Eruditorum Press

Less the heroes of our stories than the villains of some other bastard’s

Elizabeth Sandifer

About Elizabeth Sandifer

http://www.eruditorumpress.com

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.

Posts by Elizabeth Sandifer:

Is It Always as Dark as This? (Transit)

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I’ll Explain Later

Ben Aaronovitch’s Transit is the New Adventures’ great piece of Marmite, with reviews either being outright raves or vicious pans. A piece of outright cyberpunk about alien intelligences and vast transportation systems, the book features no shortage of sex and swearing. It also introduces Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier’s genetically engineered descendent, a recurring character in the New Adventures. It was absolutely savaged at the time, with Gary Russell saying outright that it “has nothing whatsoever to recommend it.” Shannon Sullivan’s rankings are only slightly nicer, putting it at fifty-third, with eight books below it, and giving it a 56.5% rating. I, Who is one of the few things to equivocate, saying that “parts of it seem damn clever – but only after back-breaking analysis.” DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

——

It’s December of 1992. Whitney Houston has just moved into number one with “I Will Always Love You,” and settles in for a massively long run there. Madonna, Take That, The Prodigy, Michael Jackson, Gloria Estefan, and Rod Stewart are among those who fail to unseat her.

In news, since we last looked at the world Bill Cinton won the US Presidential Election, and women won the “can we become priests in the Church of England” election. A fire broke out in Windsor Castle, one of several things leading Queen Elizabeth II to declare that the year has just sucked. She then became subject to taxation. This month, the US begins military action in Somalia. Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially announce their separation. And riots break out over the destruction of a 16th century mosque in Ayodha, India, killing 1500 people.

While in books, as mentioned, it is the New Adventures’ very own piece of complete Marmite. I’m fairly easy to predict on Marmite stories. Generally speaking, they’re ones with a very clear-cut reason to love them, but one that is not like the reason to love a lot of other Doctor Who, and thus that fails to appeal to a substantial core of Doctor Who fans. In this case, though, I admit to being a bit puzzled by picking either love or hate for this book.

Let’s take care of the objections, and then see what we have left. We’ll start with the smaller ones. First, this book gets a lot of flack for its marginal use of Benny. This, at least, is preposterous. Yes, Benny spends the majority of the book possessed by the villain. The reason for this is straightforward enough – realistically, Aaronovitch wouldn’t have had the manuscript for Love and War for very long. Putting the new companion in the background is a venerable tradition stretching back at least to Steven getting a bunch of Barbara’s dialogue in Galaxy Four. Nobody faults Kinda for the fact that Bailey couldn’t make Nyssa work in the story and so wrote her out of it.

And in this situation the circumstances are actually even more complex. There’s an interview with Paul Cornell in which it’s suggested that several of the novels in this period were being considered as the book that would introduce a new companion, with Benny being in competition with Aaronovitch’s Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart and, of all things, Neil Penswick’s take on William Blake in The Pit.…

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For The Sake Of An Angel (Love and War)

17

I’ll Explain Later

We have skipped both Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark and Nightshade. The former wraps up the Cat’s Cradle trilogy by having the Doctor acquire some needed “organic material” from a story that is otherwise about getting fairies and unicorns into Doctor Who. The latter is Mark Gatiss’s debut novel, and is quite well-regarded, but the consensus was that I could skip it and so I did. For those keeping track at home, we are now at two writers who made writing debuts in the New Adventures range and who then went on to write for the television series. Next Friday Gareth Roberts will make it three.

Love and War is the ninth New Adventure, and the first by a returning author, namely Paul Cornell. It features the temporary departure of Ace, as she storms out of the TARDIS, enraged at the Doctor for deliberately sacrificing the life of her lover to stop the bad guys (the Hoothi, a race of manipulative fungus). It also features the debut of Bernice “Benny” Summerfield, the New Adventures’ signature companion. It is phenomenally well-regarded, coming in as the ninth-best New Adventure on Shannon Sullivan’s rankings, with a rating of 79.4%. I, Who calls it “a paradigm shift” that is “another triumph for author Paul Cornell.” Reviews at the time were similarly enthusiastic, with Garry Russell proclaiming  it “probably the most mature and intelligent o the run so far.” It is sufficiently beloved that Big Finish are adapting it into an audio play in October, the first time that a novel has been adapted to audio without also being changed to remove the Doctor. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

——

It’s October of 1992. The Shamen are at number one with “Ebeneezer Goode,” lasting two weeks before Tasmin Archer unseats them with “Sleeping Satellite.” Two weeks later Boyz II Men take number one with “End of the Road.” Lionel Richie, Prince, and Bob Marley and the Wailers also chart, along with Madonna’s “Erotica.” In albums, R.E.M. do quite well for themselves with Automatic for the People, and rightly so. A fun fact – the two highest-charting R.E.M. singles in the UK are the utterly uninteresting “The Great Beyond” and the brilliant but unheralded “E-Bow the Letter,” both from well after their commercial peak in the US.

