Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo

Amma's new play is opening at the National Theatre; she's torn about being part of the establishment after years of railing against it. Yazz is Amma's daughter, just as passionate and campaigning but of a different generation. Dominique used to be Amma's business partner but got caught up in an abusive relationship.

Carole has a senior role in banking after a troubled childhood; her husband invested in Amma's play. Bummi is Carole's mum and struggles with what she sees as her daughter's abandonment of their heritage. LaTisha was a school-mate of Carole's and has also turned her life round, but in very different ways.

Shirley was Carole and LaTisha's teacher and is Amma's boring friend. Winsome is Shirley's mum, who worked hard to give her children opportunities. Penelope is a colleague of Shirley's and was initially hostile to her but they've become allies over time and through adversity.

Megan/Morgan is a young trans man with a huge following on social media, has met Yazz before and - by coincidence - is in the audience of Amma's new play. Hattie is Morgan's 93 year-old grandmother who has - we come to realise - a connection to Penelope. Grace was Hattie's mum, who overcame numerous tragedies but died young.

After chapters devoted to each of these 12 women in turn, we catch up with some of them at the opening night of Amma's play, and then an epilogue makes a further connection. Following these myriad connections, the same events can seem completely different. But the real revelations are in understanding how these people got to where they are. There are secrets, abuses, horrible and haunting stuff, and yet this is a book about struggles that overcome difficulty, prejudice, tragedy.

Evaristo makes each of her characters vivid and real - not only the 12 principle players but the supporting characters, including the legion of men who shape these women's lives. I felt I knew these people, and there's a thrill of excitement when a connection is made and a window opened on the life of what we thought was a passing acquaintance. These people are complex, contradictory, some hold objectionable views or do awful things. Most are just trying to get by. And because we come to understand them, we admire their resilience and we share their joy.

Along the way, Evaristo covers a lot of ground - the history of feminism, changing attitudes to race and sexuality, stuff about class and property and entitlement, a whole miso-mash of culture. Many of her characters rant, but she frequently punctures pomposity by having other people yawn or answer back. The result is it feels deceptively light and agile, but is heavyweight.

I admit I was deceived to begin with and couldn't understand the fuss. But by halfway I was hooked, and can see why this won last year's Booker Prize (along with Margaret Attwood's The Testament.) It's made me think a lot about identity, my own and other people's, and how what we are - or think ourselves to be - can define how others see us and what we are able to do.

This is also a perfect book for lockdown: 12 separate people, thinking over their lives in isolation but connected to each other. They flourish when they communicate, when they are honest and kind. It's a book about tolerance, acceptance and how we endure. The struggle is long but we'll get there.

ST: TNG 2.9 The Measure of a Man

This is the second of 12 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation recommended to me. The first one was 1.13 Datalore.

We begin 2.9 The Measure of a Man with a game of five-card stud, our heroes discussing the mechanics of poker as if they’ve never played before - at least not together. Like the stilted joke about sneezing last time, there’s something awkward and unnatural here. It’s not just the nerdy conversation, but also that I’ve seen the Bond movie Casino Royale where the poker game is full of tension and excitement. In Star Trek’s post-money utopia, this game has no stakes, an intellectual exercise without much feeling. The point of the scene is that Data doesn’t comprehend that he is being bluffed - he lacks the psychological insight that his neurotypical crewmates take for granted. It underlines his Difference.

Meanwhile, Picard is in a space cafe meeting an old flame he’s not seen in 10 years. Phillipa Louvois suspects that Picard would, “Like to bust a chair across my teeth,” and informs him - because he did not already know - that she was forced out of Star Fleet as a result of their last encounter. That was when she prosecuted him in the court martial following the loss of a ship called the Stargazer. She says now that she was just doing her duty, following the procedure when any ship is lost but Picard says she enjoyed it. Louvois calls Picard a “pompous ass”.

My sense from all this was that Louvois knew a younger, more reckless and perhaps even violent version of Picard, in line with the revelations of his past from 6.15 Tapestry (which I’ve seen). But looking up the details, the events on the Stargazer were played out in 1.9 The Battle (which I’ve not seen), and Picard was not only faultless but saved the lives of his crew. If we know that previous episode, we immediately take against Louvois here: she is prejudiced against Picard, rather than the wronged party. I was wrong, but I think the central wheeze of this episode depends a lot on how much we’ve seen of the series so far, especially how much we’ve warmed to Data.

The Enterprise is visited by Admiral Nakamura and, trailing in his wake, a cyberneticist called Bruce Maddox. I already knew Maddox from his appearance in Picard (where he’s played by another actor), but you wouldn’t think he was important in his first scene here, where he doesn’t even speak. That means it’s a surprise when we learn he and Data have history. Maddox is sneeringly antagonistic, not only disputing that Data is sentient but also now wanting to dismantle him. Who is this murderous racist - and why the hell does Admiral Nakamura nod along to his proposal? It’s shocking because we’ve grown to like Data as a regular character in the series: we have history with him, too. But it’s also shocking in the fiction of the series because Data has served with Star Fleet for 18 years, working up the ranks to his current position as Lieutenant Commander. In all that time, has no one really ever considered this serving officer’s status and rights as a person? Did it not get addressed when he signed up, or each time he was promoted, or at his regular appraisals? It’s a massive oversight by Star Fleet HR, who surely wouldn’t award promotion to a something they considered a machine.

