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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

11 Comments

  1. Alex Wilcock
    November 23, 2012 @ 1:00 am

    That’s rather a lovely and insightful piece. Thank you. And isn’t it sad that the silliest, funniest of all the New Adventures is forever now that portent of doom, as much a funeral as a wedding?

    I’m currently working on, amongst other things, a review of Battlefield, so I note that not only does Paul return to that by making his next Who book a mixture of love letter and literary criticism, but he explicitly takes part of the fallout of this joyous celebration (the suddenly young Brigadier) and makes it funereal. But just staying with Happy Endings without foreknowledge, the line in all the NAs that most made me laugh is “There will be no rehearsal here!”

    I think, though, Paul does slightly more of a retcon here than you describe: it’s not just William Blake, but the Master. Just as he pays lip service to The Pit but effectively undoes it, he does the same in effectively retconning away First Frontier – this is clearly still Ainley’s silly Master, and drearily still in need of a new body. If Paul Cornell is the most frock NA author and David A McIntee the most gun, this makes frock far more ruthless than gun.

    One other aside: “The Ribos Operation told from Binro’s perspective, if you will…” Wasn’t that just The Ribos Operation? The whole of it to me seemed to be Holmes kicking against Williams’ big idea, not just by sending it up with ice gods but by making the first in what could have been a huge, portentous epic instead a comedy hustle where the important characters are two con men and the ‘big important villain’ never has a clue what’s going on or any key role. And, yes, we see Ribos from Binro’s perspective, if not the whole story, but the story’s still far more about people at his end of the pyramid than the deranged prince’s.

    Reply

  2. Daibhid C
    November 23, 2012 @ 3:14 am

    "He makes quite a point of suggesting that Benny and Jason are a terrible couple who shouldn’t be getting married."

    I didn't get that. The impression I got was that he was playing off the idea that Benny and Jason are deeply screwed-up people inclined to self-sabotage their relationship (which is, after all, expicitly stated in the book that gets them together) before concluding that, nonetheless, True Love is True Love, even if everyone, the happy couple included, has their doubts.

    Reply

  3. BerserkRL
    November 23, 2012 @ 8:19 am

    creatures of piece?

    Reply

  4. Eric Gimlin
    November 23, 2012 @ 9:51 am

    I'm sure it's just coincidence, but it amuses me that you covered the fiftieth New Adventure on the very day Doctor Who begins its fiftieth year.

    Thank you once again for these essays.

    Reply

  5. Adam Riggio
    November 23, 2012 @ 4:47 pm

    The future of the program consuming its past. This is what I keep harping on lately whenever it comes up on your blog, because I think the Trial of a Time Lord posts made me slightly insane. As Trial of a Time Lord is prone to do if you try taking it seriously.

    But I remember a discussion in the comments section of some previous Virgin era posts where Phil and some of us discussed the degree to which the narrative coherence of Doctor Who collapsed during the Wilderness years. When the Virgin line first got moving, it was clearly the single official continuation of Doctor Who, but within the Virgin line itself, there was this breakdown as the future and the past collided and blurred together. The Seventh Doctor's adventures continued concurrently with the Eighth's.

    In fact, the past and present had been blurring ever since the Missing Adventures line became a significant aspect of the Virgin era. The only times past Doctors had occurred in the series was in reunion episodes, which were in a special weird territory, thanks to their status as anniversary shows. The first TV story where a past Doctor appeared without an extra-diegetic anniversarial excuse was The Two Doctors, the beginning of the strange vortex of collapse that the Colin Baker era was. But with the MA line, the series now had new adventures being produced that took place in the past of the series, featuring Doctors and characters from the show's past. Adventures of past eras were being produced in the present.

    This continued in the BBC Books range, with the Past Doctor Adventures, and their mandate of reproducing the aesthetic of previous eras of Doctor Who. At least that was the explicit mandate. The best MAs and PDAs were critiques or remixes of the aesthetics of the eras they depicted, and the worst of them were tone-deaf misfirings that completely failed to understand the aesthetics of the target eras.

    But it kicks into an especially high gear with the Big Finish Audios: actually producing new Doctor Who adventures with the old cast, using the narrative techniques of the 2000s to make stories better than they ever could have been. The present was producing the past more prolifically than when the past was the present in the first place.

    Reply

  6. Nick Smale
    November 23, 2012 @ 10:22 pm

    That's an odd version of the cover. My copy looked like this.

    Reply

  7. Aaron
    November 23, 2012 @ 10:37 pm

    I was going to say the same thing. Where'd that cover come from?

    Reply

  8. sorrywehurtyourfield
    November 24, 2012 @ 4:55 am

    There's also the peculiar case of The Scream of the Shalka, apparently intended by those working on it to be the launch of an official Ninth Doctor and thus new "present" for the series. However, not only was its webcast overshadowed by the announcement of the new series (the "future"), making it an oddity before anyone had seen it, there's also little sign that, despite its official BBC status, the EDAs (the other "present" coming from the same company) were doing anything to build up to it. Thus it was rendered oddly redundant from two directions simultaneously.

    Reply

  9. Elizabeth Sandifer
    November 24, 2012 @ 5:34 am

    It's an unused version of the cover published along with a Paul Cornell interview in Time Space Visualizer, the magazine of the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club.

    Reply

  10. Steven Clubb
    November 26, 2012 @ 2:56 pm

    Having entered into the Who Extended Universe via the audios, it was simply impossible for me not to realize how doomed their relationship was. Jason is the kind of guy Benny would marry on a drunken bender, not enter into with eyes wide open.

    And seeing how their marriage is at the core of the novel, the whole thing never quite works for me apart from being a series of barely related comic misadventures which eventually give way to a nearly impenetrable bout of Continuity references.

    Reply

  11. WhatsApp Download
    August 8, 2017 @ 9:38 am

    Samsung launched first generation Tizen phone Samsung Z1 that time it was came with very limited numbers of apps.

    Reply

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