Since Warhead, Lindy Chamberlain is finally acquitted for murder on the grounds that dingoes did, in fact, eat her baby. This is actually mildly relevant to Doctor Who, as four years earlier a film of this case, Evil Angels, was produced by Verity Lambert’s film company Cinema Verity. Yitzhak Rabin became Prime Minister of Israel. Hurricane Andrew thrashed Florida, and Black Wednesday took place as the UK was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which is about it for the Tory government, which had the fortune of having just won an election and thus getting to hang on for five years despite nobody liking them anymore.

While in October… erm… you’ve got the Sinéad O’Connor pope photo ripping thing.…

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Pop Between Realities, Home in Time For Tea 37 (Sandman)

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It is in some ways difficult to quite articulate why Neil Gaiman is good. Clearly he is. Even if I wasn’t fond of his writing, and I am, I’m not the sort of critic who is going to try to reject the volume of acclaim that Gaiman’s work has gathered. (Heck, I’ve contributed to it.) But despite all of this it’s maddeningly difficult to figure out what it is about him that makes him so substantial and important.

He is not so much the first of the British Invasion comics writers as he is the middle of them. The forefather, Alan Moore, had made the jump to DC some years before. His arrival coincided with Jamie Delano’s and Grant Morrison’s, with a later wave still to come consisting of Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis, and, finally, Warren Ellis and Mark Millar whose British careers didn’t even start until after Gaiman had broken out in the US. In this regard he is, by and large, typical of the style. He’s probably the most successful of them, although Millar’s savvy in making creator-owned comics with the intention of having them turned into films needs some acknowledgment, and Grant Morrison seems perpetually on the brink of some film breakout or another. But much of this comes down to his skill at the business of writing – Gaiman is adept at working different media and at catering to a loyal fanbase. (Indeed, I’d argue that very little of what he’s written since American Gods has been as good as the highlights of his pre-American Gods career, largely because after the success of American Gods he started writing primarily for his built-in audience and not pushing himself)

Much of what constitutes Gaiman’s style is borrowed from Alan Moore, and the comparison does Gaiman few favors. Moore’s work is more complex and enlivening, and almost any time they’ve shared the same genre and approach I’d argue that Gaiman comes off as the poor imitation, turning out a slightly more populist version of the same techniques. But even here the line of argument contorts oddly. Yes, Gaiman comes off as the Alan Moore protege that he, as a matter of empirical fact, is. But on the other hand, some of Gaiman’s early work, most particularly his first collaboration with Dave McKean, Violent Cases, prefigures Moore’s work in the 90s just as much as Swamp Thing prefigures Sandman.

A cynical approach would suggest that Gaiman’s major innovation was his realization that goths and geeks had a significant overlap that nobody was marketing adequately too. Indeed, even a less cynical approach might acknowledge this – it’s something that Doctor Who was sniffing the edges of in the latter days of the Cartmel era – as a significant move. Indeed, there’s a book to be written about the transformation of geek culture in the early 1990s, and though the episodes themselves had too small an audience to be a major part of that, the Cartmel era was certainly in step with it.…

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All Grey And Misty (Cat’s Cradle: Warhead)

