Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 76

Friday Links Rises From the Serpentine

The Shirley Jackson Awards were announced this week – congrats to all winners, but especially to Kaaron Warren who became the first Australian to win one of these for her novella “Sky” from her collection Through Splintered Walls from Twelfth Planet Press.

Speaking of TPP, my new crime novel A Trifle Dead is currently at a super cheap ebook price this week only to celebrate our yummy new book trailer. It’s also available for a sale price over at Wizard’s Tower Books.

Meanwhile, Alisa, Alex and I participated in the latest SF MindMeld: talking Road Trips with a bunch of other cool people.

There’s been a lot of chatter this week about JK Rowling and her new crime-writing pen name Robert Galbraith. This open letter to new and would-be writers puts the early selling numbers of Galbraith’s novel into some perspective.

I’m really excited that Annie Wu, the young comic artist responsible for some fun, retro Valentine’s Day guest work on the Matt Fraction & David Aja run on Hawkeye, is not only about to embark on some more regular work on that title (following Kate Bishop in her own storyline) but is also responsible for the art on a new mini-arc of the digital only comic Batman Beyond – BATGIRL BEYOND! I read the first issue and really enjoyed it – grab this comic. It not only has a futuristic, stompy new take on Batgirl but also features an elderly Commissioner Barbara Gordon. Promising stuff, and lovely to see such an interesting new artist getting to play with cool projects.

Another upcoming comics project I’m a bit excited about is the reclamation of Harley Quinn – Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, who are famous in comics circles for their excellent run on Power Girl, combining cheeky and self-aware art with great humour and respect for one of my favourite superheroes. Harley, once a fun and cheeky character herself, was given one of the yuckier and more pornographic costume/image reboots of the New 52 so it’s really nice to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

No Award, a new Australian blog with the subtitle: “social justice, media, fandom, drop bears,” has kicked off with several pieces looking at Pacific Rim. I found Stephanie’s piece about the portrayal of Australians in the movie (and particularly the overwhelming whiteness of Australia going by the depiction of our culture in film and TV) especially interesting, but it’s all good stuff so far!

Rebecca Fitzgibbon looks at violence and masculinity in Australian film, and the “Dark Side of Heroic Mateship.”

Renay has written a fantastic piece on Strange Horizons about science fiction communities and gender, and what a culture shock the general SF & fantasy literary community is after the more female-friendly online fandom communities.

Nicola Griffith talks about her wonderful experience as a Guest of Honor at Westercon, and the concept of Radical Hospitality at the heart of that convention.

Kim Wilkins’ speech in the Plotters v. Pantsers debate was one of the highlights of Genrecon last year – I’m delighted to see that she has put it up on her blog for all to see!

A Lost Egyptian City has been discovered beneath the sea. Underwater hieroglyphs, people!

Batman is a hoarder.

Watching New Who: The End of Time

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Series 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the “Doctor Who in Conversation” team, with a history in Doctor Who watching that goes WAY back.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points.

THE END OF TIME

THE DOCTOR: David Tennant

WILF: Bernard Cribbins

THE MASTER: John Simm

RASSILON: Timothy Dalton

THE WOMAN WHO IS NOT CONFIRMED IN ANY WAY AS THE DOCTOR’S MOTHER: Claire Bloom

DONNA: Catherine Tate

ROSE: Billie Piper

MARTHA: Freema Agyeman

MICKEY: Noel Clarke

JACK HARKNESS: John Barrowman

SARAH JANE: Elisabeth Sladen

TEHANI:

*sniff* I had been determined not to become a Tennant fangirl, but I admit it, he really won me over, particularly in Season Four, and coming to the end of his run is a bit sad. I mainlined so much of him when I first watched these that I found myself adopting Tennant-esque speech patterns and idiosyncrasies (“What? What?!”), which could be rather embarrassing.

That said, I’m afraid so much of this story leaves me a bit cold after multiple watchings, and some of it REALLY doesn’t make sense! There’s a lot to like about it, but there are some absolutely bizarre elements as well. I don’t think it helps that it has come of the back of some really cinematic episodes in the specials, but feels somehow smaller again – maybe just me?

TANSY:

I agree that very little of this story makes sense, or bears any kind of critical viewing. Having said that, I’m a million times more fond of it than any of the other Specials. I can’t explain why! I think perhaps because it has more emotional resonance than the rest of them put together, and possibly I am still deeply affected by how damn exciting it was to watch the first episode pretty close to live (within 24 hours of it screening!) – so many interesting questions, revelations and set pieces in that first episode, even if OK VERY FEW OF THEM are paid off in any way, or followed up on.

DAVID:

Wow, I can see this is going to be an interesting discussion! I really enjoyed this one, and thought that, with a few exceptions which I am sure we will get to, was very strongly written throughout. And, I personally found it a lot bigger in scope than some of the other specials, and definitely thought it far more satisfying than the last Master appearance – the three part “Utopia/Sounds of Drums/Last of the Time Lords”.

TANSY:

There are so many individual scenes in this that are delightful Doctor Who, even if it’s all stuck together with duct tape, fairy glitter and damned cheek.

The early scenes on the Ood world, for instance, are mesmerising and weird and full of possibilities … that never actually get paid off. But great scenes. Likewise, the Master’s acolytes and his wife fighting it out as to whether he will return to life, using potions and lipstick – every inch of it is ridiculous, but the performances are great, Lucy Saxon’s in particular.

I don’t have the common fan reaction of “POTIONS?” to this scene, because dude, let’s talk about the Sisterhood of Karn for a minute. Mystical claptrap has been part of Time Lord lore for a long time … though the use of a word so associated now with the Harry Potter Lexicon was a touch mismanaged. I do wonder if fan reaction would have been the same if they had used ‘philtres’ or ‘elixirs’. Meanwhile, I save my exasperation for the ‘she bears his imprint’ line and the lipstick on the tissue, because COME ON.

(Cue Time Crash and the ‘does he still have a beard?’ line that I still can’t quite believe David Tennant said out loud)

DAVID:

The whole potions thing didn’t bother me, either – you get used to stuff like that in Doctor Who. The show’s writers have always taken Clarke’s maxim that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to heart!

TEHANI:

It was a bit bizarre, but it didn’t bother me either – not in relation to the rest of the weirdness of the scene!

DAVID:

The Ood added some nice atmospherics, but I thought that they could have been quite easily taken from the story without losing too much! There were a few bits like that, but I was quite happy to just sit back and enjoy them.

TANSY:

My suspicion is that RTD was doing his usual thing of seeding intriguing ideas to be picked up on later … and of course, with a new showrunner coming in, many of them ended up getting left on the shelf. Which is fine, really. All the more material for book and audio writers to fill in later. I look forward to the 50 volume audio series Secrets of the Ood coming from Big Finish in 2023.

TEHANI:

Wilf as companion was simply marvellous, and I really enjoyed his performance throughout. He’s such a funny addition to the story, but he completely brings the pathos too.

TANSY:

I adore Wilf and Bernard Cribbins both, and all of his scenes with Tennant are gorgeous.

DAVID:

Wilf is the core of this story, as much as the Doctor is, really. I loved every scene he was in, whether it it was being played for laughs, or whether they were tugging at the heartstrings. His “Dad’s Army” was awesome! I can’t talk Wilf up enough, he is the Harry Sullivan of New Who.

Throughout this story we see someone determined to do the right thing and willing to sacrifice himself for others, and by doing so teaching the Doctor a lesson. There haven’t been many people able to do that.

I have to admit that I got a little angry with the Doctor’s speech when Wilf is stuck in the booth. It seemed incredibly arrogant, but more than that, un-Doctor-like. How many times have we heard the Doctor stress the importance of every individual, regardless of who they are?

TANSY:

Yeah I get more annoyed at him about that every time I see this story – not just the arrogance (which I would argue is really quite Doctor-like) but the selfishness. Since when does the Doctor resent the people he saves, or make them feel bad for his own sacrifices? Seeing Wilf’s lower lip wobble as the Doctor basically sneers at him for making a mistake that now means the Doctor has to take the hit for him is … well. It’s mean.

