Apollo, by Fitch, Baker and Collins

This new graphic novel about the Apollo 11 Moon landing is illustrated by Mike Collins who a) shares his name with the Command Module pilot of that mission and b) I know through Doctor Who things, so I declare my interest in what follows.

The comic begins in the moments before launch, and concludes with the Command Module on its way back to Earth. It seems largely told from the freely available NASA transcripts of the flight, and a number of books - including those written by Aldrin and Collins (the astronaut) about their own experiences. We also hear from witnesses at various levels of remove - Armstrong's wife, Aldrin's dad, soldiers out in Vietnam - and skip back in time to formative moments in childhood and the catastrope of Apollo 1.

In addition, there are the astronauts' dreams and nightmares, and I wondered if these were based on things the astronauts themselves reported, or are the invention of the writers. Really, what I'd like are exhaustive endnotes detailing every source, in the manner of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell in From Hell.

The halftone colour, provided by Kris Carter and Jason Candy, suggests the feel of comics from the period, too. Pulpier, less glossy paper and design might have better suggested an authentic artefact of the Apollo age. But this is a sumptuous physical object - which is hardly a criticism, is it?

The comic is good at underlining the dangers involved at each stage of the mission, and reveals plenty of telling detail as the story unfolds - Aldrin's efforts to be the first on the Moon's surface, Nixon's realisation that he'd be remembered as president if the mission failed, Kennedy if it succeeded. There are maybe some things that might have helped with that: Nixon actually recorded the speech mentioned here, to be broadcast in the event that a failure left Armstrong and Aldrin to die, stranded on the Moon's surface (it's included in the amazing documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon). That message may - I've not been able to find enough hard evidence - have been recorded just as Nixon was preparing to make a live phone call to the two astronauts as they bounced around in the moondust. No wonder Nixon was sweating during that call...

That's a minor quibble; this is an absorbing, detailed and arresting account that manages to bring something new to the so thoroughly picked over story. I shall be sure to pick over it again during the coming 12 months, in the lead up to the 50th anniversary of that first Moon landing.

• Apollo at the Self-Made Hero website

Doctor Who and the Day of the Doctor, by Steven Moffat

A long time ago when I was not so broken and old, I made a point of finishing every book begun, enjoyable, insightful or not. These days, amid the noise of work and childcare, I'll try and give a book 100 pages and then dump it if it's not delivering.

Oh dear, did Simon not get on with the new novelisation of 2013 Doctor Who episode The Day of the Doctor, written by his friend Steven Moffat? And to the extent of then writing an angry post about it, to be read by whole single figures of people? Or is this merely an attention-grabbing prelude?

I got to page 136 of Ann Radcliffe's 1794 gothic novel The Mysteries of Udulpho -

Hah, thought so. 

- and things were just starting to occur. After pages and pages of picturesque travel through Gascony, our heroine Emily is orphaned and forced to live with a ghastly aunt, surrounded by her aunt's ghastly friends. They engineer malicious gossip about a nice young man Emily has taken a shine to, and her prospects do not look good...

But the plot and I were making such slow progress, the prospect of another 596 pages was hardly a thrill. And then the five new novelisations of TV Doctor Who stories arrived. I selected Steven Moffat's one at random to read on a trip into town. 

And blimey. It's frenetic. I tore through it in very few sittings - which feels all the more remarkable because the book is packed.

Steven retells the events of the TV episode from the point of view of the Doctor, which is immediately tricky because it all happens out of chronological order, and to several incarnations of the Doctor at once. So we start with chapter 8, then chapter 11 and then chapter 1. Between each chapter, a narrator comments on the reliability of the sources - apparently in real time as we're reading. 

"(By the way, these pages should be appearing in italics . If not, just give three light taps on any verb, and the page will reboot. And if you don't like any aspects of my prose style, give the book a good shake. That should help you work of your irritation.)"
Steven Moffat, Doctor Who - The Day of the Doctor (2018), p. 3.

It's all very clever, or infuriating or fun, depending on your tastes. Steven packs his book with metatextual jokes - references to Doctor Who books that haven't been written yet, teasing us to look for a chapter that's gone missing, and the idea that the narrator can see us as we're reading. One page is apprently written in our own handwriting.

While the narrative largely follows the events - and dialogue - of the TV episode, Steven has added all sorts of stuff. Each incarnation of the Doctor gets a heroic moment and to go for tea. There are appearances by River Song (in the bath with the Tenth Doctor), the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith, and even the Dr Who movies starring Peter Cushing - including what the Doctor thinks of them.

"He loves them. He loaned Peter Cushing a waistcoat for the second one, they were great friends. Though, we only realised that when Cushing started showing up in movies made long after his death."
Ibid., p. 144.

Again, your delight or dismay at this sort of thing may vary, but I found the Brigadier and Sarah bits quite moving - not least because the much-loved actors who played them died in 2011 and so couldn't be part of the TV version. The TV version did achieve a coup of a cameo, and the appearance by an engimatic curator of the National Gallery still provides goosebumps in print (though sadly doesn't confirm my own evidence-based theory that the National Gallery is, in fact, a TARDIS).

But really that's all distraction from the crux of the story, in which the Doctor faces, again and again, the worst moment in his long life - when he must destroy his own people to save the universe as a whole. This, its effect on him, and the intervention by his friend Clara, is what makes this particular adventure so sad and yet joyous, so effective and even profound.