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I’ll Explain Later

Andrew Cartmel’s Cat’s Cradle: Warhead is the second part of the loose Cat’s Cradle trilogy, and the first part of the tighter but non-consecutive trilogy by Andrew Cartmel, which continues in Warlock and Warchild. Cartmel’s contributions are straight-up near future thrillers, typically referred to as cyberpunk, but in practice somewhat more diffuse than that. This one is about an evil corporation and massive pollution that threatens to destroy the world, and introduces the two characters who link the three books together, Vincent and Justine. Vincent has psychic powers and can channel strong emotion into physical forces, whereas Justine is impulsive and pissed off. Gary Russell was at the time in awe of the story, but only as “a one-off journey through the ultimate dark-side of Doctor Who,” a viewpoint that stands in stark contrast to I, Who’s adoration of it as “brilliant, but only as the first part of a trilogy encompassing Warlock and Warchild.” (Pearson views it as “a drawn-out, snarled mess” that is difficult to follow.) Sullivan’s novel rankings have it as the best of the Cat’s Cradle trilogy at 42nd out of 61, with a 62.7% rating. DWRG Summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s April of 1992. Shakespear’s Sister are still at the top of the charts, but are unseated after two weeks by Right Said Fred’s “Deeply Dippy,” because they’re not a one-hit wonder in the UK. They remain at number one for the rest of the month. Eric Clapton, Annie Lennox, Erasure, Def Leppard, Vanessa Williams, Iron Maiden, and ZZ Top also chart. Clearly we are firmly lost in the 90s now.

In real news, since Time’s Crucible we’ve had the Bosnian War get worse as Bosnia and Herzegovina declares independence from Yugoslavia, leading to lots of people shooting each other. Euro Disney, now called Disneyland Paris, opens in, shockingly enough, Paris. Manuel Noriega, former head of state of Panama, is found guilty of drug crimes in Florida. And the Los Angeles riots break out. But the big news for the UK is another general election, in which Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party puts a solid dent into the Tory majority, but is still defeated by John Major. Rupert Murdoch’s Sun claims credit for the victory, because he’s charming like that – an event that will lead to Tony Blair repeatedly selling what fragments of his soul actually still exist to win the paper’s endorsement in 1997. But more about that next year – for now, books, and specifically Andrew Cartmel’s Cat’s Cradle: Warhead.

If Time’s Crucible explores the idea of sidelining the Doctor from the action a la The Christmas Invasion or Turn Left, Warhead seems like the first real antecedent of stories like Love and Monsters or Blink, in which a Doctor Who story plays out with the camera primarily focused on someone other than the Doctor. There’s an accusation against the New Adventures in general, and often Cartmel in particular that they are prone to leaving the Doctor out of too much of the story.…

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Relics From The Old Time (Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible)

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I’ll Explain Later

Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible is the fifth New Adventure, and the kickoff to the Cat’s Cradle trilogy. Unlike the Timewyrm series, the Cat’s Cradle trilogy is somewhat more loosely connected. Basically, in this book, the TARDIS gets Time Rammed by an ancient Gallifreyan timecraft after being attacked by a largely unexplained alien. This results in it exploding into a city, lots of what we now call timey-wimey stuff about juxtaposed timelines within the city, and a missing and then amnesiac Doctor, leaving Ace to do most of the actual heroing in this story. The book lets Marc Platt indulge in his pet theories of ancient Gallifrey. The big ones are the idea that the Time Lords are sterile and reproduce asexually via what are called “looms”; that there was an ancient conflict between magic, championed by a woman called the Pythia, and reason, championed by Rassilon, on Gallifrey, and that reason won; and that in addition to Rassilon and Omega there was a more mysterious third figure known as the Other involved in the early days of the Time Lords (a concept borrowed from the novelization of Remembrance of the Daleks). The TARDIS is incompletely repaired at the end of the book, and a silver cat that serves as the avatar of the TARDIS’s repair circuits persists through the next two books, with the TARDIS being repaired at the end of the third one. I, Who describes Time’s Crucible as “a complete and bloody train wreck,” and Shannon Sullivan’s rankings puts it at 50th of sixty-one with a 58.7% rating. Gary Russell was kinder at the time in Doctor Who Magazine, politely noting that it was not “the best thing Marc has written, nor is it the best of The New Adventures,” and expressing “a growing sense of alarm” at the marginalizing of the Doctor and the similarities with Timewyrm: Revelation. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

It’s February of 1992. Wet Wet Wet are at number one with “Goodnight Girl,” remaining there for three weeks before being bounced by Shakespear’s Sister with “Stay,”which does just that for the rest of the month. Prodigy, Kiss, Genesis, Kylie Minogue, and Michael Jackson also chart.

