Two Fives
One Six
A Three and a Twelve
These are etheric beam locators!
The wonderfully colourised Daleks Master Plan
Slightly blurry Nine
I got what I came for
And finished in a room with a thousand other fans watching the latest episode.
Alpha Centauri
The Fourth Doctor
Davros
The Runaway Bride
The Happiness Patrol
“I’m behiiind you!”
My inner 15-year-old can’t quite believe it.
Ood
Misc cosplay
Writers (Fitton, Myles, Cornell, McCormack)
Autograph
Fannish glee
Second paragraph of third story ("Goblin Autumn", by Adrian Tchakovsky):
And then, one morning out trying to scratch sustenance from the dying fields, they would have looked up, movement in the corners of their lateral eyes, and seen… them. Just like in the stories but a thousand times worse, things that were like people, but stunted, spindly, huge-eyed, their faces sharp and jagged with teeth. And that child must have thought: It’s true, and they came for me just like the rhyme! But not for long. Thysalys had seen ample evidence of how goblins treated any who fell into their clutches. Evidence mostly comprising gnawed gristle and discarded skin.
Another anthology which I got because three of the stories in it were on the BSFA long list (though none of them made it to the shortlist). It's a collection of fairy tales told by non-human cultures, in some of which humans are the villains. Some good stuff here, most memorable being the very first story, "The Little People" by Una McCormack, and my personal favourite, "The Land of Grunts and Squeaks", by Chris Beckett, in which a formerly telepathic race loses that power and has to learn to communicate with sounds. You can get it here.
While I have vague memories of watching this in 1975 – my birthday was on a Saturday that year – I have much clearer memories of renting the video in about 1990; it was one of the first Doctor Who stories to be released on VHS. I persuaded sceptical housemates in the wonderful 49 Chesterton Road, Cambridge, to gather round and watch, and we all enjoyed the nostalgia trip.
When I came back to it in 2007, I wrote:
Revenge of the Cybermen has a rather poor reputation among fandom, but I rather enjoyed it this time round (I remember it first time round in 1975, when the second episode was broadcast on my eighth birthday, and watched it again in around 1990). If you treat it as Doctor Who and the Vogans, rather than pay attention to the irritating Cybermen, it is a great story – the three main Vogan characters, played by well-established pillars of Who like Michael Wisher (Davros), Kevin Stoney (Mavic Chen/Tobias Vaughn) and David Collings (later Poul in The Robots of Death and Mawdryn) all spark off each other well and give a convincing picture of a paranoid, factionalised society. Unfortunately the Cybermen rather spoil the plot – they have a different crucial weakness each time they appear, it seems – and I can never watch the Doctor’s discovery of the Plot Device Cupboard in the last scene without wincing.
During my 2009-11 rewatch, I wrote:
Revenge of the Cybermen is decent enough but not at the level of Genesis or Ark. The exploration of the internal politics of Voga, a closed and fearful society wrestling with technical change and contact with the outside world, is the most interesting thing Davis ever wrote, and the lead Vogans (including stalwarts Michael Wisher and Kevin Stoney) rise to the challenge. The Cybermen are actually the weakest point of the story; apparently the last of their race, suddenly vulnerable to gold (a new Sekrit Weekniss which we had never heard of before) and reprising the plan which worked so badly for them in The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase and The Wheel in Space.
I see that the Vogans have the Great Seal of Gallifrey on display, so they must have had contact with the Time Lords from way back (he said, desperately retconning). Tom Baker is getting a little out of control here, visibly giggling as he tells Elisabeth Sladen that they are heading for the biggest bang in history and posing with the two astronauts as the Three Royal Monkeys in episode three.
This time one thing that struck me was the complete absence of women among the guest cast. Or do female Vogans look just like male Vogans to the unpracticed eye? Perhaps they have no gender? In any case, they are all played by male actors, including Kevin Stoney who played the two greatest villains of the black-and-white era, Mavic Chen and Tobias Vaughn, and Michael Wisher who we have just seen in very different prosthetics as Davros.
Anyway, if you’re not aware of Cybermen continuity, as I was not in 1975, it’s a pretty good story.
I wrote of the novelization:
Again, one of those cases where Dicks has taken a so-so story and made it into a good read. Partly this is because of good scene-setting; partly also that he is liberated from the constraints of poor special effects; mainly that he seems to have been having fun with the script. I remembered this one fondly from my childhood, and for once it lived up to my memories.
