“Tiocfaidh ár lá!”

(It is turning into a slightly bizarre evening.)

• It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being ‘It’
  
  “Once I step foot outside the rectory, all bets are off,” the priest says. “I have to be a little more careful.”
  (tags: games )
• “Westvleteren 12” retains status of “best beer in the world”
  
  Hooray!
  (tags: beer Belgium )

• China Is Burning Almost As Much Coal As the Rest of the World Combined
  
  And no sign of slowing down.
  (tags: Climate change )
• War, Death and Hubris
  
  Afghanistan, Britain and Ireland in the 19th century.
  (tags: history War Ireland Afghanistan )
• First Evidence of Life in Antarctic Subglacial Lake
  
  Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
  (tags: Biology )
• A name that’s particular
  
  Oxford colleges’ domain names.
  (tags: Internet )
• Cambridge college domain names
  
  In case you needed to know.
  (tags: Internet )

Next in line of my Doctor Who rewatch is the first ever Who spinoff to run for more than an episode. Well, it's better than K9 and Company in oh so many ways…

You can tell that Torchwood is going to be all grown up; the word "fucking" is used two minutes into the first episode, Everything Changes (the only other particularly adult incident is Owen's implied drug-induced threesome). After that, it's surprisingly watchable. Eve Myles returns, this time as Gwen Cooper, policewoman, rather than Gwyneth, haunted maidservant; she has a murder mystery to solve, and actually solves it, despite the murderer's unwitting accomplice drugging her with amnesia juice (this episode is rather worryingly relaxed about non-consensual administration of drugs – see the threesome incident again).

Though of course that is not really the point; it's about her being Rose, encountering the charismatic, strangely costumed King of Adventure and joining his team. And for her and us, it is learning about Torchwood. There's Captain Jack; there's the doctor who did the autopsy on the alien pig, though she seems to be a computer geek now; there's two good-looking men and a girl who dies. Apart from the stashes of alien technology, it is quite difficult to associate this crowd with the people who shot down the Sycorax and hosted the grand battle of Cybermen versus Daleks in London. The first and last words Jack says to Gwen in the episode are "What do you think?" After the first 50 minutes, I'm not quite sure.

Watching the episodes one a day as I do meant that I had a break between Everything Changes and Day One, whereas on first watching we had the latter broadcast immediately after the former. (I should also add that while the 45-minute Who episodes fit quite nicely into my usual morning commute, the 50-minute Torchwood episodes sprawl out a bit so I either start watching while shivering in the shelter at the train station or have to save the last few minutes for lunchtime or the way home.)This is the episode with the orgasmic alien, and it's considerably weaker than I remembered. The worst bit is Owen's sheer nastiness to Gwen, and the failure of the rest of Torchwood to call him out; then the alien herself (as will be typical for Torchwood baddies) does several things that are necessary for the writer's convenience but make little sense in terms of the plot – I mean, really, sperm donors? Sarah Lloyd Gregory is great as both Carys and the orgasmic alien, but the show is still feeling its way. (One nice touch – Jack rescuing the hand rather than chasing the alien, and the variation on the Who theme playing as he does so.)

But Ghost Machine I thought was a very different matter. For the first time we have the standard Torchwood opening sequence, which makes one feel a bit more grounded. Here we had John Normington turning up as a lost evacuee from Old Who, and Roj Blake, once framed as a paedophile in the far future, being blackmailed as a rapist in our world. There was a nice feeling of a sordid but perfectly normal underworld of Cardiff society interacting uneasily with the alien phenomena of Torchwood's sphere of existence; and of course the tremendous scene with Jack teaching Gwen how to shoot. The biggest problem is that the ending is a bit of a cop-out, though again I wondered if it was a bit of a homage to Gauda Prime.

Cyberwoman is a guilty pleasure for me. I know that a lot of the plot makes little sense, I know that the skimpy costume worn by Caroline Chikezie as Lisa is sheer exploitation, I can agree that it is deeply flawed, yet I love Gareth David Lloyd's portrayal of besotted obsession turning to appalled realisation (Torchwood settling into its stride of bonkers horror, with some brilliant cinematography), and I also like the fact that for the first time it becomes clear that this Torchwood is part of the Whoniverse Torchwood. I will admit that it's not great art, yet I enjoyed it again. Quite possibly I have no taste. (I have never claimed that I do.)

