A 1968 anthology of stories (and one factual piece about meteor strikes) from Analog magazine. Some of these were irritating one-nifty-idea tales, but most were at least decent. The standout piece is Bob Shaw’s “Light of Other Days”, also the only one I was already familiar with. The best known of the other stories is Gordon Dickson’s “Call Him Lord” which is actually a story about a society with a rather brutal honour code, more fantasy than sf though the setting is Earth in a future Space Empire.

But really, considering what else was going on in sf at the time, what strikes one about these stories is juts how old fashioned they are; most of them (“Light of Other Days” being the clear exception) would not have been at all out of place in the Astounding of two or three decades earlier.

broadcast and webcast anniversaries

13 November 1966: broadcast of “The Nightmare Begins”, first episode of the story we now know as The Daleks’ Master Plan. First appearance of Nicholas Courtney, as Bret Vyon who captures the Tardis after Brian Cant’s character is killed on the planet Kembel. Meanwhile Mavic Chen, the Guardian of the Solar System, announces that he is going on holiday. In fact, he is in alliance with the Daleks.

13 November 1977: broadcast of third episode of The Deadly Assassin. The Doctor and Chancellor Goth battle through the nightmarish world of the Matrix, one of the most memorable of Who episodes.

13 November 2003: webcast of first episode of Scream of the Shalka starring Richard E. Grant as the other Ninth Doctor. The Tardis lands in the English town of Lannet, where peculiar volcanic eruptions are taking place and he meets Alison the barmaid.

13 November 2009: broadcast of second part of Mona Lisa’s Revenge. Mona Lisa attempts to unleash The Abomination upon the world, but is thwarted by Sarah’s gang with the assistance of K9.

13 November 2010: broadcast of Hound of the Korven (K9).

In the park in the centre of Moldova’s capital city, the locals enjoy good weather and free wi-fi

broadcast and publication anniversaries

12 November 1964: publication of Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks by David Whitaker, the first and still the best novelisation of any of the televised stories. Hunt it down if you can – any self-respecting fan should have a copy.

12 November 1966: broadcast of second episode of The Power of the Daleks. Despite the Doctor’s best efforts, Lesterson revives one of the metal monsters, which harshly declares itself to be the humans’ “ser-vant”.

12 November 1977: broadcast of third episode of Image of the Fendahl. Much chasing around the priory, culminating in the summoning of the Fendahleen by Stael and his followers.

12 November 2006: broadcast of Small Worlds (Torchwood), the one with the creepy fairies and people coughing up rose petals.

12 November 2007: broadcast of first episode of The Lost Boy (SJA). Luke apparently is really the son of Jay and Heidi; Mr Smith is really a Xylok; Jay and Heidi are really Slitheen. (Do try to keep up.)

12 November 2008: broadcast of first episode of Mona Lisa’s Revenge (SJA). The Mona Lisa comes alive and captures Sarah Jane. (I told you, do try to keep up.)

• Mikhail Khodorkovsky: final trial speech | openDemocracy
  (tags: russia)

i) births and deaths

I considered commemorating the births of Stubby Kaye (1918) and June Whitfield (1925) but since neither appeared in more than one Doctor Who story – respectively Delta and the Bannermen (1987) and The End of Time I (2009) – I decided I wouldn’t mention them.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

11 November 1967: broadcast of first episode of The Ice Warriors. Britannica base, fighting a new Ice Age enveloping Britain (and the whole planet) finds a frozen humanoid and three people arriving from the Tardis.

11 November 1978: broadcast of third episode of The Stones of Blood. The Doctor finds the hyperspace ship and is confronted by the Megara; Amelia and K9 have to deal with the Ogri.

iii) date specified in canon

11 November 1913: the Doctor defeats the Family of Blood, as seen in, er, The Family of Blood (2007).

Some of you will have seen this elsewhere:

[Interviewer:] You have stated elsewhere that the plot of the novel was given to you in a vision while taking ayahuasca, a mind altering substance from the Amazon, a drug you have taken at least thirty times. What led you to believe that this substance is more than a hallucinogenic, and that the visions you received were more than just the ravings of a drug-enhanced mind and actually from a higher power?

[Author:] Ayahuasca, and its active ingredient dimethyltryptamine (DMT) are extremely interesting agents for bringing about deeply altered states of consciousness. People from many different walks of life and from many different cultures all report finding themselves in similar otherworldly landscapes where they meet similar intelligent non-human beings with teachings to offer.

Increasing numbers of serious researchers are willing to consider the possibility that these beings and realms are real – perhaps in ways that quantum physics can elucidate.

Mmmm. I am sure that those researchers are both very serious and vastly increasing in number.

Justin Richards is the Terrance Dicks of our day, in that he has written far more Doctor Who books than anyone should want to, and his good ones are classics while his less good ones are at least average.