I remain very cross about Donna, and unhappy that Catherine Tate was brought back for this story only for NOTHING TO CHANGE about her memory, but I do love the team up of the old soldiers.

TEHANI:

I’m so with you on that Tansy – what a perfect opportunity for the Doctor to find a way to give her back her memory, her SELF, and completely wasted

DAVID:

While I was happy to see Donna end up with a degree of happiness in the end, it still didn’t take away the bad taste in my mouth completely. It was as if she had so much of herself stolen and ended up settling for far less than she deserved. All those memories gone, and so much of her growth and development and blossoming as a person taken away. Say what you want about RTD, he certainly sticks to his guns. I couldn’t have written what happened to Donna in “Journey’s End” in the first place, let alone gone away and thought about and still not taken the chance to fix it! *shakes head*

TANSY:

John Simm’s performance is something I deeply appreciate here – I know many fans were turned off by this reappearance of the ‘Skeletor’ Master with the superpowers and the savaging of food, but I can’t take my eyes off him when he’s on screen, and I quite like the idea of seeing some of the damage that has been caused by the Master’s constant attempts to beat death.

The Master’s more monstrous appearances (the TV Movie, for instance, and The Deadly Assassin/The Keeper of Traken back in the 1970s) are important, of course, and become more intriguing as ‘our Doctor’ gets closer and close to that key 12th regeneration, because whatever the writers end up pulling out of their hat to allow the Doctor to keep going past 13 (they’d BETTER) the one thing they can’t do is allow the Doctor to want more than his allotment of lives – as soon as he actually desires immortality, he becomes as bad as the Master.

Plus the sight of John Simm tearing a roast chicken to bits is horribly fascinating. I am so glad they gave him a cooked one!

DAVID:

This may put me in the minority, but I much preferred Simms in this to his last performance. While the Sith lightning straddled the line of ridiculousness at times, I thought he he conveyed a real sense of menace – he wasn’t simply eccentric but terrifyingly insane. I thought Simms was excellent right through.

And, Tansy, the first thing I thought when the skull first appeared was Deadly Assassin!

TEHANI:

I really liked Simm in this outing, but it’s also possible I love him better this time around too, because I’ve seen Life on Mars now! Having said that, I kept misremembering these scenes from the finale episodes of Season Three – it’s almost like most of “The End of Time” could have come directly after that!

DAVID:

It’s interesting, Tansy, that you mention about his lust for immortality, as compared to the Doctor. They did use the Doctor’s fear of death quite well in this story, but you are right in saying that we can’t have the Doctor seeking to increase his number of lives. I actually had more patience for him once he felt threatened by true death, rather than just a regeneration. It was poignant when he was saying that regeneration meant he, as in Ten, would be gone, but fancy whinging about a fresh new body like that to an 80+ year old man!

TANSY:

That is a very good point. They handled that aspect very nicely.

I like the rare scenes where the Doctor and Master are around each other in this story – not enough of that, but Simm and Tennant are brilliant together as always. I always laugh at the cliffhanger to Part One because just as the whole ‘I’m going to call myself Harold Saxon and become Prime Minister of England’ plot felt like something Roger Delgado’s Master would do, the whole ‘replacing every human on Earth with the Master’ likewise feels like something they would have done in the old days if they could have juggled the Chromakey to achieve the effect. Imagine Delgado’s beard in all those crowd scenes!

Rolling my eyes at you since 2009

I also really like every scene with the Vinvocci – they look great, and Sinead Keenan’s character in particular, rolling her eyes at the Doctor every chance she gets, and arguing with him. I would have loved it if she ended up as his companion. He needs someone who thinks he’s ridiculous and is prepared to get huffy at him when he is pompous.

It was cute that they pointed out how often aliens are just hanging around on earth (ShiMMMMER) doing their own thing. Makes me wonder how many more of them had to suddenly deal with a world of John Simms. Surely the Vinvocci weren’t the only ones…

TEHANI:

I think you’ve had some talks on Verity! recently Tansy, about the New Who trend of modern Earth companions. It would be cool to have a non-human companion or two – we’ve seen some great alien guest stars, so it’s not like they CAN’T do awesome and believable alien characters *cough* Madame Vastra *cough*

TANSY:

I suspect considering the incredible hours they already work to film this show, having a regular (rather than recurring) character with massive makeup or prosthetic requirements would be a logistical nightmare. It’s not like Star Trek which had much larger ensembles. But we have a long history of alien companions who don’t look that different to humans, and I’d be happy with one of those! Or a future/past one.

TEHANI:

And of course, we have the unexpected (to me, at least!) appearance of James Bond, er, Timothy Dalton as Gallifreyan Lord President Rassilon! I was thoroughly surprised by the ending of Part 1, I truly had no idea this was a story that brought Gallifrey back!

DAVID:

Well, I have long held the theory that James Bond was a Time Lord – it would explain why he is still active after 50 years, the different incarnations, plus we know that all Time Lords prefer to hang out in England!

TEHANI:

That is a scarily clever suggestion…

TANSY:

Ha, I like that! Though I immediately start wondering if that means that Moneypenny was the Rani…

DAVID:

Timothy Dalton certainly made the most of his appearance, and doesn’t hold back. The phrase “say it, don’t spray it” came to mind once or twice. Saying that, I really enjoyed his portrayal of Rassilon, though I found it interesting that character made a return to the series in the story. The idea that the Time Lords, and particularly Rassilon, were responsible for the Master turning evil was definitely a bold story choice, though I am not quite sure how I feel about the concept.

TEHANI:

Well, there’s a long tradition of big guest stars chewing the furniture when they appear in Doctor Who, right Tansy?

Paradise Towers was on Tehani’s TV the other day and I almost made her watch it…

TANSY:

There is, but Timothy Dalton definitely gives Ken Dodd and Joan Sims a run for their money! Richard Briers still wins the sparkly diva trophy for Most Acting Done In A Confined Space. But at least he didn’t visibly spit during his impersonation of a god architect inside a body impersonating Hitler.

I do rather like Dalton’s Rassilon, I have to say, even though his presence raises so many more questions than it answers (mostly questions beginning with the phrase WTF!?!?!). It’s just a shame that after all the gorgeous build up in Episode 1, ultimately so little is done with the Time Lords before they disappear back into the Time War.

In particular it’s hard to miss the fact that Time does not in fact End at any point in the story.

But damn, he wears those robes well.

DAVID:

One thing that I thought worked really well was the mysterious woman who appears to Wilf. I spent a lot of time trying to guess who she was meant to be, and judging from Wikipedia I am not the only person who came up with some interesting theories!

TEHANI:

I picked her as probably being the Doctor’s mother from the start, but unlike old school fans, I didn’t have any potential other Time Lords to choose from, really! RTD confirmed it was his mother, it seems?

TANSY:

He confirmed that was the intention, but if it’s not on screen it doesn’t count! I think it would have been fascinating if she was Susan, or indeed Susan’s mother (thereby the Doctor’s daughter) because there’s no reason that she should look younger than him. The idea that she was his mother felt weirdly disappointing to me – I don’t think you can throw an idea like that into the story without actually doing something with it.

In which case I am very glad she in fact wasn’t Susan or Romana because that means the options are still open for them both to be alive and well and not necessarily swallowed up by the Time War.

DAVID:

I think if she had been Susan it would have been brilliant. You’re right – there is no reason why she couldn’t appear older than the Doctor, and her calling him Grandfather would have been delightfully weird!

So, what did we think of the Naismiths? It takes a certain type of arrogance to have a book cover like that! I got a definite creepy vibe from their interactions with each other, but maybe that’s just me. I did think that they were curiously under utilised in the story, they just seemed to fade into irrelevance by the end.

TEHANI:

I agree – particularly as I had to double check to see who they were! The story could probably have been told without them, I think?

