ruby and the Doctor are captured well, and Ranavere is a character we can relate to; she and her family are well drawn. Like Ruby, I'd never heard of this moment in history but it makes for a rich, arresting backdrop. It's all great fun, not least towards the end when, after all the ice and cold, the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS with a pile of big, fluffy towels for the surviving burly warriors. Their resistance to such comfort quickly melts, in a moment that's perfectly daft, funny and true to character.
"The number of nude photos needed for the Guardroom set has increased from three to six." (p. 647)
This massive, detailed day-by-day history of the making of Doctor Who is a great nerdy joy. The first volume covers the period from Monday, 2 November 1936 (the start of the BBC's regular Television service) to Friday, 4 November 1966 (the day before Patrick Troughton made his full debut as the Second Doctor, having been glimpsed in the closing moments of the episode broadcast the previous week).
In effect, it's a much expanded version of the 164-page production diary featured in Doctor Who: The Handbook - The First Doctor (1994) by David J Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker. Indeed, Walker is the editor of this new volume, which is published by Howe's company, Telos. David Brunt looked again at the production files held at the BBC's Written Archives Centre used in that earlier version, and also looked more widely - there's an exhaustive list at the end of this volume of the files consulted for individual writers, actors and other personnel, as well as BBC departments.
I should probably declare an interest in that David's research at WAC overlapped my own for the biography of David Whitaker. We liaised a bit, compared notes and shared ideas, and I read a fairly early draft version of this book containing much less detail. There's plenty in the published volume that is new to me. In some instances, we looked at the same evidence and came to different conclusions.
For example, the book says that David Whitaker "has most likely been appointed as Doctor Who's story editor" by the time of his wedding on 8 June 1963 (p. 49). My guess is that if this were case he'd have been copied into the memo dated Monday, 10 June from head of serials Donald Wilson to everyone else involved at a senior level: assistant head of drama Norman Rutherford (head of drama Sydney Newman being away), drama department organiser Ayton Whitaker (no relation), associate producer Mervyn Pinfield, acting producer Rex Tucker and incoming producer Verity Lambert (who didn't start for another week). Maybe the story editor wasn't considered sufficiently senior for inclusion in this august company, but I make the case in my book for David Whitaker being assigned to Doctor Who on Monday, 17 June.
I'm especially impressed by pp. 104-105, where the weekly cycle of rehearsals, read-throughs and technical runs is spelled out. As far as I'm aware, there's no single document detailing this sequence and it's been deduced from scattered references in myriad different sources. Understanding that schedule illuminates much that follows. We can appreciate the frustration of actor William Russell being given a new six-page scene to learn on Thursday, 20 February 1964, the day before The Wall of Lies was recorded; it's additionally frustrating when we know that after a Thursday morning run-through of an episode for the producer and senior technical crew,
"the cast will normally be free to ... leave early that day." (p. 105)
The other thing that this book illuminates is the frantic spinning of multiple plates at any one moment. Most histories of Doctor Who - in Doctor Who Magazine or the Complete History, or on the DVDs and Blu-rays - scrutinise one story at a time. The Production History lays out how studio production on one story overlapped with filming for the next, the writing and editing of the story after that and planning and budgeting for stories months ahead. At the same time, there was press and publicity, and responses to enquiries about the episodes just aired.
Detailing the treadmill of production demonstrates, time and again, the problems caused by anyone holding things up, whether late scripts or delivery of props, or the repeated machinations of the Design Department to kill Doctor Who before it even started. It's dizzyingly, exhaustingly fraught. It's all the more impressive that Doctor Who was often so compelling and easy to see why working on this series burned through talent so quickly.
This day-by-day approach is very revealing and has made me make a whole tonne of connections. I'll give the example of one story, to show how it is in fact lots of stories and things happening at once.
