Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 89

Turn that Frown Upside Down

A crappy end to the school holidays – both girls sick and cranky, me sick and tired and crankier. The only cure for such a bleh day is Sesame Street, as sharp and awesome as ever:

(I never thought they’d top 30 Rocks, or True Mud, but they DID)

Galactic Suburbia 74: The You Know You Missed Us Edition

In which Alex touches Troy with her bare hand, Alisa discovers that the best part of Paris is not the part that’s underground, and Tansy cheats on both of them for love of Doctor Who (it was inevitable, really).

WHAT WE DID ON OUR SUMMER HOLIDAY!

Alex: Turkey and Egypt

Alisa: Honeymoon in Paris

Tansy: adventures on the internet including the article “Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That” syndicated on Tor.com, selling Wet Shirt Mr Darcy for the Deepings Dolls, and Verity! (a Doctor Who podcast)

Hugo Nominations close on Sunday, March 10, 2013. We’ll be making recs over the next few episodes, though in the mean time check out Tansy’s post on Hugo Recs for Best Graphic Story.

The Galactic Suburbia Award: for activism and/ or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction in 2012 – to be announced in 2 weeks, get your nominations in quick! Check out last year’s winner and honours list to see the type of thing we want to hear about, or be reminded of!

Culture Consumed:

TANSY: Eureka Seasons 1-4; Captain Marvel by Kelly Due DeConnick, Dexter Soy & Emma Rios; Saga by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples.

ALISA: The entire series of The Closer, Tara Sharp 1: Sharpshooter and 2: Sharp Turn.

ALEX: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (the movie); Zendegi, Greg Egan; The Telling, Ursula le Guin… and how many books in total? Yes, Alisa really ran a book on this one.

AND!! Alisa’s exciting news!!

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 Posing in Comfort

Jim Hines looks at some of the responses to his ‘posing like the uncomfortable ladies on cover art’ project and talks about why it is important.

Verity! Podcast has a new episode out, A Perfect Ten? – I’m not in this one and listened with great interest as Deb, Erika, Liz and Lynne debated which Tenth Doctor story was most representative of his era. The School Reunion episode spurred passionate debate in particular, though I felt Erika made a very coherent argument for “Journey’s End” – I’ll be adding my Two Cents on the Verity blog this week. It’s also worth listening to for the discussion about the ‘fake geek girl’ and ‘Tennant fangirl’ putdowns that can happen in our fandom as well as ALL fandoms, and why the attitude that you are entitled to judge other people’s fannish love is so very toxic.

A companion post to the new Verity! episode, Things We Like – the Allons-y Edition, provides links to some fun and delightful fanworks from the era that brought such explosively enthusiastic fan love to Doctor Who. Some old favourites in there, go check it out!

In other ‘our Verity’ news, some casting for the exciting dramatisation of the creation of Doctor Who has been announced, including Jessica Raine from Call the Midwife as dynamo producer Verity Lambert, and David Bradley (Filch from Harry Potter) as William Hartnell. No word yet on who will be rocking Ian and Barbara’s matching cardigans as William Russell and Jaqueline Hill.

I can’t get out of my head the idea that this will actually be a pilot for a The Thick of It style TV series, which will shadow the behind the scenes story of a year of Doctor Who each season, taking us up to at least The War Games. This is probably not true.

Elsewhere, Lynne Thomas writes a heartfelt piece about wheelchair accessibility in public libraries, and the very real effect of this on families. Her story about the magical experience of Disneyland (because of not even having to think about wheelchair accessibility due to excellent modern design) really kicked me in the gut.

Amy Landisman discusses what kids are learning from Minecraft, citing the many educational qualities of the game, and discussing the Swedish school that decided to make it compulsory. It’s always a Swedish school! My 8 year old is thoroughly into the ‘non survival’ version of the game and I am very impressed with what it demonstrates about her budding engineering skills, so it’s nice (especially at the end of a cranky school holidays) to see such an able defence of some screen time for youngsters.

Mary Robinette Kowal launches another “month of letters” today (being the first of February) and ohhh, I was so very tempted to play. It’s a gorgeous idea but I slapped myself upside the head for thinking about it. Maybe next year. TOO BUSY, BOOK TO PROMOTE, STORIES TO WRITE, LIVING TO EARN.

If anyone wants to write me a letter, though, I will totally write them back. Possibly next year, but you can’t have everything!