As with 1.13 Datalore, there’s a telling thing in the use of pronouns, Maddox insisting - big old racist that he is - on referring to Data as “it”. The word objectifies Data, but it’s not clear how consciously Maddox is using it as a ploy to exert ownership and rob Data of the right to self-determination. The less threatening argument made by the admiral is that he respects Data and simply wants to reassign him/it to a new experimental project. But Maddox is vague about the risks involved and doesn’t seem particularly concerned that Data should survive. It’s chilling.

Yet Data then has to explain his objections to his captain (and friend) before Picard attempts to help him. When Picard goes to see Louvois, she also struggles to understand the problem: when Picard says that Data has rights, she responds, “All of this passion over a machine.” If this were a standalone drama, we might sympathise with that view but we’re 35 episodes into the series and we know and like Data - largely, I think, because actor Brent Spiner is so charismatic even playing a man with no emotions.

Meanwhile, Data is in his quarters packing to leave the Enterprise in what’s surely a case of constructive dismissal. Among his possessions are a 3D hologram of the late Tasha Yar - who was killed off in 1.22 Skin of Evil (I vaguely remember that one from its broadcast on BBC Two on 6 March 1991). The hologram effect is nicely done and I wondered if actress Denise Crosby had come back for it especially - but apparently not. The hologram is subtly deployed in the scene but important: the emotional connection we feel to Tasha, and to her relationship with Data, means that it’s even more of a violation when Maddox brusquely strides into Data’s room without asking - declining to afford even the most basic respect he would presumably show to any other serving officer. Again, Data says that Maddox’s experiment is dangerous - an existential threat to Data. Maddox counters that Data is a found object, the property of Star Fleet. His “life” is unimportant.

Picard gets Louvois to agree to a tribunal to judge whether Data is a person and therefore has rights. It’s astonishing that this question should even be asked of a long-serving and well-regarded officer. But then, ahem, I sat in on a recent tribunal where it seemed astonishing there was any question to be probed. Louvois agrees to the tribunal on condition that Riker acts as prosecution - just as she was once required to prosecute Picard. This is really odd. It’s some kind of revenge on Picard, or point-scoring, or proving a point. But Riker is Data’s friend, and Picard - as defence counsel - has a history with Louvois as the judge. It’s hardly impartial. I believe the phrase used by my learned friends is that it would open to challenge.

Yet I was hooked by what follows. There’s a spectacular moment as Riker builds his case and finds something he can use - Jonathan Frakes perfectly conveying without words his thrill and then his guilt. In the tribunal itself, it’s brilliantly horrible when Riker asks to remove Data’s arm as evidence that he’s not a person and then uses the off-switch from 1.13 Datalore to show he’s not a real boy. “Pinocchio is broken,” he says of the friend and crewmate slumped across the desk. “Its strings have been cut.” Note the pronoun, used to devastating effect.

There’s then a break in proceedings and Picard takes solace in the bar. Here, wise Guinan makes explicit what this story is about: removing Data’s personhood and replicating him will mean, “an army of Datas, all disposable, [so] you don't have to think about their welfare.” When she speaks of, “whole generations of disposable people,” Picard responds, “You’re talking about slavery.” Guinan denies it, though of course that’s the allusion. I think this is all sensitively done but Guinan then says this connection to slavery isn’t the issue anyway - and Picard seems to agree.

Back at the tribunal, Picard makes a case for Data’s personhood, using as evidence his possessions, his friendships, his intimate relations with the late Tasha Yar. In fact, Data doesn’t want to be drawn on that relationship having given Tasha his word not to speak of it. His loyalty and manners, all of this stuff, make a compelling case appealing to our emotions. But Picard then pivots to confront Maddox’s central argument that Data is not sentient and therefore can be treated as property rather than a person. As Picard argues, sentience is a difficult thing to define - I thought of Alan Turing’s imitation game, predicated on the idea that we assume intelligence on the part of people we talk to. There’s a good argument here: that Maddox should have to prove his own sentience before casting aspersions. But that’s not where Picard goes.

He argues that Data is the first of a new kind of android, one that Maddox and others seek to replicate. The judgment of this tribunal will define how all those androids are treated in the years to come. Picard makes the link to slavery explicit here: “Are you prepared to condemn him and all who come after him to servitude and slavery?” The point is not what Data is but the behaviour of Star Fleet and the precedent set for the treatment of a whole new class of life. Picard quotes from the the mission statement of the Enterprise - and the series, since it’s given at the start of each episode - is “to seek out new life and new civilisations.” So the discussion here is fundamental to Star Trek. It's not about Data specifically but a wider-reaching principle of tolerance and respect for the different. It is fundamentally wrong, Picard argues. to treat some others as if they matter less. Cor, I thought, that’s really something.