System Shock doesn’t quite make it to being better than average, unfortunately. The Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive in London in 1998 to find aliens invading and Harry Sullivan now senior in MI5. The aliens are amusingly addicted to management-speak, and there are some nice riffs on the digital culture of the era. But inserting the quintessentially 70s characters of the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith into a late 1990s setting is a bold stroke that somehow doesn’t come off, and the presentation of Harry as 20 years older and considerably wiser doesn’t quite live up to its promise.

But it was interesting to read this immediately after my post on companions’ afterlife, and I shall go on now to a different Harry future in Wolfsbane, having been discussing its ending with the book’s author and also Ian Potter on Twitter.

Posted via LjBeetle

According to Saharawi sources, eleven people were killed during the Moroccan cattack on a protest camp in the occupied Western Sahara on Monday. The Spanish agency ABC has a report with video. The BBC article is not too bad

i) births and deaths

10 November 1989: death of Clyde Pollitt, who played a Time Lord (the Chancellor) in The War Games (1969) and The Three Doctors (1973).

10 November 1991: death of Tutte Lemkow, who played Kuiju in Marco Polo (1964), Ibrahim in The Crusade (1965), and Cyclops in The Myth Makers (1965).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

10 November 1979: broadcast of third episode of The Creature from the Pit. In a memorable scene, the Doctor talks to the Creature, and the egg device comes alive.

10 November 2008: broadcast of second episode of The Mark of the Berserker (SJA). Maria, in a welcome cameo, tells Luke, Clyde and Rani the secret of the pendant. Clyde retrieves it and tells his father to catch himself on.

iii) date specified in canon

10 November 1913: the Family of Blood arrives in England, as seen in Human Nature (2007).

• Fear Factor: Europe bans the burqa | openDemocracy
  Lucid essay on the rationale behind this absurd legislation – "Europe’s systemic fears involve nothing less than the extent of her territorial and cultural boundaries. To put it bluntly, an aged Europe feels under threat from a world she once dominated, but which she never properly understood. It is this post-colonial world that is coming back to haunt her. And it is wearing a burqa."
  (tags: eu islam)
• Worst EU Lobbying Awards
  Vote now! for the worst EU lobbyists.
  (tags: eu)
• Brussels Brontë Blog: Memorable day of talks with Sue Lonoff and Brian Wilks…. and two surprise visitors
  The latest events of the Brussels Brontë Society
  (tags: belgium)

A rather decent novelisation of four of the original Thunderbirds episodes, “The Uninvited” (with the archaeologists in the pyramid), “Brink of Disaster” (with the monorail and the collapsing bridge), “Sun Probe” (with the, er, Sun probe), and “Atlantic Inferno” (where the drilling rigs are exploding pockets of submarine gas and Jeff tries to take a holiday). The Tracy family are sadly indistinguishable in terms of character; Brains has a speech impediment, and Lady Penelope and Tin-Tin are girls (one posh, one Asian) so at least you know who they are; but Morris has injected a certain depth of context and a little moral didacticism into what were originally sheer adventure scripts, it’s nicely illustrated, and there are some good lines (in “Brink of Disaster”, our heroes are propelled along the corridor in the crashing train as if they were puppets – well I never); and having read every single Doctor Who novelisation myself, I think he has done a decent job.

i) births and deaths

None that grabbed me.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

9 November 1968: broadcast of second episode of The Invasion. First appearance of UNIT and Benton, and return of the (newly promoted) Brigadier. The Doctor and Jamie are taken to UNIT, and then go in search of Zoe and Isobel; everyone is captured by IE.

9 November 1987: broadcast of second episode of Delta and the Bannermen. The Bannermen pursue Delta, the Doctor and Mel try to help, and the two Americans wonder what they are doing there.

9 November 1988: broadcast of second episode of The Happiness Patrol. The Doctor and Ace run around separately getting captured and escaping; the Kandy Man really ought to lock up the lemonade.

9 November 2010: broadcast of second episode of Lost in Time (SJA).

iii) real event described in canon

9 November 1923: The Doctor and Ace witness the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, as told in Terrance Dicks’ 1991 novel Timewyrm: Exodus.

• Pohl: Great Subject, Really Lousy Book
  Calling out shoddy research – when you are its subject.
  (tags: sf)

Rather a good Seventh Doctor story, with Ace returning to the Doctor/Benny setup, and mysterious and murderous goings-on in orbit around the planet Lucifer, but in a setting invoking many of the more space operatic Who stories – particular shout-outs to Colony in Space and Caves of Androzani, but various others are also referenced. Lots of incidental characters who almost all get decent treatment (in narrative terms). We also have the reunion of the Doctor and Benny with an older, hardened Ace. Both authors went on to greater things than this, but it is a good start.