Mary Beard, awesome classicist and blogger, faced some extremely ugly online abuse over the last week and a half or so. She responded and then, after the campaign against her became far more vile and despicable, with righteous anger. The whole ‘don’t feed the trolls’ mentality of ducking and covering has led to a whole lot of terrible behaviour going unchallenged and uncommented upon, so it’s very courageous of her to revoice some of the gross things said about her in order to draw attention to the fact that this is the sort of thing that often drives women away from making political or public commentary, or participating in online culture.

Meanwhile, Sarah Rees Brennan has a glorious, angry piece up on Tumblr about the mocking of Jane Austen fans, and the general cultural concept that anything hugely popular among women is somehow suspicious rather than ENDORSED.

Maggie Stiefvater writes about literary rape, and the repeated use of this as a ‘worst thing that can happen to a woman’ trope, while male characters get a greater variety of worst things that can happen to them, usually based on their personality.

A great article on the Huffington Post about a man buying ‘boy’ underwear for his daughter, and his frustration at the narrow range of heroes promoted to girls as compared to boys.

Jessica White catalogues the great round ups of reviews from the Australian Women Writers Reading Challenge.

Getting back to Doctor Who (what, were we away?) Erika Ensign has a fun if alarming theory about the TARDIS as a maternal mastermind.

I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this one before but I was reminded of it and, well. It bears repeating!

Wet Shirt Darcy Never Gets Old: Pride and Prejudice turns 200!

The 200th birthday of Pride and Prejudice sort of crept up on me. I should have been prepared, but instead it arrived with a thump, bearing celebratory goodness, such as this Regency ball that the BBC are recreating in honour of Elizabeth and Darcy, and the Slate slideshow of the “best” P&P covers over the last 200 years.

Because yes, I should have seen this coming. In my other life, not the author one or the pop culture blogger one or the Mum one (though of course, all of these at once) I manage a small business called The Deepings Dolls. These hand-turned, hand-painted historical figurines are a tradition of long-standing in Tasmania, and have been in my life since I was eight or so and my mother the art student drove me up the Huon so she could investigate the possibility of a part-time job. Twenty five years later, she’s still painting them.

And look, we have a brand new website, all shiny!

The original woodturner and designer of the Deepings Dolls, Adrian Hunt, retired some years ago, and my mother Jilli and I took over the business (under the name Pendlerook Designs) when I had a new baby (just the one!) on my hip, a PhD thesis that had tried to smother me in my sleep, and a reasonably dire need for paid work I could do from home.

So this is what I do when I’m not writing, mothering or blogging (or to be strictly accurate, this is what I am NOT doing when I do all those things): I take online orders, post dolls out to galleries or individual customers, and try to keep all the people with near-impossible requests away from my mother, because SHE WILL ALWAYS SAY SURE, I CAN DO THAT.

The dolls are made from Tasmanian white sassafras and are shaped and painted into a variety of different nostalgia or history themed designs – from lawyers and ballerinas to nativity sets, with a particular focus on Victoriana and Australian colonial history.

One of the first designs I pushed for us to add to the (crazy big) catalogue was Jane Austen. Cough, well to be honest I had been pushing for this since somewhere round about the mid 90′s because “Austen is so hot right now.” I wasn’t wrong, was I? As Austen grew in stature, it became more and more obvious that we needed to add her to the range – we had a Dickens, after all, and a Shakespeare, and all three Bronte sisters. But the Bronte sisters had the convenient good taste to wear the Victorian crinoline, a shape we had in abundance, and the Regency gown was a lot trickier to get right.

Finally we had her! Not only a Jane, of course, but the Regency gown also gave us license to produce an Elizabeth Bennet, and it was quite easy from that point to give her a matching Darcy. Mum was a bit hesitant at my insisting that Lizzy always have mud on her hem, but when we gave the option, no one EVER ordered the version without mud, so I was proved quite right.

But then Mum came up with the best thing of all – an alternative version of Mr Darcy, inspired by THAT Colin Firth wet shirt scene (which in turn was reflected by a different wet shirt in a more recent P&P movie). Sure, that scene isn’t quite in the book, but that’s not important, right?