Two things still bother me. First, this determination so fundamental to the series and to the Federation’s future is made by one judge with a personal score to settle with the defending counsel, while the prosecutor she appointed is a good friend of the defendant - known to socialise with Data, such as in the opening scene of this episode. It would surely be easy for Maddox to demand a retrial with more objective participants. As they acknowledge here, he very nearly won the case. Rather than settling the matter, the fact that the question was even asked about Data’s personhood is unsettling.

Then there’s Louvois’s concluding remarks:

“We have all been dancing around the basic issue. Does Data have a soul? I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have. But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself.”

Why bring in a spiritual dimension at all? It’s not the point Picard has made and puts the onus back on Data. It lets Star Fleet off the hook for treating him so badly by forcing him to go through this grisly business at all.

After the judgment, Data says he is still intrigued by Maddox’s research and may yet help him if they can mitigate the risks. Maddox is surprised by this gesture, admitting, “He’s remarkable.” That pronoun is important but it’s a shame our attention is drawn to it explicitly, as if the production team doubt that the sentience of their audience. The use of “he” suggests Maddox won’t be back demanding a retrial (and he's not seen again until Picard). Data and Riker are also reconciled, again the onus on Data to make it all okay when he's done nothing more than have the temerity to exist.

Then Picard and Louvois head off for drinks, reconciled themselves. It's a happy ending all round, the matter of Data’s personhood settled for good. Isn’t it?

Next episode: 3.16 The Offspring

Doctor Who Magazine 551

The super new issue of the official Doctor Who Magazine is out now, and features former show runners Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat interviewing one another, and my wise mate Mark Wright interviewing the series current composer Segun Akinola.

There's also "Contact Has Been Made", in which I spoke to editorial assistant Emily Cook and Strax actor Dan Starkey about all the exciting Who-related stuff going on during lockdown. In fact, there's so much going on it was a struggle to fit it all in - and then no sooner had I delivered the feature than there was more stuff being announced.

Also in this issue, Jamie Lenman reviews Susan's War, delighted by the Robogrons in my The Uncertain Shore. He says the excellent sound design - by Howard Carter - makes the play like "Saving Private Susan", and concludes that it's, "A glorious, if faintly bewildering, runaround." Hooray!

ST:TNG 1.13 Datalore

I enjoyed the recent first series of Star Trek: Picard but was very aware of missing the references as I've not seen all of Star Trek: The Next Generation - and most of that when it was first on. Helpfully, @GDgeek and @ScottKAndrews came up with a list of 12 essential episodes:

1.13 Datalore
2.9 The Measure of a Man
3.16 The Offspring
3.26 The Best of Both Worlds
4.1 The Best of Both Worlds part 2
4.2 Family
4.3 Brothers
5.23 I, Borg
6.26 Descent part 1
7.1 Descent part 2
7.25-26 All Good Things…

So, to begin with…

1.13 Datalore

"But... but... but..."

How achingly young everyone is - and how new the whole enterprise. It’s all so new that the Captain’s log at the beginning has to explain to us that Data is an android.

Wesley Crusher, doing work experience on the bridge of the Enterprise while everyone else is in uniform, seems to be dressed as the Thirteenth Doctor Who.

Colds have been eradicated from this utopian future but there’s some silliness about sneezing. The tone is odd; the silliness stilted - less laugh-out-loud as somewhat amusing. I know from other episodes that these actors are good with comedy, so it’s just the material here not being very funny.

I’m horrified to hear the Enterprise whoosh past the screen in the opening titles, despite the silent vacuum of space. This is Star Trek as fantasy, as lacking in scientific credentials as Star Wars. But Star Wars makes no claim to get the science right.

Another shock as our heroes beam down to an alien planet realised entirely in studio, the forced perspective background looking especially cheap. I remember this "new" iteration of Star Trek when it first arrived as sumptuously rich and extravagant. Here it looks like Time-Flight.

On this alien world we learn about Data’s origins: he was discovered here 26 years ago, he says. Geordi is able to see clues no one else has - which is really odd. Given how strange and precious Data is, did no one think to conduct a proper survey?

Having found a secret base, they recognise the name of a famous Earth scientist - Dr Noonien Soong. But they don’t immediately connect him to Data, or the fact they look so alike. Has no one really never noticed?

Soong, they all know, was Earth’s foremost robotic scientist, “Until he tried to make Asimov’s dream of a positronic brain come true.” Isaac Asimov was still alive when this episode was broadcast, but also admitted that the positronic brain he devised in stories written 50 years earlier weren’t exactly a practical idea. So it’s Star Trek linking itself to a lineage of science-fiction rather than of science. (Daleks have positronic brains in The Power of the Daleks (1966) and The Evil of the Daleks (1967), suggesting they and Data are related.)