The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
‘You can’t allow it,’ he said slowly. ‘And just who might you be?’
I made this observation about the Season 12 novelizations as a whole:
The Season 12 novels, with slight reservations for Doctor Who and the Giant Robot, are consistently good in a way that I don’t think can be said for any other season so far. (I know that Season 7 has its partisans, though.) All the elements seem to have come together successfully. There are a couple of significant differences in characterisation: Dicks’ version of the Fourth Doctor is more jolly than the screen version, so I imagine that fans coming to Tom Baker’s stories via the books will be surprised by the darkness in the original portrayal. Harry comes over as more clueless than gallant as written by Dicks (the reverse is true in Marter’s books for some strange reason).
You can get the DVD here (here as part of a two-pack with Silver Nemesis) and the book here.
I have been noting that most of the Season 12 stories share a theme that I had not previously spotted: the scientist villain (Miss Winters, Styre with only a small stretch, Davros) who is misusing public resources to develop technology for evil purposes. With only a little more stretching, it applies doubly here – Kellerman has killed off almost the entire crew of the space station to favour his own goals (even if they are more personal gain than scientific), and Vorus, though not a scientist, has presumably diverted public resources from the budget Tyrum gave him to build the Sky Striker. So that’s basically every story this season except The Ark in Space, where I think Noah doesn’t quite fit the bill (because it’s a story of political leadership itself gone bad, not being subverted by the research sector).
There are actually rather few other stories in Old Who whose plots are close to this theme. In Planet of Giants, Forester is developing DN9 with private funding, not government funding. Mavic Chen is diverting public resources all right, but buying in technology from elsewhere as part of The Daleks’ Master Plan. The sinister tech in The Savages is completely under government control; that’s precisely the problem. The War Machines almost fits the bill but the perverter of government resources is itself an AI, WOTAN.
Two Season 4 stories do pretty much fit this, most obviously Power of the Daleks, where Lesterson lets his research get out of control, but also I think The Underwater Menace, where Zaroff is using the resources supplied by King Thous but not for the purpose intended. The Enemy of the World is also a decent case, though Salamander is not himself a scientist.
In the Third Doctor era, Inferno is close (though I am not sure that Stahlmann thinks he’s doing anything other than what was expected of him); the Master in The Mind of Evil is a clear-cut example; the scientists in The Time Monster are innocent I think; The Green Death doesn’t count because it’s private sector money (and also the main baddie is another AI); but Invasion of the Dinosaurs is another clear case.
Looking forward from Season 12, we have thin pickings. Robots of Death? Private sector, and Capell/Dask isn’t tasked with research. The Doctor himself, in The Invasion of Time? It all turns out to be part of a bigger plan. The Leisure Hive counts for sure; I don’t think anything else does, and not sure that any Fifth Doctor story fits the bill either. I am a bit confused as to what any of the Sixth Doctor stories was actually about. Possibly Vengeance on Varos fits. I don’t think any Seventh Doctor story does.
In New Who, there’s a bit more of it – arguably it’s the whole point of Torchwood, outside the government – but the baddies tend to be aliens disguised as humans – the best example are the Krillitanes in School Reunion; Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen in Boom Town and the Master’s machinations in The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords are again more cases of political leadership going bad and using Science and Technology as part of their evil plan, which isn’t quite the same thing.
Running out of energy here; but my point is that there really are only a handful of Doctor Who stories featuring a scientist (or military technician) diverting substantial resources from his or her own political masters for nefarious purposes; and four out of five in Season 12 clearly do address this theme as a core plot element. Interesting.
I am looking forward to much discussion of this and many other points at Gallifrey One, the Los Angeles Doctor Who convention where I will be this weekend. Look out for pictures.
Current
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders
A Popular History of Ireland, by Thomas D'Arcy McGee
The Aachen Memorandum, by Andrew Roberts
Last books finished
The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant – did not finish
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
Shadow over Mars, by Leigh Brackett
Arc of the Dream, by A. A. Attanasio – did not finish
Next books
Hex, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Small Island, by Andrea Levy
The candidates for Best Novel were 5th, 15th, 18th, 24th, 25th, and 36th on my previous list.