Meanwhile, since last we checked in, George Bush has vomited in the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister. Absolutely nobody has ever claimed that this was one of the causes for Japan’s apology to South Korea five days later for forcing women into sexual slavery during the Second World War.  Boris Yeltsin and George Bush reach a largely symbolic (but potently so) agreement to stop having nuclear missiles pre-targeted at one another. And John Major calls a general election for April, more about which next entry.

While during the month this book came out, the Winter Olympics happen in Albertville, France. The UN approves the deployment of a peacekeeping force in Yugoslavia. And 613 civilians are massacred in Khojaly in Azerbaijan.  And the Maastricht Treaty, which establishes the European Union and begins the process of establishing the Euro, is signed.…

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Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea 36 (Snow Crash)

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There are two main ways into cyberpunk, and which one you pick is terribly important to how the genre looks to you. The first option is to go via Neuromancer, William Gibson’s 1984 novel. This is not the first cyberpunk work – the term had been coined a year earlier by Bruce Bethke, and had been around unnamed for a few years previous, including in other works by William Gibson. But it is in many ways the definitive one, where it broke out into the mainstream. A year later we had Max Headroom, which we’ve already talked about.

The other way people approach the genre is Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash. This is an altogether more interesting way, since Stephenson’s next novel, 1995’s The Diamond Age, was self-consciously framed as a post-Cyberpunk novel. The first character it introduces, Bud, is a blatant parody of cyberpunk heroes (the first sentence says it all: “The bells of St. Mark’s were ringing changes up on the mountain when Bud skated over to the mod parlor to upgrade his skull gun.”) and, more to the point, gets spectacularly and ignobly killed forty-three pages into the book. And while Snow Crash itself is not so prone to aggressively deconstructing cyberpunk, there is a somewhat odd sense of things that comes from having one of the iconic novels of cyberpunk be a book by an author whose later career consists almost entirely of actively moving beyond the genre.
Obviously, given the stated topic of this post, I’m taking the latter, although in my defense I did talk about Max Headroom at the time, which is almost like talking about Neuromancer. Though for the most part this is just a matter of accurately tracking influences. The cyberpunk influences on 1980s Doctor Who are few and far between. Warriors of the Deep, somewhere in its bowels, has a cyberpunk story trying desperately to get out from under the Myrka. Vengeance on Varos has some cyberpunk attitudes, but they’re largely incidental – any attempt to do a sci-fi Play for Today in 1985 would have been about as cyberpunk as Vengeance on Varos. Actually, the most cyberpunk story of the 1980s is probably The Caves of Androzani, which is just kind of too perfect if you want to think about it.
The New Adventures, on the other hand, are mad for cyberpunk. The primary embodiment of this is actually Andrew Cartmel, who has a cyberpunk trilogy spread out over the course of the line, the first book of which we’ll deal with on Monday. But scads of the books are heavily cyberpunk inflected. So we should probably, you know, actually look at what that genre was before we go too much further. 
On a basic, factual level cyberpunk can be described as a sci-fi genre focusing on computers and digital technology (broadly construed), and with a gritty, street-level, punk aesthetic. Typically it’s set in a post-industrial and at least mildly dystopian future, and stars anti-hero hackers as its protagonists.
…

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Guest Post: Odin and the Doctor

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Fairly early in the process of writing this blog I realized that it was useful to have some prior context for a given story before writing an entry on it. And so I bought the About Time books, which are fabulous and were my anchor for several stories in the classic series about which I’d have had little interesting to say on my own. But I was also, early on, aware that I was eventually going to hit the new series and there would be no About Time to help me.

The solution, I realized, was to get a friend hooked on Doctor Who so they would blog about it and I could just take off on their posts. Unfortunately for me, the friend I chose was Anna Wiggins. The problem with Anna, you see, is that she is vastly more clever and intelligent than I can ever hope to be, and so when my blog hits Series Six, about which she has blogged extensively, I am going to abruptly be found out as the pathetic fool I am and all of my readers are going to, quite correctly, go follow Anna instead. Oops.

In order to ease the transition to all of you abandoning me in favor of my smarter and far cooler friend, I thought I should get a guest post from Anna about the relationship between the Doctor and Odin. And so I did.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, several Germanic tribes migrated to England. And they brought their gods with them. The British isles would be settled, resettled, and invaded by many peoples over the next several hundred years. The bones of Britain contain traces of dozens of cultures, and many of those cultures were Heathen.