Steven goes beyond the TV version, which rests on the Doctor restating the promise implicit in his name, that he endeavours never to be cruel or cowardly. The book turns out to be a more fundamental exploration of that promise, and of exactly who the Doctor thinks they are.

It ends on a battlefield in the future, with the Doctor in conversation with two women from her past, quoting words from a TV episode that, long ago, promised the adventures would never end. So this novelisation of old Doctor Who - in more ways than one - is ultimately a witty / optimistic / clever-clever look to the future.

K-9 & Company

I had a lovely weekend at the Doctor Who Appreciation Society's Capitol event, where we launched my book on The Evil of the Daleks.

• Here's an exhaustively detailed timeline of the production of the story on Hero Collector.
• Here's an interview with me at We Are Cult about the book.
• As well as being available to buy from Obverse Books, the book is also now available on Lulu. 

The Lord of Chaos was delighted to poke his nose inside the TARDIS, to meet K-9 (he approves of the new look for the forthcoming film as it is cuter than the original) and to come home with no end of new toys.

I saw lots of old friends, had a nice chat with Bob Baker who'd I'd not met before, and really liked the exhibition of photos, letters and other curios from the collection of the late Alec Wheal, senior cameraman on 1980s Doctor Who, .

George Watson's People of 2016

Me, by George Watson

Yesterday, I became #109 in George Watson's "People of 2016", a daily photographic blog. That's me in Soho after not enough sleep.

I've known George since we started comparing notes on short films and documentatries we were both busy making. Thrillingly, he's also the author of one of the children's fan letters to Doctor Who companion Sophie Aldred included in her book, Ace! The Inside Story of the End of an Era (1996, written with special effects high brain Mike Tucker).

Making Doctor Who Adventures 97% weirder

To mark 10 glorious years of kids' magazine Doctor Who Adventures, my former boss Paul Lang has written a magnificent celebration of its daftness and delight. He describes this especial foolishness as my masterpiece:

I've already posted all the episodes of daft comic-strip AAAGH! I wrote, and other bits and pieces I did. But there was the time we got "Koquillion" into the wordsearch. Or got the Daleks to write the horoscope (every star sign had "You will be exterminated!"). Or wrote comic strips in which the Doctor battled bogeys, bananas and space owls... Such happy times and places.

Genre Reader interview

Me and Scott Andrews - who I killed all those times in The Time Travellers - have been ably interviewed by Will Barber-Taylor for the Genre Reader site - largely about my novella Fall Out, which follows on from the mayhem in Scott's School's Out.

Being both Professionals and Professional Liars, Scott and I manage to get through the whole Ordeal without letting on that we are, in fact, Sworn Enemies.

Was Leela black?

Tonight and tomorrow, BBC Four is repeating the 1977 Doctor Who story The Face of Evil, in which Tom Baker's Doctor meets a new friend - Leela, played by Louise Jameson. I interviewed Louise two years ago for Doctor Who Magazine's essential guide to the companions, and with the kind permission of DWM editor Tom Spilsbury, here it is as published...

"How do I say this?" muses Louise Jameson, who played the Fourth Doctor's companion Leela in 1977 and 1978. "I adore Tom Baker now. I want that to come across in what you put. But at the time, on the show, he behaved very badly towards me and I was very unhappy."

This is surprising given that Leela was perhaps the toughest companion ever to travel in the TARDIS. A fearless warrior from a savage tribe in the far future, she loved to fight the Doctor's enemies and even, sometimes, kill. Indeed, she was named after a terrorist who'd been in the news – Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

"Oh really?" laughs Louise.

She didn't know?

"Certainly not back then. I based Leela on a three-year-old who lived upstairs from me and on Bosie, my then dog."

How was Leela like a dog?

"Bosie was highly intelligent, instinctive, inquisitive," Louise explains. "She was a bassenji whippet terrier. Bassenjis have huge ears and fantastic hearing, and she'd –"

Demonstrating, Louise whips her head round, suddenly alert.

"That came from my dog."

Commenting on Leela's eagerness to kill (rather unusual for a Doctor Who companion), Louise confirms that "Tom hated it. You remember that speech of his in my first story? 'No more Janis thorns – ever!' We wrote that in the rehearsal room."

But maybe he was right to object. Louise considers. "At the time I was too connected to just me and my role to really have an opinion. Now that I'm a writer-director-producer and all those things... No, I don't think he was. Leela needed educating but it could have been done over a more interesting story arc than just one speech."

Louise explains that it wasn't merely Leela's character that Tom Baker objected to. "He wanted to travel alone and refused to be part of the audition process, even though he was invited. Pennant [Roberts, director] read the Doctor's lines. He said he gave me the part because I 'made him work'."

So when did Louise first meet Tom?

"After my final audition, very briefly. Philip [Hinchcliffe, producer] and Pennant took me to the BBC canteen for lunch. Tom was filming that day so they called him over and we shook hands across the table. He was still in costume, that great scarf and coat, and he nearly knocked everything over. Then off he went. The next time was on set at Ealing on the first day of filming. We had a tiny rehearsal in my dressing room where we both made suggestions, with Pennant as referee. Then we were filming it."

What suggestions did Louise make? She takes a moment to remember.

"I didn't understand why Leela didn't run away when she saw the Doctor – who she thought of as the Evil One. I wanted something behind me so I had no escape route. Tom didn't like that and Pennant came down on his side so I had to find a reason to stay. It wasn't difficult: Tom is so charismatic. I thought, 'She's in the presence of danger but her instincts tell her he's not dangerous and her curiosity wins out.' I don't think I've ever told anyone that!"