And then, gosh, we have PJ Hammond contributing Small Worlds, a marvelously creepy story, with the little girl from the family of The Idiot's Lantern transported fifty years forward and 200 km westward to Cardiff, and enjoying an obsessional relationship with malignant spirits which appear to be time-travelling fairies (little Lara Philipart is pitch perfect as Jasmine). This episode makes a lot more sense than most Torchwood this season, and if anything I wish the director had made more of the fact that Jack and the team are completely defeated here (and of course it is not the last time that Jack allows a child to be sacrificed to inhuman forces).

More bonkers horror with Countrycide, where unusually apart from our lead character there is no alien or sfnal presence at all in the story (I think the last one we had like that was Black Orchid). Again, so much of the plot makes no sense at all (and the banter between the team at the campsite is pretty unfortunate) and yet I find the way it looks pretty compelling. I was gripped, even knowing what was going to happen, even knowing that (again) it is deeply flawed. The scene of Jack bursting in on the tractor to rescue everyone is pretty hilarious as well, possibly even in a good way; though the end nudges downwards with the gratuitous Gwen/Owen affair.

Where Cyberwoman was Ianto's episode, and Out Of Time will be Owen's, Greeks Bearing Gifts is Toshiko's. up to now she has been the background Asian geek girl, basically the same character Naoko Mori played in Absolutely Fabulous but with firearms; now we have her vulnerability exploited by an evil sex alien which tears people's hearts out. And we get extra bonus idea lifted from the Buffy episode Earshot, which here is only a subplot rather than the point of the episode. Danielle Denby-Ashe is excellent as Mary, and Naoko Mori finally gets something to do as Tosh.

They Keep Killing Suzie is back to bonkers horror, with an excellent return from Indira Varma as Suzie, returning from the dead to deal with her own personal demons, identifying Gwen as her supplantor in every respect and gaining revenge by leeching away her life force. It is a shame that Team Torchwood didn't take more advantage of Suzie's exceptional gift for forward planning back when she was still alive!

The whole of Torchwood is a guilty pleasure for me; I like it much more than I probably should (though it's worth remarking that audience appreciation index ratings were generally in the mid-80s), and it was great fun watching these episodes again.

Next up comes the rest of this first series, also Catherine Tate's Who debut and the Sarah Jane pilot.

< The Curse of Fatal Death | The Webcasts | Rose – Dalek | The Long Game – The Parting of the Ways | Comic Relief 2006 – The Girl in the Fireplace | Rise of the Cybermen – Doomsday | Everything Changes – They Keep Killing Suzie | Random Shoes – End of Days | Smith and Jones – 42 | Human Nature / The Family of Blood – Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords & The Infinite Quest | Revenge of the Slitheen – The Lost Boy & Time Crash | Voyage of the Damned – Adam | Reset – Exit Wounds

• Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands to abdicate for son
  
  One of the better royals around.
  (tags: world: netherlands )
• The big space battle of January 2013
  
  (tags: Games )
• Nabokov. Lecture on “The Metamorphosis”.
  
  You will mark Kafka’s style. Its clarity, its precise and formal intonation in such striking contrast to the nightmare matter of his tale. No poetical metaphors ornament his stark black-and-white story. The limpidity of his style stresses the dark richness of his fantasy. Contrast and unity, style and matter, manner and plot are most perfectly integrated.
  (tags: Writing )

A few weeks ago I booked in for an allergy test – the one where they tape lots of potentially allergenic substances to your skin to see if it reacts.

I should have done it last week, but had to postpone when I unexpectedly spent last Monday in an ice storm in Munich airport and needed the rest of the week to catch up.

So I went to the dermatologist this morning, and she merrily stuck squares soaked in various substances to me, covering it all over with a huge bandage. She will check them on Wednesday and make a final assessment on Friday.

And I can’t have a shower until Friday. I think it is decades since I went as long as four days without a shower. (Obviously I can wash by other means, but Thursday evening’s posh reception will be interesting.)

And the worst of it, as I am now realising, is that the bandage is really itchy; it is deliberately placed in the most inaccessible part of my back, and in any case, if I actually am allergic to any of these things, of course it’s going to bloody itch – until Friday, for the next four days!

I just hope I actually am allergic to something or other, to make the whole exercise worthwhile.