TANSY:

They were creepy and villainous and definitely had a very weird incesty vibe about them, but ultimately they were red herrings, I think. Then again… really the entire plot is a bunch of red herrings tied together with tinsel. But I forgive it a lot for the scene in which they all ran away from the Master with the Doctor still tied to a chair. I’m just shallow like that.

TEHANI:

There is perhaps one of the best, most sad-making bits of the entire series in this story as well – Tennant’s final line, “I don’t want to go,” and his delivery of it, are just HEART-WRENCHING!

TANSY:

That one’s a line which perhaps works best without the context of waiting around for a year of slow, long, drawn out goodbyes and being immersed in a noisy fandom that’s awash with resentment at a certain actor for prioritising his Shakespeare career over being a lovely Doctor forever. I rather think that a good chunk of the audience were yelling “well why did you quit then” at this point, while I know for a fact that an awful lot were, sadly, saying “Just get on with it.”

TEHANI:

Keep in mind I mainlined Tennant in a not-very-long period, so I was very immersed in his run, and yes, Tennant too

TANSY:

I imagine that helps a lot! And I was sad to see him go, plus being very suspicious about that terribly young Smith bloke they had waiting in the wings.

Personally … I’m still hmm. I like the Tenth Doctor a lot in most of this story, his mix of manic energy and deep pathos, but while I adore the Suck-It-Lord-Of-The-Rings farewell scenes that last forever, I don’t like that last line very much. It felt too meta to me.

TEHANI:

I think the meta is part of why I liked it!

DAVID:

Well, that seemed to me to be Tennant speaking to the camera as much as it was the Doctor – reminded me of his line in Time Crash when he told Five how much he loved him.

TEHANI:

Yes, that’s it I think!

TANSY:

Let’s talk about those closing scenes. Conventional fan wisdom says they went on too long and made everyone yell ‘hurry up and die’ at the screen. A pox on them! I love every single one of those scenes. I love that the Doctor, knowing his time is up, says ‘screw you’ to the universe and goes around making a bunch of changes to the timeline to keep his people happy. I love that he not only saves Luke but that he has the class to say goodbye to Sarah this time around (SOB), that he bashed a Sontaran on the head to save Martha and Mickey, and that he took that one last opportunity to see Rose without her knowing it was him.

TEHANI:

Oh, not me, I LOVED THEM ALL! It was marvellous, a bit like seeing everyone in “Journey’s End”, but more so.

DAVID:

Conventional fan wisdom can bite me. I loved every minute of it. Yes, it might have been fanservice, but it was also quite in line with the story – the Doctor saying that he wouldn’t take more time for himself and cheat time for his own gain, but that while he had the power to do something for others he would seize that opportunity.

TEHANI:

“Conventional fan wisdom can bite me.” ? BEST LINE EVER! *runs off to put it on t-shirts*

DAVID:

That little moment with Sarah Jane was lovely, and I thought the whole wedding scene was well done. It was entirely fitting that the Doctor doesn’t just say goodbye to Wilf, but to Sylvia as well, considering how their relationship has evolved over the past few seasons.

The lottery ticket was a clever touch, but it still shows that the Donna we end up with isn’t the Donna that we loved, not in all her fullness. It’s as if they minimised her, and everything she had been through, to someone much more shallow.

TANSY:

Yes, I agree. The bit about her dad actually makes me cry a little bit EVERY SINGLE TIME, mostly because of the look on Sylvia’s face. But the idea that … money will fix everything for Donna is just shallow all around.

TEHANI:

Of anything in all of New Who so far, Donna’s treatment still makes me the most cross – if there’s anyone out there who is okay with how she was treated, please let me know how you reconcile it! This fan-fiction is the only way I can… (although in searching for the link to that one, I discovered there’s a WHOLE SWATHE of fan fic that has Donna regenerating and going off to have adventures – I like this idea very much!)

TANSY:

Okay, the setting a (grieving!) Jack Harkness up with a hot date thing wasn’t quite as classy as the rest, but how hilarious is it that they staged an entire cantina scene just for that? Having read A Writer’s Tale and knowing that RTD had a massive crush on Russell Tovey and thus this is an entire wish fulfillment scene totally had me in stitches. I don’t care if it’s self-indulgent, that’s what this episode was for, and it made me laugh in between the quivery lip moments.

Yes, I do sniffle every time I get to the final scenes, OK?

TEHANI:

Perfectly understandable.

DAVID:

Seemed to be a lot of pollen or dust in the air when I was watching the ending.

TANSY:

MARTHA AND MICKEY, DISCUSS!

TEHANI:

PERFECT! What’s to discuss?

DAVID:

Wonderful. I love them as a couple. I love the man Mickey turned into, and I always thought Martha was awesome.

TANSY:

Excellent. I was delighted with that scene. I know that many were distressed she seemed to have jettisoned Dr Tom from “Last of the Time Lords”, but really he’ll be much happier with Miranda.

TEHANI:

*snerk* I had to think about that for a minute, then I laughed a lot!

TANSY:

It makes a lot of sense to me, as Mickey and Martha both have that deep experience in common, not only of travelling in the TARDIS and then coming back to “ordinary” life, but also playing second banana to the lovefest that was Ten/Rose. Plus I love the idea of them going “freelance” in using their skills of fighting alien invasions to do exactly that.

That scene makes me squee a bit now too because Dan Starkey as the Sontaran! Apparently he was the only Sontaran actor available to film that tiny bit (he was like third Sontaran from the left in “The Poison Sky”). You can recognise him because of the gap in his teeth. Cough, remember him, he might be important later.

DAVID:

It didn’t take long for me to realise that Mickey and Rose would never end up together, no matter how much my inner romantic might have wanted them to. After all, Mickey would have always been second best, and he deserved far more than that. It’s a much happier ending, and as Tansy says, makes a whole lot of sense. Who else would understand what the other had been through, and how could you back to “normality” after the sights and wonders they had seen?

TANSY:

The scene I always forget of the farewells is the one with the very pointedly named Verity Newman, granddaughter of poor old Joan from “Human Nature”. A nice touch that the Doctor checked in on her, and that he was still thinking (at least a tiny bit) of the woman he left behind.

TEHANI:

That was a very nice touch indeed.

DAVID:

That was lovely. Still one of my favourite episodes from New Who, and it makes sense that the Doctor would be thinking of her amongst all the other goodbyes. And, the shout out to Verity Lambert is one of those things that have shown that this is a continuation of the old series, not a reboot. Something that, in fairness, one has to say RTD has been very good at.

TANSY:

And then Rose and Jackie! I enjoy that scene in particular, the very young Rose a few months before her shop blows up and her life changes forever. And Jackie, unlucky in love but still ready for a party. Such a nice way to say goodbye.

So David, what did you think of your first glimpse of Matt Smith? He’s got legs, you know, and arms, and blimey, what a chin. Still not ginger, though. Do we think the TARDIS blew up because she was cross at losing David Tennant too?

DAVID:

Well, I will talk more about this in our next installment, but Matt Smith was very different than I had expected. I had tried very hard to keep away from spoilers and had only seen a few photographs of him, and I was expecting someone who looked much younger, for a start. I’ve never encountered a Doctor played by someone younger than me! So, I was little concerned how I was going to handle it, but my doubts were quite quickly dispelled.

While he immediately seemed quite charismatic, it was a very different energy to David Tennant which I think was the right way to go. I really enjoyed the scene where he is exploring his body (haha bad choice of words, I guess) – very amusing.

I do wonder whether the ginger comment was a bit of a foreshadowing of things to come?

TEHANI:

We shall have to see…

TANSY:

And of course we’re not just saying a final goodbye to Mr Tennant, and all the companions he met along the way, but also to Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner, whose heroic efforts brought our show back. Which means it’s time again to show the most excellent Wrap Party vids which sum up their achievement!