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children of Ruin | 26,433 | 4.10 | 195 | 3.95 |
| Tade Thompson – The Rosewater Insurrection | 3,788 | 4.05 | 75 | 3.78 |
| Emma Newman – Atlas Alone | 3,457 | 4.07 | 66 | 4.19 |
| Gareth L Powell – Fleet of Knives | 1,633 | 4.02 | 44 | 3.93 |
| Juliet E. McKenna – The Green Man's Foe | 147 | 4.4 | 10 | – |
Last year's winner was third out of five on this ranking.
Four of the candidates for Best Short Fiction are available for standalone purchase:
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone – This is How You Lose the Time War | 74,407 | 4.05 | 421 | 3.82 |
| Becky Chambers – To Be Taught, If Fortunate | 27,772 | 4.25 | 235 | 4.15 |
| Tade Thompson – The Survival of Molly Southbourne | 1,454 | 3.67 | 35 | 3.3 |
| Gareth L. Powell – Ragged Alice | 969 | 3.53 | 31 | 3.45 |
Interesting to see that the two top novellas have both outsold the top novel. (The other two candidates are “Jolene”, by Fiona Moore, and “For Your Own Good”, by Ian Whates.)
And finally for now, four of the five Best Non-Fiction candidates are available for purchase:
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| Farah Mendlesohn – The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein | 154 | 4.08 | 32 | 4 |
| Gareth L. Powell – About Writing | 125 | 4.47 | 7 | 4 |
| Adam Roberts – HG Wells: A Literary Life | 4 | 5 | 6 | – |
| Glyn Morgan & C. Palmer-Patel (eds) – Sideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction | 13 | 4 | 1 | – |
The other is “Away Day: Star Trek and the Utopia of Merit”, by Jo Lindsay Walton, an online essay. (I have to say that I am not sure that I will fork out £75 for a book of essays.)
So, looking at the final scores, my Sunday prediction was wrong in 19 out of 39 constituencies – just under half. Two of these were simple error on my part – I mixed up Labour and the Social Democrats in Wicklow, and FF and FG in Mayo.
But in general I did not appreciate how transfer-toxic FF (and to a lesser extent FG) have become. The best illustration here is Dublin South-Central, where neither of the traditional parties won a seat, despite starting in second and third place on first preferences.
The older parties did not even transfer well internally. The best example is Tipperary where Fianna Fail had over a quota of first preferences, and Fine Gael had more than 0.8 of a quota, normally enough to win a seat, but FF only just scraped into the last seat and FG were runners-up. The FG front-runner got less than 60% of his running-mate's transfers; the FF front-runner got only 35% from their second candidate when she was eliminated!
By contrast, Greens, Social Democrats and Independents were often more transfer friendly than I expected. Independent candidate Dean Mulligan started in ninth place in Dublin Fingal, but came with 150 votes of winning the fifth and final seat.
All this meant that my Sunday prediction was way out from reality, except, oddly enough, for SF who I correctly called at 37 seats. FF and FG underperformed my Sunday prediction, on 38 and 35 respectively rather than 47 and 37. Labour got the 6 that I expected once I sorted out my Wicklow mistake. The others all did better: 21 Independents (including Aontu) rather than 17, 12 Greens rather than 9, 6 Social Democrats rather then 3, 5 SPBP rather than 3.
All in all, a useful object lesson in humility for me!
Second paragraph of third chapter:
The parties have been 'locked in talks' as they say (inaccurately) since the start of May, shamed into them by the public outrage at the murder of Lyra McKee. As with all previous negotiations since January 2017, though, momentum has been lost and the 'never again' horror of the moment submerged in the tit-for-tat squabbles of an increasingly fractious summer. The Prime Minister is determined, he says, to give all of the parties a fair and equal hearing, as indeed he is obliged to under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
A book on the agonies of Northern Ireland, written by an author who I generally admire (he wrote the script for the film Good Vibrations, which stars Jodie Whittaker as the wife of legendary Belfast music figure Terri Hooley). He takes the story right up to the start of last month, which of course means it's now rather out of date, with the December 2019 election and the restoration of devolution having happened in the meantime (having said which, cracks are already appearing in the new settlement). Patterson's style is engaging, but I wish he had something more concrete than offering a long long sigh of despair. Not that I can really blame him. I think it would be an entertaining and fairly light introduction to Northern Ireland for people who don't know too much already. You can get it here.
February 2005 was rather a busy month. The Macedonian government held a major reception in Brussels on Valentine's day, which I attended with family in tow, and then referenced in a briefing on the country published a few days later. I went to Geneva to give a lecture, and ended the month in Belgrade, but also had a couple of trips to London – on one of which I attended Picocon at Imperial College, bonding with a lot of newish friends in sf fandom; and using another for an initial conversation with my future employer, who I had met in Kosovo the previous year. It would be another year and a half before the conversation turned into something more concrete.