Then our heroes find the dismembered parts of an android body just like Data, including his bare bum. It’s an incongruous detail, depersonalising him and his dismantled brother. But perhaps that’s the point.

It’s also odd to have Data then observe but not help in the assembly of his brother. Does he not want to be involved? Is he not allowed? It seems to be a question of etiquette. Despite the 26 years since Data was discovered, people are still awkward around him. There’s some fun in the discomfort

But I like the awkwardness of the crew in asking Data questions about all of this - the social niceties, the strangeness, of a friend and colleague you can make. But the scene in which Data confides in Beverely that he has a secret off-switch is really odd. Would the medical officer on the Enterprise not have full access to his schematics? If not, the suggestion is that’s he’s seen as a piece of engineering rather than a person with medical needs.

Data’s brother Lore says that he was made to supersede - to replace - the imperfect Data, and given the etiquette and awkwardness we’ve just witnessed, this seems cruel. We’re immediately put on our guard about Lore because he’s been mean to Data, though no one else has noticed.

There’s more awkwardness from the human crew, but Picard apologises to Data for his misuse of pronouns in referring to androids as “it”. My suspicion is that when they made this episode they weren’t thinking of trans rights, but that’s surely the association we make watching it now.

Now Data is suspicious of Lore, and Lore uses the word “brother” to make a connection. He is, unlike Data, programmed to please humans, he says - but it’s all very manipulative. My thought was of the algorithms of social media that seek to keep us hooked by playing to our (worst) emotions.

But I really like the walk-and-talk scene in the corridor of Data and Lore together. Just like Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers, Brent Spiner makes the two characters distinct individuals, so it doesn’t immediately register that this is a trick shot. Again, Lore is manipulative - suggesting that the emotionless Data is envious or jealous. It’s nicely played, and this early into the series we don’t know Data well enough to be sure about him.

Data tells Lore how he got his Star Fleet uniform: “four years at the Academy, another three as ensign, ten or twelve on varied space duty in the lieutenant grades”, taking up at least 17 of the 26 years since he was discovered. What happened in the years before he joined the Academy? And also - as we will see - it is appalling that after 17 years of service in Star Fleet, the organisation still isn’t sure about Data’s status, rights or personhood.

I’m also unconvinced by the sci-fi cliche that Data can’t use contractions or crack jokes. Word processing software and predictive text can deploy contractions - the rules are simple enough. A child can grasp jokes. It plays, I think, into an insidious myth about autistic people that they don’t understand jokes and are taciturn, unfeeling, somehow lesser than neurotypical people. I don’t know if the production team meant to link Data to these supposed traits of autism, but now I’ve made that connection it makes me very uneasy to see how they’re deployed.

After their conversation, Data leaves and Lore is left alone, reading a computer screen. It’s innocuous enough, but sinister music tells us he is up to something - though we’ve not seen him be naughty yet. We are being manipulated.

On the bridge of the Enterprise, security chief Tasha Yar asks Picard how much he really trusts Data. The crew are shocked, and Picard’s response is really interesting:

“I trust him completely. But everyone should also realise that that was a necessary and legitimate security question.”

As when he apologised to Data about a misuse of pronouns, this is Picard’s compassionate management style, in sharp contrast to the ruthless, selfish Gordon Gekko kind of businessman in Wall Street, from the year before this was broadcast. It’s there, too, in the corporate culture of the Enterprise - with a ship’s counsellor so respected she has a seat on the bridge (if not a uniform), and (as well see in later episodes) organised entertainments that mix up different ranks socially.

Lore opens a bottle of Champagne, which begs the question whether androids can get drunk. In fact, it’s been poisoned and Lore finally shows his true colours. Suddenly the episode kicks into gear, and what follows is tense and involving.

Even so, there’s a very odd scene on the bridge, where Lore pretends to be Data and no one notices except Wesley. The telling detail is that Lore doesn’t understand Picard’s order to “Make it so” - a catchphrase already, just a handful of episodes into the series. When Lore has gone, Welsey tries to share his concern but first Picard and then Wesley’s own mother tell him to shut up. Well ha ha, Wesley is a bit precocious and annoying - but this is the captain of the flagship of Star Fleet snapping at a child in front of everyone on the bridge. A child, I might add, whose dad is dead and whose mum seems to have history with the captain. Where is the sensitive management style now? It’s particularly galling because Welsey is right!

Lore then uses Wesley, who still doesn’t fall for the trick. He helps the real Data, and there’s a fight. When Picard and Dr Crusher arrive, Lore threatens to kill Wesley - again, manipulating them through his understanding ofd emotions. But luckily our heroes are able to teleport him away. We’re not told where he goes: the implication is, I think, that he’s been beamed out into space where he won’t survive. Wouldn’t they check?

Picard doesn’t apologise to Wesley - who was completely right about Lore - but expects to see him back on the bridge. Again, ha ha, how funny that Picard won’t back down and its at Wesley’s expense. It’s a really odd, unsatisfying ending to an episode that’s otherwise about respect for other people’s feelings. If I were Wesley, I’d be going straight to the ship’s counsellor to discuss workplace harassment.