On Thursday 26 May 1966, William Hartnell (Doctor Who), Michael Craze (Ben Jackson), Anneke Wills (Polly) and members of the guest cast were in Cromwell Gardens in Kensington for location filming on The War Machines. We're told that this included a high-shot filmed from upstairs at no. 50F (by arrangement with a Mrs Lessing there), and that,
"The location in Cornwall Gardens is diametrically opposite the property where Peter Purves is living at this time." (p. 603)
Hartnell spent that same morning in rehearsals on the preceding serial with Purves (Steven Taylor) and Jackie Lane (Dodo Chaplet). The Savages Episode 3 was then recorded in studio the following day. Both co-stars were being rather abruptly written out of the series, Purves the following week and Lane two weeks later in the middle of The War Machines. The prevailing atmosphere was not great, as Purves told me in 2013:
"I was very disappointed [to leave]. Later, I knew [producer] Innes [Lloyd] quite well and there was no animosity. But I didn't want to go. Bill [Hartnell] was furious. I remember him saying he'd make them change their minds. A few months later, he was gone, too." (Me, interview with Peter Purves for Doctor Who 50 Years - The Companions)
Given this, it's all the more astonishing that the production were there on Purves' doorstep, filming with his replacements.
Also present at the location filming that afternoon were William Mervyn (Sir Charles Summer), whose son Michael Pickwoad later designed more than one TARDIS and Mike Reid (uncredited soldier), later a comedian, host of Runaround and Frank Butcher in EastEnders and Dimensions in Time. There was more notable casting on this story. When the first episode of The War Machines was recorded in studio on 10 June, one of the extras in the Inferno nightclub was Alan Cassell, later the star of Australian TV's The Drifter, written by David Whitaker. Two weeks later, another extra left production during the lunch break to go for an X-ray and then didn't return for that evening's recording of Episode 3; Mike Yarwood is,
"now better known for his later TV career as an impressionist." (p. 620)
That week had been a little fraught anyway. On Monday, 20 June, the first day of rehearsals on the episode were disrupted by Hartnell "still feeling the after-effects" of filming in Cornwall the previous day for next story The Smugglers. Having completed work, he'd had a long trek back to London by train. His second-class ticket from Penzance (p. 606) seems extraordinary treatment for a veteran star of a series and came at a cost: his "travel fatigue" (as the Production Guide puts it) led to a delay in the usual schedule. On 6 July, William Mervyn wrote a letter to Lloyd suggesting that Hartnell should henceforth be transported by helicopter - for all the joking tone, it implies there had been a real problem.
Reading events day by day, I think it might have been the final straw for Lloyd. On 24 June, the day that The War Machines Episode 3 was in studio, the producer notified story editor Gerry Davis that, by arrangement with Hartnell's agent, the star would be absent from whatever episode was to be recorded on 11 February 1967 - in the event, The Moonbase Episode 2. But the problems caused to the schedule following filming in Cornwall surely affected the decision Lloyd was then involved in. On 15 July 1966, three weeks after that memo to Davis, Lloyd seems to have broken the news to Hartnell that his contract would not be extended beyond the next four-part story, The Tenth Planet. Hartnell told his wife the following day that he would be leaving Doctor Who.
I've pored over much of the original paperwork used here and thought I knew this stuff. This exhaustive diary tells a whole new story. Let's have volume 2 sharpish, please and thank you.
“The museum is a powerful and extraordinarily malleable cultural sorting house. [Museums] are places for demonstrating that the West is best, regardless of what the West has actually been up to. For example, when we hear the story of how Napoleon’s troops in Egypt at the turn of the nineteenth century resorted to using dynamite to blow up a large, basalt statute of Rameses II, we needn’t worry in the way we do about the Taliban [destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas]. Even if they did blow up the Egyptian sculptures, Napoleon’s motive was to get them into the French national collection. They would be safe there.” (p. 188).
Subtitled “Ten lies that made the West”, this insightful and often funny book is full of historical details that challenge all kinds of presumptions. The ancient Athenians, for example, wouldn’t recognise our political system as democracy. Their whole system was about governing themselves; we elect other people, usually from the elite, to do so on our behalf.
Or there’s what Magna Carta did — or rather didn’t — do to fundamental rights here and abroad. I’d never even heard of the contemporaneous Charter of the Forest, which now seems a far more radical document, providing rights for ordinary people to land and resources; some of its provisions were still in force until 1971.