PREVIOUS “New Who In Conversations”

“Rose”, S01E01

“Dalek”, S01E06

“Father’s Day, S01E08

“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10

“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13

Series One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special

“New Earth”, S02E01

“School Reunion,” S02E03

“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04

“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, S02E12/13

Series Two Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

“The Runaway Bride”, 2006 Christmas Special

“Smith and Jones”, S03E01

The Shakespeare Code & Gridlock, S0302-03

Human Nature/The Family of Blood S0308-09

Blink S0310

Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Timelords S0311-13

“Voyage of the Damned,” 2007 Christmas Special

Series 3 Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

Partners in Crime, S0401

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S0405 S0406

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S0408 S0409

Turn Left, S0411

The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, SO412-13

Season 4 Report Cards: Tansy, Tehani, David

The Specials

Makes Tartarus Look Like The Elysian Fields [Xena Rewatch Season 4 Overview]

Season Four of Xena is… not very good. This is especially noticeable because the okay to mediocre to terrible episodes are loaded up quite heavily in the first half of the season, while the best episodes are left teetering right at the end, which is not very helpful when most of your audience has strained their eyeballs due to rolling them too hard.

Mostly, I found this one a slog. The India episodes are mostly not that bad, but I was well and truly over the spiritual quest by the time we got there.

Having said that, I admire the fact that Gabrielle’s trauma from Season 3 is addressed rather than swept under the rug. Her relationship with Xena may have been healed with a song back in The Bitter Suite, but the tragedy of Hope and the after-effects of Gabrielle’s repeated sacrifices have taken a toll on her.

Xena, it has to be said, got HER spiritual journey and mourning over with pretty much by the end of the opening two-parter of the season, but then Xena is more equipped to deal with guilt, angst and background misery on a daily basis, while it came as something of a shock to Gabrielle.

Other aspects shook this season up quite considerably: having (mostly) written out Callisto as a villain, they experimented with some different Big Bads for Xena. Something I’d never actually noticed before is the lack of Ares in this season as well – he would have been the obvious go-to villain to beef up in the wake of Callisto, but instead the series worked on creating some new female nasties, while also working towards the climax of the Caesar story. Like Callisto, Ares only made one appearance and at the very end of the season (and in his case, not in Xena’s usual continuity but in the far future).

I don’t love Alti or Najara but I do appreciate that the show was trying something different with them. The same can even be said of the India episodes, which aren’t nearly as bad (apart from The Way) as I remember.

Many familiar elements of the show were bid farewell in this season, including Gabrielle’s outfit, hair and fighting stick, and the recurring characters Hope, Ephiny, Pompey and Caesar.

In Season 4, Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship status, while still not overtly declared, begins to feel more like a common law marriage than anything else. They are accepted as a couple by their family and friends, they describe each other regularly as soulmates, and more importantly they both have a quiet confidence in each other which cannot be rattled by any outside force (though Najara has a red hot go at it).

You can still watch this show with a heterosexual lens, as I certainly did the first few times around, but it’s harder to do in 2013. What has really changed in Season 4 is that you no longer have to close your eyes or mentally edit out certain elements in order to view this purely as a lesbian relationship: there are no longer ANY hints of romance between current Xena or Gabrielle and any men that they meet.

The only man that Xena has any kind of romantic or sexual interaction with here is Borias in flashbacks.

Gabrielle’s friendship with Eli is firmly platonic (in her eyes anyway) – far more overtly so than her interactions with Najara. Joxer’s love for Gabrielle remains unrequited. Autolycus seems to have learned to keep his smouldering gaze to himself. Ares doesn’t even show up to flirt with the ladies (though he does have a good smoulder at Ted Raimi’s future Xena).

Another major shift which occurs in this season is the subject of the afterlife, and the acknowledgement that there are options other than Tartarus and the Elysian Fields (the bits that Hades has always been in charge of). Amazons have their own Land of the Dead. Xena is shown the repercussions of the fact that she will reincarnate into the future, and find redemption and peace in those future lives. Then, right at the end in Ides of March, there’s another revelation. Callisto tried for oblivion, but ‘it didn’t take’ – this time around, she ended up in a place called Hell. Run by a chap who isn’t very nice, but takes an interest in villains and politics. No horns have turned up as yet, but I think you see where I’m going with this!

Xena had mashed some Old Testament stories in with its Everything BC Is Good worldview before, and had teased the audience with their preconceptions around a ‘One God’ before revealing that Dahak was in fact a different kettle of fish to the ‘One God of the Israelites’. But from Ides of March onwards, there was going to be a LOT more Christian imagery and mythology mixed in with the Greek and Roman.

Heaven and hell, angels and demons… oh, yes. All that to come. It’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Season Highlights:

The Play’s the Thing

Endgame

Ides of March

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Season Lowlights:

A Family Affair

In Sickness and in Health

Daughter of Pomira

Paradise Found

The Way

Bite, Taste, Squish – the A Trifle Dead Book Trailer!

So, A Trifle Dead, my debut crime novel, is all about food and frocks and murder. Now students from Curtin University have made me an awesome book trailer which not only captures the tone of the book (cheeky, glamorous, and occasionally murderous) but especially my main character who loves vintage fashion and making an artistic statement almost as much as she likes making custard from scratch.

I just know that Tabitha has that apron. But for her co-workers’ sake, I hope she doesn’t make QUITE as much mess when she prepares trifle for the cafe…

Basically, prepare for food porn.

Benny at Big Finish [WHO-50—1998]

If 90’s Doctor Who was all about the books, with the greatest lasting effect of the TV movie being the change between Virgin New Adventures and BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures, then the 00’s (or at least the first half of that decade) was surely all about the audio. This is where it started.

An independent company called Big Finish (yes, named after that episode of Press Gang, a show created by that Steven Moffat when he was barely out of his teens himself) was formed by several creative chums who had produced many of the better known underground fan films of the 90’s (often featuring characters and actors from Doctor Who’s history in names-changed-to-prevent-copyright-violation kind of ways) and their dream was to make new, original Doctor Who audio plays.

Sensibly, they decided they probably had one shot to convince the BBC to give them the official license, and so instead of putting Colin Baker on speed dial straight away, they chose a closer-to-home science fiction property to work on first.

Enter Bernice Summerfield again!

Not only had Benny’s cranky, witty personality been one of the most creatively successful legacies of the Virgin New Adventures Doctor Who books, but she had also proved herself as an independent lead character in the series that Virgin continued to publish after the BBC license for the Doctor Who bits was revoked.

Benny had a fan following, a massive backlist of story material to borrow from, and most importantly, the stories they could tell with her in an audio series would be a fabulous showcase of the kind of Doctor Who that Big Finish was capable of producing.

So in 1998, the first three Professor Bernice Summerfield audio plays (of a six story season) were released on CD. Each play was painstakingly adapted (mostly by Jacqueline Rayner) from one of the original novels (some from the NA Bernice range and some from the earlier NA Doctor Who range), altered to create a new and coherent canon.

Season 1 Audio Benny had the same default setting as her original solo series – she was a resident archaeology professor at the university of Dellah, divorced from Jason Kane, and accompanied by her cat Wolsey. She had once, it was loosely hinted, travelled through time and space with a certain friend, who had bestowed Time Rings upon Jason and herself during their marriage, but while there was a space for the Doctor and his TARDIS in her past, it remained discreetly unspoken.

Some of the novels adapted for this season of audios originally featured BBC-owned characters such as the Doctor and Ace, but were now reworked with different characters. If, like me, you hadn’t read those particular novels, the seams were by no means obvious, and the stories built up a rich and detailed universe for Benny to mess around in.

I am still extremely fond of this season, and was somewhat crestfallen when I reached Season 2, only to discover that Dellah was now well in Benny’s past, and there was a whole new cast of characters around her (however, they were pretty awesome characters, so I coped).

The richness of the novel adaptions worked very well creatively (at least for this listener), but I found out afterwards that they had represented a logistical nightmare, with the rights of individual authors having to be juggled along with the BBC license, and it made more sense to commission original scripts from scratch into the future.

Sigh. Mostly I just want Jacqueline Rayner to be writing Benny forever and always. This first season definitely taught me to look out for her byline.

But what of those first stories, the ones published in 1998?