Louise is a committed follower of Stanislavski's theories on acting. "You need a clear objective for every sentence you say and a clear obstacle to saying it," she explains. "That's where the drama appears. Her desire is to run but this man is fascinating so she can't quite leave."

What tradition of acting does Tom come from? Louise's eyes go wide.

"That's such an interesting question! Tom is very cerebral. He's got the most extraordinary voice, and he's very aware of it. But he'd laugh if you asked if he followed Stanislavski. So would Colin Baker. Yet if you look at their work, I think they follow the rules to a tee. All my work is based on that method." She grins. "It comes into its own when you're working on scripts that don't quite cut the mustard, helps you find a way to make them work."

Louise also refers to Stanislavski when asked about Leela's costume – or lack of it.

"It didn't seem gratuitous. She lived in the jungle and the rest of the tribe wore skins too. But I was very naïve then. It didn't occur to me that I would become some kind of sex symbol. But Phillip knew that taking Leela's clothes off was a good move." She laughs again. "It added 2.5 million to the viewing figures."

In her third story, Leela swapped the skins for a full-length Victorian costume, and in Horror of Fang Rock wore jeans and a jumper. "But they realised the value of Leela in a leotard, so that didn't happen again!" Does she regret that, looking back? "No," she says. "If you want to establish a character, it's good to wear one costume throughout."

Did she ever worry about the message it sent, or her responsibility as a role model to the women and girls who were watching? Louise shrugs. "I worry about the text and whatever it takes to honour the writing. If that means stripping off, putting on a corset or pretending to be a man – I just do it."

So how did it affect her – becoming, to use her own phrase, a sex symbol? Louise smiles. "I have this catchphrase: I helped many a young man through a difficult phase in their lives. I find it quite flattering, to be honest. Though that's probably not the PC thing to say!"

To begin with, Louise wore contact lenses to make her blue eyes look brown. In pictures from an early make-up test, her skin looks very dark. Was Leela intended to be the show's first black companion? It was still fairly common for white actors to "black up" – in Leela's third story, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, the white actor John Bennett was made up to look Chinese.

Louise is candid. "It was never specified with Leela. Quite honestly, in those photos I think the make-up woman just didn't get it quite right. The dark eyes were because, I was told, Leela meant 'dark-eyed beauty'." Again, she considers. "There was always an hour and a half in make-up before I was allowed on set. I wasn't black but it was more than a tan. One of my sons is mixed race – dual heritage we say now. I think I was meant to have that kind of skin."

Louise left Doctor Who at the end of her contract, declining to stay on for another season or to return in 1980 for Tom Baker's final stories. Yet now she's playing Leela alongside him in audio plays for Big Finish. So what's changed?

"I love Big Finish," she enthuses.

But what about Tom, who made her so unhappy? She shrugs. "He said sorry. That's all it took. Now we get on brilliantly. He's a pussycat – and I'm more sure of myself. And despite everything we were – and still are – hugely admiring of each other's work."

He's never difficult to work with? Her eyes glitter as she smiles – a fierce look that's all Leela.

"He wouldn't dare..."

Science Museum late, 26 August

Me, m'colleague Dr Marek Kukula and our chum Samira Ahmed will be at the Science Museum late event on 26 August, which is free and rather good. As the blurb says:

Attention, big kids - join us at the Science Museum this Wednesday 26 August and step back into the wondrous world of childhood. Explore the scientific secrets of Doctor Who, uncover the meaning behind types of play and learn how the food your mum eats affects your tastes.

Come and enjoy our famous bubble show or make your very own mutant teddy at one of our interactive workshops. Plus, don't miss regular attractions including live music, the Punk Science comedy show and the best silent disco in town.

Marek says "no"

Here's Dr Marek Kukula - my co-author on The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who - on Doctor Who: The Fan Show answering questions about science, and saying no to Steven Moffat.

Doctors Who and all their friends

I am in love with this magnificent effort by the amazing Red Scharlach:

As Red explains:

I set myself a few ground rules: canon Doctors only (so no Shalka Doctor or Peter Cushing, sorry); not all recurring characters are companions (so no Jackie Tyler or Kate Stewart); and companions must have appeared more than once but not necessarily in the same medium (e.g. Sara Kingdom has been in Big Finish and Grace has been in a comic). But then I broke those rules on occasion (e.g. to include Cinder, the War Doctor’s only companion), so the end result is all a bit wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey fuzzy-brainy won’t-fit-in-the-box-neatly. Rather like Doctor Who itself, in fact.
Anyway, the design is now on sale in my Redbubble shop as a poster or art print (i.e. on heavier paper) and there’s still a little bit of time to order one before Christmas…

But look: Oliver, and Amy/Abby and Zara, and even Decky Flamboon...

Oliver Cromwell's Fundamentalist Queen

The Fundamentalist Queen, a Radio 3 documentary I've produced, is broadcast tonight at 6.45 pm, and will thereafter be available on the Radio 3 website. Official blurb as follows:

Samira Ahmed explores the extraordinary rise and fall of the Lady Protectress Elizabeth, wife of Oliver Cromwell - a commoner who became "queen" in the 1650s.

Elizabeth lived through an extraordinary time - for women as well as men - as the country was divided by a decade of civil war in the 1640s. In the new regime that followed the execution of Charles I, Elizabeth found herself a consort like no other, an ordinary housewife elevated to Lady Protectress.