Posted via LjBeetle

Reuters reports on the situation outside Laayoune in the occupied Western Sahara, where locals are protesting with their feet against the continued Moroccan occupation. Latest reports are that the Moroccans are planning to clear the camps by force and have cut off cell phone signals to as to prevent sneaky stuff like uploading video of what they are doing. You probably won’t read much about this in the international press because Morocco is a darling of the West and news editors generally don’t care much about the Saharawis. (BBC, Guardian, etc, where are you on this?)

i) births and deaths

8 November 1956: birth of Richard Curtis, executive producer of The Curse of Fatal Death (1999) and writer of Vincent and the Doctor (2010)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

8 November 1975: broadcast of third episode of Pyramids of Mars. The Doctor and Sarah fail to blow up the rocket, and the Doctor is transported to Sutekh’s chamber.

8 November 1980: broadcast of third episode of Full Circle. The Doctor and Dexeter analyse their samples, but Romana lets the Marshmen onto the starliner.

8 November 1986: broadcast of second episode of Terror of the Vervoids (ToaTL #10). One of the Mogarians turns out to be a detective in disguise, and the Isolation Room contains a plant/human hybrid.

8 November 1989: broadcast of third episode of The Curse of Fenric. The Haemovores attack the church and Judson is possessed by Fenric.

8 November 2010: broadcast of first episode of Lost in Time (SJA).

• UK trade, the EU, and the Rotterdam Effect
  Nosemonkey looks into EU trade figures.
  (tags: eu)
• cassiphone: A Reader’s Guide to Lois McMaster Bujold
  Tansy Rayner Roberts gives an excellent overview and ideas on where to get started on the Vorkosigan saga (but doesn't cover Bujold's fantasy books).
  (tags: sf)

I’m lagging behind on my Doctor Who annuals – should have read this last month while watching Season 12. I have mixed feelings about it; on the plus side, the stories are better written than usual and the artwork is pretty gorgeous, but on the minus side it is very short, the factual filler rubbish seems to take up about half of the 64 pages, and worst of all the pictures of Harry and Sarah don’t look remotely like either of them – very well drawn, just the wrong people. I think I would have felt a bit disappointed at paying £1 for this in 1975. You can find it on the Genesis of the Daleks DVD.

Posted via LjBeetle

Various spinoff media have addressed the question of what happened to the Doctor’s companions after (and in some cases before) their time with our favourite Time Lord. I don’t pretend that the list below is complete but I think it is fairly comprehensive, and at least is a good place to find out what other writers may have done with your favourite companion (unless your favourite companion is Steven Taylor).

Susan

Unlike most companions, but for obvious reasons, there is a fair amount of spinoff media about Susan’s life before her first TV appearance. I particularly recommend the Telos novellas Frayed by ‘Tara Samms’ (a pseudonym for Stephen Cole) and Time and Relative by Kim Newman, which explore respectively the Doctor and Susan’s choice of names and what happened in London in the winter of 1962. There are also a bunch of short stories in the various Short Trips anthologies set in the pre-Ian and Susan period.

Susan appears in The Five Doctors as one of the main characters, but we hear nothing about what she has been up to since leaving the Tardis. The Eighth Doctor novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel has her helping the doctor defeat the Delgado!Master. The Eighth Doctor audio An Earthly Child has her and her son (who is played by Paul McGann’s son) thwarting an alien invasion. The BBC audio Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman? has her becoming European Commissioner for Education in the mid-1990s. There are also two Big Finish stories featuring an alternate Susan with Geoffrey Bayldon as the Doctor; she becomes President of the Time Lords. Take your pick.  (She is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Ian and Barbara

It is pretty much received wisdom that Ian and Barbara got married after leaving the Tardis ans returning to 1965. In David McIntee’s novel The Face of the Enemy they are roped in by UNIT to join the Delgado!Master in dealing with curious events relating to many televised adventures. their son, rock singer Johnny Chess full name John Alydon ganatus Chesterton) turns up in Keith Topping’s novel The King of Terror and has a fling with Tegan. We heard in Death of the Doctor (SJA) that they had both become professors at Cambridge and had not aged since the 1960s.

Vicki

In a brilliant short story, “Apocrypha Bipedium” (Short Trips: Companions), Vicki/Cressida meets up with the Eighth Doctor, Charley Pollard and a young William Shakespeare in the immediate aftermath of the rather duff Eight/Charley audio The Time of the Daleks. The Big Finish audio Frostfire by Marc Platt has quite a substantial framing narrative set in Carthage many years after The Myth Makers, though most of the plot involves Jane Austen in 1814.

Katarina

Apparently Steve Lyons’ short story, “Katarina in the Underworld” (Short Trips: The Muses) describes her afterlife following her death in The Daleks’ Master Plan, but I haven’t read it. Lyons is a good writer though so I shall look out for it.

Sara Kingdom

Big Finish have done three Companion Chronicles featuring Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom, with an imaginative solution to how you can write stories about a dead character: Home Truths, The Drowned World and The Guardian of the Solar System, all by Simon Guerrier, all recommended.