To be clear, I’m using ‘Heathen’ in a fairly specific and uncommon sense. Prior to the encroachment of Christianity, a similar worldview and set of religious beliefs was practiced widely across Northern Europe and Scandinavia. The Romans termed these people ‘heathen’. So, I am using the term ‘Heathen’ to refer to this basic religious system, which largely included the same gods, myths, and folk legends. The more commonly known term for this religious system and worldview is ‘Norse’, as in ‘Norse Mythology’. But that is a misnomer – in practice, the same basic set of beliefs and practices held sway throughout northern Europe, and included, at various times, various parts of the British Isles. (I will also mention ‘modern Heathenry’ in the course of this entry – which is a reference to the reconstructionist religion that revives the worship of the Heathen gods)

And so, in the late 1980s, Doctor Who began to draw on these Heathen bones of British culture. The Seventh Doctor was cast as an explicitly Odinic figure, and this vision of the Doctor operating in a Heathen mode would have a lasting influence on the show.

Odin is widely known as the ‘chief god’ of the Heathen pantheon, and as a ‘god of war’ and, if you have a particularly verbose summary on hand, maybe a ‘god of secrets’ or a ‘god of wisdom’.…

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If You Were That Old, And That Kind (Timewyrm: Apocalypse and Timewyrm: Revelation)

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I’ll Explain Later

Timewyrm: Apocalypse is the third New Adventure and third part of the Timewyrm series, and is written by Nigel Robinson. Robinson was the editor of the Target novelizations until 1989, when Peter Darvill-Evans, who created the New Adventures line, took over. He thus continues the pattern across the first three New Adventures of using experienced writers from the Target novelizations. Timewyrm: Apocalypse involves societal revolution on an alien world, and is typically considered unambitous and tedious. I, Who goes with “sadly dull, especially in the middle,” and Sullivan’s rankings have it as the second-worst of the New Adventures with a 45.8% rating. Its reputation at the time of release was perhaps rosier, with Doctor Who Magazine praising it as “just excellent” and “well worth running out to buy.” DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide Entry.

Timewyrm: Revelation is the debut novel of Paul Cornell, and wraps up the Timewyrm series while starting the (very) loosely connected quartet of Paul Cornell novels that ends in Human Nature. Unlike any previous Doctor Who story, it’s an intensely psychological book in which the bulk of the action takes place inside the Doctor’s own mind where his previous incarnations live eternally. It’s tremendously ground-breaking, and does more to define the New Adventures style than any other book. At the time, Doctor Who Magazine bent over backwards to try to avoid actually calling it the best New Adventure to date, but cautioned against following in its footsteps with future novels. I, Who calls it “One of the blackest, most invasive Doctor Who novels – and one of the best,” while the Sullivan rankings give it a slightly above average ranking of twenty-first out of sixty-one, with a 74.9% rating. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide Entry.

Its October of 1991. Bryan Adams is still at the top of the charts with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” and it’s not until the last week of the month that U2 finally dislodge him with “Fly.” Genesis, Moby, Salt-N-Pepa, and Erasure also chart, as, oddly, do Monty Python with “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” released some twelve years after Life of Brian.

It’s also December of 1991, where George Michael and Elton John are trying to keep the sun from going down. They are unseated after two weeks by a rerelease of “Bohemian Rhapsody” following the death of Freddy Mercury, which remains at number one through the end of the month and takes the coveted Christmas number one. These facts obscure a tremendously weird set of songs in the lower positions, as The KLF make it to number two, Right Said Fred have another hit that makes it to number three, and both Michael Jackson and Nirvana fail to hit number one with “Black or White” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” respectively. But most importantly, Hammer, formerly MC Hammer, hits #4 with a rap redo of the Addams Family theme.

In real news, Clarence Thomas is appointed to the US Supreme Court, while Bill Clinton announces he’ll run for President.…

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Then Suddenly, One Year, There Was No Spring (Timewyrm: Genesys and Timewyrm: Exodus)

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I’ll Explain Later

I’ll Explain Later is a feature that will be employed for the out-of-print Virgin and BBC Books covered over the next few months, in which I provide a brief contextualization of what the book is and what its general critical reception is. For these entries, the entry proper begins below the horizontal rule. 