Generally speaking, customers order Formal Buttoned Up Darcy and Wet Shirt Darcy in about equal numbers. Sometimes they even get both…

Then, quite unexpectedly last month, we were solicited by Australian Homespun Magazine for our dolls to feature in their shopping section – themed to tie in with the 200th birthday of one of my favourite books of all time. The spread they did was fantastic, showing Lizzy and her TWO Darcys (take that, Bridget Jones) off to great effect among other Austen arts and crafts. And since then…

Well, we’re normally busy over the summer as the cruise ships come into Hobart and many tourists discover the displays of Deepings Dolls we have strategically placed in Salamanca, Richmond and Port Arthur, but this has been a crazy cruise ship summer with dolls practically flying off my mother’s work desk, and to top it all off, so very many internet orders for the Austen Three. Who knew, magazines still sell a lot of product! That explains a lot about how newsagencies are still a thing, really…

So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Pride and Prejudice! I am still terribly fond of you, even after all these years. I even like you in plays where the adapter has skipped several sisters. I like you in musical versions, Bollywood, crazy old black and white with Greer Garson in Scarlett O’Hara’s wardrobe… YOU NEVER FAIL ME. Most recently, I have been loving (along with half the internet) the cleverly modernised Lizzie Bennet Diaries – check out this interview with romance writer Kate Noble about writing episodes for the show, with some insight into how it is made.

Pride and Prejudice rocks! And if anyone ever invents a time machine, they should totally go back in time and tell Miss Austen all about the wet shirt thing. I hope she’d get a kick out of it.

Deepings Dolls/Pendlerook Designs website

Pendlerook on Tumblr

The Deepings Dolls on Pinterest

Graphic Story Recs for Hugo

Hugo nomination time is upon us! Apart from hoping that many listeners of Galactic Suburbia will remember to nominate us for Best Fancast (but only if you love us, obviously), I’m very keen to join the chorus of voices making recommendations for the Best Graphic Novel category, which has suffered from occasional neglect and malaise in the past (not to mention a whole bunch of cynicism).

Here are my favourite SF/graphic novel pics of the year. I hope I haven’t forgotten any!

Saga

If you like weird comics and grand space opera, this is definitely the comic for you. I was blown away by the (very reasonably priced) trade of the first six issues of this brilliant, slightly warped new series by Brian K Vaughan (of Runaways) with gorgeous art by Fiona Staples. Random Alex, you need to check out this comic!

I love the combination of space adventuring, drama, angst, domesticity and creepy alien bounty hunters, all against a war torn galactic background. The story begins with the birth of a baby to a star cross’d couple from opposite sides of a massive space war – and rather neatly, the story is narrated by that same baby which means at least I can take comfort in the fact that THE BABY MAKES IT to the end of the story. Not everyone else does.

Plus, did I mention? BABY. The two hapless parents may have made one, but they don’t have much idea how to look after it, and juggling domestic issues like nappies and breastfeeding while escaping assassins and scary alien plant menaces (not to mention dismembered ghosts) makes for a really original and fun contrast.

Graphic violence, kinky sex, dismembered ghosts, baby cooties and a wonderful jumble of magic, science and lunacy. Reeeeead this comic. Then think about nominating Fiona Staples for Best Professional Artist, too – her covers are things of beauty.

Captain Marvel

Another very strong trade comic from the first six issues of an original comic – this one written by Kelly-Sue DeConnick, with various artists (mainly Dexter Soy to start with). Captain Marvel might come with a whole lot of baggage from the history of Marvel comics, but this story of identity, time travel and feminist history gives you everything you need to know about Carol Danvers and her new name.

The art is a downside of this one – I’m not actually sure if Soy is the problem of the first few issues or if it’s more that the colourists are making his work look worse than it is – he captures the characters reasonably but the pages are terribly dark. It picks up a lot by the time Carol is bobbing around in her time travelling hijinks, though, to the point that when new artist Emma Rios came in, it was a real adjustment for me.

Still, while I might not love the visual style, the story is wonderful, so clever and pointed with plenty of history, action and banter. All of my favourite things. If the internals had the same clarity and colour of the brilliant covers from this run, it would be a perfect comic to rival my other 2012 favourite, Hawkeye (not being recced here because not remotely SFnal or fantastical).

Saucer Country

Sadly this one has recently been cancelled and the ultimate story will be left unfinished. This first arc, though, is fresh and clever with very nice ‘realistic’ art. Cornell has taken the mythology surrounding alien abductions, Area 51 and Roswell New Mexico, and blended it with the pragmatic narrative of a charismatic female divorced Latino governor who is about to enter the US Presidential race – and with supremely bad timing, learns of the truth behind the alien abduction conspiracy.

