Second paragraph of chapter on The Unquiet Dead, the third Ninth Doctor story:
What I particularly appreciated, though, is ‘The Unquiet Dead’’s characters. I remember loonies at the time attacking the new series for being “character-based”, perhaps with a subtext that it was distressing to have new stories that hadn’t simply been regurgitated from old ones. Personally, if anything, I’d make the opposite complaint. 45-minute episodes if handled badly can end up flatter and simpler than an old-school four-parter, especially when the Doctor’s in almost every scene.
Since I’m now up to date with Obverse Books’ Black Archive series, I thought I should start catching up on their other Doctor Who non-fiction, since I have been generally impressed with their output. Though numbered volume 9, this is the first in an envisaged series of volumes looking at Doctor Who and the wider Whoniverse and related shows, restricting itself to TV, books and comics, but not audio plays (understandable on grounds of length, but a bit of a shame).
I have been familiar with Finn Clark’s critical writing since before New Who started, and these essays seem for the most part to have been written at the time without seeing any need to update them. They cover the Ninth Doctor stories, all of Torchwood, and the various iterations of Quatermass (not Whoniverse but a close relation), along with the 1960s sf series A for Andromeda and Russell T. Davies’ other shows Bob & Rose, Casanova, Queer as Folk and The Second Coming.
The most passionate of these pieces are about the Ninth Doctor TV stories and the first two Torchwood seasons. Clark was not impressed by Torchwood and is not afraid to say so. He is pretty merciless and detailed about the faults of all of the TV shows, but Torchwood seems to summon his energy in a way that few others do.
In general I find that my judgement is aligned with his, at least as to which the best and worst episodes and books are, so I shall try and find the time to watch some Quatermass and some of RTD’s other work, which he recommends. (Quatermass has also been thoroughly analysed by Paul Cornell and Liz Myles in their podcast.) Refreshing, but one for completists I think. You can get Time’s Mosaic 9 here.