Books I read in February 2005:
Non-fiction 3 (YTD 6)
Blowing My Cover: My Life As A CIA Spy, and other misadventures, by Lindsay Moran
Theft of A Nation: Romania since Communism, by Tom Gallagher
Cyprus: The Search for a Solution, by David Hannay
SF 10 (YTD 15)
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
The Ethos Effect, by L.E. Modesitt Jr
Heartfire, by Orson Scott Card
His Majesty's Starship, by Ben Jeapes
We/Мы, by Yevgeny Zamyatin/Евгений Иванович Замятин
Manna from Heaven, by Roger Zelazny
Foundation's Edge, by Isaac Asimov
Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson
ThiGMOO, by Eugene Byrne
Stamping Butterflies, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
4,800 pages (TYD 8,200)
1/13 (YTD 3/22) by women
none by PoC
Best book of the month was Zamyatin's dystopian We, a fore-runner to 1984 and Brave New Worldyou can get it here. Second best probably Cloud Atlasyou can get it here. Deeply unimpressed by Lindsay Moran's take on Macedonia. You can get that here.
Lots more numbers overnight. Below seats in bold have declared their final results; seats in red are where I have either changed my prediction from last night, or else been proved wrong by the result. FF not doing as well on transfers – including internal transfers – as I had expected.
| Constituency | Seats | FG | FF | SF | GP | Lab | SD | PBP | Ind | |
| Carlow-Kilkenny | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1 | possible GP overtake 3rd FF | |||||
| Cavan-Monaghan | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| Clare | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | I now think FG not Ind | ||||
| Cork East | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Count complete | ||||
| Cork North-Central | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | I now think SPBP not Ind | |||
| Cork North-West | 3 | 1 | 2 | Count complete | ||||||
| Cork South-Central | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | Count complete | |||||
| Cork South-West | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | SD did overtake FG; count complete | ||||
| Donegal | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| Dublin Bay North | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | possible Green overtake SD | |||
| Dublin Bay South | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Dublin Central | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | SD have overtaken FF | |||
| Dublin Fingal | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Dublin Mid-West | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | SPBP currently ahead of FG but I think will slip behind again | |||||
| Dublin North-West | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Dublin Rathdown | 3 | 2 | 1 | Count complete | ||||||
| Dublin South-Central | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Dublin South-West | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Dublin West | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Count complete | ||||
| Dún Laoghaire | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | FF overtook 2nd FG; count complete | ||||
| Galway East | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Count complete | |||||
| Galway West | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Second Ind polling well. | ||||
| Kerry | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| Kildare North | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | FG will overtake 2nd FF | ||||
| Kildare South | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | plus CC (FF) | |||||
| Laois-Offaly | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Limerick City | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Ind has overtaken GP | |||
| Limerick County | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Ind overtook SF; count complete | ||||
| Longford-Westmeath | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Louth | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Lab have overtaken FF | ||||
| Mayo | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Don't know how I miscounted that! Count complete | |||||
| Meath East | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Count complete | |||||
| Meath West | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | (Ind is Aontu) Count complete | |||||
| Roscommon-Galway | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | SF stayed ahead of FF | |||||
| Sligo-Leitrim | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Poor FG internal transfers lost seat to GP; count complete | |||
| Tipperary | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| Waterford | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Wexford | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Ind has overtaken 2nd FF | |||
| Wicklow | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | possible 2nd FG overtake GP | |||
| Total | 159 | 36 | 42 | 37 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 19 |
It's difficult to call the irish election without having seen where SF transfers go. But looking at first preferences (where we have them) and tallies (where we don't) I think this is a better election for FF than people are saying. I call:
FF 46+1 (bonus for the Ceann Comhairle)
FG 37
SF 37
GP 9
Lab 7
SD 3
SPBP 3
AO 1
Inds 16
This obviously puts FF in best position to lead the next govt. If I were Micheal Martin, I'd fancy a minority administration for a few months and then go to the polls again.
If SF transfers largely go Left rather than all over the place, it's a different matter.
IF.