But the Protectorate, and its efforts to forge a new kind of state power based on strictly Puritan grounds, lasted only a few years. In 1660, the monarchy was restored, Oliver's allies were executed as traitors and his own dead body was dug up and hanged in chains. The widowed Elizabeth, scorned and taunted, was forced to beg Charles II for mercy.

So why is so little known about her? Helped by leading Cromwell scholars and tantalising historical documents - including a satirical cookbook - Samira goes on the trail of the fundamentalist queen, from the church where she married and her kitchen as the young wife of an MP in Ely, to the extravagant gifts that came to her Puritan court and the secrets that may lie within her anonymous grave. With Louise Jameson as the voice of Elizabeth Cromwell.

Presenter Samira Ahmed. Producers Simon and Thomas Guerrier. A Whistledown Production for BBC Radio 3.

Samira has written her own blog about the documentary, wrote a piece about Elizabeth Cromwell for the BBC's online magazine, and discussed her on the Robert Elms show on Wednesday (1 hour 9 minutes in; and she's followed by an interview with my chum Dick Fiddy from the BFI and the amazing Paddy Kingsland of the Radiophonic Workshop). The documentary is also one of BBC History Magazine's picks of the week's TV and radio.

Samira makes the point, too, that the documentary came about because I researched the life of Oliver Cromwell for a Doctor Who audio - The Settling. Grateful thanks to Gary Russell, the director-producer who commissioned me, on the condition that I'd do the reading. (Researching the prospect of the documentary also led me to look round Ely, which in turn led to the setting of another Doctor Who story - Home Truths.)

It's been a joy to make the documentary, and that's all down to the generosity of the people with whom we made it. Thanks to Samira for her faith in me and brother Tom, and to David Prest and everyone at Whistledown for so patiently shepherding us through the process. Thanks to John Goldsmith, formerly of the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon, Traci Bosdet and Tracey Harding at Oliver Cromwell's House in Ely, and Diane Corbin at St Giles Cripplegate, and to Jane and John Trevor for letting us look round their home. Thanks to our experts: Professor Laura Gowing at King's College London, Professor Peter Gaunt of the University of Chester and the Cromwell Association, and Dr Patrick Little of the History of Parliament. Thanks to David J Darlington for assistance with bringing the 17th century vividly to life (just as he did with The Settling). And thanks to Louise Jameson for bringing Elizabeth to life.

Modern Man - Best Comedy Short at Isle of Man!

As director Seb Solberg reports, Modern Man (a short film I wrote) won Best Comedy Short at the Isle of Man Film Festival this weekend. Hurrah and indeed hoodoo!

Mark Kermode and Modern Man director Seb Solberg

It's the film's second award so far: earlier this year, Modern Man also won Best Film in the Three Minute Wonders category of the Kino International Film Festival.

Here's me on the writing of Modern Man from last year (including the original cut of the film for you to watch), and another post from Seb on making Modern Man. And here's the full - and amazing - cast and crew.

Nine Worlds and Worldcon

Next week I'll be at the mahoosive science-fiction convention, Nine Worlds. The week after I'll be at the even more humungous Loncon. On the off-chance you care, here's where I'll be and when…

Nine Worlds

(My schedule on the Nine Worlds site.)

Time Travel (Books)
Friday 8 August 11.45 - 13.00
This is a message from your future self: go to this panel!
Panel: Paul Cornell, Lauren Beukes, Kate Griffin, Fabio Fernandes, Simon Guerrier

(The Dr will be delivering Monsterclass: Archaeological world building at 3.15.)

Writing for Transmedia: ideas that cross formats and boundaries (Books/Creative Writing)
Friday 8 August 18.45 - 20.00
Because a story can also be an app, computer game, vlog, fanvid, web series, docu-drama, interactive ebook, diary comic, inter-sensory experience or any other format currently existing or yet to exist not listed here. Kind of against the spirit of the thing, if you ask us. Guess you’ll just have to go to it in person.
Panel: Barry Nugent, Anna Caltabiano, Simon Guerrier, Adam Christopher

Anytime, Anywhere (Doctor Who)
Sunday 10 August 10.00-11.15
The Doctor can travel anywhere in time and space, and the pure historical story was a regular occurrence in the early days of the show, but has been seen only once since 1966. Would a pure historical work in today’s Doctor Who? Is there any time or place the Doctor should go that he hasn’t yet? Which historical figures does he really need to get around to meeting?
Panel: Simon Guerrier, Adam Christopher, Joanne Harris, Anna Jackson

A Handy Guide to the Wilderness Years and Beyond (Doctor Who)
Sunday 10 August 13.30 - 14.45
Doctor Who isn’t just a telly show, it’s also books, audios, comics, webcasts, and computer games. In the nineties, these non-telly sources were the only place you could get (official) new Doctor Who stories. For telly fans looking to step into the worlds of book and audio, where do you even start? Our panel talks about the highs and lows of non-telly Who, and where you can find the good stuff.
Panel: David Bailey, Sarah Groenewegen, Rebecca Levene, Simon Guerrier, David McIntee

Representation of Gender Roles (Doctor Who)
Sunday 10 August 15.15 - 16.30
From rejection of the fifties ‘feminine mystique’ to Sarah Jane’s explicit rejection of seventies patriarchy. Ace and Rose are working class heroes. Madame Vastra and Jenny are a married interspecies couple who fight crime, and aliens, in Victorian London. How successfully does the show challenge prevailing gender norms? Where does it succeed best? Where could it do better?
Panel: Simon Guerrier, Angela Blackwell, Una McCormack, Amy

Loncon

(My schedule on the Loncon site)

Children's something or other
Thursday 14 August 14:30
I've been asked to talk to a children's workshop about what I do. Lucky them.