Timewyrm: Genesys is the first of the New Adventures, by John Peel. The first four books are ostensibly a plot arc about the eponymous Timewyrm, who is introduced in this book as an alien using the Osiran playbook on the Sumerians and impersonating Ishtar. She eventually gets magic powers from the TARDIS, like you do. Guest-starring Gilgamesh, and infamous for the amount of boobs and molestation, at the time Gary Russell politely describes himself as “feeling a little disappointed.” More recently, I Who describes it as “brave, if woefully unsuccessful,” and Shannon Sullivan’s novel rankings place it at fifty-fourth out of the sixty-one New Adventures, with a rating of 54.9%. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

Timewyrm: Exodus is Terrance Dicks’s debut in the world of adult Doctor Who novels. Nazis ahoy, this one features an alternate timeline where the Germans win World War II, Hitler as a major supporting character (possessed by the Timewyrm to boot), and the return of the War Chief from The War Games. This easily has the best reputation of any of Dicks’s original novels. At the time, Doctor Who Magazine called it “a mature, intelligent book written by someone who clearly knows his subject backwards.” I, Who calls it “a book with a good reputation that deserves even more praise,” while Sullivan’s rankings put it at seventh out of sixty-one with an 81.4% rating. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.


It’s June of 1991. Cher is at number one with “The Shoop Shoop Song,” replaced by “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd after one week. They hold until the end of the month, when Jason Donovan takes over with “Any Dream Will Do.” Soft Cell, KLF, REM, Kylie Minogue, Salt-N-Pepper, and Amy Grant also chart.

It’s also August of 1991, in which Bryan Adams is at number one with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” which stays at number one the entire month, fending off Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” for a staggering six weeks straight, with the two occupying #1 and #2 through to the end of September. Guns ’n Roses, Metallica, Heavy D and the Boyz, and The Prodigy also chart.

In news, we have rather a lot to cover in the eighteen month gap. So, starting back in December of 1989, free elections are held in Chile for the first time in sixteen years, and the Romanian revolution begins and ends in a matter of days, with Nicolae Ceau?escu being executed as a Christmas present. Four days later, Václav Havel is elected president of Czechoslovakia.

1990 is all sorts of exciting – a US invasion of Panama, F.W.…

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Time Can Be Rewritten 32 (Death Comes to Time)

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One of the enduring mysteries of Doctor Who is how, in 2001, Death Comes to Time made it to the air and, more to the point, did so with as solid a cast as it did. That Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, and, in a late-story cameo, Nicholas Courtney signed on for this is not surprising – all three of them, after all, have a long legacy of doing work for various fan projects and low-end Doctor Who stuff. And I suppose Anthony Stewart Head’s appearance can be explained by the fact that it can’t have taken him more than an hour to record. But good God, what the heck is Stephen Fry doing in this thing?

I’m hard-pressed to come up with much of an argument for being anything other than honest about this one. This is an absolutely terrible story. Virtually everything about it is completely misconceived. For those unaware of it, it’s the first of four attempts at a webcast Doctor Who during the wilderness years. It was successful enough to do more, but not nearly successful enough to justify the same approach – the next two attempts would be farmed out to Big Finish, and after that, attempted their online continuation of Doctor Who in the form of Scream of the Shalka, which we’ll get to in due course. All of which said, what is it about this story that’s so mind-wrenchingly bad?

Back on Friday, in the comments, there was a discussion about the importance or lack thereof of continuity. Which is convenient, because one of the most obvious and often-raised objections to this story is that it is a complete and utter departure from all established continuity. That it kills the Doctor in his Seventh incarnation, thus apparently attempting to relegate the McGann movie into the abyss might fairly be taken as charmingly cheeky by some fans. That it does so in a way that discards the entire New Adventures line would have sacrificed points with many of those fans, but no matter. But that it does so along with completely redoing the Time Lords, turning them into magic sorcerers with no shortage of clear inspiration from Highlander, is pretty tough to swallow.

Why is this? After all, for the most part I’ve been pretty vocal in support of a “there’s no such thing as canon/continuity” approach to Doctor Who. Why not throw major strands away and start over? Continuity, after all, just endlessly and eternally limits what you can do. So if you’ve got a better take on the Time Lords than the series’ – and let’s face it, given that the series’ Time Lords went out with Trial of a Time Lord, itself following the Arc of Infinity/Five Doctors version of Gallifrey, this is not a high bar to clear – why not scrap them and replace it with a new one?

One line of thought is that this is OK, but that it has to be done deliberately and consciously. I largely disagree with this.…

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