Over the course of 10 chapters, Subhadra unpicks a series of assumptions about the “civilised” and the “savage”, such as the superiority of the written word over the spoken, or the roots of political frameworks or psychological insights. In doing so, she shows how art, science and history are bound up in and blinded by a constructed, self-aggrandising narrative.
Subhadra addresses numerous elisions from the historical record that serve to feed this false story. Repeatedly, women and non-white people and cultures have been left out of the story. I was fascinated to learn that Abraham Maslow’s work on the hierarchy of needs and on self-actualisation, which I studied as part of my training to be an adoptive parent, owes a great deal to his time among the Siksiká people in Northern Alberta — now the Northern Blackfoot Confederacy. Maslow later said he’d been inspired by news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour; Subhadra uses Maslow’s own work and accounts from women who knew him to set the record straight.
I should declare an interest in that I know Subhadra and get a credit in the acknowledgements (I had to check with her what for). The Dr is also cited as a source at one point. Some of what’s covered here I’d already heard, having seen Subhadra’s stand-up comedy act and heard her Boring Talk for the BBC on Jeremy Bentham’s “Auto-Icon”.
But there’s a great deal here that was completely new to me — a richer, stranger more diverse history than the one I thought I knew. What a delightful way to discover the myriad ways in which I’m wrong.
Voting is open to members of the BSFA, who can select up to four works per category. There will then be a shortlist, and winners announced at the Levitation Eastercon event over the weekend of 29 March - 1 April. Details and voting form at the BSFA site.
What with life and lockdown, I've been a bit out of the loop with all things BSFA, though I used to regularly review books for its magazine Vector and attend its events in London. In September 2015, I was the subject of one of those events, interviewed by Professor Edward James, who'd overseen the Masters degree in science-fiction I did 1997-98.
Here's an on-its-side recording, from that ancient bygone age.
It's the story of three people: online social justice warrior Kayla who IRL struggles with social interactions; intelligence analyst Libby who has become the target of a right-wing hate campaign; and Derek, a major-general in the army who is torn by the disparity between his orders and his oath to uphold the law. They're thrown together because of a shocking new scheme developed by the Home Office and private enterprise.
It's an exciting, involving story, the early parts reminiscent - in a good way - of the bleak, near-future and political consciousness of the "War" trilogy of Doctor Who New Adventures books by Andrew Cartmel in the 1990s. But the later part of the novel is concerned with hammering out the practicalities - and clash of personalities - in agreeing exactly how to combat the sinister vested interests behind a tide of disinformation.
Often, science-fiction presents this kind of thing as an engineering problem: it just needs someone to properly identify the fault for a solution to be found. My experience is that, even when everyone has the most well-meaning intentions, there's rarely a "Eureka" moment in politics and it's more often an uneasy, imperfect compromise. People are a bit messy.
In that sense, the latter part of this novel reminded me more of the end of John Christopher's Tripods trilogy, in which the war against the aliens is followed by a more complicated peace among humans, and our hero goes off to become a member of the new government. Except it does more than that, presenting a draft manifesto plus notes and discussions about how this work might be taken forward. It all feels very timely - a novel addressing the bleak now.
This new issue features the latest instalments of two regular features devised by Marcus and written by me. In All Decs on Hand (my best headline in an age), I interview assistant set decorate Verity Scott and set decorator's assistant Lois Drage. In Sufficient Data, Roger Langridge illustrates my take on the last of the reader's poll winners - this time, the winning stories of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors respectively.
These features will continue under the new editor and we've also been discussing some new things. More of that to come...
By coincidence, I got home to find this new DWM waiting for me after a long drive, in which me and the children were entertained by David Tennant's reading of How to Train Your Dragon (2003) by Cressida Cowell, which was different enough from the films to keep my guessing and is full of fun twists and adventure. It's also fun to hear Tennant's skills as a storytelling with multiple characters and accents, and I quietly thrilled to him referring several times to the 'The Green Death'. But what really struck me - and Lady Vader - is the absence of female characters. A book about young Vikings from another age.
Blurb as follows:
Published to coincide with three feature-length anniversary specials, the ultimate official celebration of 60 years of Doctor Who, featuring heroes, monsters, spaceships, planets and more... all as you've never seen before. Welcome to the Whoniverse. First stop- everywhere.