Oh No It Isn’t, adapted from the first novel (by Paul Cornell) of the solo Benny NA range, introduced Lisa Bowerman as our heroine. This great piece of casting not only brought the character to life wonderfully, but also proved an asset for Big Finish in other ways – Lisa has gone on to be one of their regular directors, notably of the excellent paranormal Victorian mystery series Jago and Litefoot.

Lisa once appeared in the original Doctor Who TV series, playing Karra the cat woman in Survival, the final broadcast Sylvester McCoy story. Realising that their best chance of building an audience for Benny audios was to appeal to Doctor Who fans, the Big Finish team drew in some big name guest actors for each play of the first season, beginning with Nicholas Courtney, Sophie Aldred and Elisabeth Sladen.

Oh No It Isn’t is a fun, wicked story. Benny is taking students on a dig when their spaceship is involved with a collision and… they all wake up in a world inspired by pantomime.

It’s a bizarre choice with which to start a series, I have to say. Imagine if they had launched Xena: Warrior Princess with The Bitter Suite, or if the pilot of Buffy was actually Once More With Feeling.

Still, I love this story to bits. Lisa Bowerman’s deadpan Benny is hilarious as she drops into the role of pantomime boy, with all the gender ramifications that implies, and has to deal with the fact that her cat is not speaking to her.

Nicholas Courtney plays the cat. I’m not even kidding here.

His arch, plummy tones are perfect for the role (I so resisted the urge to say purrrrfect) and he manages to turn the absurd situation into one of great dignity and feeling. The point at which Wolsey realises that he is going to lose all this intelligence again when the story ends is heartbreaking. It’s basically like The Doctor’s Wife, only with Nicholas Courtney as a giant talking feline.

Sure, some other things happen in this beautifully scripted comedy (I shouldn’t enjoy the fact that one of the dwarves is called Bitchy as much as I do) but even if it only consisted of the Bernice and Wolsey scenes, it would be my favourite and my best.

Things take a turn for the plotty in Beyond the Sun, written and adapted by Matt Jones, a far more serious adventure. More to the point, Benny’s ex husband Jason Kane turns up, which makes everything extra awesome!

The sparky energy between the two of them, and Benny’s ongoing exasperation at her ex’s dodgy and suspicious behaviour, makes for a surprisingly fun storyline and I like what we learn about Benny as a character once Jason rolls into town and they set off in search of a civilisation’s ancient super weapon.

Casting Sophie Aldred as Jason’s current someone special and sinister con woman is a clever choice that alludes to the weird shenanigans between Benny, Jason and Ace (I mean, Dorothée) back in Happy Endings. Like the previous story, we also see Bernice working with students in between saving the universe.

Finally, Time Rings ahoy with Walking to Babylon!

An interesting quirk of Benny and Jason’s history is that the Doctor gave them a Time Ring each upon their decision to get married and leave the TARDIS – but they can only use the rings together. Their divorce means a lot of complex negotiation (and/or active theft) if they want to time travel anywhere. Awkward!

Walking to Babylon, adapted from a Benny solo novel by Kate Orman, is actually the beginning of an audio trilogy in which Benny and Jason are stranded across several different war torn Earth eras. All three of the stories are excellent, and represent interesting growth for the characters.

Strangely, the source material these plays come from are not linked at all, and in fact the second and third play in the “trilogy” are based on earlier Doctor Who novels from before Benny and Jason met.

Timey wimey much?

For the purposes of discussing 1998, though, I’m going to stop at Walking to Babylon, though I highly recommend Birthright and Just War.

There’s a spectacular story concept in this one, involving a time corridor stretching back from Benny’s time to Ancient Babylon. To prevent a race called The People from destroying Babylon with a singularity bomb, Bernice must literally walk to Babylon and involve herself with the politics there.

This play has (again!) great performances by Lisa Bowerman and Stephen Fewell as Benny and Jason, and a gorgeous guest star turn by Elisabeth Sladen as the powerful Ninan-ashtammu.

Given that the previous story showed Jason having a love life after Benny, it was rather refreshing to see her having a turn at hooking up with someone else, in this case John Lafayette (Barnaby Edwards), an Edwardian gentleman who accidentally made his way down the time corridor. The fact that Benny as well as Jason are open to other offers makes their post-marriage relationship feel a lot more equal.

All in all, while I get the impression that Big Finish are a little embarrassed by these early works, and have never made them available for digital download (the CDs can be purchased very cheaply), I continue to be fond of them – they got me hooked on the Benny character in a way that the novels never quite managed, and lured me in to follow her through the many stories that followed (I’ve just caught up, somewhere around the 14th season, though they started numbering them again after 11!)

I can absolutely see why these Benny audios were sufficient evidence for the BBC to decide that it might be worth letting Big Finish work with the Big TARDIS toys, and it turned out to be a most satisfying investment in the future of Doctor Who – and, indeed, in the ongoing legacy of the astounding and legendary Professor Bernice Summerfield.

ELSEWHERE ON 1998:

The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin [The Doctor Who Book Club Podcast]

PREVIOUSLY:

Wonder Woman is Not the Problem

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while.

How often do we hear about The Problem with Wonder Woman?

That one is actually a very pro-Wonder Woman article which addresses many of the sillier myths around The Problem, but the headline makes me crazy and the comments drive me completely round the twist. Because I see that headline, or an equivalent of it, and those comments all the time. Across social media and blogs and at conventions, all I hear are reasons why there isn’t a Wonder Woman movie yet, why there can’t ever be a Wonder Woman movie, despite the fact that she has the most independent brand recognition of any other female superhero ever.



Joss Whedon couldn’t do it, so no one else can.

Her villains are all stupid.

Her origin story is dumb.

The costume is a problem.

Steve Trevor is a problem.

David E Kelley had her sitting on a couch eating ice cream.

No one will write her right (except Joss Whedon).

No actress can play her.

No actress can wear the costume without being attacked by feminists and/or looking silly.

Movies about female superheroes always suck.

Hey didn’t you know she was all about kinky bondage stuff back in the day? Hurr hurr.

Wonder Woman isn’t RELATABLE.

I think Shoshanna at Tor is right on the money with her article – the “problem” with Wonder Woman is that most people don’t know how to deal with an unapologetically feminist character. Writers panic. Executives panic. The way that women in particular are written in Hollywood is so vastly different to the way that superheroes tend to be written, that when the two concepts are combined, fear and cosmetics companies and ice-cream tend to get thrown at the resulting mess until it goes away.

Unless Joss Whedon is doing the writing, but he can’t be everywhere at once, people.

But you know what?

Wonder Woman is not the problem.

Her supposed lack of unsilly villains are most certainly not a problem, not in a Hollywood that managed to deal in a clever, post-modern way with The Mandarin, one of the most alarmingly racist comics villains of all time. I mean, Ares worked JUST FINE for Xena, Circe is wicked fabulous, Cheetah… could probably only be used for comic relief but nothing wrong with that, and if all else fails there’s the whole Amazon vs. Man’s World storyline to address. There’s plenty to do with Wonder Woman that doesn’t require a supervillain AT ALL.

(and for those who fret that running out of credible villains for future movies might in some way be a problem, the plot for Wonder Woman 2 would obviously be the Artemis sequence where Diana loses the Wonder Woman name and has to win it back. Duh.)

Diana’s origin story, by the way, is actually exceedingly awesome. Pilot crashes on island, discovers lost civilisation of extremely technologically advanced Amazons, Diana the daughter of the Queen wins a tournament for the right to return him to Man’s World, once there Diana finds all sorts of uses for her strength and skills and turns herself into Wonder Woman. It works in the present day as easily as it did in the 1940’s. Sure, you’d have to replace the brief spell she works in the circus to acquire her costume with a roller derby scene or two, but that is in no way a flaw.

Also you probably have to leave out the part where the Amazons on the island ride giant kangas in gladiatorial combat, which breaks my heart a bit, but we all make sacrifices.

If you really don’t want to set it in the present day, you can in fact set it in the 1940’s. Or 1950’s. Or 1960’s. Because all of those would be brilliant.