• Nicholas Stern: ‘I got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse’
  
  *gulp*
  (tags: climatechange )
• Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
  
  A hypertext version. Pride and Prejudice first published 27 January 1813.
  (tags: Books )

"The profile of the Union is not tainted because others are threatening it or advancing alternative, more viable political or economic models. What chiefly dents the credibility of the EU is that Europeans have not been practicing what they preach as consistently and effectively as they committed to do, at home and abroad." (Giovanni Grevi, in the introduction)

This is a 100-page book brought out earlier this month by the Spanish-based think tank FRIDE, which is producing better and better material these days. It is a good global review of the political situation in various parts of the world, with some policy ideas for how Europe could deal with them. "Europe" here is writ pretty large, with an emphasis on collective action by member states rather than tinkering with the Brussels machinery, and this is no self-indulgent back-slapping exercise of misty-eyed idealism about peace and harmony. It leads upfront with three areas of foreign policy where the EU has not delivered on its rhetorical commitments – promoting democracy (by FRIDE director Richard Youngs), fighting climate change (Bernice Lee and Diarmuid Torney), and developing a security/military capability (Daniel Keohane) – and takes a hard look at why the EU is failing in these areas and what could be done to reverse the drift. Of the other chapters, I particularly appreciated the ones on supporting democratic transition in the Arab world (Kristina Kausch) and on crises in Africa (Damien Helly).

This is not a book about the problems of the Euro or how to solve the economic crisis, but it lurks behind every chapter; the fact is that EU leaders have been too absorbed with fixing the finances to look outside over the last few years. In addition, internal leadership on this issue is, to be charitable, weak. In my own opinion the EU is actually a less powerful foreign policy actor now than it was ten years ago. In 2003 European peacekeeping troops were deployed to Macedonia. Now a civilian mission is securing an airport in South Sudan. It's rather a drop in scale of ambition and effort. FRIDE's analysis is a good starting point for discussing both how to try harder and if it s even worth trying.

‘I’ve discovered a lot in the last few weeks,’ Smith began. ‘I’ve found out that being the Doctor… it’s not about having special knowledge or abilities. It’s about not being cruel. It’s about not being afraid.’ He walked into the middle of the clearing, searching for the right words. ‘There are monsters out there, yes. Terrible things. But you don’t have to become one in order to defeat them. You can be peaceful in the face of their cruelty. You can win by being cleverer than they are.’

This is still the only Who novel to have been adapted for television rather than the other way round. I first read it, gulp, seven years ago – the first Seventh Doctor novel I ever read – and would have been rereading it anyway as I shall be rewatching the TV episode soon.

Now that I have read the previous 37 New Adventures, I still think this is one of the best in the series. It is better than most Who novels as a standalone (though Niall Harrison found the continuity heavy going), the major reference to previous novels being to Benny’s loss of her lover in the Albigensian crusade. The Doctor is absent from most of the book and needs to be explained to his own alter ego, John Smith, whose final sacrifice is very effective.

An easy Bechdel pass with Benny bantering with a group of women at a bar in the prologue.

• The Only Way to Get Important Things Done
  
  Programming yourself, apparently.
  (tags: psychology lifehacks productivity )
• New photos, videos and app shed fresh light on Anne Frank’s family life
  
  #fb
  (tags: books )
• George Packer: The Political Isolation of the American South
  
  As late as 1950, there were just three Republicans among the South’s hundred and nine congressmen, and none in the Senate; a decade later, the numbers had barely moved.
  (tags: Uspolitics )

I heard his voice exclaim, ‘Listen to the noisy sods.’ And a female voice, husky with love, said, ‘Never mind them, darling. Come back here.’ And I thought another thought, except this one was even more stupid. I actually recognised her voice, until I corrected myself. It couldn’t be, never in a million years.

This is the most recent Lovejoy book, published in 2008, and since the author turns 80 this year I guess it may well be the last. (Though not for me; eleven down, thirteen to go.) It is a rather confused affair; an older Lovejoy, more narcissistic than ever, gets swept up in a massively weird conspiracy by the stranded dregs of colonialism (who of course tend to have retained fantastically valuable antiques). As well as Lovejoy’s East Anglia base, we get taken to various parts of England with a climactic scene off the coast of Blackpool. Lovejoy turns out to have a son who has inherited his gift of divvying (the supernatural ability to detect genuine antiques) and is the most memorable new character in the book; also, remarkably, his long-suffering apprentice Lydia develops a sudden burst of characterisation, not that it does her much good. And Lovejoy manages to bed pretty much every female character over the age of consent, though not very explicitly. I won’t recommend this as a book to start reading the series with; though it seems that this is where it finishes.