Steven

Uniquely, nobody seems to have written anything about what happened to Steven on the planet of the Elders and the Savages, despite Peter Purves’ repeated and increasingly plaintive statements that he would love to reprise the role in such a story. (Maybe he should write it himself – see below under Mike Yates and Harry Sullivan.) I’m really rather surprised by this: how can it possibly have come about that there are more post-Tardis stories about Kamelion than about Steven??? [Edited to add: Apparently this is due to problems with the estate of Ian Stuart Black, who retain copyright in the planet of the Elders and Savages.]

Dodo

Having had one of the worst write-outs of any companion, Dodo gets one of the better afterstories in David Bishop’s novel Who Killed Kennedy?, in which the narrator, James Stevens, discovers her after years of treatment for psychiatric problems, and has a love affair with her which ends tragically. Though in “Ships” by Jamie Woolley, published in DWM 185 in 1992, she is still alive.

Ben and Polly

There are a couple of short stories about Ben and Polly finally getting together (unlike Ian and Barbara, their love is not generally assumed to be plain sailing) and in Death of the Doctor (SJA) we are told that they are running an orphanage in India. However…

Polly without Ben

In Marc Platt’s typically intricate Big Finish audio The Three Companions, Polly joins forces with the Brigadier and audi-only companion Thomas Brewster to thwart alien forces casuing climate change. We are told that she is now working in a senior position in Whitehall, so presumably Ben has found someone else of the same name to run his orphanage with.

Victoria

Victoria foolishly returned to Det-Sen monastery in the early 1990s and became possessed by the Great Intelligence; under its direction she ended up running a sinister north London university and had to be rescued by the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith, as shown in yet another Marc Platt story, Downtime. In The Great Space Elevator, she is expecting her first grandchild (presumably in 2008).  (She is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Zoe

Zoe appears as an illusory flashback in The Five Doctors, and has a post-Tardis framing narrative in the audio Fear of the DaleksLegend of the Cybermen. But I particularly want to flag up Peter Anghelides’ short story “The Tip of the Mind” in the Short Trips: Companions anthology, which features a rather moving encounter between an amnesiac Zoe and the Third Doctor.

Jamie

Jamie also appears as illusion in The Five DoctorsThe Two Doctors and Terrance Dicks’ novel World Game. The recent Big Finish audio sequence comprising City of Spires, Night’s Black Agents, The Wreck of the Titan and Legend of the Cybermen brings back an older Jamie for adventures with the Sixth Doctor (and in the last of these also Zoe). DWM got there years before, though, actually killing Jamie off in a Six/Peri comic story, “The World Shapers”, published in 1987 in ssues 127-129. [Edited to add: see also the framing narrative of Big Finish audio The Glorious Revolution.]

Liz Shaw

Her actual departure isn’t shown on TV, but it is covered in Gary Russell’s novel The Scales of Injustice. Liz also appears briefly in Who Killed Kennedy? and as an illusion in The Five Doctors, and apparently features in several novels I haven’t read – Blood Heat, The Devil Goblins from Neptune, The Wages of Sin and Eternity Weeps in which she is killed off. The four P.R.O.B.E. videos feature her as the leader of the Pretenatural Research Bureau, with Louise Jameson playing her sidekick and numerous other Who actors involved (in particular the first features Jon Pertwee, Colin Baker, Silvester McCoy, and the third Peter Davison), but only Caroline John is explicitly playing the same role as on Who. [Edited to add: According to Death of the Doctor she is on the Moon.] (She is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Jo Grant

Her reappearance in last month’s Death of the Doctor (SJA) was what prompted me to write this entry. She had previously sent the Metebelis crystal back in Planet of the SpidersGenocide) or stayed with him (Death of the Doctor, Big Finish audio The Doll of Death). She also had a very weird experience doing her Christmas shopping in late 2010 (Big Finish audio Find and Replace). It is reported in 2040 that she died in a house fire in 2028 (“Carpenter/Butterfly/Baronet” by Gareth Wigmore in Short Trips: 2040).

Mike Yates

The first TV companion to get a comeback after his departure, if you count Planet of the SpidersThe Five Doctors. Also features in Paul Cornell’s Seventh Doctor novels No Future and Happy Endings, and is also the central character of the Doctor-less novel The Killing Stone by none other than Richard Franklin, which brings him together with the Brigadier and Benton to confront the Master (published as an audiobook by BBV in 2002). Most recently, of course, he has teamed up with the Fourth Doctor for two series of audio adventures. (He is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

The Brigadier

Crumbs, where to start? Apart from the TV stories Mawdryn Undead, The Five Doctors, Battlefield and Enemy of the Bane (SJADowntimeSpectre of Lanyon Moor, Minuet in Hell, Zagreus and The Three CompanionsUNIT series; the Big Finish stories with David Warner as the Doctor; various novels including No Future and Happy EndingsThe Warkeeper;s CrownTerror of the Zygons. [Edited to add: According to Death of the Doctor he is in Peru. Again.] (He is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Benton

Benton is the central character of Wartime, which was the first serious spinoff Who video; I haven’t seen it (though reports are not terribly encouraging). Other post-Android Invasion appearances include the novel No Future and cameos in the novel Happy Endings and John Peel’s novelisation of The Power of the Daleks. The Brigadier reports that he is now a used car salesman in Mawdryn Undead.