Old comics do tend to have a certain amount of stupid all over them (or if they go far enough in the wrong direction, high camp ridiculawesome), but vintage Wonder Woman comics are in no way more stupid than, for example, those starring Superman, Batman, Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and OMG THOR.

But if really truly you can’t bring yourself to honour Wonder Woman’s origin story (which is just as good as the baby shot out of Krypton or the parents killed in Crime Alley, except that her Mum gets to still be alive which is rather special) then go for the boy-pleasing current Cliff Chiang/Brian Azzarello run, which is basically Wonder Woman as Xena with a side of Christopher Nolaneque grittiness. Or the popular Gail Simone run in which Diana is an FBI agent and has to balance her ‘man’s world’ duties with her obligations as an Amazon. Or start her off without her memory like the Strazcinski run. Or give her the Emma Peel treatment like they actually did in the 1970′s. Or adapt the 12 Labours of Wonder Woman storyline.

Wonder Woman has had 600+ issues over the years. I’m pretty sure we can find a story or two in there worthy of a big screen movie.

It’s not like we NEED to see Wonder Woman becoming Wonder Woman. Everyone kind of knows who she is.

Then there’s the costume. And you know what? The costume is a problem. However, the costume is largely a problem as drawn over the last 20 years. Superhero costumes are always a problem, because things drawn on to comic characters don’t generally work that well when you get real people to wear them. This has been a problem for every superhero movie of the last thirty years and frankly it was a problem of all the ones before that too but we were more forgiving back then. The X-Men solved the problem. If really truly no one in Hollywood has the faintest idea how to do it with Wonder Woman, then get Ngila Dickson on speed dial. She’s the woman who dressed Xena, and later did the costumes for The Lord of the Rings. She can deal.

Take a moderately attractive actress. Don’t pretend she is a cartoon character and that all you need to do is ink in a few scraps of red and blue paint. Let her wear clothes that cover a reasonable amount of her body, which in some way evoke the spirit of Wonder Woman’s costume. Check out Tumblr and Pinterest to see an infinite variety of what fan artists and cosplayers have done over the years to celebrate the possibilities of her costume. Make sure your actress can run in the outfit and hit things without her boobs falling out. Job done.

STEVE TREVOR IS WONDERFUL.

He is a male character in the military who looks at a woman who is more physically powerful than him, and he finds that incredibly attractive. THIS IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STEVE TREVOR.

Fancying Wonder Woman does not make him weak. He doesn’t need to compete with her. He has his own stuff going on. Also sometimes, he can point her at things and ask her to hit them while he files the reports. He can fight beside her, or he can get out of her way.

Yes, he was occasionally written as a raging sexist or an idiot, but that was down to writer panic – there’s plenty of material showing him as being unthreatened by Diana’s awesomeness, and happy to give Wonder Woman credit for saving his life many times.

If you go down the ‘Wonder Woman pretends to be Diana Prince and becomes his nurse/secretary but he won’t look twice at her’ storyline rabbit hole, try a) not to write Steve as being monumentally stupid and b) try to remember that this is not just a gender reversed Lois Lane situation. Superman wants Lois to love Clark because he’s the version he thinks of as his real self. Wonder Woman IS Diana’s real self, so it’s actually GOOD that Steve fancies her more than the more traditionally docile Diana Prince. A great many comics seemed to be confused on that point.

I’m also not entirely sure why it’s even necessary for Steve to remain ignorant that the Amazon who rescued him on the island is in fact Wonder Woman. The story works better if he knows that – as the Gail Simone animated movie showed quite effectively!

I’m not going to address the ice-cream part. But you know what? I would watch the hell out of a Wonder Woman movie or TV show or whatever in which she sat around in her underwear eating ice-cream when sad, or hanging out with her girlfriends, as long as she was a rounded character in other ways, her dialogue was clever, and she got to be unapologetically heroic.

We need to be aware that female characters are judged on a far more minute level than male characters. We all loved The Avengers eating shawarma. Let Diana eat some damn ice-cream without being all judgy about it. Though it would be pretty awesome if that bit was after the credits, and she was eating it with Batman, and then Nick Fury turned up to ask them to form the Justice League…

The fear that no one will write her right is… well. A legitimate concern. I would hate to have a crappy, badly written Wonder Woman movie. But all I’m seeing here is fear that the task is impossible, and it’s not impossible. Gail Simone wrote a damn good Wonder Woman movie, which happened to be made as an animated film. You can go watch it RIGHT NOW. It’s pretty great. Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti wrote a fabulous Wonder Woman origin story for Ame-Comi Girls which did that really annoying ‘let’s write her as a teenager’ thing and still worked excellently.

If writers are good writers and are not threatened by or terrified by the idea of a female superhero (NOT A NOVEL CONCEPT, PEOPLE) then the writing is not automatically doomed before it starts. Joss Whedon is not the only person, surely, who can make this sucker fly.

Actresses:

Get a good one.

Not too skinny.

Gina Torres would do nicely. Or Jennifer Lawrence. But come on, this isn’t rocket science.

There are a lot of actresses in Hollywood. I’m sure if the script is good enough, you can get a good one. It’s not like you need the brand recognition of a star.

Chris Evans wasn’t as famous as Captain America when he got the role. Lynda Carter was definitely not as famous as Wonder Woman when she got HER role, and she did a damn good job. She’s a big part of the reason that the character remains so fondly in the heart of so many women today who have never read a comic in their life.

Almost no actress you get is going to be as famous as Wonder Woman herself.

That’s okay.

Just cast the right person, and pick someone who looks like she can hit things without her arms shattering.

Also, try to choose a director who thinks letting women act is more important than making sure they look pretty in every single frame. It will pay off in the long run.

Oh, and don’t talk to me about the bondage thing. It wasn’t the most important element of the early comics, regardless of the supposed intent of WW’s creator. This particular salacious detail gets talked about over and over, usually to belittle the character and to derail any serious discussion about why generation after generation of women are still talking about her, and fascinated by her even though she hasn’t featured in any live action media since the 70′s.

Let’s not reduce her to a dirty joke, people. Stay classy.

As for the the ‘not relatable’ comment, surely the most enraging thing anyone has ever said about Wonder Woman ever (and it gets said a lot) – you know what, if you can’t relate to a cool, witty, powerful female superhero, that’s not my problem. But this is a common perception, so it is something worth addressing. As I already mentioned, female characters are judged far more harshly for their flaws AND their perfections. So you can’t create a Wonder Woman that is criticism proof, sadly. (this is not a Wonder Woman problem, it’s a human race problem)

But here are a few ways to make a character more likeable despite being a superpowered, beautiful woman (even typing those words made me annoyed all over again) – and no, tacking fakeout flaws like ‘clumsy’ or ‘unlucky in love’ are not going to make people hold back from the Mary Sue accusation:

1. Witty dialogue. You don’t have to be Joss Whedon to work out that people like characters who are funny while being powerful. Yes, even ladies. Xena and Buffy both had this going on. Wonder Woman often has the reputation for being strait-laced and severe but there’s no actual reason she has to be written that way – plenty of her comics show her having a strong sense of irony and sarcasm.

2. Being good at their job – a great way to make audiences sympathise with a character, including villains.

3. A script that remembers that women are people. And that includes women in cinema audiences, as well as superheroes.

4. Don’t have her hook up with Superman. At all. Unless it’s a massive, teasing red herring to lead into a Lois Lane/Wonder Woman team up movie, in which case, go nuts.

Lasso or no lasso, there is some great material in the 60+ Wonder Woman comics that could be mined for a new, modern script along with some of the more successful recent reboots of the character – and the fact that there is the occasional bit of stupid along the way shouldn’t in any way be used as an excuse to dismiss or disregard the ongoing success of Wonder Woman as a character and an icon. All sixty year old comics have occasional stupid bits in them.

Oh wait, that’s right, there aren’t that many superhero comics that have lasted more than sixty years. Maybe Wonder Woman is something special, or something.

Maybe a movie with her in it might actually be awesome, if we stopped freaking out about the ‘problems’ ahead of time.