The political discussions and campaign details are part of the joy of this trade, along with a snarky sense of humour. I’ve never seen the West Wing (I know, right) but I see why Saucer Country has been compared to it. The only warning I’d put (apart from the fact that if you like this, it’s only going to have maybe one more trade and then be finished abruptly) is that it deals extensively with actual and metaphorical discussions of rape. This is a necessary thing, I believe, considering the tradition of violation (both sexual and medical) in the mythology surrounding alien abductions, and is treated respectfully through the text – I particularly like the way that Cornell addresses the shameful way that these violations have been turned into cheap ‘anal probe’ jokes in our culture, and that he works very hard to make sure anyone reading this comic will never find them funny again.

My favourite character is Chloe, the Republican advisor brought in to play devil’s advocate in Arcadia’s very Democrat team (at least I’m pretty sure that’s the right way around) – she reminds me of Mallory Book in She-Hulk – funny, sharp and absolutely exhausted by everyone else’s weakness and incompetence. I kind of want her to continue as a DC character, regularly popping up to offer her services to, for instance, make Wonder Woman President, to improve Aquaman’s PR (have you considered a hook?) and to regularly play pool with Lex Luthor. You just know she plays dirty pool.

Princeless

Yes it’s a kids comic, but Princess is also smart, clever and interrogates gender issues in the fantasy genre. Plus it has some amazing art. I haven’t managed to get hold of the trade from Australia, but I have read several issues of this brilliant comic through ComiXology and heartily recommend checking it out.



Avengers Babies vs. X-Babies by Skottie Young

Possibly my favourite single issue comic of this entire year. You have to read it to believe it. Fabulous, hilarious art, layered jokes on every page, and Cyclops has never been better, nor Wolverine wittier. Seriously.

Again, this one can be found on ComiXology.

In Defence of Dinosaurs [WHO-50—1974]

Really, are the dinosaurs that bad?

I love this story.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs joins The Time Warrior and Planet of the Spiders as the only really GOOD Third Doctor/Sarah Jane adventures, and serves very well to progress their relationship, which is still on shake ground at this point – Sarah was whisked back in time by accident in The Time Warrior and spent a large part of that story thinking the Doctor was the bad guy (fair cop) until he won her over with his suave charm and snippy sense of humour.

The Doctor returns her to London in this story, only for them to be alarmed at a mysteriously empty city. What would be so scary that it is worth evacuating London?

DINOSAURS, obviously!

Is it unfannish of me to say I don’t care about the quality of the dinosaur animation? I don’t think it’s that bad at all. Why is it that Harryhausen is acclaimed as a master of the cult art of special effects for his wobbly skeletons and fake Krakens, but Doctor Who doesn’t get a free pass for a few dinosaur puppets?

The reach of this story is far beyond its ability, but that sums up Doctor Who and I much prefer a slightly wonky but ambitious story over one that merely achieves a comfortable mediocrity.

But, you know. The dinosaurs are shade more convincing than the Drashigs, which still terrify the pants off me despite being blatant glove puppets. It’s all in the wrist action…

In fact, many of the dinosaur shots are pretty good, at least by the standards of the day, and a few of them manage something close to Harryhausen-esque grandeur. There are some dodgy production choices, my favourite being the gratuitous use of CGI to put a live feed of a captured, unconscious and occasionally twitching dinosaur as the background shot of a basic office scene. But this sort of thing only makes the story more entertaining!

I will admit that the dinosaurs are not the best bit of this story, but would certainly argue that the wonderful, clever script makes up for them. With Jo Grant and her go-go boots having departed, UNIT has lost its cozy family feel and there’s a bleakness to this story that reminds me of the tone of Season 7 – hardly surprising as the writer, Malcolm Hulke, also wrote The Silurians and The Ambassadors of Death, (50% of that first Pertwee season!) as opposed to only one story for each of the years that followed.

It’s a shame that Hulke appears to have no longer been offered Doctor Who work once Letts and Dicks left in favour of Hinchcliffe and Holmes. I’d loved to have seen what Hulke might have written for the Fourth Doctor, and he writes Sarah very well.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs is also directed by Paddy Russell, the first female director on the show, who produces some great location work to really convey the scale of the story – the location shots in particular look great, especially the ones without dinosaurs getting in the way. Though I also thought a lot of the military scenes were done very well and gave the impression of UNIT being a bigger organisation than ever before – while the more intimate office scenes were a lot more dynamic than is often the case.

