i) births and deaths
25 March 1920: birth of Patrick Troughton, who played the Second Doctor from 1966 to 1969 and returned on various occasions. He would have been 91 today.
25 March 1967: broadcast of third episode of The Macra Terror. Jamie and Polly are made to work in the pit, while the Doctor tries to analyse the mysterious gas.
25 March 1972: broadcast of fifth episode of The Sea Devils. The British government attempts to organise a nuclear strike on the Sea Devils.
24 March 1942: birth of Lynda Baron, who performed “The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon” in The Gunfighters (1966) and played captain wrack in Enlightenment (1983).
also 24 March 1942: birth of Stephen Yardley, who played Sevrin in Genesis of the Daleks (1975) and Arak in Vengeance on Varos (1985).
ii) broadcast anniversary
24 March 1973: broadcast of fifth episode of Frontier in Space. The Draconians realise that the Ogrons are behind it all, and join forces with Earth to pursue the Master to the Ogrons’ planet.
So, the separate run of Big Finish audios featuring the Eighth Doctor comes to an end after four years of fun with Paul McGann and (mostly) the fantastic Susan Sheridan. Eight gets reincorporated into the main Big Finish run from now on.
To The Death is a moderately satisfying end to the fourth season – taken on its own terms, rather good, though not quite as good as I was hoping for. (Then again, most Who finales leave me feeling that way.) It wraps up the story of the second Dalek invasion of Earth started in Lucie Miller, with much drama, death and destruction.
Further discussion requires
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I’m not going to go on about this at great length because
Surely there is also a fairly major continuity problem? (Though sometimes problems are opportunities, I suppose.) In To The Death, the Doctor clearly remembers the events of Patient ZeroBlue Forgotten Planet is that Charley zapped all the Sixth Doctor’s memories of travelling with her. Or am I wrong on that point? Might go back and listen to that sequence again while waiting for next month’s releases. Though I have the new Gallifrey series to get through first…
I thought this was a really silly book. Watson presents us with standard aliens out of UFO lore, combined with Jung’s theory of UFO’s (thus having his cake and eating it) and an Egyptian order of followers of Rūmī, and seems to take it all quite seriously and uncritically. None of the characters does anything remotely interesting, and there is a tremendously poor scene with an American cop. Really one to avoid.
23 March 1909: birth of Charles Morgan, who played Songsten in The Abominable Snowmen (1967) and the Gold Usher in The Invasion of Time (1978).
23 March 1928: birth of Louis Marks, who wrote Planet of Giants (1964), Day of the Daleks (1972), Planet of Evil (1975) and The Masque of Mandragora (1976).
ii) births and deaths
23 March 1968: broadcast of second episode of Fury from the Deep. Maggie Harris is overpowered by Oak and Quill, and the mysterious noises intensify.
23 March 1974: broadcast of first episode of The Monster of Peladon. The Doctor and Sarah land on Peladon to find Queen Thalira having problems with the miners.
23 March 1982: broadcast of second episode of Time-Flight. The mysterious Kalid has been kidnapping Concordes. Guess who he really is???
23 March 1984: broadcast of second episode of The Twin Dilemma. The Doctor meets an old friend, but discovers that he is responsible for kidnapping the twins.
23 March 1985: broadcast of first episode of Revelation of the Daleks. At Tranquil Repose, there is a disc jockey who looks just like Alexei Sayle and people being turned into Daleks.
Industrial Evolution is the latest in the main sequence of Big Finish audios, with the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn in Victorian industrial Lancashire keeping an eye on disreputable former companion Thomas Brewster, who has managed to get entangled in otherworldly circumstances in the local factory. The star turn here is from Rory Kinnear, son of Roy Kinnear, who plays factory owner Samuel Belfrage as a slightly twittish businessman with a mysterious background. Decent enough otherwise, though there seemed some technical problems with the very first track (ie track 02, after the title music) of my download.
i) births and deaths
22 March 1950: birth of Mary Tamm, who played the first Romana in 1978-79.
22 March 1969: broadcast of third episode of The Space Pirates. Clancey and the Tardis crew evade General Hermack and arrive at the pirate base on Madeleine’s plant.