Harry Sullivan

Harry actually gets prequelled in The Face of the EnemyHarry Sullivan’s War, which was published by Target back in the 1990s (Marter also wrote novelisations of two of Harry’s TV stories, Ark in Space and The Sontaran Experiment). Apparently he is in Justin Richards’ novels Millennium Shock and System Shock which are both reasonably high on my to-read pile. He is reported to have died in both Jacqueline Rayner’s novel Wolfsbane, and The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (SJA), though in Russell T. Davies’ novel Damaged Goods, set in 2015, he is still alive. Sarah says in Death of the Doctor (SJA) that he saved thousands of lives by vaccinating people. His brother Will features in the second run of audio sarah Jane Smith stories.

Sarah Jane Smith

Now in her fourth series of spinoff TV show, which follows two Big Finish series of audio plays about her and her appearances in K9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend, The Five Doctors (and Downtime) and her New Who appearances in School Reunion. (and The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End and The End of Time II). Also appears in Lawrence Miles’ two-part Interference novel, and appears to be killed off in David McIntee’s Bullet Time though is clearly alive and well some time later in other stories. (She is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Leela

We see her life on Gallifrey with Andred and K9 Mark 1 in the novel Lungbarrow and the audio story Zagreus, and she then joins forces with Romana for Big Finish’s three excellent series of Gallifrey audios; apparently a fourth is on its way. In three Companion Chronicle audios – The Catalyst, Empathy Games and The Time Vampire – she appears to be imprisoned and dying, but we don’t really find the sequence of events leading up to this. (She is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Romana

Romana ends up returning to Gallifrey (Big Finish audio The Chaos Pool) and becomes President (Paul Cornell’s novels Goth Opera and Happy EndingsShadaThe Apocalypse Element, Neverland and Zagreus), eventually teaming up with Leela to try and save Gallifrey in the excellent Big Finish Gallifrey series (which at one point also brings back Mary Tamm as a development of Romana’s first incarnation). A regenerated third version of Romana appears in the novels The Shadows of Avalon and The Ancestor Cell. (She is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

K9

Mark I:  Having stayed on Gallifrey with Leela, is destroyed during the finale of the second series of Gallifrey audios, but somehow gets transferred and regenerated to future London for the K9 spinoff TV series.
Mark II: Returns to Gallifrey with Romana and has quite a sparky relationship with Mark I before the other one gets destroyed. Fate after the Great Time War is unknown.
Mark III: May possibly be the K9 who travels with the Fourth Doctor and Adric in the stories of the 1982 Doctor Who Annual, before being sent off to join Sarah Jane Smith. Broke down irretrievably in “Moving On” by Peter Anghelides (Decalog 3: Consequences) and dismantled by Hilda Winters in the first Sarah Jane Smith audio series, before being repaired by the Doctor in School Reunion.
Mark IV: shouldn’t really be on this list as has never travelled with the Doctor; but continues to appear occasionally on SJA and New Who. In David Martin’s 1986 Make Your Own Adventure novel, Search for the Doctor, set in the year 2056, he is bequeathed to an unnamed viewpoint character [thanks for correction].
(Other/Unknown: There is also a K9 in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Adric

Adric was rather boldly brought back from the dead by Big Finish in The Boy That Time Forgot, this time played by Andrew Sachs (or as Peter Davison puts it, “this time played by an actor“). It turns out that he survived the freighter crash and now rules over a race of intelligent scorpions, which works better than it sounds.

Nyssa

Peter Darvill-Evans’ novel Asylum has Nyssa meeting the Fourth Doctor after she has left the Tardis but much earlier in the Doctor’s timeline. Two of the four stories in the Big Finish audio Circular Time are vignettes of her life after the Tardis, and fifty years after Terminus she rejoins the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough in Big Finish audios Cobwebs, The Whispering Forest and The Cradle of the Snake, with more to come. (She is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Tegan

Apart from the possibly non-canonical incident where she teams up with the Sixth Doctor (In A Fix With Sontarans), we next find Tegan in Brisbane in 2006, briefly reunited with the Fifth Doctor but apparently suffering from a terminal illness, in the Big Finish audio The Gathering. However she seems to have recovered; according to Sarah Jane in Death of the Doctor (SJA) she is fighting for Aboriginal rights.

Turlough

Turlough appears with the Sixth Doctor and Peri in Michael Holt’s 1986 Make Your Own Adventure novel Crisis in Space. He also has an entire spinoff novel about his subsequent career, Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma by Tony Attwood, which is really for completists only.

Kamelion

To my astonishment, there are several stories featuring Kamelion post-Planet of Fire. In Christopher Bulis’ novel The Ultimate Treasure he is resurrected and destroyed again; in Matthew Griffiths’ short story “The Reproductive Cycle” (Short Trips: Life Science) it is revealed that he somehow had a child with the Tardis; and he makes an appearance also in the last part of the Circular Time audio.