Maybe we should just let it be awesome, and hope for the best. Who knows what the fresh imagination of some new, open-minded creators might bring to the table?

PS: Yes, this entire rant is a long-winded way of saying I’ll be putting up some more Where The Wonder Women Are essays very soon.

Friday Links is Saving Mr Banks

Much of the publishing talk this week (apart from the bit about James Frenkel leaving Tor) has been about this Tor.uk post about how publishers aren’t really the problem with gender inequity in SF/F – it’s the authors who are failing to submit! On the bright side it did include lovely, beautifully presented statistics to back up the editor’s opinion. It also represents an official statement that Tor.uk are very welcoming to female authors, which is good to know. Just a shame that it also dips into defensiveness rather than acknowledging that sexism is inevitably an aspect to be considered when looking at the publishing industry.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia addresses the phenomenon where women seem to be better represented in the urban fantasy/paranormal romance and YA categories, by pointing out how often female writers are placed in those categories regardless of what they write: On Sexism and the Slushpile.

Ladybusinessplus on Tumblr responds by commenting about how the ‘it’s not us’ mentality is not actually helpful.

i09 followed this up by looking at some of the comments on the Tor.uk post (including one by our Sean!) and exploring some of the ramifications of the post – I think the comment by Annalee Newitz brings the clearest ‘maybe this article isn’t all that’ perspective when she points out that the majority of books sold are not drawn from the slushpile, they are requested by the publisher, so showing the slushpile stats only gives us one piece of the picture.

Coming back to the ‘women writers getting reviewed and selling reviews’ issue, Mary Beard weighed in with her perspective as a reviews editor, and how surprised she was to crunch the numbers and discover that the Classics section of the Times Literary Supplement wasn’t as equal or female-dominant as it was perceived…

In other linky goodness, Stella Young talks about why it’s not okay to pat wheelchair users on the head, with our new/old Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as the latest public example of the patronising phenomenon.

Mary Robinette Kowal talks about How To Identify a Rabid Weasel (if you’re worried it might be you, it’s not you) and how Bad Apples can damage communities – the trolls you can’t afford to ignore.

Speaking of which, Heather Urbanski talks about the important issue of sexual harassment policies, and why they don’t in fact impact on free speech.

It’s nice to have some positive discussion about SFWA and what they are doing right now! The King of Elfland’s Second Cousin looks at some of the Board’s recent activity with A Healthy Dose of Professionalism.

Diana Peterfreund on The Home Stretch and Hating Female Characters.

A lovely review at Strange Horizons of Where Thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Poe (Lethe Press) featuring a story by meeeeeee.

The Guardian have been curating an interesting series of interviews with self-published authors (each featured author recommends the next one to be included) – check out Tracey Bloom’s story about how the lack of a UK publisher in her US-published romantic comedy led to her doing it herself.

The Mary Sue reviews Long Live The Queen: A Game of Strategy, Intrigue, and Horrible, Adorable Death

Bitch Magazine talks about the feminism in Miyazaki’s films.

The Eight Doctors (or: Uncle Terrance Cleans House) [WHO-50—1997]

The Story So Far: The Virgin New Adventures run of books had been going since 1991, building up a substantial universe of original characters and settings as well as developing the dark, Machiavellian character of the Seventh Doctor and extending the futures of old favourite TV characters like Ace and the Brig as well as new companions Benny, Chris and Roz.

They had built a substantial, reliable audience of fans who enjoyed the dark themes, the emphasis on adult science fiction concepts, and the continuing characters. A bit like Torchwood. However, some fans dislike this new version of the Doctor Who Universe, seeing it as over-hyped, over-violent and deliberately, gratuitously ‘darrrk’ to the point of ridiculousness. Dare I say, also a bit like Torchwood.

Some of us were on the fence, liking bits and pieces of this universe, but not having committed QUITE to reading every single one of the books, except the ones by authors they liked or that looked like they had a lot of Bernice in them.

But all things come to a close. The TV Movie marked the end not only of the Seventh Doctor’s life, but also the contract that Virgin had with the BBC – which the Beeb now chose not to renew. The Eighth Doctor meant a chance at a fresh start, the potential for a new TV series and a new run of BBC original Doctor Who novels.

The TV series never eventuated, but the books relaunched, now billed as the Eighth Doctor Adventures (or EDAs) with a companion series of Past Doctor Adventures (or PDAs). Many fans complained about the transition, as it looked very much like the BBC were simply trying to cash in on the hard work of the Virgin range, copying their format, but ditching much that was cherished.

Others (like me at the time) were completely unaware of this fan rage and simply appreciated the fact that there was a new jumping on point. As with the original New Adventures, I read a large number of the books from the first 18 months of the BBC original series, and very few of the later ones.

If I ended up reading more of the BBC books than the NAs, it was probably because a) I was an adult now myself and better placed to appreciate the grown up aspects of this fictional universe and b) the covers were prettier.

Meanwhile, Virgin gave Bernice Summerfield her own series of New Adventures, in a universe without the Doctor or any other BBC-owned aspect of Doctor Who. This must have caused a few headaches for the writers considering that her academic speciality was Draconians… in any case, Bernice would be reunited with the Doctor Who universe (if rarely the Doctor himself) a few years later when she got her audio series, but in the mean time she got to play with a simplified version of her own universe. She was forcibly divorced, as a single female action hero apparently made more sense, but hey. Female action heroes leading their own popular range of books, not to be sneezed at.

Meanwhile, the first Eighth Doctor Adventure released was the imaginatively titled The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks himself, one of the most long-running contributing writers of the TV and novelisation versions of Doctor Who. He had written four books for the Virgin range (both NA and MA) including one in the Timewyrm series, and it it unsurprising he was also called upon to launch the new BBC range (which borrowed heavily on the Virgin stable of writers, naturally).

Also, I should add, this book is a thing of fannish beauty. I am surprised it isn’t raved about more, in the same nostalgic vibe that The Five Doctors is now celebrated. It’s ridiculously fun, fast-paced, and so completely awash in continuity that it makes your head spin. I was worried about re-reading it after so long, especially after the Doctor Who Book Club Podcast were fairly “meh” about it, but OH it was fun to read.

I have a problem with the way that current fans dismiss any callback to previous Doctor Who continuity as ‘fan service’ as if it’s there entirely to appease them and they’re having none of it. It’s akin to yelling ‘porn!’ at a TV screen every time there’s a sex scene – sure, it’s sometimes accurate, especially if you’re watching Game of Thrones, but not always appropriate. Our show has a long history, and I believe that hinting at the past is as appealing to new viewers as to old school fans – there’s a big difference between revealing that Doctor Who is bigger on the inside, and simply flashing frilly TARDIS-coloured knickers at the universe. Mostly, I believe, especially in the recent Series 7, it’s the former and not the latter.

The Eight Doctors, however, is the other end of the spectrum. It’s not about getting in new readers. It sets its sight clearly on fans who know all about The Tribe of Gum, The War Games, The Sea Devils, Carnival of Monsters, The Daemons, The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time, State of Decay, The Five Doctors, and Trial of a Time Lord.

It’s a novel that flashes its blue fanboy knickers at the universe and says HELLO SAILOR YOU’RE NOT A REAL DOCTOR WHO FAN UNTIL YOU CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CASTELLAN AND A CO-ORDINATOR.

The Eight Doctors is not a novel for beginners. But that doesn’t mean it’s not, well. Ridiculawesome is the only word that comes to mind.

Terrance Dicks, in case you were on the fence about this novel, is the person who wrote The Five Doctors. Thought he’d squeezed more sugar-sprinkled continuity treats into that TV special than could ever be in another story ever again? You would be wrong, because The Eight Doctors eats The Five Doctors for breakfast.

The plot is as follows: the Eighth Doctor loses all his memories (again, already) and returns to various points of his past in order to reclaim them, one incarnation of himself at a time.