22 March 1975: broadcast of third episode of Genesis of the Daleks. Sarah has failed to escape from the Thal dome, but Harry and the Doctor arrive to rescue her – and the Doctor is electrocuted.
22 March 1983: broadcast of first episode of Time-Flight. A Concorde is kidnapped and the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa investigate.
22 March 1985: broadcast of first episode of The Twin Dilemma, first full episode for Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor. The new Doctor is behaving strangely; meanwhile the Sylvest twins have been kidnapped.
22 March 2003: webcast of “The Child, Part 3”, the seventh episode of Death Comes to Time.
Usual rules: bold if you’ve read, strike through if you hated, italics if it’s on the shelf waiting to be read.
Both these lists are from Ian Sales. The first is his list of “Mistressworks”:
2 Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)
3 Orlando, Virginia Woolf (1928)
4 Lest Ye Die, Cicely Hamilton (1928)
5 Swastika Night, Katherine Burdekin (1937)
6 Wrong Side of the Moon, Francis Leslie Ashton (1951)
7 The Sword of Rhiannon, Leigh Brackett (1953)
8 Pilgrimage: The Book of the People, Zenna Henderson (1961)
9 Memoirs of a Spacewoman, Naomi Mitchison (1962)
10 Witch World, Andre Norton (1963)
11 Sunburst, Phyllis Gotlieb (1964)
12 Jirel of Joiry, CL Moore (1969)
13 Heroes and Villains, Angela Carter (1969)
14 Ten Thousand Light Years From Home, James Tiptree Jr (1973)
15 The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin (1974)
16 Walk to the End of the World, Suzy McKee Charnas (1974)
17 The Female Man, Joana Russ (1975)
18 Missing Man, Katherine MacLean (1975)
19 Arslan, MJ Engh (1976)
20 Floating Worlds, Cecelia Holland (1976)
21 Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm (1976)
22 Islands, Marta Randall (1976)
23 Dreamsnake, Vonda N McIntyre (1978)
24 False Dawn, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (1978)
25 Shikasta [Canopus in Argos: Archives], Doris Lessing (1979)
26 Kindred, Octavia Butler (1979)
27 Benefits, Zoe Fairbairns (1979)
28 The Snow Queen, Joan D Vinge (1980)
29 The Silent City, Élisabeth Vonarburg (1981)
30 The Silver Metal Lover, Tanith Lee (1981)
31 The Many-Coloured Land [Saga of the Exiles], Julian May (1981)
32 Darkchild [Daughters of the Sunstone], Sydney J van Scyoc (1982)
33 The Crystal Singer, Anne McCaffrey (1982)
34 Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin (1984)
35 The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985)
36 Jerusalem Fire, RM Meluch (1985)
37 Children of Anthi, Jay D Blakeney (1985)
38 The Dream Years, Lisa Goldstein (1985)
39 Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind, Sarah Lefanu & Jen Green (1985)
40 Queen of the States, Josephine Saxton (1986)
41 The Wave and the Flame [Lear’s Daughters], Marjorie Bradley Kellogg (1986)
42 The Journal of Nicholas the American, Leigh Kennedy (1986)
43 A Door into Ocean, Joan Slonczewski (1986)
44 Angel at Apogee, SN Lewitt (1987)
45 In Conquest Born, CS Friedman (1987)
46 Pennterra, Judith Moffett (1987)
47 Kairos, Gwyneth Jones (1988)
48 Cyteen , CJ Cherryh (1988)
49 Unquenchable Fire, Rachel Pollack (1988)
50 The City, Not Long After, Pat Murphy (1988)
51 The Steerswoman [Steerswoman series], Rosemary Kirstein (1989)
52 The Third Eagle, RA MacAvoy (1989)
53 Grass, Sheri S Tepper (1989)
54 Heritage of Flight, Susan Shwartz (1989)
55 Falcon, Emma Bull (1989)
56 The Archivist, Gill Alderman (1989)
57 Winterlong [Winterlong trilogy], Elizabeth Hand (1990)
58 A Gift Upon the Shore, MK Wren (1990)
59 Red Spider, White Web, Misha (1990)