Fails the Bechdel test at the third hurdle. There are many women characters, who frequently talk to each other, but Lovejoy himself is invariably the topic of conversation.

“My advice to you is to marry as soon possibly as you can. Do not marry in England; for such a marriage will prove your ruin… There are some good Catholic wives to be had in England; but now it is a great venture. Never bring a Protestant wife into your family. Marry in your country as all your predecessors have done.” (Lord Trimleston to his son, 1686)

A pretty massive book in which Ohlmeyer looks at the turbulent seventeenth century in Ireland (really the shorter period between the Flight of the Earls and the Williamite victory) through the lives and deeds of the people who saw themselves as Ireland’s natural leaders – the resident peerage. My personal interest in the subject is that the Sir Nicholas Whyte/White of the day (not the Elizabethan statesman, but his grandson) married the daughter of Viscount Moore and managed to bag Viscount Galmoye (probably), Viscount Dillon and the Earl of Carlingford as sons-in-law; though the White/Whyte family are not mentioned directly in this book, their relatives certainly are.

Ohlmeyer’s argument, to summarise brutally, is that the Irish peers were engaged in a nation-building project, almost all of them committed to support for the British monarchy (as it became in 1603), but not necessarily to the Dublin government (let alone the English parliament), and committed to a paradigm of honour which included most importantly serving the Crown in peace and war, but also meant ensuring that the peasants didn’t starve and securing the familial succession so that succeeding generations could keep up the tradition. This last point comes up again and again; Ohlmeyer denotes substantial and separate chapters to birth, marriage and death among the peerage, and it is striking how often lines simply expired – underage heirs might be vulnerable to disputed successions and seemed to die early themselves rather often, and of course the wars of the 1640s and 1690s took their toll as well.

A lot of the noble houses switched religion over the decades – not just as a result of mixed marriages, but also as a result of individual conversions; but there always remained a critical mass of Catholics, if a minority, among the peerage, accepted by Protestant peers and by London as a critical part of the fabric of Irish society, until the 1690s when most of them converted or fled, ending the nation-building project. I still find it quite difficult to get my head around the fervently Catholic Irish peers wishfully thinking that James I and VI or Charles I or II was going to restore Catholicism, or even allow them to hold the public offices from which they were barred, and I suppose it is a triumph of Stuart statecraft that allowed them to think so (having said which, they were not the only ones who thought the Stuarts might be soft on Romanism, and if they were reading hard line Protestant pamphlets they would have had fuel for their fantasies).

Ohlmeyer sends a rather exhausting amount of time on the statistics and patterns of landownership (and the maps used to illustrate are not terribly clear). But one point I took away that I had not previously realised related to the Cromwellian land settlement. Ohlmeyer confirms the traditional historical version that many Catholic landowners were dispossessed entirely or transplanted to Connacht. However, a significant minority of these dispossessions were overturned on appeal to Charles II, particularly of peers who had good connections at court (and the Irish peers, Catholic and Protestant, had by and large supported Charles in his exile, which turned out to be the way to bet). Either way, peers as a group ended up owning more of Ireland’s acres at the end of the process; it was the smaller and less influential dispossessed or transplanted landowners who had no redress.

Anyway, a minority interest, but plenty of food for thought.

• Has a passenger ever landed a plane after the pilot was incapacitated?
  
  Kind-of, yes, once or twice.
  (tags: flying )
• Opinion: Cameron is wishing for an EU that already exists
  
  “…the speech is either ignorant or disingenuous about the reality of the EU on several counts… Cameron calls for a council of ministers to deal with the Single Market, but ignores the existing Competitiveness Council, which does just this… in terms of flexibility, Britain already has various opt-outs on the euro, border controls, justice, policing and working time rules.”
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• @Telegraph fakes a plot by the EU to control British press
  
  @BrunoBrussels lying again.
  (tags: eu )
• David Cameron may have finished off the Tories – but he had no choice
  
  Peter Oborne of @telegraph gets it right. (Really.)
  (tags: ukpolitics EU )

• Fog in Channel, Cameron Cut Off (by @timjudah1)
  
  Quote from me at the end!
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )

• The Schengen Curtain, by Marko Đedović
  
  Wonderful immigration policies which penalise the innocent traveller and encourage criminality.
  (tags: migration eu humanrights belgium )
• Cameron’s backward-looking speech
  