But blimey, on the subject of abuse of staff by Star Fleet, next up is 2.9 The Measure of a Man…

• See also: my review of Picard: Last Best Hope by Una McCormack

The Fated Sky, by Mary Robinette Kowal

After the smart, brilliant, thrilling The Calculating Stars, this second novel in the Lady Astronaut series is just as good - thrilling, compelling and compassionate as our heroine is part of the first crewed mission to Mars in an alternative 1960s.

There are all kinds of hazards along the way, including diarrhoea in space - a hundred times more horrible than it sounds - and Earthbound conspiracists attacking their own technological infrastructure in ways that echo recent attacks on 5G. In fact, this tale of people cooped up together for long stretches really resonates just now, the astronauts missing loved ones and unable to do anything about the medical emergencies affected their loved ones back home...

Yet for all the big events and hard science, this is a novel about the little stuff - the interpersonal relationships, the struggle not to be That Arsehole.

"Space always sounds glamorous when I talk about it on television or the radio, but the truth is that we spend most of our time cleaning and doing maintenance." (p. 425).

I'm keen for the next instalment, The Relentless Moon, due out later this year, but the author's website includes links to some short stories in the meantime:

Here's the list in internal chronological order:
"We Interrupt This Broadcast"The Calculating Stars"Articulated Restraint"The Fated SkyThe Relentless Moon - coming 2020
The Derivative Base - coming 2022
"The Phobos Experience" - in Fantasy & Science Fiction July 2018"Amara's Giraffe""Rockets Red""The Lady Astronaut of Mars" 

Corridors - Passages of Modernity, by Roger Luckhurst

I've submitted a review of this for publication elsewhere, but Professor Roger Luckhurst (who I know) has produced a fascinating history of corridors in architecture and imagination.

His argument is that the corridor is a modern conception, the name deriving from the Italian verb "currere" meaning to run - the same root as our word "courier." The architectural sense came in the fourteenth century: a "corridoro" was the path kept clear behind defences along which messengers could run. It was then used in large buildings - the swift bypass meaning you didn't have to go through in room in turn. In a royal palace, where status could be defined by proximity to the monarch, that bypass had political implications. Without the need for interconnecting doors, rooms could be isolated - changing our sense of private space.

Roger covers a great deal of ground here - a long corridor like the ones he describes in the pavilion hospitals brought in by Florence Nightingale. He covers hospitals, prisons, asylums, universities, private homes, corridors in films, and the way the modern idea of a corridor is projected back on history - such as Arthur Evans reconstructing modern-style corridors at the ancient Minoan site of Knossos. I'm fascinated by the below-ground labyrinth of Wellbeck Abbey, and the revelation that until the 1810s schools were structured in "barn style" buildings, all the children in one room, perhaps a thousand of them taught by one teacher.  Segregation by age, gender, ability and corridor could dramatically change the effectiveness of education.

In discussing corridors in films, Roger argues that we're still haunted by - indeed, still live and work within - Victorian institutions and their architecture. A corridor crowded with zombies therefore resonates with us. But corridors can also be cheap to fashion and fill with fewer extras, making the most of limited studio space, and so easy to redress that a single T-section can represent a whole vast complex.

"All these corridors look the same," sighs Seth in the 1979-80 Doctor Who story The Horns of Nimon - in which the corridors really do turn out to be moved round and reused. Indeed, a lot of Doctor Who is people running through corridors. But then that should be a surprise as that's what they're for...

Doctor Who: Wicked Sisters

Out in November, Wicked Sisters is a trilogy of Doctor Who stories in which the Fifth Doctor and Leela must destroy two powerful beings who threaten all of space and time. Their names are Abby and Zara...

It's been a thrill to reunite the Doctor with the leads from my sci-fi series Graceless, and I couldn't be happier with the result. The series stars Peter Davison, Louise Jameson, Ciara Janson and Laura Doddington - plus some amazing guest actors who will be announced in due course.

Full press release as follows:

The Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) is on course for a reunion with some old friends when he crosses paths with sisters Abby and Zara.

Created by pan-dimensional beings the Grace to assist – and sometimes hinder – the Doctor in Big Finish’s Key 2 Time trilogy, Abby (Ciara Janson) and Zara (Laura Doddington) went on to their own time-spanning adventures in the acclaimed spin-off series, Graceless. After centuries of their own wanderings through time and space, Abby and Zara are about to meet the Time Lord again...

Doctor Who: The Fifth Doctor Adventures – Wicked Sisters is now available for pre-order, from just £16.99, and is due for release in November 2020.

The Doctor is recruited by Leela for a vital mission on behalf of the Time Lords. Together, they must track down and destroy two god-like beings whose extraordinary powers now threaten all of space and time. Their names are Abby and Zara...

This new full-cast Doctor Who audio drama box set features three linked adventures by Graceless’ creator and writer, Simon Guerrier, who wrote the very first appearance of Abby and Zara in Doctor Who: The Judgment of Iskaar.