60 Polar City Blues, Katharine Kerr (1990)
61 Body of Glass (AKA He, She and It), Marge Piercy (1991)
62 Sarah Canary, Karen Joy Fowler (1991)
63 Beggars in Spain [Sleepless trilogy], Nancy Kress (1991) (I’ve read the orignal novella)
64 A Woman of the Iron People, Eleanor Arnason (1991)
65 Hermetech, Storm Constantine (1991)
66 China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F McHugh (1992)
67 Fools, Pat Cadigan (1992)
68 Correspondence, Sue Thomas (1992)
69 Lost Futures, Lisa Tuttle (1992)
70 Doomsday Book, Connie Willis (1992)
71 Ammonite, Nicola Griffith (1993)
72 The Holder of the World, Bharati Mukherjee (1993)
73 Queen City Jazz, Kathleen Ann Goonan (1994)
74 Happy Policeman, Patricia Anthony (1994)
75 Shadow Man, Melissa Scott (1995)
76 Legacies, Alison Sinclair (1995)
77 Primary Inversion [Skolian Saga], Catherine Asaro (1995)
78 Alien Influences, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (1995)
79 The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell (1996)
80 Memory [Vorkosigan series], Lois McMaster Bujold (1996)
81 Remnant Population, Elizabeth Moon (1996)
82 Looking for the Mahdi, N Lee Wood (1996)
83 An Exchange of Hostages [Jurisdiction series], Susan R Matthews (1997)
84 Fool’s War, Sarah Zettel (1997)
85 Black Wine, Candas Jane Dorsey (1997)
86 Halfway Human, Carolyn Ives Gilman (1998)
87 Vast, Linda Nagata (1998)
88 Hand of Prophecy, Severna Park (1998)
89 Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson (1998)
90 Dreaming in Smoke, Tricia Sullivan (1999)
91 Ash: A Secret History, Mary Gentle (2000)
The second list, though I got it from Ian Sales, is not his: it is the list of sf novels published by the Women’s Press in the 1980s.
2. Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines, Suzy McKee Charnas
3. The New Gulliver: Or The Adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, Jr. in Capovolta, Ésme Dodderidge
4. Machine Sex and Other Stories, Candas Jane Dorsey
5. Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin
6. The Judas Rose, Suzette Haden Elgin
7. The Incomer, Margaret Elphinstone
8. Carmen Dog, Carol Emshwiller
9. The Fires of Bride: A Novel, Ellen Galford
10. The Wanderground, Sally Miller Gearhart
11. Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
12. Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind, Jen Green & Sarah LeFanu
13. The Godmothers, Sandi Hall
14. Women as Demons, Tanith Lee
15. The Book of the Night, Rhoda Lerman
16. Evolution Annie and Other Stories, Rosaleen Love
17. The Total Devotion Machine, Rosaleen Love
18. The Revolution of Saint Jone, Lorna Mitchell
19. Memoirs of a Spacewoman, Naomi Mitchison
20. The Mothers of Maya Diip, Suniti Namjoshi
21. Planet Dweller, Jane Palmer
22. The Watcher, Jane Palmer
23. Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy
24. Star Rider, Doris Piserchia
25. Extra(Ordinary) People, Joanna Russ
26. The Adventures of Alyx, Joanna Russ
27. The Female Man, Joana Russ
28. The Hidden Side of the Moon, Joanna Russ
29. The Two of Them, Joanna Russ
30. We Who Are About To…, Joanna Russ
31. Queen of the States, Josephine Saxton
32. Travails of Jane Saint and Other Stories, Josephine Saxton
33. I, Vampire, Jody Scott
34. Passing for Human, Jody Scott
35. A Door Into Ocean, Joan Slonczewski
36. Spaceship Built of Stone and Other Stories, Lisa Tuttle
37. Across the Acheron, Monique Wittig
Lots more to look out for (I can see my Bookmooch wishlist expanding again…)
21 March 1915: birth of Ian Stuart Black, author of The Savages (1966), The War Machines (1966) and The Macra Terror (1967).