Doctor Who: Fandom for the Whole Family
Thursday 14 August 16:30 - 18:00, Capital Suite 10 (ExCeL)
Doctor Who is an international cult hit phenomenon that began when the First Doctor landed the TARDIS on British soil in the 1960s and captured the hearts and minds of a generation. The Doctor's companions, from Susan to Adric, from Zoe to Amy, have often been teenagers or children, a surrogate 'family' that brings the family together as our Doctors regenerate into our children’s Doctors—generation after generation. What is it about Doctor Who that attracts younger fans? Why do they identify with a thousand year old Time Lord? What was the Doctor like when he was a teenager? Panelists discuss the ageless and timeless appeal of Doctor Who, especially among younger fans and their families.
Panel: Jody Lynn Nye, SJ Groenewegen, VE Schwab, Kathryn Sullivan, Simon Guerrier

Awards and Their Narratives
Sunday 17 August 10:00 - 11:00, Capital Suite 10 (ExCeL) 
As one of Saturday's panels discussed, many factors come into play when judges or voters decide which books to recognise with awards. But what happens afterwards, over the years, as the list of winners grows? As an award develops a "canon", patterns will emerge, different maps of what we should be valuing in science fiction and fantasy. This panel will discuss the maps drawn by different genre awards -- from the Hugos to the Clarkes, from Tiptree to Translation, from Aurealis to BSFA -- and the ways in which readers make use of them.
Panel: Tom Hunter, Simon Guerrier, Stan Nicholls, Dr Tansy Rayner Roberts, Tanya Brown

Kaffeeklatsch (no, I'm not sure either)
Sunday 17 August 18:00 - 19:00, London Suite 4 (ExCeL)
Simon Guerrier, Greer Gilman

Paul Spragg (1975-2014)

My friend Paul Spragg died on 8 May. His brother Nick and best friend Tom have written beautifully about what a lovely, funny, hard-working and magnificent fellow he was. It's not only desperately sad, it's just ridiculous that Paul is gone.

There's a justgiving page set up to donate money to the British Heart Foundation in Paul's name.

Feast or famine

Waaah! I have been a bit busy lately, scribbling lots of things all at once (and editing and producing and interviewing and advising and judging). So this poor blog has been even more neglected than usual.

Out in shops now is Doctor Who and the War To End All Wars, the last of the Companion Chronicles to be recorded. As I enthuse on the interview stuck on the end of the CD, I've loved writing the Companion Chronicles, and thanks to David Richardson, Jacqueline Rayner, Lisa Bowerman and all the amazing actors and sound people who've made me sound vaguely adequate.

This one is based on conversations I had with Matthew Sweet while he was making his Radio 3 programme on Alex Comfort - and discovered that Comfort had been interviewed by Doctor Who's script editor Gerry Davis about being a scientific adviser to the show. Matthew recommended Comfort's Authority and Delinquency as a good book of ideas to base a Doctor Who story on, so I did.

Next month, my Blake's 7 play President is out - and of the six Blake's 7s I've written for Big Finish it's the one I'm proudest of. By an odd coincidence to do with scheduling, both this and the Doctor Who one are all about politics - but they were written more than a year apart.

I've a book out next week which I shall try to blog about on 1 May. But now I must go and add a second coat of paint to a ceiling.

Some items of interest pertaining to Sherlock Holmes

First a review of The House of Silk, and then some other items of Sherlockian interest...

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz is a thrilling, richly drawn new Sherlock Holmes adventure, that gets Holmes, Watson and their world pretty much perfectly right. It's a gripping read, and even though I was ahead of Holmes with several of the clues, it kept me guessing till the end. Yet, it left me disappointed. Why?

The edition I read included a bonus feature: "Anthony Horowitz on Writing The House of Silk: Conception, Inspiration and The Ten Rules". It's fascinating to read the rules Horowitz set himself when writing the book - such as "no over-the-top action", "no women", and "no gay references either overt or implied in the relationship between Holmes and Watson". But including those rules is also surely a challenge to the reader: how would you write Holmes?

Horowitz's rules seem largely to do with not repeating the mistakes or attempting to emulate over iterations of Holmes, and to stick closely to the canon of stories written by Conan Doyle. But they didn't explain my misgivings with the book.

Horowitz is keen to slot his book seamlessly into the canon. I found the constant references to other, canonical cases a bit wearing. One rule - "include all the best known characters - but try and do so in a way that will surprise" - struck me as odd. Yes, he's got Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Mycroft, Wiggins, and even an appearance by someone Holmes hasn't yet heard of - a fact that, to fit with the canonical stories, requires some awkward contriving:

"You must swear on everything that is scared to you that you will never tell Holmes, or anyone else, of this meeting. You must never write about it. You must never mention it. Should you ever learn my name, you must pretend that you are hearing it for the first time and that it means nothing to you."

Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk (2011), p. 260.

But are these characters' roles surprising? As Horowitz admits,

"In each case, I added very little to what was known about them simply because it seemed to be taking liberties."

Ibid., p. 404.

Where he does develop the world of Sherlock Holmes. As Horowitz says, in Doyle's stories,

"Victorian London is economically sketched in".