1. The Garden of Storms
2. The Moonrakers
3. The People Made of Smoke

Producer Mark Wright said: “It’s been ten years since we first took Abby and Zara off on their own adventures, and it’s fun to get the team that’s worked on every episode of Graceless together every couple of years.

“Simon Guerrier’s scripts always take us into unexpected territory, and Ciara Janson and Laura Doddington bring something new to their performances each time Abby and Zara are back together. As it’s been a decade since the first series of Graceless, we thought it was time to bring things full circle and take the sisters back to where it all began – with the Fifth Doctor.” 

Writer Simon Guerrier added: “It’s been a thrill to write for the Fifth Doctor and Leela, and put them up against Abby and Zara. You don’t need to know anything about Graceless - that was part of the brief from my masters - but they’re sisters with extraordinary powers that threaten all of time and space.”

“They’re very different from the women the Doctor first met all those years ago when we did the Key 2 Time series. Back then, he wasn't required to kill them...

“The three days we had in studio just before Christmas were the highlight of my working year. A dream cast, a lot of laughter, and Lisa Bowerman ably marshalling everyone as we faced the collapse of the universe.”

Doctor Who: The Fifth Doctor Adventures – Wicked Sisters is now available for pre-order, exclusively at the Big Finish website from just £16.99. 

Doctor Who Magazine 550

Issue 550 of the official Doctor Who Magazine is out tomorrow and comes with posters, a cardboard TARDIS control room to make and plenty of other treats. That includes my in-depth interview with director Michael E Briant about The Robots of Death. That story is part of the Season 14 box-set to be released on Blu-ray as soon as the global crisis allows...

What with all that hullabaloo, magazines are facing a thin time so now would be the perfect opportunity to subscribe to this noblest of all titles. Please and thank you.

Also, this afternoon I took part in the Stay-at-Home! Literary Festival, on a panel about writing Doctor Who books alongside esteemed colleagues Una McCormack, Jonathan Morris and Jacqueline Rayner. Jac commissioned me for the very first bit of fiction I ever got paid for, and it was nice to be able to remind and thank her. 

Van Gogh's paintings in Doctor Who

Vincent Van Gogh was born on this day in 1853, and this evening my clever friend Emily Cook at Doctor Who Magazine has organised a special online watch of 2010 Doctor Who episode Vincent and the Doctor, with tweeting along by writer Richard Curtis, script editor Emma Freud and stars Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Tony Curran.

The Lord of Chaos has greatly enjoyed the last two tweet-alongs, but I suspect tonight he'll want to know more about the paintings featured in the episode. So I have made a list.

1. Wheat Field with Crows, July 1890

The episode begins with Van Gogh painting what some have said is his last work, a wheat field with crows. We then cut to the Musee D'Orsay in Paris, in the present day, where the picture is part of a special exhibition of Van Gogh's work - and presumably on loan from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

2. Self-portrait with straw hat, summer 1887

As Bill Nighty's unnamed art expert expounds, we see more pictures in the exhibition. This self-portrait is now in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

3. Olive Trees, 1888

The art expert passes a screen on which can be seen this sketch of olive trees, now held by the Musée des Beaux-Arts Tournai in Tournai, Belgium.

4. Road with Men Walking etc. 17 June 1890

The screen changes, to show this sketch contained in a letter Van Gogh wrote on 17 June 1890, listed as "Road with Men Walking, Carriage, Cypress, Star, and Crescent Moon" in the collections of the Van Gogh Museum.

5. The Starry Night, June 1889

Now the Doctor and Amy breeze into shot, and we get glances at a range of paintings on display - which we'll get clearer views of later. The Starry Night, which will be a pivotal one later in the episode, is now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

6. Still Life: Vase with 12 Sunflowers, c. 1888-89

Across the gallery, we get a glimpse of this, one of numerous paintings of sunflowers by Van Gogh. This one is now in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, Munich.

7. Wheat Field with Cypresses, late June 1889

Back in the main part of the gallery, there's this wheat field which is now owned by the Met in New York.

8. La Berceuse, December 1888 to early 1889

Next to it is one of the five portraits Van Gogh produced of Augustine-Alix Pellicot Roulin, wife of the postmaster at Arles. I'm not sure I've got the right one of the five - this one is from the Met collection.

9. Road with Cypress and Star, May 1890

Then there's this, one of a number of paintings of the same scene - as sketched in the letter (image 4, above). This seems to be the right one, with the distinctive curves of the tree and green patch of grass in the road at the bottom centre. This one is from the Kröller-Müller Museum, in the Netherlands.

10. Siesta, or Noon: Rest from Work (after Millet),January 1890

Next, there's this famous one of a sleeping couple, today in the Musee D'Orsay.

11. Wheat Field with Thunderclouds, mid to late July 1890

This one is next is thought to be the first of the sequence that culminated in Wheat Field with Crows (image 1). I wasn't sure at first as the version on screen seems to be a different shape and the clouds more grey, but the triangle of green in the middle seems to match exactly. It's now in the Van Gogh Museum.