My detailed analysis:
| Constituency | Seats | FG | FF | SF | GP | Lab | SD | PBP | Ind | |
| Dublin Bay North | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | possible Green overtake SD | |||
| Dublin Bay South | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Dublin Central | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | possible SD overtake FF | ||||
| Dublin Fingal | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Dublin Mid-West | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||||
| Dublin North-West | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Dublin Rathdown | 3 | 2 | 1 | possible SF overtake 2nd FG | ||||||
| Dublin South-Central | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Dublin South-West | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Dublin West | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Dún Laoghaire | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | possible SF overtake 2nd FG | |||||
| Carlow-Kilkenny | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1 | possible GP overtake 3rd FF | |||||
| Kildare North | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2nd FF vulnerable to FG or Lab | |||||
| Kildare South | 3+1 | 1 | 1+1 | 1 | plus CC (FF) | |||||
| Laois-Offaly | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Longford-Westmeath | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Louth | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | expect Lab to overtake FF | ||||
| Meath East | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Meath West | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | (Ind is Aontu) | |||||
| Wexford | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2nd FF weak but difficult to see who else | ||||
| Wicklow | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | possible 2nd FG overtake GP; edit: I got SD mixed up with Lab here | |||
| Clare | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Cork East | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Cork North-Central | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Cork North-West | 3 | 1 | 2 | |||||||
| Cork South-Central | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | ||||||
| Cork South-West | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | possible SD overtake FG | |||||
| Kerry | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| Limerick City | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Limerick County | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Tipperary | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| Waterford | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Cavan-Monaghan | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| Donegal | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| Galway East | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | SF could stay ahead of FF or FG | |||||
| Galway West | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Mayo | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | ||||||
| Roscommon-Galway | 3 | 1 | 2 | |||||||
| Sligo-Leitrim | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Total | 159+1 | 37 | 46+1 | 37 | 9 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 17 |
Again, an Old Who story that I got back to pretty early after New Who revived my enthusiasm, but this time I am pretty sure that I watched it both first time around in March/April 1975 and then the 85-minute cut shown during the Christmas holiday that year. In April 2006, I wrote:
Watched episode 4 last night, and episodes 5 and 6 tonight. Will have to go back and do it all again with the commentary turned on. But it really is very good, after all this time. The whole thing is very much Davros' story, rather than that of the Doctor or even the Daleks. The last few scenes, where his creations turn on him because they are doing what he made them to do, are superb.
Pity? I have no understanding of the word. It is not registered in my vocabulary bank.
And rewatching in 2010, I waxed a bit more lyrical:
Genesis of the Daleks will never get old for me. First off, it looks good; an astonishing contrast with the previous year's Death to the Daleks, which just looked like a few sets draped around a studio, here we really feel that we are on a war-ravaged planet with two different factions at odds. The performances range from solid (eg Harriet Philpin as Bettan) to unforgettable (Michael Wisher as Davros, Peter Miles as Nyder).
But it really works because the basic plot idea is brilliant, to go back to the beginning of the Daleks' story and try to change it, an idea which turns out to be really a character study of Davros falling in love with his own creations, and then finding that they have outgrown him and will destroy him. Since we lost the Master we haven't had a decent villain in a Doctor Who story (with the mild exceptions of BOSS and Lynx). It is not surprising that Davros has had such a long afterlife (and I really recommend the Big Finish prequels about his childhood and earlier career).
I found it every bit as compelling as before. In particular, I've seen some complaints that there is too much running around corridors to fill up time, but I have to admit that I did not notice this as a problem on any of my viewings. The weariness of war and the technical genius offering a magical solution, the shout-outs to Nazi chic, the grimness of it all, adds up to the best story of this season and one of the best ever.
Incidentally, if you count Trial Of A Time Lord as a single story, but count Mission to the Unknown as a separate story from The Daleks' Master Plan, there are 155 stories altogether in Old Who, and Genesis of the Daleks is the 78th, precisely in the middle.
Rereading Terrance Dicks' novelization in 2008, I wrote:
One of the greatest TV stories, and I still think one of the best novelisations. The action is breathlessly stripped down from six episodes to fit the Target format; but Dicks also adds a lot more circumstantial detail about the horrible landscape of Skaro, Davros, the Kaled and Thal leaders, the reactions of Harry and Sarah to their environment, and the Doctor's moral dilemmas. Despite knowing the story as well as I do, I found myself reading avidly to the end.
The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
Security Commander Nyder and General Ravon were waiting for them. Nyder was turning over the odds and ends taken from the Doctor's pockets. He held up a small, complex instrument surmounted with a dial. 'What is the function of this object?'