Ibid., p. 397.

Horowitz digs a little deeper: there's an insight into the kind of awful existence lived by the Baker Street irregulars when not engaged in cases for Holmes; there's a visit to one of the prisons to which villains are dispatched when Holmes has caught them. In both cases, Watson seems surprised by the oppressive conditions, as if a practising doctor in London would not already know. But I liked the attempt to explore the world Holmes lives in and furnish extra depth.

That depth is partly the result of the length of the book.

"My publishers, Orion Books, had requested a novel of between 90,000 and 100,000 words (the final length was around 94,000) - big enough to seem like value for money on an airport stand. But actually, this goes quite against the spirit of Doyle's originals which barely run to half that length".

Ibid.

Horowitz's solution is to have Watson recount two cases, not one - a trick also used in the later episodes of the TV series starring Jeremy Brett, where they blended Doyle's stories.

All of which, again, I cannot fault. And yet, these two aims - to fit The House of Silk perfectly within the canon, and to explore the world of Holmes - also also what left me dissatisfied. In the latter, the world we explore is murky and cruel, with corruption reaching so high into the establishment that even Myrcroft is powerless to act.

One of the mysteries that Holmes exposes is particularly vicious - and of a kind Doyle himself could not have published in his own time. It's not the crime but the way it fits Horowitz's general character of Victorian London that makes it so affecting: Holmes might stop what's happening, but only in this one instance.

On top of this, in fitting this adventure into the canon, Horowitz also seeks to reconcile a continuity error in Doyle about when exactly Watson married. Some Sherlockians have conjectured that Watson was married twice; Mary Morstan - who Watson married at the end of The Sign of Four - must have died at some point and Watson remarried. Horowitz confirms this hypothesis, with Mary mortally ill.

That the whole book is narrated from after Holmes has died only adds to the bleak feeling. For all his rules, Horowitz has missed a key ingredient of the canon: the element of joy. Holmes might walk through the mire of crime, but the stories celebrate his brilliance. The Final Problem, in which Holmes meets his match, is affecting and extraordinary precisely because it's so unlike the norm - and, in The Empty House, even the great detective's death turns out to have a solution.

That's what The House of Silk sadly misses: Sherlock Holmes is not about awful problems but the ingenious answer.

I think the current run of Sherlock on BBC One has got the mad, thrilling flavour of Doyle just right. I adored The Sign of Three last week, but my chum Niall Boyce was bothered by the central wheeze: that a victim would not know they'd been stabbed because of the tightness of their clothing. Niall's an editor of the medical journal, the Lancet, so tends to spot these things.

In fact, just such a killing has a precedent - and from Doyle's own time. Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, was murdered in September 1898:

The assassination of Empress Elisabeth of Austria,
via Wikipedia.

"After Lucheni struck her, the empress collapsed ... Three men carried Elisabeth to the top deck and laid her on a bench. Sztaray opened her gown, cut Elisabeth's corset laces so she could breathe. Elisabeth revived somewhat and Sztaray asked her if she was in pain, and she replied, "No". She then asked, "What has happened?" and lost consciousness again...

The autopsy was performed the next day by Golay, who discovered that the weapon, which had not yet been found, had penetrated 3.33 inches (85 mm) into Elisabeth's thorax, fractured the fourth rib, pierced the lung and pericardium, and penetrated the heart from the top before coming out the base of the left ventricle. Because of the sharpness and thinness of the file the wound was very narrow and, due to pressure from Elisabeth's extremely tight corseting, the hemorrhage of blood into the pericardial sac around the heart was slowed to mere drops. Until this sac filled, the beating of her heart was not impeded, which is why Elisabeth had been able to walk from the site of the assault and up the boat’s boarding ramp. Had the weapon not been removed, she would have lived a while longer, as it would have acted like a plug to stop the bleeding."

Wikipedia: Empress Elisabeth of Austria - 10. Assassination

Niall also provided me with two snippets of Sherlockian interest from the Lancet archives, which he's kindly allowed me to share. First, here's Conan Doyle weighing in on the case of George Edalji - the case that's the subject of the novel Arthur and George by Julian Barnes, which I blogged about in 2007.

Niall also tweeted this later contribution from Doyle's son, "Was Sherlock Holmes a Drug Addict?", in 1937:

You may also care to note that I passed Doyle's house in South Norwood a couple of months ago. And, if you've not already discovered it, John Watson's blog - written with some assistance by m'colleague Joseph Lidster - has been especially good this series.

Doctor Who: 2013

Episode 799: The Day of the Doctor
First broadcast at 7.50 pm, Saturday 23 November 2013
<< back to 2012

Happy birthday, Doctor Who

 And so, at last, I reach the end of this daft project to find one image from each calendar year of Doctor Who and use it an excuse to waffle on in praise of some aspect of the show. It was my attempt to mark the 50th anniversary and for this last installment I want to talk about the 50th anniversary itself.

Wasn't it brilliant?

Andrew Ellard's wise tweetnotes on the episode, which I largely agree with, concluded:

In short: A vastly entertaining barnstormer that put the title character front and centre.

I'd worried that nothing could surpass The Five Doctors (1983), and there'd been rumours and grumblings about what might be happening behind the scenes. And yet, and yet...

I loved The Day of the Doctor, with its fast and funny and redemptive plot. But I especially loved how it encompassed all of Doctor Who - right back to the title sequence, theme music and even the school from the very first episode. Then, after a single shot taking us into the TARDIS (this time in 3D!), we're in Trafalgar Square - where Rose and Mickey had lunch in some of the very first moments of the show when it returned in 2005.