  Mark Leonard: “a miscalculation which will leave everyone frustrated”.
  (tags: ukpolitics EU )
• David Cameron’s argument will fool no-one, and will relegate the existing EU-UK relationship to the periphery
  
  Julian Priestley doesn’t mince his words.
  (tags: ukpolitics EU )

• The Secret Mansion (with images, tweets)
  
  Baron Hill on Ynys Môn, abandoned since WW2.
  (tags: photos )
• Obama, Marshmallow Cannon Creator Joey Hudy Pose For Science Fair Pictures
  
  Fantastic videos of airguns in the White House.
  (tags: )
• Dear brilliant students:
  
  Why you should not do a Ph D.
  (tags: Life )
• The best (and worst) media errors and corrections of 2012
  
  Some of these are hilarious.
  (tags: Funny media )
• BBC News – Norway goat cheese fire closes tunnel
  
  “This news item contains the words ‘Norway’, ‘goat’, ‘cheese’, and ‘fire’.” – Dominic Green
  (tags: cheese Norway )
• Up-Goer 5: Social Justice Edition – Ozy Frantz’s Blog
  
  Privilege: Some groups of people get bad things other groups of people don’t get.
  (tags: )
• Seven EU myths you should never believe
  
  The ‘Thatcherite free-marketeer’ Polish foreign minister: “Even your cooking has improved.”
  (tags: ukpolitics EU poland )

This is the second of a trilogy by Burns which started with X’ed Out, and leaps between three different storylines: Doug’s memories of his life in our world, in particular his enigmatic girlfriend Sarah (who has a fascination with Louise Bourgeoisalter ego Nitnit in the alternative insectoid world of The Hive; and the romance comics which are common to both worlds. It seems almost as if Burns is interrogating the medium of comics from two different directions, Bourgeois’ startling and disturbing images and the conventionally fluffy romance stories. There is also clearly a deep revelation to come in the third and final volume about what happened between Douglas and Sarah, and I find myself rather hoping that it is something sufficiently disturbing to justify the emotional energy of the story rather than some relatively generic story about growing up.

Bechdel fail at the second step – it is a tight narrative of a male viewpoint character (or characters), and while there are numerous female characters, none of them talk to each other.

(Also known as Dubrovnik.)

Describing my job using only the thousand most common words in English:

There are people who run some places (or who would like to run them) who do not find it easy to talk to people who run other places, but would like to do that more often and better. I help the first group of people to talk to the other people.

Try it yourself.

• Why I like Martin Luther King Day
  
  (Note to self: Americans have a holiday tomorrow.)
  (tags: )
• Forget Harry Potter
  
  John Crowley speaks out for Joan Aiken’s “Wolves of Willoughby Chase”, etc.
  (tags: sf )
• Books on books — recursive but fun!
  
  Lois McMaster Bujold: Essays on a Modern Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy
  (tags: sf )

• Niger ambassador to Belgium, wife found dead
  
  Jeepers. I met him last April, we had a great conversation about Mali.
  (tags: Death )
• It’s all about the lies
  
  Re Armstrong: “When he says he’s sorry now, how do we know he’s not still lying?”
  (tags: Dopingscandal )
• Eastercon now has a code of conduct.
  
  …or, How to Make Sure Everyone Has A Good Time.
  (tags: Behaviour )

	Goodreads		Librarything
	number	average	number	average
2312, Kim Stanley Robinson	1445	3.41	267	3.65
Dark Eden, Chris Beckett	138	4.09	30	4.50
Intrusion, Ken MacLeod	115	3.40	64	3.97
Jack Glass, Adam Roberts	79	3.89	18	5
Empty Space: a Haunting by M. John Harrison	52	4.19	31	3.5

NB that only one Librarything user has rated either of the last two, which is why those numbers are italicised.

Full shortlist (including short fiction, art and non-fiction) is here.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.

• Seven hazards for Cameron
  
  By Michael Emerson.
  (tags: EU )
• 4 Years On
  
  Live-tweeting the end of the conflict in 2009
  (tags: srilanka )
• How to withdraw from the European Union? Confronting hard reality
  
  Another CEPS piece.
  (tags: EU )

• Irvine Welsh: Scottish Independence and British Unity
  
  “Better together? Yes, certainly, but better independent and free together.”
  (tags: scotland ukpolitics )
• Advantages of social media are poorly understood
  
  My grandfather began school at a time when trust was defined by physical locality, and often marked by the boundary of the parish. In the spring of 1879, aged seven, he was part of the first generation of Irish kids to attend national school in Fanad, Co Donegal. It was his first lengthy engagement with the English language; and it’s likely that the main technology he used during the six years of his formal education was a stone slate.