Peri

I have to say that in my personal fanon poor Peri is mindwiped and killed during the events of Mindwarp, and the subsequent assurances that she survived are false. However, I’m in a minority. In Age of Chaos, a full-length comic story by Colin Baker himself, the Sicth Doctor goes to Thoros Alpha to find her; David Carroll’s 1992 short story “Reunion” in DWM 191 has her still annoyed with the Doctor; and in Matthew Jones’ novel Bad Therapy the Seventh Doctor returns her to Earth. (She is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Mel

Mel reappears in Steve Lyons’ novel Head Games, and her subsequent travels feature in two short stories in the More Short Trips anthology, Gary Russell’s “Missing, Part One: Business as Usual” and Robert Perry and Mike Tucker’s “Missing, Part Two: Message in a Bottle”. She is reported to have died in Dale Smith’s novel Heritage. The Big Finish Unbound audio He Jests At Scars… explores what might have happened if the Valeyard had won. (She is also in Dimensions in Time, but we don’t talk about that.)

Ace

Last but by no means least (indeed featuring in more spinoff literature than any other TV companion), because the TV series ended with her still in the Tardis, Ace features in 34 novels of the New Adventures series, all of which are presumably set after Survival, in 22 main sequence Big Finish audios (as well as others set before Survival), and in 18 DWM comic stories. Her ultimate fate is not clear: according to Sarah Jane Smith in Death of the Doctor (SJA) a “Dorothy something” is running a company called A Charitable Earth (initials suggesting that this is Ace rather than Dodo Chaplet); she is apparently killed in “Ground Zero”, a DWM comic story by Scott Gray published in issues 238-242 in 1996; and most radically of all, in the webcast Death Comes To Time she actually becomes a Time Lord herself.  (She too is in Dimensions in Time, but we really really really don’t talk about that.)

This piece is much longer than I expected anyway but once I got started it just grew! Please do comment if I have made any particularly egregious omission. I had originally meant to link to my reviews of books mentioned above, and may still do that, but writing this has taken me all day and I want to finish up now. I think this all illustrates the wisdom of Paul Cornell’s essay on canonicity from a couple of years back. Much briefer thoughts on the subject are embedded in a typically long and witty review of Death of the Doctor by an unspecified Daddy (probably Richard) on Millennium Elephant’s blog.

Everyone else is linking to these, but I will too: two brilliant scenes made for the DVD of the most recent series of Doctor Who, the first of which could actually be a fairly good introduction to Doctor Who for people who know nothing about it:

And the second will go some way to reconciling fans of Old Who with the latest version:

Hmm, it’s a bit of a blur, but I make that Rose, Sarah Jane, Romana I, Liz, Martha, Romana I again, Rose again, Donna, Polly, Jo, Romana I again, Zoe, Katarina (!), Romana II, Leela, Barbara, Tegan, Peri, and lots of Leela. (And then back to the first set of shots looping again.)

Brilliant stuff.

i) births and deaths

7 November 1950: birth of Lindsay Duncan, who played Adelaide Brooke in The Waters of Mars (2009).

ii) broadcast anniversary

7 November 1964: broadcast of “Dangerous Journey”, second episode of the story we now call Planet of Giants. Ian and Barbara are trapped inside the laboratory; the Doctor and Susan scale a drainpipe to rescue them but are themselves threatened by the water.

ii) date specified in canon

7 November 1987: Peter Tyler is killed crossing the road to a friend’s wedding – oh no he isn’t – oh yes he is – as seen in Father’s Day (2005).

I’ve seen a couple of people doing this: go thorugh the list of UNESCO world heritage sites and note the ones you have been to. I count 83, so only 828 more to go… rather shamefully, there are two in Brussels (this and these) and one in Antwerp that I have not seen. It’s just as well that so many old capital cities are on the list or my tally would be considerably lower…

Austria

Azerbaijan

Belgium

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Estonia

Finland

France

Georgia

Germany

Greece

Holy See

Hungary

Ireland

Italy

Jerusalem

Kosovo

Luxembourg

Macedonia

Malta

Montenegro

Netherlands

Portugal

Russian Federation

San Marino

Spain

Switzerland

Turkey

Ukraine

United Kingdom

United States of America

I wrote a while back that I was likely to vote for Tim Farron in the election of the next President of the Lib Dems. Having perused the candidates’ election leaflets, I see no reason to change my mind. Indeed, the two elections are so similar – straight out of the ALDC school of QuarkXPress – that it’s rather easy to compare and contrast and to see that Tim basically has the harder edge. For example, take the “3 reasons to vote for me” given by each candidate:

It is notable that all three of Susan Kramer’s statements are in the future tense, while Tim Farron starts with the past, moves to the present and switches to the future only halfway through the third point. It’s also notable that the future tense statements are all pretty woolly, and you would have to wonder why any candidate thought any of them was actually worth making as part of staking out your own ground. Note also that while the second of the three points is very similar for both candidates, Tim edges it by a) putting it in the present tense and b) pointing out that as an MP he has easier day-to-day access to the leadership.