How bold and ridiculous to explain the Doctor's connection to Elizabeth I - first glimpsed in The Shakespeare Code (2007) and The End of Time part one (2009). How magnificent to see UNIT make peace with an alien species rather than blasting them from the Earth. How brilliant to resolve the Time War with a happy ending, yet without revoking any part of the past eight years of the show.

There's nods to all the eras and Doctors - and the suggestion of all sorts of tales we've never even dreamed of, with a brief glimpse of Sara Kingdom stood with Mike Yates. How extraordinary to get Tom Baker into it, how amazing that it remained a surprise, and how perfect was that scene? I found it so moving that it wasn't until my third time of watching that I picked up on the inference that this is a far-future Doctor. Gosh! and sssh! and aaaah!

What really struck me about the episode, though, was the sense of extraordinary joy. And that was matched in the other special programming round the episode - The Night of the Doctor, An Adventure in Space and Time, the Five-ish Doctors, my chum Matthew's documentary, and everything else. All in all, it seemed perfectly to provide something for fans of every era and style of this sprawling, madcap show.

It's not just been on TV. There's been the return of the missing nine episodes - which I assume was carefully stage-managed to happen just ahead of the anniversary. And this year has seen some of the best and boldest spin-off Doctor Who. (At least, I gather it is: I'm hoping for The Light at the End, the 11 Doctors, 11 Stories book and The Vault for Christmas - but that rather depends on whether I've been good.) Plus there's been events all over the country and abroad, and 94 countries got to watch the special episode together.

Perhaps, amid all these treats, some fans may have missed what Doctor Who Adventures did the week of the anniversary. But I think, more than anything else, it might be the one thing to really bring home the scale of Doctor Who's achievement in lasting half a century.

The comic strip of Doctor Who Adventures issue # 333 (6-26 November) broke its own solemn rules and featured a past Doctor. "Time Trick" - written by Craig Donaghy, with art by John Ross and colour by Alan Craddock - didn't just feature any past Doctor, but the original as played by William Hartnell.

Doctor Who Adventures is aimed at 8-12 year-olds - children who've now grown up in an age where the longest gap between new episodes of Doctor Who has been a mere nine months. Hartnell died in 1975 - before the parents of some of those readers had been born. He played the Doctor between 1963 and 1966 - when the grandparents of those readers were children.

"Time Trick" from Doctor Who Adventures #333 (6-26 Nov 13)
written by Craig Donaghy, art by John Ross
and colour by Alan Craddock.

The end.

James Bond, 1654

Via a tweet from my chum Farah earlier in the year, I learnt of A Firework for Oliver (1964) by John Sanders. Brother Tom tracked down a copy via the wonder that is Abe Books.

It's a thrilling spy story about a top English secret agent, Nicholas Pym, on the trail of a deadly new superweapon that's being developed by an implacable foe.

The trail leads him into the heart of Europe, and into the arms of a tough but beautiful lady with a tragic past... It's James Bond except for being set in the 1650s, Pym an agent of the Protectorate and the plot aimed at killing his boss, Oliver Cromwell.

From the off, there's an enticing line in dry wit and understatement.

"Pym gave the man in the plain dark suit [his boss, Secretary of State John Thurloe] a cold grin. 'You said something about meeting fire with fire. So be it! Let them find me alone. I am an officer on special service who might know something. They won't kill me at once, without trying to find out what that is. Make it easy for them. Let my face be seen!'

Mr Thurloe leaned back as far as his high-backed chair would allow. A bland expression wiped the anxiety from his face. In an impersonal voice he said: 'Two special envoys from the States-General are arriving in Gravesend in connection with the Anglo-Dutch peace treaty. It will be an occasion for public rejoicing. They dock tomorrow afternoon. You will attend as an additional aide to Lord Clayton, the Protector's brother-in-law, who will be there to greet them.' He picked up one of the pile of dispatches on the oak table and began to read it. Without looking up, he said: 'Don't bother to wear a hat.'"

John Sanders, A Firework For Oliver (1964 [76]), pp. 43-4.

It's a neat reversal to set a spy story under the Puritan regime: instead of Bond boring on about fine food and drink, Pym is scathing of glamorous living. That said, he's no prude - enjoying sex out of wedlock and hardly blinking an eye when the mission takes him to a posh Parisian orgy.

Like Bond, this is a thoroughly male world and perspective - woman can be clever, resourceful and beautiful, but they're still largely at the mercy of men. At one point, Pym just happens to call on a beautiful lady while she's having a bath - and fighting off a comrade who won't take no for an answer. When Pym steps in and knocks the man unconscious, she is suitably grateful...

Pym, though, is not a womaniser. It's good that he's only interested in one woman in the whole adventure; it's not quite so good when she's the only major female character in the book. There are few minor ones, too.

Like Bond, Pym is an ordinary but competent agent with lashings of common sense, an able guide through the shady political world in which he deals. If there's a lot of exposition - not all of it subtly done - the book is good at establishing the setting and politics. I love that the superweapon involved is - to us hundreds of years after the event - quite a minor advance but promises to offer an army a distinct advantage.

Like the best of Bond, the book is a series of dramatic encounters, many of them visually arresting. There are last-minute escapes and coincidences, not all of them entirely credible. But the book rattles along at a frenetic pace, and we soon learn that anyone who spends any time near Pym is unlikely to see out the day.