21 March 1923: birth of Peter Pratt, who played the Master in The Deadly Assassin (1976).
21 March 1936: birth of Roger Hammond, who played Francis Bacon in The Chase (1965) and Dr. Runciman in Mawdryn Undead (1983).
21 March 1946: birth of Timothy Dalton, who played Rassilon in The End of Time (2009-2010).
21 March 1983: birth of Bruno Langley, who played Adam in Dalek and The Long game (2005).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
21 March 1964: broadcast of “Rider from Shang-Tu”, fifth episode of the story we now call Marco Polo. the Tardis crew are unable to persuade Marco polo that Tegana is the source of their problems, and he prevents their escape.
21 March 1970: broadcast of first episode of The Ambassadors of Death. An attempt to rescue a lost Mars probe is frustrated by a signal sent from a vacant warehouse; UNIT investigates and is attacked.
21 March 1981: broadcast of fourth episode of Logopolis, ending Season 18: last appearance of Tom Baker and first of Peter Davison as the Fourth Doctor regenerates into the Fifth, after falling from a radio telescope while preventing the Master from blackmailing the people of the Universe.
21 March 2009: broadcast of Fragments (Torchwood), the one with all the flashbacks.
One of the first Eleventh Doctor / Amy books, taking the two to a conglomeration of space junk called the Gyre, where degenerate humans, civilised Arabic-speaking aliens and an interstellar criminal are grappling with a bomb, a comet, and a long-lost technological relic. It’s for younger readers, but pleasing none the less, with Llewellyn keeping a lot of balls in the air and before bringing the story to a satisfactory conclusion.
This is a selection of poetry translated from the original Persian of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, known as Mowlānā in Persian and Rūmī in the English-speaking world, whose followers founded the Mawlawī Sufi order, better known as the Whirling Dervishes, after his death. The poetry is expressive and profound, but also fairly easy to digest. Rūmī’s basic philosophy is that one can find a path to the ineffable through meditation on love – his best one-liner is that “Love is the astrolabe that sights into the mysteries of God”. Unlike the Christian monastic tradition, he stresses the importance of human contact (though I noted that while he writes a lot about both friendship and romantic love, he has less to say about parenthood). He includes a number of Sufist parables, in a style which I was familiar with from my encounter with the Bektashi in the Balkans (founded at about the same time and in roughly the same place, and also Sufist in orientation), though Rūmī is both more profound and more basic (the parable of the maidservant, the donkey, and the importance of taking essential preliminary measures will linger in my mind for a while).
I was slightly concerned while reading it that the translator, Coleman Barks, might have taken considerable liberties with the original text. I have no way of knowing, but I am reassured by the appendix which includes reference to each of the original poems, and also, unusually for a poetry book, several curry recipes.
Anyway, a fascinating insight into a different tradition of spirituality.
Collection of short stories, set in the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (apart from one which brings the Duke of Wellington to the world of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust). I’ve read all of Jane Austen since I first read Clarke, so I’m now more able to appreciate the style that she takes off so devastatingly. In general this is a successful reclamation of fairies and Faerie from being twee to being dangerous and simultaneously alien and familiar, with a much more feminine perspective than is seen in the longer novel. Generally excellent stuff. My eye was caught by the last story which features Mary Queen of Scots’ embroidery in her imprisonment, but for historical rather than literary reasons.
20 March 1965: broadcast of “The Centre”, sixth episode of the story we now call The Web Planet. The Doctor and Vicki are captured by the Animus; but Ian and the Optera attack from below, and Barbara and the Menoptera from above, and Barbara destroys it.
20 March 1971: broadcast of second episode of The Claws of Axos. The British are determined to control the world’s supply of Axonite; the Axons, however, are a parasitic organism intending to suck the planet of all its energy.
A great novel of two people in a Caribbean port of South America who fall in love when young, are parted by social circumstance, and then after fifty years are reunited. Full of careful observation of what love does to your soul and body, and of the different ways in which people deal with it. Not a lot to write about it except that I really enjoyed it.