This time again I thought that it's well done, though I did register that Dicks' Doctor is a little funnier than Baker's, which slightly jars the mood at times. But it's a book you could give someone who wanted to know what Old Who was all about and be confident that they came away with an accurate answer.
And I just want to note that, just like Mrs Winters and just like Styre, Davros is a scientist running a rogue research programme in defiance of the taxpayers. It is unlikely, I admit, that the Kaled or Thal leaders have been democratically elected, but they possibly have more popular legitimacy than Davros's own sense of destiny.
You can get the DVD here and the book here.
Second paragraph of third story (“The Ice Man”, by Rosie Oliver):
“What do you want?” she moaned into her pillow.
A short collection of short stories by women, a number of which ended up on the BSFA long list last month, so I expected value for money – and got it. I must say the knockout story of the lot is co-editor Rosie Oliver's “The Ice Man”, which takes the Scandinavian noir sub-genre and adds a very well crafted sfnal tweak to it. But they were all good. You can get it here.
I don't recall seeing any of The Sontaran Experiment first time around in 1975, but it was one of the earlier bits of Old Who that I got back to, in March 2006. I wrote then:
It comes between two excellent stories of Tom Baker's first season, The Ark In Space and Genesis Of The Daleks. Alas, the two episodes in between are not much cop, with the Doctor, Harry and Sarah running around a quarry and falling down holes, in the company of some dishevelled stranded astronauts, a Sontaran and a robot reminiscent of Graeme Garden's computer from the Goodies. The final victory is implausible even by Doctor Who standards of plausibility, and the experimentation scenes gratuitously nasty without adding much to the plot.
In 2010 I was even more dismissive:
After [Ark in Space], The Sontaran Experiment is a bit ordinary. It's refreshing to have more location filming after the claustrophobia of the Ark in Space but I find the plot a bit pointless – why are the Sontarans suddenly interested in torturing? and the battle fleet turns around just because the Doctor tells it to?
Kevin Lindsay is great again – third time in just over a year after The Time Warrior and his unmasked Cho-Je in Planet of the Spiders – and it is sad that he died a month after this story was shown.
This time around, I liked the aesthetic integrity of the location filming, and the fact that the astronauts all have southern hemisphere accents. But otherwise I didn't really like it any more than previously, and I don't have much more to say about it. However, it's only right to note my brother William's theory about What is really Going On:
I'm a big fan of The Sontaran Experiment actually, because it's basically The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but (a) taking advantage of the Doctor Who format to come in after the kids have transgressed and started to be punished, so you skip the boring bits and (b) made a year *before* The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so it actually has a genuine claim to be the first video nasty. (I think I Spit On Your Grave was around the same time, but I Spit On Your Grave is done from the point of view of the "monster" so it's a different kind of movie).
I also love the fact that Styre's experiments are stupid. Would the Sontarans in war really adopt the tactics of depriving their enemies of water for a month rather than say shooting them? Clearly, what's going on is that Styre is a psycho, is known by the Sontarans to be a psycho, and so has been sent to a planet of *no strategic value* to twiddle his thumbs while something important goes on somewhere else. (He wasn't just killed because he was well-connected — all clones, of course, have family in high places). The reason why the Doctor is able to get the invasion called off so quickly is because it was never planned in the first place. YOU SEE IT ALL MAKES SENSE.
Having said that, it's not brilliant. But if they'd had the budget to film the novelization it would have been.
He adds elsewhere:
Although Wood and Miles say the Sontaran Experiment is the story that took the Sontarans from villains to monsters, I think Styre is a unique creation, taking the slight lasciviousness of Linx and elevating him fully into a creepy sex gnome. It's the pinnacle of the Sontarans as slightly interesting, compellingly gross aliens, in a way that was thrown away by their subsequent classic series appearances and abandoned in their new series transformation from Rumpelstiltskin to rugger bugger. (Having said that, Strax in A Good Man Goes to War is a step back in the right direction of finding things you can do with the Sontarans that you can't do with the Cybermen or Daleks — an unhealthy fascination with the mechanics of being organic is key to making them interesting).
Fandom is a broad church, and it's good when people find different things to like. I'll just also should out to Glyn Jones, one of the stranded astronauts here but also author of the Hartnell story The Space Museum, and therefore one of the few people to have both written for TV Who and appeared in front of the cameras. (If we include spinoff literature, the list expands a bit, to include John Barrowman, Matthew Waterhouse and Colin Baker.)