Six decades may only be a handful of heartbeats to a Time Lord, but for Doctor Who it's the adventure of several lifetimes. Evolving over 60 years, the world's longest-running sci-fi TV show has gifted us a universe of menacing monsters and unforgettable heroes. You might even call it a 'Whotopia'.
Now you can roam free through the Doctor's dimension as never before in this special commemorative book for Doctor Who's diamond anniversary. Join all the Doctors as each tells their own story. Learn about their legions of legendary allies - and hear from the monsters' own mouths about what makes them tick. Find danger on alien worlds and threats here on Earth in all eras. And explore the gadgets, robots, spaceships, computers and mind-blowing creations that crowd the never-ending corridors of Whotopia.
Crammed with exciting new images and in full colour throughout, Whotopia- The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse is the essential celebration of 60 years of Doctor Who.
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
ISBN: 9781785948299
Number of pages: 324
Weight: 750 g
Dimensions: 293 x 219 x 40 mm
This is a typically imaginative, clever and often funny novel by my mate Eddie Robson. It rattles along but the settings, characters and big ideas all really stick in the mind. Amy Scanlon reads the audiobook version very well - there are a lot of characters and accents, but she makes individuals distinct so we know exactly who is speaking when there is dialogue. A real pleasure of a novel.
I've been puzzling over what it reminded me of. Lydia is, I think, the latest in a line of klutzy, plucky young women Eddie tells stories about. In fact, the first chapter put me in mind of the relationship between Katrina and the alien Uljabaan in Eddie's sci-fi sitcom Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully. And that, in turn, had something of the feel of Paul Cornell's Happy Endings, in which all sorts of aliens descend on a village to attend the wedding of plucky, klutzy Bernice Summerfield - another young woman in a complex relationship with an alien being.
Lydia isn't Bernice and Fitz isn't Dr. Who, but there's an echo of the New Adventures Doctor Who books here - that mix of boggling sci-fi concepts with the ordinary domestic, the wit of it, the boozing (even if it's not exactly boozing). The result is at once dizzyingly original and comfortingly familiar. Loved it.
Burk had access to the Newman archive, and I'm beside myself with envy at some of the material he's had at his fingertips. The Ur-text of all Doctor Who archaeology is the 1972 book The Making of Doctor Who by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks. According to Burk, Hulke wrote to Newman on 6 August 1971 asking him for memories of how the programme came about. On 28 September, Newman replied:
“I don't think I'm immodest in saying that it was entirely my concept, although inevitably many changes were brought about by Verity Lambert, who was its first producer. She would be the very best source of information, better than say, David Whitaker or even Donald Wilson.” (pp. 448-449)
However, by the time Newman sent this, Hulke had spoken to Donald Wilson (on 8 September) who told him what's generally considered the fact: that Doctor Who was created by Newman and Wilson.
“It was just Sydney and I together, chatting. At an early stage we discussed it with other people, but in fact the title, as I remember, I invented…” (p. 450)
Burk digs into this, citing some counterclaims, analysing the surviving paperwork from those early days and addressing the issue that some key papers appear to be missing from the archive. I've some more to add to this in my forthcoming book on story editor David Whitaker.
Anyway, Doctor Who is just one of the many, many shows Newman worked on. Head of Drama conveys the extraordinary range and impact of his work, from documentary films to opera and everything in between. There's what he learned from double-checking ticket sales in a cinema and watching the reactions of different audiences to the same film, and what working in newsreel and sport taught him about staging drama. He delights in telling us when he got something wrong - he was against employing chat-show host Ed Sullivan, tried to cancel the Daleks and resisted Donald Wilson in commissioning The Forsyte Saga.