All of our regulars are out of their comfort zone – the Brigadier is trying to manage the situation with a superior officer breathing down his neck and making all the wrong decisions, the Doctor and Sarah get themselves arrested even before the action gets underway, poor old Benton is being his usual world-weary self, and Mike Yates… well, he’s the star of his own quiet tragedy, though this is not revealed until much later.

I had seen Planet of the Spiders about a billion times before I finally got to see all of this one, which means that the treachery of Yates came as no surprise at all – though I am very pleased that a lot of attention is given to this plot line, and to his ambiguous role in the ‘Golden Age’ plot. His genuine agonies at having to betray the Doctor and UNIT are well done, and I particularly like the scene in which everyone at UNIT has to turn against the Doctor and Yates plays his own betrayal off as his duty.

It also allows Benton to shine in a lovely scene in which he is given the job of arresting the Doctor, waits until they are alone and says “You’d better start overpowering me, hadn’t you?”

Sarah has a marvellous pile of story stuff to work with here. The fact that she doesn’t work for UNIT – the first of Pertwee’s “assistants” to be freelance – becomes very important in this story, where her role as journalist makes her a target of suspicion from both the army and the bad guys (many of whom, of course, are the same people). More to the point, despite her Sontaran adventure, she’s not officially the Doctor’s travelling companion yet and so is only helping him thanks to her a) general sense of justice b) desire to get the story and c) moxy.

Both Liz Shaw and Jo Grant were part of the system, and would have had a more active role in the UNIT system, but Sarah has to work around and outside it, which adds some nice tension to her story.

And what a story she has! One of the best plot twists in the history of Doctor Who has Sarah rendered unconscious (of course) when investigating something suspicious… only to wake up on a spaceship heading out to found a new Earth colony… six months later!

It’s the sort of thing that could only happen on this show, and the question of how on earth Sarah is going to get out of this fix and back to the Doctor is explored really nicely. Most importantly, she rescues HERSELF through general logic and smarts.

There’s a nice touch at the end where we see that Sarah is in fact still not sold on the idea of bombing around in time and space with the Doctor – but he gives her a honeyed speech about a particularly saucy planet and she laughingly accepts her fate. This one time.

I can see why the dinosaurs have been a bit of a sore point with fans over the years – and why the production team of the current show felt the need to restore Doctor Who’s honour with the marvellous creations of 2012’s Dinosaurs on a Spaceship – but really, if you’re letting the special effects turn you off this one, you’re missing out on one of the best political intrigue stories of the Third Doctor era.

However, I will admit that my ardent defence of Invasion of the Dinosaurs did not wash at all with young seven-year-old Oscar, one of the many children with whom I rewatched the show in recent weeks.

“Tyrannosaurus?” he said scornfully. “That’s not a tyrannosaurus. IT HAS THREE FINGERS. They’re getting it all wrong!”

I am humbled to know less than dinosaurs than a seven-year-old, but it would probably be against the natural world order for it to be otherwise.

ELSEWHERE ON 1974:

The Time Warrior [Wife in Space]

Sarah Jane Smith – defending the Earth with or without the Doctor [Marlow Inc]

Invasion of the Dinosaurs [The Independent]

Death to the Daleks [Neowhovian]

Monster of Peladon [Radio Free Skaro]

“Not Just a Journalist But A Woman Journalist” – Planet of the Spiders [TansyRR.com]

RetroView 6: Planet of the Spiders [Neowhovian]

New Cover for Livia Day’s “A Trifle Dead”

I’ll admit I was nervous when I heard there was ‘tweaking’ going on with the cover of my book, because I had just been showing it off to everyone I met at Genrecon and hearing so much positive feedback about how it worked for crime and mainstream readers (and even the occasional SF reader) – the thought of changing it was alarming!

But of course I should have trusted the amazing Amanda Rainey, who added a splash (literally) more criminal intent to the original design, which really brings the concept together.

YOU GUYS IT’S REALLY SOON NOW!

A Trifle Dead will be launched on 28 March at the Hobart Bookshop – more details on that later. In the mean time, you can pre-order the book directly from Twelfth Planet Press.