  Three generations – and 120 years or so – later and, at half that age, his great grandson’s favourite educative tool is already an iPad.
  (tags: ireland technology )

• 22 Stairways That Lead Nowhere
  
  I think we all feel like that sometimes.
  (tags: photos architecture )
• Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax
  
  Good reporting.
  (tags: Media )

• 50 stories for 50 years: 1982
  
  Andrew Hickey: Why Earthshock succeeds, against the odds.
  (tags: Doctor who )
• Katesbridge: The legend of Northern Ireland’s ‘frosty hollows’
  
  Why is it so cold in Katesbridge (and Castlederg)?
  (tags: Weather northernireland )
• Czech presidential vote marks shift in EU relations
  
  (tags: EU czechrepublic )

• What Cameron *should* say on Europe (WSJ)
  
  Wishful thinking: “…the idea that I am going to hold the euro zone to ransom at a time of acute financial stress by blackmailing our closest trading partners with some cobbled-together list of vague and probably unachievable ultimatums, risking years of damaging uncertainty, simply to appease a faction in my party who will never be reconciled to EU membership anyway, is completely absurd.”
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• Links: Britain and Europe
  
  “The Americans have never wanted the UK out of the EU. If they did, they’d say it.”
  (tags: EU ukpolitics )

“You’re not the Doctor. It’s a trick. You’re one of those doubles, Mr Mackenzie told me.”
“I don’t know who this Mr Mackenzie is, Jamie,” said the Doctor. “But I assure you that I am definitely me.”
“You’re dead.” He looked the Doctor up and down. “You’re not the Doctor. I want to go back.”

A slightly unusual Past Doctor Adventure here: the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe end up in a future which is based very strongly on the work of the late Gerry Anderson, the Tracy family of Thunderbirds fame translated into the Sharon family with their Lightning rescue craft, and various other adaptations from parts of the Andersonverse that I don’t know as well.But this future is a dystopia where society had collapsed globally, and which is under threat from the Myloki (who combine attributes of both the Mysterons and the attackers of Earth in UFO). It is lovingly drawn, and my lack of familiarity with the source didn’t spoil my appreciation of the detail. Messingham also has the Doctor and companions go through hell – the Doctor so badly injured before the story starts that he almost regenerates, Zoe drawn into a doomed love affair, Jamie traumatised and distrustful – which is not at all true to the series of the time, but does take the characters to interesting places. However, though I liked the setting and what was done with the regulars, I wasn’t really grabbed by the plot such as it was, and too many of the borrowed Anderson characters – especially the women – were simply background coloration.

A bare pass for the Bechdel test (and I think some readers would fail it). Zoe is often thrown together with some of the aforementioned cardboard women characters and it is suggested that they have conversations, which may not always be about men. (I am going to try and systematically tally this for all fiction I read this year.)

How much do monsters have a choice about being monstrous, and how much can they outgrow their natures?

Getting the year off to a good start with Graham Sleight’s analysis of 29 of the Doctor’s best known monstrous adversaries, and what they actually mean in story terms. Fellow fans will enjoy Sleight’s take on the various creatures, whether we agree or disagree – for instance, he argues that if Kroll had been realised better on screen, The Power of Kroll might have a far better reputation as a story. But mainly he looks at the effect of monsters on the other characters in the story, on the viewer and to an extent on themselves. The people who will really get something out of this book are those with a strong interest in cinematic and television depictions of monsters, combined with a passing familiarity with Who, rather than the other way round.Having said that, the book looks very much at Who in its own terms without tying it particularly to other screen sf or fantasy, and jumps around quite a lot in historical timeline (which I think was a good way of getting the Whovian reader to think about it a bit more; the non-Whovian reader won’t care). The Daleks get four separate chapters – original story, pre-Davros, post-Davros and New Who – and the Cybermen get three – up to Return of the Cybermen, Earthshock to end of Old Who, and New Who. 

My copy unfortunately was marred by production errors, including a complete lack of page numbers. The material deserved better from the publisher (I.B. Tauris), but Who fans and media fans more generally will enjoy it anyway.