12. Portrait of Dr Gachet (second version), 1890

This is one of two portraits of Dr Paul Gachet,  both painted in June 1890. This one is in the Musee D'Orsay collection.

13. The Yellow House, September 1888

Showing 2 Place Lamartine in Arles, this is the house Van Gogh rented - and shared for nine weeks with Paul Gaugin. The painting is now in the Van Gogh Museum.

14. Church at Auvers, June 1890

We focus on Church at Auvers because - in the episode - there's a monster in the window. The painting is now in the Musee D'Orsay. The art expert tells the Doctor it was painted between 1 and 3 June 1890.

15. Bedroom in Arles, 1888

Next the painting of the church hangs Bedroom in Arles, which the episode later recreates as a set - a joke surely lifted from the 1991 Guinness ad. The painting is now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum.

16. Blossoming Almond Tree, February 1890

Shocked by the monster in the church window, the Doctor dashes past three paintings hanging together. We see them in a blur, but get a better look later on. This one of a blossoming almond tree is in the Van Gogh Museum.

17. Portrait of Marguerite Gachet at the Piano, June 1890

This is a portrait of Marguerite, daughter of Dr Paul Gachet (see in image 12).  It's in the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland.

18. Irises, May 1889

This is now in the collection of the Getty, Los Angeles. This is the last of the paintings shown in the pre-titles sequence.

19. Cafe at Night, 1888

On arriving in 1890, the Doctor and Amy look for Van Gogh and Amy matches this painting, seen in her book of postcards from the exhibition, to the exterior set.  This is the cafe terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, and the painting is now in the collections of the Kröller-Müller Museum, Netherlands.

When we meet Van Gogh in the episode, he is arguing over the merits of his self-portrait with straw hat (image 2). When he talks to the Doctor and Amy, he also unrolls some of the canvas for Siesta (image 10).

Amy and the Doctor follow Vincent home, and Amy looks at her postcard of the Bedroom (image 15) before entering Vincent's house. The house contains many of the pictures we've also seen - the Yellow House, both Gachet portraits, the apple blossom - as well a still life of flowers in a vase with a red background that Van Gogh will later paint over in the episode. There is one we've not seen before:

20. Prisoners' Round, after Doré, 1890.

This was inspired by an 1872 engraving by Gustave Doré of the exercise yard at Newgate Prison in London. Van Gogh's painting is now in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

There are also various sketches pinned around Van Gogh's home which I've not yet identified.

21. Still Life with Basket and 6 Oranges, March 1888

The Doctor chides Van Gogh for using the above as a tea tray. It's now held in a private collection.

22. Self-portrait as Painter, Dec 1887-Feb 1888

Finally, when the Doctor goes to see Van Gogh in his bedroom (the set designed to match image 15), this self-portrait is on one wall. It's now in the Van Gogh Museum.

After this, Amy fills Van Gogh's garden with sunflowers, as per his famous still lives. We then see him paint the Church at Auvers (image 14), and he shares with Amy and the Doctor his view of the night sky (an animated version of image 5). We return to the exhibition in the present day, giving us a better look at paintings glimpsed in the pre-titles sequence.

Picard: The Last Best Hope, by Una McCormack

This extraordinary novel by my friend Una McCormack is something really special: the best tie-in novel I've read in an age, a great novel in its own right, and disturbingly, horribly timely.

The brief is simple enough: to bridge the gap between our last sight of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (in the 2002 movie Nemesis) and the start of his new TV series, Star Trek: Picard, which itself follows on from the destruction of the planet Romulus in the 2009 reboot movie Star Trek. Una sets out her mission on the first page, beginning, as does the new TV series, with retired and elderly Picard at home on his vineyard in La Barre. Only Una has him picking over exactly what led to him being here.

It's so much more than just joining the dots between movie A and television series B. The prose is immediately arresting, the scene poignant and moving, the great Picard now,

"One more outcast, cast adrift. Prospero, on his island. An old conjurer, his magic spent, nursing old grievances." (p. 3)

This is a perfect association for Picard, played all these years by Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart. There is dignity, even majesty, in his fall from grace. Having established that sense of him, Una then has Picard settle on, "the moment when everything changed" - the day he left his beloved Starship Enterprise. 

We cut back to that day, and Una swiftly lays out the Great Problem that Picard is tasked with - a refugee crisis that involves old enemies who are too proud to ask for help. Picard is promoted to Admiral and takes charge of a new ship and crew to boldy go sort things out. Nicely, Una also has him take his leave of old friends, especially those who've not (yet) had cameos in the new TV series. One conversation with an old friend is like a knife through the heart.

"[Picard] had never quite summoned up his courage, when it came to Beverley Crusher." (p. 20).