Thanks to Sean the Blogonaut for scooping the author on this one & saying such nice things about the book based on only having read the first chapter. Someone get that man a review copy!

Australia Day Book Giveaway Hop: Love and Romanpunk

Welcome to the Australia Day Giveaway Hop!

From January 25th to 28th, over fifty book and writing blogs will be giving away books by Aussie writers.

Head on over to our host Book’d Out to check out the list of links to participating sites and bloggers, and maybe find a few great book blogs while you’re doing it!

Meanwhile, here is my contest:

WIN A COPY OF LOVE AND ROMANPUNK!

This collection of stories about Roman superheroes, monsters, dead empresses and lovelorn lamia was published by Twelfth Planet Press in 2011 and includes the multi-award-winning story “The Patrician” as well as several others in the same universe (or as I like to call it, the Agrippinaverse).

While the ebook is still very much for sale (notably at Wizard Tower Books), the print version has sold out and is currently unavailable, making my dwindling pile of author copies a rare resource.

To Enter: comment here on this post, email me at tansyrr @gmail.com or tweet me at @tansyrr to let me know your Favourite Monster of All Time. I’ll put all the entries into a hat for one of my very random daughters to select a winner.

Entries close at midnight (AEST) on Monday 28th January 2013 and I will announce the winner within 7 days. Anyone can enter, worldwide.

Verity!Extra! and the Andy Pandy Overalls Revelation

Thanks to the wonderful editing skills of Erika (@hollygodarkly) we have put up a Verity!Extra! podcast this week – featuring a discussion on Doctor Who Companions and their Clothes.

We’ve all had those conversations, right? About the crazy Jo Grant Couture, Amy Pond’s tiny skirts, the adorable go-go boots worn by Polly and Liz Shaw, the alarmingly short shorts sported by Turlough in Planet of Fire, and OH what horrendous crimes against the human body did they force Nicola Bryant into for almost all of her run as Peri? Not to mention Ian’s obsession with Barbara’s combat cardigans, Tegan’s endless flight attendant uniform, Nyssa’s crushed velvet, the modern vs. classic companion attitude to high heels, and whether or not you could actually hunt a Sontaran while wearing Leela’s leathers.

Miraculously I think we remain the only Doctor Who podcast not to have discussed Zoe’s silver catsuit in The Mind Robber at length. GO US!

It’s so lovely to have people who will rant with me about how Downton Abbey has a Book Of Costuming and Doctor Who does not. I even put together a Pinterest board to illustrate our Verity!Extra! It was fun to hunt up all the costumes we mentioned, and especially to answer Deb’s challenge to prove that Sarah’s overalls were a LEGITIMATE 70′s fashion thing for women.

I put in a picture of Andy Pandy too, for those who didn’t get the reference to the old TV puppet show only to blow my own mind by discovering that while his outfit is indeed candy-striped, he doesn’t wear overalls! Shock!

This does explain why googling ‘Andy Pandy Overalls’ brings up Sarah Jane in The Hand of Fear as the first page, though.

Delgado, Diplomacy and Draconians [WHO-50—1973]

The Master:

Nobody could be more devoted to the cause of peace than I! As a commissioner of Earth’s Interplanetary Police, I have devoted my life to the cause of law and order, and law and order can only exist in a time of peace.

The Doctor:

Are you feeling all right, old chap?

[Doctor Who - Frontier in Space, 1973]

As I mentioned last week, 1973 is “my” year of the Pertwee era, and my go-to episodes to watch most come from this year: Carnival of Monsters, The Three Doctors and the most excellent The Green Death. I really enjoy the more mature Jo of these stories, and the comfortable relationship she has with the Doctor – and while I know in my head that the earthbound UNIT years are a bit part of what make the Third Doctor a special snowflake, I do love to see him swanning around foreign planets.

That brings me to Frontier of Space or as I like to think of it, Doctor Who and The Space War. Like Day of the Daleks, this is a story I first experienced as a Target novelisation, and no matter how well it was rendered on screen (and I think they did a pretty good job of it), the book version is the “real” one for me.

I’m genuinely surprised that the Draconian Empire never showed up again, as this particular Earth future and its corresponding space-war political problems are so well realised in this story. The Draconians themselves come across as a well-developed alien race through careful telling details, and their design looks fabulous.

Was it too Star Trek and not Doctor Who enough? Is that why they didn’t bring them back? Or was it merely that no one thought to put the later Doctors back into the future that had been built for Jon Pertwee to visit?