As I did when I finished the first of the Penguin volumes, I’m logging this as a book completed in March (though started last August).
The chapters in the original Volume III are: Theodosius, the destruction of Paganism, the sons of Theodosius, plus Rufinus and Stilicho, the Sack of Rome, Arcadius, St John Chrysostom, and Theodosius II plus Eudoxia and the eunuchs, the Vandals in Africa, Attila the Hun, Attila the Hun again, the end of the Western Empire, monasticism and Arianism, what was happening meantime in France, Spain and Britain, and finally some general observations on the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. I actually found it rather tough going in places, with a lot of background info for the main event, the Sack of Rome, and then the rather dull dying spasms of the western half of the empire. The concluding General Observations are rather good, and were written befor most of the rest of the book, so can comfortably be read on their own if you just want to see if Gibbon appeals to you.
The chapters in the original Volume IV are: Theodoric and Boethius, an introduction to Justinian, Belisarius’ military successes in the west, Justinian’s campaigns in the east, chaos in the west and natural disasters, Justinian as a lawyer, the Lombards and Italy after Justinian’s death, the Persians, the Avars and the Emperor Heraclius, and Christianity in the East. I found it a much more coherent book, most of the chapters unified by the ambiguously fascinating characters of Justinian and Belisarius, and topped and tailed with Boethius and the Eastern Christians.
Anyway, 24 more chapters to go; I should finish it some time this year.
This chapter is a masterful summary of the theological discussions of the origin of the Incarnation and also of the later development – up to Gibbon’s own day – of the history of the Nestorians, Jacobites (Syrian rather than Scottish), Maronites, Armenians, Copts, and Abyssinians. See also my notes on Ethiopia, king Alfred, and Cosmas Indicopleustes.
This is the weekend of the month’s Big Finish releases. I’m never sure which to listen to first, so by the magic of my MP3 player I am going in alphabetical order by title, which means starting with this month’s Companion Chronicle, a Second Doctor story with Polly, Ben and Jamie, told by Anneke Wills with occasional interludes from Fraser Hines. The story, by David Lock (who appears to be a newcomer to Who writing), is not all that great – rather odd timey-wimey aliens, somewhat stilted framing narrative which has a weak ending – but Wills’ voice is beautiful and she does a fantastic job both as Polly and as the aliens. (Hines, uncharacteristically, seems a bit weaker this time.)
A short book but an endearing one, with the narrator, stranded in the desert, distracted from his deadly predicament by the philosophical odyssey of the spacefaring little prince. I was struck on this reading by the difference in the prince’s relationships with the exploitative and manipulative rose on his own planet, and the earthly fox which is affectionate but also prepared to let him go. (And there’s that very weird business with the snake as well.) I should probably try it in French some time too.
19 March 1966: broadcast of “The Return”, third episode of the story we now call The Ark. The Tardis returns to the Ark centuries after its original visit, to find that the Monoids are now in charge. The Doctor and Dodo are sent to investigate Refusis.
19 March 1977: broadcast of fourth episode of The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The Doctor escapes from Li H’sen Chang on stage; Weng-Chiang’s men capture the Time Cabinet from Litefoot’s house.
19 March 2005: broadcast of the Doctor Who night on BBC.
19 March 2008: broadcast of Adrift (Torchwood), the one with the island full of people rescued from Torchwood’s vault by Jack.
ii) date specified in canon
19 March ?2009: setting of From Out of the Rain (Torchwood, 2008).
One could reasonably gripe about this anthology because the cover names Peter S. Beagle, Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe, implying that stories by all three are to be found within, when in fact only Beagle makes an appearance, Gaiman and Wolfe being missing in action. I would be on firmer ground to criticise if I had actually rushed to read the book soon after buying it three and a half years ago, rather than letting it sit on the shelf until now. Anyway, it’s a good collection of good stories, none of which I could remember having read before, the best for my money being Daniel Handler’s post-mortem romance, “Naturally”. Fantasy isn;t usually my genre but I can see the appeal from reading collections like this.