That’s all a matter of style, I suppose. On substance, Susan Kramer has more (though not a lot more) to say about using the position of President to service the party membership, and Tim Farron is crystal clear that he sees the role as another potential public platform for a senior Lib Dem to use. If I were more active in the party, perhaps I would have a sense of things going wrong that Susan Kramer could fix, but I’m not so I don’t; and my ballot goes off with an X in the Farron box.

Two grand traditions of British sf meet in this book, where the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond try to save the universe while dealing with the piratical Captain Cornelius and also with the Terraphiles, re-enactors of Old Earth culture who have rather garbled views of the activities of Edwardian England (it should be noted that both Doctor Who and a Dalek appear in the original Jerry Cornelius series). It’s some way from being a standard Who novel, and rather closer to a normal Moorcock production if there is such a thing; having said which, the plot is relatively straightforward if not always elegantly expounded. There are some good rollicking descriptive passages, and Moorcock has fun with the misinterpretation of the rules of cricket perpetrated by the Terraphiles. It’s more of a curiosity than a classic, but I enjoyed it.

Posted via LjBeetle

Like a lot of people who were around in British student politics in the mid-80s, I am unhealthily gleeful about the voiding of Phil Woolas’ election in Oldham East and Saddleborough by an election court. (Edited to add: After starting to write this entry yesterday, I went out for dinner last night with someone who had dealt with Woolas in a different capacity many years later, and was equally delighted by the result.) I urge anyone who feels the slightest twinge of sympathy for him to read the full election judgement (BBC excerpt, official PDF). It’s all very well to have robust political debate, but to win an election by telling lies about your opponent’s entirely fictional links with Islamic extremism is surely a different matter. I won’t blame the Labour Party as an institution for this, and applaud the suspension of Woolas’ membership, though note with interest blog entries from Chris Davies, written just before the judgement, and Jonathan Fryer, immediately after, illuminating the local political style.

The full content of the offensive literature is in the judgement linked to above, but I thought some might be amused by the text that caused the last unseating of an MP on these grounds, as a result of the North Louth election petition of 1911, as dug out by David Boothroyd here. The loser in North Louth was the famously polemic and controversial T.M. Healy, who ten years later would end up as the first Governor-General of the independent Irish Free State, though of course nobody knew that then. Running as a dissident candidate against the mainstream Irish Nationalists of the day, he had had all the nastiest of campaign techniques thrown at him, and a dozen of his opponent’s activists were personally deemed to have broken election rules to get him defeated. His opponent, Richard Hazleton, was unseated as a result of the court case, inter alia for publishing lies about Healy.

To quote David:

The North Louth case started with a letter, published in the Freeman on 2 December 1910, written by George McSweeny. Part of it ran:

"Now, let me come to Mr. Healy, pure, great, and impeccable. Even the great Tim was absolutely pap fed with British gold. For years he nourished his hatred of a member of the Irish party by suggesting that he had procured some relative to be appointed a postmaster. Yet all the time Mr. Healy, senior, was secure in the possession of the snug postmastership of Lismore, and rumour has it indeed that the great Tim began his career in the Queen’s uniform, delivering letters, with the familiar rat-tat."

"Then there is the case of Mr. Anthony Carroll, Crown Solicitor of Cork. He was the hero of the Tallow Conspiracy Case and got his job immediately afterwards, yet he incurred no denunciation from Mr. Healy. People will say that had he been the cousin say of Mr. Devlin instead of being the cousin of Mr. Healy he might have fared worse."

"Then there was the case of Mr. Heskin, one of the defendants in the same Tallow Case. Mr. Heskin stood against the brother of Mr. Healy for the clerkship of the Lismore Union. Mr. Healy’s brother was beaten by the test of popular election. But he was not doomed to be long disappointed, for shortly afterwards he was appointed a Local Government Inspector at £500 a year. The recent family history does not even stop here. For it was only the other day that Mr. Joseph Sullivan, another member of the family, received an appointment of £800 a year in the Irish Land Commission. And all this under the corrupt Liberals. So far have matters gone up to the present. But from the number of Mr. Healy’s relations who are already or about to become barristers, doctors, engineers, attorneys, and politicians, I have no doubt that the list will soon be extended. Meanwhile when Mr. Healy next talks of ‘place-hunters’ let him chew these facts."