Picard must also argue the case for the officer he thinks should succeed him on the Enterprise, and much is made of the significance of Captain Worf, a Klingon, taking the helm of the Federation's flagship just 100 years since the enmities of 1991 movie, The Undiscovered Country. That works well, but oddly it's relayed through other people's responses. We barely glimpse Worf at all; he's given no dialogue. I assume there's some contractual issue, or some other spin-off has bagsied Worf's perspective, but still.

One other thing seems missing: I've still little sense of how Picard knows Laris and Zhaban, the Romulans working for him at the start of the TV series. They get no more than a name-check in the book. Again, I assume that's a story for another time - or something I missed in the series. [ETA, Laris and Zhaban apparently feature in the comic mini-series Countdown.] But that and the silence of Worf are hardly complaints, just the sole two moments where I thought, "Wait, what?"

Otherwise, the book's use of established, TV-derived lore is exemplary. So much tie-in fiction is about playing in the margins, at a discrete distance from the primary source. But Una includes scenes that I've watched in the TV series, adding to them, extending them, offering more context and insight. It's more than simply access to the production team and the episodes well ahead of broadcast: there's evident care and trust and parity of esteem in the relationship between production team and writer for this to dovetail with the series so perfectly. The result is that I'm engaged in and am enjoying the Picard TV series more because I've read the book.

Again, it's not just about joining the dots. Una creates her own characters - indeed, a whole ship under Picard's command, the Verity. Two characters are so well drawn that we really feel their loss when they die. I also found ambitious politician Olivia Quest particularly easy to visualise, as Emma Thompson in Years and Years. Characters new and established feel psychologically real: there are few out-right villains, just people with conflicting views about what should be done in the face of vast and awful crisis.

I think there's something of the TV series Chernobyl in this response to - and denial of - calamity. We're also told that the people of Earth long solved its climate crisis, and then Picard despairs of those refusing his help:

"But there must have come a point - long past - when it was clear that something on Romulus was going horribly wrong. Yet many people - even among the elites, most of whom have been privy to the information - seem not to have believed the evidence of their own eyes. They seem to have wantonly refused to connect the dots between the increasing heat, the storms, the floods, and the freak weather pattern. I struggle to understand why. Perhaps some truths are simply too much to face." (p. 253)

Una couldn't have known it, but much of her novel feels horribly pertinent right this minute, as we square up to Corvid-19. Politicians and experts argue over the correct response to an unprecedented crisis. There's selfishness and denial from ordinary people, not sure what to believe in the calm before the storm. But, fast becoming reality, there is suffering and death on a barely imaginable scale...

We know from the opening page of the book that things do not turn out well for Picard or those he pledges himself to save. I'd already seen the episode of the TV series which flashes back to the day Picard resigns from Star Fleet. Una includes that, and shows us his resignation. He fails. Then she concludes with some thoughts, from Picard, on the cruelty of history.

Bloody hell. It's a book that's changed my sense of the TV series, and the world outside my door now.

At Childhood's End, by Sophie Aldred

This melding of Doctor Who old and new is great fun and surprisingly moving. With help from Mike Tucker and Steve Cole, it's written by Sophie Aldred, who played Ace in Doctor Who between 1987 and 1989, and it sees an older Ace reunited with the Doctor - the current, female incarnation.

It's structured in three parts, just like one of Ace's TV stories, and includes a character from 1989's Survival and a load of references and retcons to that era, but all feels engagingly, refreshingly new. I especially liked how well the author(s) capture the current Doctor and her companions, with some credible awkwardness between police officer Yaz and explosive experts Ace.

At one point, due to quantum wossnames, Ace glimpses all kinds of possible lives, allowing her to encompass the various Aces from books and comics and audio while at the same time over-writing all that with this authoritative version. It also dovetails nicely with the trailer Aldred starred in last year for the Blu-ray release of her final season in Doctor Who, legitimising it and following its lead emotionally.

I think there's a callback to the days of Doctor Who books aimed at an adult audience when we first meet this older Ace: she's woken from a nightmare and gets out of bed; we're told on page 11 that she's naked. It's an odd, incongruous detail for an adventure aimed at the whole family.

Otherwise, the horse-like and rat-like aliens and the various scrapes and solutions make this feel very much like the TV series of today. It rattles along breathlessly, full of jokes and surprises. I find myself wondering where exactly in this year's series it takes place: after the events of Fugitive of the Judoon, given than Yaz first learns of Cybermen in that story, but chats about them with Ace here on page 137. 

Doctor Who Magazine 549

The new issue of the official Doctor Who Magazine includes a feature I've co-written with Sophie Iles, a preview of the animated version of 1967 story The Faceless Ones.

We spoke to producer/director AnneMarie Walsh, sound restorer and remasterer Mark Ayres, colour artist Adrian Salmon, 2D animator Kate Sullivan and character designer Martin Geraghty.

Vortex 133

The new issue of free magazine Vortex includes a feature on Doctor Who audio spin-off Susan's War, including an interview with me about the episode I wrote - The Uncertain Shore - and a picture of the splendid cast. 

The series is out next month: order Susan's War from the Big Finish website.