In the process, he convinces the First Doctor to think twice about bopping that caveman on the head with a rock, talks the Second Doctor into making that call to the Time Lords in The War Games, participates in a high-speed Master-catching sequel to The Sea Devils and returns to Devil’s End with the Third Doctor, flirts with Jo, confuses the Brigadier, participates in a surprisingly long epilogue to State of Decay including giving the Fourth Doctor a full blood transfusion after some more vampires get at him, foils a second outbreak of Time Scoopage immediately after The Five Doctors including Sontarans, the Raston Warrior Robot and Drashigs, teams up with Chancellor Flavia to figure out exactly what the hell was going on with the Sixth Doctor in Trial of a Time Lord, and saves the Seventh Doctor’s life on Metebelis Three.

I’m not even kidding, here.

The book also addresses several Issues that have obviously been Bothering Uncle Terrance since the TV Movie. In the first couple of pages alone, it addresses the whole half human thing and the Eye of Harmony, and by the end of the book we also know exactly why the Master turned into a life sucking snake, and what the hell he was even doing on Skaro. It’s a masterclass in how to retcon the annoying bits out of a Doctor Who story you don’t like.

What the book doesn’t do very well is establish the character of the new companion for this series, Samantha “Sam” Jones. It’s promising at first, in a scene where the Eighth Doctor returns to the junkyard in Totter’s Lane (yes, again) and meets a teenage girl from Coal Hill School 1990’s style. There are even two teachers called Trev and Vicki who have Concerns about Sam Jones.

Which is fair enough, really, as she is busily grassing up the school drug dealer because he’s moving on to crack cocaine, which is the Bad Stuff. It’s like Doctor Who meets Grange Hill, so adorable! Sam is blonde, an environmentalist, and has picked up a bunch of science fiction tropes through casual absorption of pop culture. Textbook companion material

Unfortunately, she disappears from the story early on while the Doctor spends most of the novel playing hooky with his other selves, and only turns up again at the very end, ready and waiting to go on the adventure of a lifetime. I remember quite liking Sam, though I can’t imagine why from this introduction (oh hang on, I see her second novel was written by Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum, that explains a lot – Kate was the best character writer of the whole Virgin range).

The Eight Doctors makes it very clear that BBC Books weren’t all that interested in building a new audience for their book range – they merely wanted to continue the captive audience who continued to be actively interested in Doctor Who, but to do so under their own brand and control.

Having said all that – every Doctor Who is someone’s first, and while The Eight Doctors does not feel (to me) especially welcoming to new fans, it was undoubtedly someone’s first experience with the Doctor Who universe. And as a bonafide old school fan, both then and now, it feels like an unapologetic, unfettered love letter to Our Show, and its many, many faces.

A new era had begun, yet again, with even more tenuous ties to the TV version of the show and despite its old school beginnings, this book launched plenty of new, crazy, unimaginably weird adventures to come for this next Doctor.

ELSEWHERE ON 1997:



The Well-Mannered War by Gareth Roberts [The Doctor Who Book Club Podcast]

Lungbarrow, by Marc Platt [The Doctor Who Book Club Podcast]

The Dying Days, by Lance Parkin [The Doctor Who Book Club Podcast]

The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks [The Doctor Who Book Club Podcast]

Extra Min Eight [Verity! Podcast]

PREVIOUSLY:

Galactic Suburbia 84

New Episode! You can head over to our Podbean page to download episode 84, or get it directly from iTunes.

In which we ask the all-important question, what do David Bowie, Tolkien, Judith Merril, H.R. Giger and Joanna Russ have in common? Also harassment in SF, and the many shades of awesome that was Captain Janeway of Star Trek: Voyager

SF Hall of Fame includes some familiar names.

Elise Matthesen reports sexual harassment at Wiscon, kicking off a long conversation across various spots on the internet about harassment, procedures, and gender issues.

Some of the related posts we discuss:

Alisa: It’s Not Just Them Over There

Tansy: Sexual Harassment at SF Conventions (links mostly)

Genevieve Valentine on “Dealing with It”

Elise Matthesen’s post at Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog (with commentary, and links to all the other hosts of the post)

Jared Axelrod on “Ruining the Party”

SFFragette: Moving SFF/F into the 21st Century

Culture Consumed

ALISA: Defiance and Voyager rewatch, and Why Voyager Is The Most Feminist (and Best) Star Trek

TANSY: Captain Marvel: Down, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Dexter Soy & Emma Rios (artists); Xena Season 4; Ovid’s Heroines by Clare Pollard, Warehouse 13 Season 1

ALEX: Abaddon’s Gate, James SA Corey; The Lowest Heaven (anthology)

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Friday Links is Sweeping Up

Most of the links that have caught my attention this week are follow ups in some way from the big issues of last week. For instance: Why I Stood With Wendy, and Julia Gillard: the most productive Prime Minister.

I’m very glad that I was wrong in my guess that Gillard’s legacy as PM would be torn down and rendered invisible after the second Labor spill (she was the Prime Minister but…) but am I the only one annoyed at how QUICKLY everyone has turned around and started providing real evidence at how badly she was treated and how good she was at her job the second she’s no longer in power?

Closer to home, the Hobart Mercury ran an editorial condemning the way that women in politics and leadership roles (and our Tasmanian premier Lara Giddings in particular, with reference also to Julia Gillard) are often slammed for not also being mothers.

Bitch Magazine provides a brief history of Lois Lane in comics.

I Know I Got My Shovel, Where’s Yours? Tricia Sullivan addresses a bunch of the recent gender & harassment in SF issues, with particular reference to Rod Rees and his charming ‘women can’t write female characters as well as men and when I say men I mean ME’ post.

Radish Reviews looks at Harassment and the Back Channel – why warning your female friends isn’t the only system we should be employing to combat harassment at conventions.

Ursula Vernon (who by the way is the creator of Hugo-winning graphic novel series Digger and is currently running a Kickstarter for an omnibus edition) on Con Sexual Harassment – Being an Ally is Freaky As Hell.

David Moles on why it’s not actually too hard for certain people to learn better behaviour, and suggesting otherwise is insulting and enabling. Won’t Someone Think of the Insensitives?

His comment about NOT using casual references to those with Aspergers or Autism in your apologism for harassment is a very important one and leads nicely to this excellent post by Kari Spelling (worth bookmarking for every time this comes up ever) about how people who are genuinely diagnosed with Aspergers and Autism do not on the whole tend to harass people – and indeed work hard to be considerate of others. I’ve seen some other posts on this recently (appear to have lost some links, please send some my way if you have them) but I think Kari is very justifiably angry about how terms like Aspergers and Autism (and even that well known chestnut ‘clueless men’) have, like the concept of ‘safe space’ been misappropriated and used to try to silence women when they protest about appalling behaviour.

It’s also, you know, incredibly insulting to adults and children who have a genuine diagnosis.

This leads to Jared Axelrod’s excellent post about what we mean when we talk about harassment – and what it means to be the person who responds to that harassment, thereby ‘ruining the party’.

A very positive contribution: the Make Me a Sammich blog (brilliant title) on taking the hashtag #SFFragette further and making constructive change to the culture by Moving SFF into the 21st Century. I can also recommend their Facebook page, which has been providing some great links to interesting posts.

SL Huang has provided a useful timeline of the “SFWA controversies” of the year, which might help those trying to keep track. I wasn’t able to log in over there to make a comment but as an SFWA board member I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that, while Elise Mattheson’s excellent and informative post is very much part of the ongoing conversation to do with sexism, racism and dealing with harassment in the SF industry, it is not actually a matter involving SFWA itself as the other items in the timeline all are.

Meanwhile, Mary Robinette Kowal sums up some of the issues based on her past experience on the SFWA Board.

Okay, phew. Some lighter material: Erika of Verity! on why Nyssa was such an important Doctor Who companion for her, and was awesome. Spoilers: because science!

A Song of Ice and Attire, still one of my favourite blogs right now, talks about the extraordinary art of the embroidery featured in the show, and the artist behind it. Anyone want to join me in a campaign for Michele Caragher for ‘Best Professional Artist’ in the Hugo next year?

Kate Elliott talks about Women in Epic Fantasy.