The novelization is also by Ian Marter, who played Harry Sullivan in the televised story; I wrote in my Strange Horizons piece (apologies for some repetition from my Ark in Space post):
Marter's first two Doctor Who books, Doctor Who and the Ark in Space (1977) and Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment (1978), were both based on stories broadcast in 1975 in which Marter himself had appeared as Harry, and there's a corresponding emphasis on the character. It's more prevalent in the latter, where the Doctor and friends spoil the plans of the eponymous aliens to invade the Earth.
Marter both added and subtracted from the story as broadcast. He added some simply superb descriptive passages which one really regrets were not realised on-screen. At his best, there are some much longer sections: Harry gets almost an entire chapter to himself exploring the Sontaran spaceship, a passage completely absent from the television story, which had only two episodes as opposed to The Ark in Space's four, so some padding was required. There's also the nightmares inflicted on both Sarah and Harry by the Sontaran experimenter. He also adds graphical nastiness and violence. The fight between the Sontaran and the Doctor is realised in considerable detail.
Basically, if your attention is suddenly held by the prose in one of Marter's novelizations, it's a fair bet that it's something he added. Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment makes a below-average DW story into a well-above-average DW novel.
The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
Here and there he encountered other, similar shafts branching off at all angles. Harry ignored these and struggled on towards what he hoped would prove to be the surface. The same warm, sulphurous breeze issued from all the tunnels making the air thick and suffocating, so that Harry’s throat burned and his head throbbed. Whenever he paused for breath, curious distant sounds—like the pounding of machinery—reached his ears.
The novel actually adds quite a lot to the story as shown, including two more sleeping Sontarans and an on-ship robot, plus the Doctor kills off Styre with Scotch whisky which is a bit more grown-up than we were allowed to see on screen! But I also noticed this time that it's one of the thankfully few stories with no female guest cast members at all (Elisabeth Sladen is here as Sarah Jane, of course).
Going back to my theme of the management of public-funded science – we don't actually need to go the whole way with William's suggested analysis to observe that Styre is doing a dodgy and dangerous research project without the full approval of his political masters, who are (rightly) becoming increasingly suspicious of what he is up to – just like Mrs Winters at Thinktank. I wonder if there will be any more stories featuring that scenario this season?
Genesis of the Daleks next; meanwhile you can get the DVD of The Sontaran Experiment here (also here as part of a Sontaran box set), and the novelization here.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
He did not see or hear her arrive at the door to the cellar where he was working, until she called him by name, gently enough not to alert his comrades above. He reached for his gun at the sight of her but she tutted and shook her head with collegial imperiousness. “I’m Main à plume,” she said, and he believed her. That it was by some technique from the canon, some re-uttered poem in a novel context, that she had gained unseen entrance. He put his rifle down.
This was one of the near misses for the Hugos in 2017, but I was interested to read it anyway as Miéville is always provocative. Here we have an alternate timeline where Paris is still resisting the Nazis in 1950, and the Surrealist artists are united with the Partisans in resistance. I'm afraid it would have meant more to me if I knew more about the artistic connections, which were somewhat above my head. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2017. Next up is The Moomins and the Great Flood, by Tove Jansson.
Current
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
Last books finished
Doctor Who and the Giant Robot, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who and the Ark in Space, by Ian Marter
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow
Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment, by Ian Marter
The Idea of Justice, by Amartya Sen
Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks, by Terrance Dicks
A Killing Winter, by Tom Callaghan
Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen, by Terrance Dicks
The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, by Farah Mendlesohn
Next books
The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant
Arc of the Dream, by A. A. Attanasio
I definitely remember watching The Ark in Space first time around – again, not sure that I caught every episode, but the setting of the space station far in humanity's future was immediately entrancing. When the show returned, this was one of the first DVDs I bought. I wrote then:
Harry is a bit annoying, but it's every bit as good as I thought I remembered from when I was seven (I admit I watched the updated CGI version rather than the one with the original model shots, so the only really wobbly bit was the march of the Wirrn over the hull in the last episode). Of course, Ian Marter's novelisation was even more fun, but there's lots to like here – particularly pleasing are the characterisation of Tom Baker's Doctor (only his second story broadcast, though of course the third to be filmed), the first episode with nobody other than the Doctor and companions, and the banter between minor characters Rogin and Lycett. DVD extras are OK, including an interview with Tom Baker in Wookey Hole filmed while making Revenge of the Cybermen.