I’d love to see the Draconians back in New Who, dealing with the Doctor once again. Their story potential has been explored a bit in the Bernice Summerfield audio adventures and some of the books, and more importantly they have been REFERENCED in The Pandorica Opens. So no excuses, then.

But let’s get back to Frontier in Space/Doctor Who and the Space War, the first appearance of this interesting alien race! I recently re-experienced it through the audiobook version of the novelisation, read by the suave Geoffrey Beevers (Caroline John’s widower, who played the Master in The Keeper of Traken and has continued to play him as a voice role in many excellent Big Finish Audio Productions. And it’s really, really good.

I did end up wanting to watch the TV version as well, if only for Roger Delgado’s marvellous performance.

Delgado was not “my” Master because Anthony Ainley got a hold on me too early for me to have a say in the matter, but he is one of the best things about this era of Doctor Who. His tragic death not long after this story means that his run was confined to three years, and Frontier in Space has taken on a certain poignancy in retrospect, as the last appearance of the first Master.

Would he have returned to the role in later years, meeting other Doctors? He certainly would have been invited back for Pertwee’s final story, which might no longer have looked anything like Planet of the Spiders and was intended to leave us with a legacy never followed through on – the identity of the Master as the Doctor’s brother. I’m a bit glad that’s never been confirmed as the question is so much more interesting than any old answer.

Would we have even had Tom Baker as the longest-serving Doctor? The death of his kind and gentle friend has been cited as one of the main reasons that Jon Pertwee chose to hang up his velvet jacket when he did.

The Master has certainly had a bit of character growth just in time for Frontier in Space, moving him up in the universe – no longer willing to settle for failing to take over the Earth (or, well, London), he has now turned his eye to galactic conquest, and is juggling allies as he stirs up war between the Draconians and humans.

I am a sucker for “sneaky third person starts a war between two parties by making them distrust each other” stories and this is a particularly good example of the type. Of course it’s the Master behind it all! And while it doesn’t quite follow through, it’s pretty cool that he teams up with the Daleks, gets along very badly with them, then escapes to leave the Doctor to deal with the Daleks in a following story.

He also manages to turn up and save the Doctor’s life in the nick of time, and to save Jo at least once from one of the many incarcerations she experiences in this story. Just because he’s a villain doesn’t mean he’s not a gentleman.

It’s lovely the way that Jo is so pleased to see him – sure, he’s the bad guy, but he’s HER bad guy, and more importantly he’s a familiar face at a time when she is surrounded by aliens and futuristic humans who are not making her feel particularly at home. We hear a lot about the relationship between Delgado’s Master and the Third Doctor but I think the Master-Jo dynamic is also great.

After all, Roger Delgado and Katy Manning joined in the same story, Terror of the Autons, and get to know each other quite well even as he’s regularly trying to hypnotise or thwart her, or get to the Doctor through her. I love that he still calls her “Miss Grant” all these years later, unfailingly polite.

I don’t think any other companion had a similar ongoing relationship with the Master – Tegan and Nyssa perhaps came closest, though Nyssa’s trauma at his stealing her father’s body was largely ignored after Castrovalva, leaving only Tegan to react every time to the latest appearance by the Master in a new disguise – and she usually does this in a light, world-weary way rather than referring back to her own bereavement when he murdered her Aunt.

But Jo and Delgado’s Master have a complex shared history, and it’s oddly nice to see this acknowledged in the story that would be his last appearance. While no one would have chosen this to be Roger Delgado’s swan song, it is splendid for it to be such a BIG story – an epic space adventure across multiple locations with Ogrons and Daleks as well as Draconians and a female Earth president. Doctor Who space opera has not been quite this grand since The Daleks’ Master Plan.

In short: I want the Eleventh Doctor and possibly River Song (or Strax!) to log in some serious Draconian time in future seasons of Doctor Who. I think they’d go rather well with a future of Headless Monks, Sontarans and Silurian armies.

Take us into space, Mr Moffat. Let’s go start a war with some Dragons!



ELSEWHERE ON 1973:

The Three Doctors or a Brotherly Blast From the Past [Fangirl Knits Scarf]

Carnival of Monsters [Wife in Space]



Carnival of Monsters [The Independent]

Planet of the Daleks Episode 1 [Chronic Hysteresis]

The Green Death [Wife in Space]