The letter was reprinted in the Dundalk Democrat on 3 December by suggestion of the agent of Richard Hazleton, the successful candidate in North Louth. Meanwhile on 2 December an order was placed for 20,000 leaflets in the following terms:

"Place-Hunting at Home. Tim Healy’s Family List. Mr. Carthage Healy, Brother, appointed Local Government Inspector, 1907, by the Corrupt Liberals!! 500l. a year. Mr. Joseph Sullivan, Cousin, Examiner of Titles, Irish Land Commission, 800l. a year. Anthony Carroll, Cousin, Crown Solicitor of Cork, 500l. a year! Arthur O’Connor, Ex-M.P., for years Healy’s fellow-wrecker in the Irish Party. An English Judge! 1,700l. a year. M. Healy, Senior, Father, Postmaster, Lismore, Co. Waterford. A. N. Sheridan, Election Agent of Mr. Healy, Dundalk, Clerk of the Crown and Peace, Louth, 600l. a year. The Corrupt Liberals again!! Jeremiah Howard, Henchman of William O’Brien, Director U.I.L., and Wrecker, 1907. Land Commission, 800l. a year. The Corrupt Liberals again!! Joseph Mooney, another Henchman and fellow-wrecker of Healy’s. Director Irish Independent, Labourers’ Cottage Arbitrator, Local Government Board, paid by the job. The Corrupt Liberals Again!!!! William M. Murphy, Railway Director, Contractor, Director Irish Independent, etc.., etc., recommended by Lord Aberdeen to build Government Railways in Africa; estimate, 100,000l. Maurice Healy, M.P., Brother, Postman at Lismore."

Unlike in Oldham East and Saddleborough, however, Hazleton’s campaign was also found to have been guilty of bribery, intimidation, and treating; also unlike Phil Woolas, the winning candidate was not found to be personally guilty, and so wasn’t barred from standing for office for three years (and in any case had also been elected for Galway so stayed in the House of Commons). It is slightly amusing that the accusation that Healy was on the British government’s payroll, probably not in itself a defamatory statement but obviously relevant in an election between two candidates trying to out-Green each other, was found by the judges to be sufficiently offensive to merit the rerunning of the election.

Woolas will probably appeal, but I do not wish him well. Judging by the statements he made yesterday he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. He said that:

“It is vital to our democracy that those who make statements about the political character and conduct of election candidates are not deterred from speaking freely for fear that they may be found in breach of election laws.”

It is also vital that you don’t win elections by smearing the other guy as a fellow-traveller of terrorists.

broadcast anniversaries

6 November 1964: broadcast of “Horse of Destruction”, fourth episode of the story we now call The Myth MakersThe Deadly Assassin. The Doctor is put on trial, realises that the Master is behind the assassination, and enters the dream world of the Matrix.

6 November 2009: broadcast of second episode of The Eternity Trap (SJA). Sarah destroys Erasmus and his machine with the sonic lipstick and rescues Professor Rivers. (But what about Lord Marchmont?)

6 November 2010: broadcast of The Last Precinct (K9).

i) births and deaths

5 November 1983: birth of Andrew Hayden-Smith who played Jake in Rise of the Cybermen, The Age of Steel, and Doomsday (all 2006).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

5 November 1966: broadcast of first episode of The Power of the Daleks. Ben and Polly are getting used to the mysterious new bloke in the Tardis; they land on the planet Vulcan where Stevenson has been experimenting with Daleks from a crashed ship.

5 November 1977: broadcast of second episode of Image of the Fendahl. The mysterious skull is taking over Thea, terrifying Mrs Tyler, and forces the Doctor to touch it in agonising pain.

5 November 2006: broadcast of Cyberwoman (Torchwood), the one with the, er, Cyberwoman.

5 November 2007: broadcast of second episode of Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (SJA). Maria’s father saves her and Sarah Jane from the Trickster; poor Andrea remains drowned.

5 November 2009: broadcast of first episode of The Eternity Trap (SJA). Clyde, Rani and Sarah investigate the mysterious manor of Lord Marchwood and Erasmus Darkening (Luke gets a week off).

• Iraq, war and WikiLeaks: the real story | openDemocracy
  Iraq Body Count has patiently and consistently tabulated recorded deaths since the invasion. It has now conducted a preliminary analysis of a sample of the incidents recorded in the documents (including all the larger ones) (see Paul Rogers, “The harvest of war: from pain to gain”, 28 October 2010).This concludes that the logs both confirm the majority of the deaths it has already recorded, and the need for a definite upward revision of the estimated toll. IBC’s existing, pre-logs total was a little over 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, which has now been amended to 150,000, By comparison, fewer than 5,000 members of the US-led military coalition have died.
  (tags: iraq waronterror usa)

i) births and deaths

4 November 1971: birth of Robyn Moore who plays Jorjie’s mother June Turner in K9 (2009-2010).

4 November 1998: birth of Bear McCausland, who played Jack’s ill-fated grandson Steven in Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009). I doubt if I will note any more recent birth than his.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

4 November 1967: broadcast of sixth episode of The Abominable Snowmen. The Doctor and friends destroy the Yeti controls, and Padmasambhava dies cutting the Intelligence’s link to earth. Travers spots a real Yeti.

4 November 1978: broadcast of second episode of The Stones of Blood. The stones attack Boscombe Hall, and Vivien Fay attacks Romana, who disappears into thin air.