When I came back to it in my 2009-11 rewatch, I wrote:
I've often remarked in the course of this rewatch that I've revised my view of a story from mediocre to decent (or more rarely vice versa) when watching it in sequence. For the first time, with The Ark in Space, I'm revising my rating from "excellent" to "really superb". In particular, the first episode, establishing the new Team Tardis (particularly the Harry-Doctor relationship, Sarah already being a known quantity) with no other characters seen, is a great stroke – I think the last time we had a new companion treated in anything like this much introductory detail was Zoe.
The rest of the story is good too, with a great deal made of very little physical material – green bubble-wrap and about three sets in total. And Kenton Moore's agonised performance of Noah is excellent. (I had missed on previous watchings, but 'Noah' is his nickname, his real name being 'Lazar', i.e. Lazarus, so in fact a character with two Biblical references.) Slightly let down by the adult Wirrn but they are far from the worst monsters ever (or even this season).
This time around I watched it with the visiting in-laws,and they in their late seventies were as captivated by it as I was aged seven in the mid-seventies. I had forgotten just how claustrophobic the set is made to feel, psychologically reinforced by the rapid spate of deaths in the second episode, and the body horror of the Wirrn (Noah vs his arm being another shout-out to Dr Strangelove). Also, the different parts of the Nerva beacon are distinct enough from each other that we don't get lost – there is a clear correlation between the external model shot and what we see inside. We don't always get that in 1970s TV science fiction.
Doctor Who and the Ark in Space was the first of ten novelisations by Ian Marter, who actually played Harry Sullivan on screen (and still has the second highest tally of novelisations after Terrance Dicks, despite having died in 1986). I did a big article about Marter for Strange Horizons a while ago; here are the relevant bits:
Marter's first two Doctor Who books, Doctor Who and the Ark in Space (1977) and Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment (1978), were both based on stories broadcast in 1975 in which Marter himself had appeared as Harry, and there's a corresponding emphasis on the character. It is weaker in the former, a story of alien insects infiltrating a far-future space station where humanity lies dormant, waiting for the earth to become inhabitable again, although Harry very much provides the viewpoint in the first chapter as we are introduced to the Doctor, Sarah, and the futuristic setting.
Marter both added and subtracted from the story as broadcast. He removed, somewhat surprisingly, most of the humorous lines of dialog, such as the Doctor's line from The Ark in Space: "Well, my doctorate is purely honorary, and Harry here is only qualified to work on sailors." It is, of course, a joke on Harry's character, but perhaps Marter just felt the line didn't work as well on the page as it does on the screen. It's also a bit surprising that the unusual link between the two television stories—the Doctor and his companions travel to Earth via transmat beam—was dropped in favour of the more standard journey in the Doctor's TARDIS.
He added, however, some simply superb descriptive passages which one really regrets were not realised on-screen. Sometimes it's just little things, like the Doctor opening a door on the space station by thinking at it. At his best, there are some much longer sections: [eg] Sarah's journey through the ventilation duct, through the mass of Wirrrn—another thing added by Marter is an extra "r" in the name of the monster insects. He also adds graphical nastiness and violence. One character's head explodes, revealing the Wirrrn within. Another's body is "burnt to a colourless crystal."
Basically, if your attention is suddenly held by the prose in one of Marter's novelizations, it's a fair bet that it's something he added. Doctor Who and the Ark in Space is a really good read, to the point where Andrew Wrixon at the Doctor Who Ratings Guide blames Marter for making him unable to enjoy the original television version as much as he does the novel.
Coming back to it now, Marter's shift in tone from Dicks is even more remarkable; this is a gruesome gritty story, where future humanity has impoverished itself spiritually through unimaginative specialisation, failing to question the flawed political leadership of Noah until the disruptive Tardis crew stimulates them to do so. But the book somewhat deprecates the considerable agency of the women characters in the original – it's very interesting that the High Minister of Earth is a woman (as Harry says, in the year that Margaret Thatcher was elected Leader of the Opposition, "Fancy a member of the fair sex being top of the totem pole?") played by Gladys Spencer, who at the age of 80 must have been one of the oldest actors to appear in Doctor Who to that date (even if we only hear her voice).
This is a good story, but only the second best of this season. You can get the DVD here and the book here (a new edition with a foreword by Steven Moffat).