I really enjoyed The Diamond Age when I first read it, which must have been shortly after it was first published in 1995; I thought that Stephenson’s exploration of the ideas of education, conformity versus originality, and culture was original and fascinating. I loved the richly imagined (if slightly idealistic) future, with firmly laid down channels of justice and culture which an individual might still be able to jump between. The ending is a bit weak, but I felt that it probably deserved its Hugo partly also in compensation for the fact that the earlier Snow Crash, which is a better book, had failed to get the recognition that it deserved at the time.
Rereading it now, more of the book’s flaws are apparent to me. It’s striking that, apart from Judge Fang and his assistants (and Lord Finkle-McGraw, who has of course made himself a subject of Queen Victoria II), most of the characters are non-Asians encountering Chinese culture as foreigners; the myths encountered and dealt with by Nell are almost all identifiably white people’s myths; and the interrogation of conformity vs individualism gets rather close to being Asia vs USA. I now know that it is possible to immerse us in other cultures’ futures without othering the culture (Ian McDonald is good at this) and I was rather uncomfortable at places in The Diamond Age when reading it this time round.
However, I’ve also now read all but one of the other books that were on that year’s Hugo shortlist. Stephen Baxter’s The Time Ships is a typical Baxter book, of great vision (and of course an authorised sequel to one of the seminal works of the genre) yet somehow impersonal. David Brin’s Brightness Reef is about at the point where the Uplift series was visibly running out of steam. Robert J. Sawyer’s The Terminal Experiment, which inexplicably won the Nebula, is poor. I haven’t read Connie Willis’ Remake but I’ve heard or read nothing to suggest that this omission is a blight upon my life. So, basically, the Hugo voters got it right.
Extraordinary. My colleague Carne Ross will be on Radio 4 about it shortly.
18 March 1967: broadcast of second episode of The Macra Terror. Ben is brainwashed by the secret rulers of the camp; he and Polly encounter a Macra, but he denied it has happened.
18 March 1972: broadcast of fourth episode of The Sea Devils. The Doctor and the Master arrive separately at the Sea Devils’ lair and try to negotiate with them.
Lá ‘le Pádraig shona daoibh!
I’ve been making occasional notes about the relationship between Doctor Who and Ireland, but this seems a good enough day to pull it all together.
No part of televised Who is set in Ireland. There are however a number of Irish characters in TV canon:
Possibly also Irish (or at least possibly played with Irish accents): Rohm-Dutt in The Power of Kroll (1978-79), Chip in New Earth (2006), Thomas Kincade Brannigan in Gridlock (2007) and Luke Rattigan in The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky (2008)
NB that in the Torchwood episode Out of Time (2006) the Sky Gypsy flew to Cardiff from Dublin, but none of those on board seem to have been Irish.
In “The Feast of Steven” (the famous Christmas 1965 episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan), a policeman asks the Doctor if he is English, Scottish, Irish,or Welsh. He responds that he is “a citizen of the universe, and a gentleman to boot”.
There is occasional confusion about whether Gallifrey might be located in Ireland.
Books
No Doctor Who novel is set in Ireland as far as I know. I find reference to however one short story in a published collection:
“Screamager”, by Jacqueline Rayner, in Short Trips: Monsters edited by Ian Farrington (2004). Features The Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria visiting Ireland in the 14th century.
I note also the following:
Audios
There are two Big Finish audios set entirely in Ireland.
The Settling by Simon Guerrier (2006) is a pure historical story, bringing the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex to a well-imagined 1649 where Oliver Cromwell is besieging first Drogheda and then Waterford.
The Book of Kells by Barnaby Edwards (2010) brings the Eighth Doctor and new-ish companion Tamsin to the monastery of Kells in 1006. So, which character from Old Who do you think might show up in an eleventh-century monastery? Though I admit I did not see it coming.
I note also the following:
Further additions to this list will be gratefully noted.
17 March 1973: broadcast of fourth episode of Frontier in Space. The Master has the Doctor and Jo captive, but all three are captured by the Draconians.