But time and again, Newman's instincts for what would be popular and connect with a broad audience were dead right. Just one example of his many, many insights here:
“I laid down some simple notions [while at ABC]. Some people become physically ill when they see blood, and only a fool wants an audience to puke. Ergo, show blood with care. Some in the audience are daffy with hate, so don’t show them how to make a bomb. Viewers will identify with the innocent character, so being bound and helpless and tortured becomes powerfully disturbing, and that kind of reaction is a turn off. And finally, avoid common, easily available weapons such as a kitchen knife, so as not to provoke a viewer who may be feeling momentary murderous rage to act upon it in the moment.” (p. 304)
Newman gives full credit to the many writers and producers and talented people he worked with, but he's an amazing, funny and honest storyteller. There are some amazing stories here. Just before the Second World War, he was offered a job with Disney but had to head to back to Canada to sort out a visa. On the way, a fellow passenger seems to have reported him - as being an illegal immigrant from Mexico! The result was jail and some very hairy moments, but Newman tells it all with compassion and a wry smile, tying it all into a broader theme of having always been an outsider, an exile. And then he concludes that without this sorry business and the problems of a visa, had he been able to take that Disney job, he'd have ended up drafted into the US army and killed at Iwo Jima.
He shrugs that all off and is then onto the next drama.
Abigail Kamara is Peter Grant's 12 year-old cousin, as featured in several of the books about Grant, a London copper who investigates weird bollocks. This novella is what happens while Peter is away in Hereford (during the events of Foxglove Summer), looking into the disappearance of a bunch of kids her own age from Hampstead Heath. There's some suggestion this is going to riff on Pied Piper of Hamelin but it goes more The Stone Tape, but full of the usual smart, funny observation that makes the main series so compelling. There's a posh boy called Simon who prefers climbing trees to school work which particularly struck a chord.
Shvorne Marks is an excellent reader, with dour footnotes provided by Kobna Holbrook-Smith (who usually narrate's Peter's audiobook adventures). What strikes me is how easily Abigail could lead further adventures - as could many of the other rich and well-drawn characters in the series. Ben has created a whole world, one that could survive the death or retirement of its lead character. I'm all too aware off that as I begin Amongst Our Weapons...
On other titles in the series:
The Autobiography of Spock is another extraordinary thing, perfectly weaving together the different threads and revelations from a great multiplicity of texts on screen: stuff revealed about Spock's background in the original Star Trek TV series, all the stuff about his dad in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the never-previously mentioned brother in the movie Star Trek V, the never-previously mentioned sister in Star Trek: Discovery, the stuff in the 2009 reboot movie and bits gleaned from Star Trek: Picard. In the acknowledgements, Una mentions a number of Star Trek books and novels she's borrowed from, too, and the essays on Romulans by Michael Chabon and on James T Kirk by Erin Horakova. I'm sure there's more, and part of me would love to see a version of this autobiography with footnotes that cite all the sources.
But that would perhaps break the spell. Given so much material to choose from, some of it contradictory or at least inconsistent, it's remarkable how cohesive this book is. That's partly due to the structure, each chapter focused on someone that Spock loved, enabling Una to focus on particular, telling moments in the long life in which Spock prospered. Given such a famously logical, aloof character, a focus on his love life is initially surprising but it really works, in part because this is love in the broadest sense - the subjects include Spock's parents, his sparring partner Dr McCoy and even the starship Enterprise. But it also works because it's at the heart of what the book is addressing: Spock coming to accept his hybrid nature as half-human, and his emotional side. There's a lot on searching for and accepting the truth - of situations, or events, of ourselves. Spock is honest about failure, about when he's got things wrong. There are passages in this that change my sense of what's happening in the things I've seen on screen.
The point is that it doesn't feel like a jigsaw. There's fun to be had in spotting the sources - when mention is made of the expression on Kirk's face on seeing Spock mind-meld with a whale, I know exactly what that's from and exactly that expression. But this is not simply a list of references to events in episodes and movies. It's a story, Spock's story, full on fresh insight and perspective - and lots of original material. We find out what happened to other characters from these episodes and movies, the aftermath of events seen on screen. I'd love to see more of Saavik and Valeris on screen after what we're told about their later lives here.
Una says in her acknowledgements at the end that, for all the many actors who have portrayed the character,
"There would of course be no Spock without Leonard Nimoy, and I hope his voice sounds true upon these pages."
It really does, and the result is like hearing again from an old friend. In spending time inside the head of this beloved character, I've come to know him better, and to feel his loss all the more.