Where it's different from Bond, apart from the period setting, is that it's also very funny. By yet more fiendish contrivances, on several occasions Pym has to thump his baffled superiors if he's to thwart the enemy. And, having set up a Pyrrhic victory that's very like Fleming's Bond, there's then an unexpected, happy ending.

A bit clunky and contrived, this is a thrilling, fun adventure - and I'm delighted to learn just the first of a series.

Doctor Who: 2004

After episode 696 (Doctor Who): the first day of filming on the new series
Sunday, 18 July 2004
<< back to 2003

Eccleston and the Space Pig
My feature for
Doctor Who Adventures #277

Hidden away in the archives of the official BBC Doctor Who website, there's a fun video of a press conference with Christopher Eccleston from just before the new series was broadcast. One question is about his first day of filming.

"My first day, I chased a brilliant actor of restricted height called Jimmy Vee dressed as a pig dressed as a spaceman... I had to chase him up and down a corridor."

I adore the space pig. It's brief time in Doctor Who is a perfect example of the show as written by Russell T Davies - daft, funny, exciting, scary and moving all in one quick scene. I badgered the poor then editor of Doctor Who Adventures, Natalie Barnes, to let me run a feature on the space pig and she finally relented. (She also gave kind permission to post it here.)

But I also know exactly where I was when the scene was filmed. On Sunday, 18 July 2004, Big Finish held a party to celebrate five years of new audio adventures for old Doctor Who. I'd written a few short stories for them and was busy writing my first audio play, so got to go along - the first posh drinks I was ever invited to as a writer.

Before I was lost to the miasma of free fizz, I met actors Lisa Bowerman and Stephen Fewell for the first time, who I'd late be boss of on the Benny plays. And a young actor I'd seen on the telly said "Thanks, mate" to me. It was David Tennant.

Next episode: 2005

Doctor Who: 2003

After episode 696 (Doctor Who): the announcement that the show was coming back
Friday, 26 September 2003
<< back to 2002

Nicholas Courtney, Mark Gatiss,
David Warner and David Tennant
in Doctor Who in 2003.

Imagine: a Doctor we never knew about before, one played by an acting legend, in a story with David Tennant and Lethbridge-Stewart - all to celebrate the show's anniversary.

Sympathy for the Devil was part of Big Finish's effort to mark Doctor Who's 40th birthday. It was recorded on 23 March 2003 and released in June - months before the announcement on 26 September that the show would be returning to TV.

Yet despite the surface similarities to whatever might happen in The Day of the Doctor this evening, that audio story is from another age. As the whole BBC marks the anniversary this weekend, and crowds fill events round the country, I find myself dwelling on what it was like before the show came back.

Doctor Who was not highly thought of. In April 2002, a studio audience agreed with former BBC boss Michael Grade to consign the series to Room 101. It wasn't just the general public putting the boot in, but sci-fi fans, too:

"In short, Doctor Who exists as science fiction's imbecile, its rudimentary intelligence a somewhat tragic counterpoint to its often brilliant and salient parent."

Peter Wright, “The Shared World of Doctor Who: from the New Adventures to the Regeneration”, Foundation – The International Review of Science Fiction #75 (Spring 1999), pp. 78-96.

Wright's paper was about the Doctor Who books - the ones aimed at adult readers. Even so, and whether or not his views have changed since, I can't imagine an editor today would let that statement go unchallenged.

(I assumed the then features editor would have overseen it, but Farah Mendlesohn assures me it was peer reviewed: "Oh good, not me or Edward! I spent my own childhood glued to the programme. But I've always had low tastes.")

At the time, Foundation's then editor, Edward James, asked me to respond (I'd just completed a Masters in sci-fi under him at the time), and I singled out that "imbecile" statement:

“I've experienced too much terrible sf to be content with that, though maybe it's inevitable, as a fanboy, that I think the differences between sf and Doctor Who less pertinent than their similarities. Sometimes the stories are really, excruciatingly awful. Sometimes they are so startlingly good that people who 'don't normally like that sort of thing' can be wholly captivated. On the whole though, like sf, they are okay enough to keep bothering with. And the thing about unfulfilled potential is that you live in hope.”

Me, letter to Foundation – The International Review of Science Fiction #77 (Autumn 1999), p. 94.

My po-faced response makes me cringe now, not least because my defence is merely that the books were "okay enough", accepting from the outset that the show was not very good before trying to justify why I still liked it.

I spent a lot of time apologising for liking Doctor Who. In the years up to 2005 the Dr would tell people at parties that I was a Doctor Who fan. I'd then spend the rest of the evening stuck in the same spot, defending my position in the face of sheer disbelief and ghoulish interest. When the show came back and it was no longer so weird to like it, the Dr got cross that she couldn't always find me.

I wasn't the only one to feel the need to explain. Last night, a whole special edition of The Culture Show was devoted to celebrating Doctor Who, presented by my chum Matthew Sweet. But on 17 March 2005, just before Doctor Who returned, Matthew was a lot more cagey about his devotion:

“For years now, men like me have been forced to walk in the shadows, to hide our true natures, to lie to our partners about those videos and magazines, to identify each other with secret coded references to The Talons of Weng-Chiang... But all that may be about to change...”

Matthew Sweet, preview of Doctor Who on The Culture Show, 17 March 2005.

It's a funny, insightful piece, worth watching again to see how much things have changed.



Next episode: 2004