TARDIS Eruditorum

Right. So that’s Doctor Who, done and dusted. (And thank you all for the excessively nice things you said about me in the comments section of the last post.)

Except, of course, it’s not. There’s still a lot to cover, and I expect this blog will keep us busy until the early 2014. But obviously, as the line goes, it means I’m gonna change. For the remainder of the year, the primary focus of this blog is books. Specifically the Virgin New Adventures line, which provided the official continuation of Doctor Who from 1991 through to the TV Movie, with some chronological eccentricity at the end.

It’s reasonable to ask why I’m doing this, especially given the marginality of the books compared to the series. The answer, glibly, is “because they happened.” Doctor Who has a history through the 1990s, and even if it was a more obscure history than its history through the preceding three decades and the next decade, it was a history. More broadly, were I to just jump to the TV Movie and then to Rose then I wouldn’t have the context necessary to adequately discuss either. And, well, these books deserve mention and analysis. They’re good books worthy of being talked about. I have things to say about them. So I’m saying them. 


That said, I know these are more obscure. Indeed, they’re out of print, which is absolutely dreadful, and I really wish they’d go back in print, as they’re wonderful, and as the only means of acquiring them these days are either prohibitively expensive (some of the later ones still go for upwards of $50) or illegal, and either way don’t actually get the authors any money. I’m sorry about that. It kinda sucks.


(For what it’s worth, while I’m certainly not going to link to any sites, I wouldn’t think less of someone who downloaded them, so long as, if the books ever come back into print, they were to buy copies then. Others, I know, would disagree with this approach. And for the record, having said that, I have a complete run of the New Adventures, all bought as new copies, from which the authors got their royalties.)


In any case, to mitigate against that I am going to shift the format of the blog ever so slightly when I cover them, opening with a brief summary of what the book is – not so much a plot summary as a bulked out version of the About Time “Which One is This?” sections/a compressed version of the overall basics section. Then we’ll get into our usual “It’s #DATE. #BAND is at number one with #SONG” stuff.

Once we get into the swing of this phase of things, the plan is that books will be covered on Mondays and Fridays, with Wednesdays devoted to something else – usually, but not always, a Pop Between Realities. That said, it’ll take a bit to ease into that schedule – I’ve got six posts scheduled between Survival and the first Timewyrm books, and the schedule is a bit eccentric around those four books.…

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Wasn’t that bit of the Olympic opening ceremonies where Mary Poppins fought Voldemort in defense of the NHS great? Here’s a fun fact – in the US, instead of the NHS we have this cool alternative where people can’t afford necessary medical care to deal with debilitating illnesses. It’s just like the NHS, only instead of being worth celebrating in front of the world in spectacular fashion it’s an abiding source of shame that leads to needless suffering. One such person suffering is a friend of mine named Valéria, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis while in grad school and without adequate health insurance. As a result, she could really use some help affording her medical bills so that she can keep doing frivolous things like “walking.” If you can chip in even a few bucks, pounds, euros, or whatever over here, I’d be tremendously appreciative, and it would make a real difference to someone who could use it. 

Sophie Aldred receives instructions from the director in the Big Finish studios.

It’s November 22nd, 1989. Doctor Who goes out to the tune of New Kids on the Block’s “You Got It (The Right Stuff),” which is almost sadder than the cancellation itself. Iron Maiden, UB40, and Big Fun also chart, so really, it’s dismal through and through. In real news, a bomb attack on the President of Lebanon’s motorcade kills him. The Velvet Revolution takes place in Czechoslovakia, bringing down the Communist government and, in late December, bringing Václav Havel to power in a more or less unprecedented moment of a nonviolent revolution deciding “what we really need is for a playwright to be in charge.” Marc Lépine guns down fourteen women at École Polytechnique, blaming feminism for his rampage.

While on television, as mentioned, Doctor Who ends with Survival. One of the things that the dismembering of Doctor Who’s chronology engendered by non-linear DVD releases has done is to obscure some of the subtler shifts in what Doctor Who does. For instance, there’s a big and often missed shift we pointed out back with The Hand of Fear, a stark dividing line that ended a period stretching back to The War Machines where nearly half of all Doctor Who stories were set on contemporary Earth and began one stretching forward to Survival where only about fifteen percent did. But because most people experience the classic series non-linearly the nature of this shift is obscured – Survival looks like a very standard “Doctor Who in contemporary Britain” story because it came out between Logopolis and Robot, and about six months after The Invasion, all of which spend time there.

In reality, the last time the TARDIS landed in contemporary Britain was Silver Nemesis, where it mostly hung out at tourist sites. The last time it just landed in “ordinary” Britain, so to speak, was Attack of the Cybermen, five years ago. To get one where a majority of the action took place in contemporary Britain you have to go back six years to The Awakening.…

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Bloody hell, is it the Arockalypse again?

It’s October 25th, 1989. Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers are at number one with “That’s What I Like,” which is unseated after two weeks by Lisa Stansfield’s “All Around the World,” which rides out the story. Phil Collins, Belinda Carlisle, Kylie Minogue, and New Kids on the Block also chart. This being rather dismal, let’s note that Kate Bush’s The Sensual World comes out during this story, which is an altogether more fitting analogy.

In real news, Nicaragua ends its ceasefire with the US-backed contras, and Douglas Wilder and David Dinkins become the first African-American governor in the US and mayor of New York City, respectively. The General Assembly of the Church of England votes to allow the ordination of women. Increasingly desperate measures are taken to deal with an ambulance strike in Britain. And oh yeah, the Berlin Wall falls.

While on television we get The Curse of Fenric, which is one of the best things ever. It is also, of course, oddly incoherent. The biggest howler by its own logic is pointed out by Tat Wood. Much of the plot hinges on the fact that everyone at the base is a descendent of the viking settlers. These would be, of course, the viking settlers who were all killed by vampires, according to the inscriptions. Oops. And yet I’ve watched Curse of Fenric more than any other Doctor Who story, and I never noticed this problem. I’ll bet that an overwhelming majority of you haven’t either. And this is an important observation that provides a lot of insight into how we have to understand Curse of Fenric.

Rather more of you, I suspect, have noticed things like the fact that the chess puzzle and its solution are completely non-sensical, that a mate-in-one puzzle that stumps an ancient god for ages is ridiculous, that nordic runes are a strange way to make a logic diagram, that no understanding whatsoever of how to crack a German code would also be able to translate a language, and that the inscription does not, in fact, read “let the chains of Fenric shatter” but instead reads “Leek, Abracadabra, Presto Chango, Leek.” (OK, possibly only my good friend Anna noticed that last one. Incidentally, there’s a big line of commentary I’m just dropping here about the Norse mythological roots of this story. That is because towards the end of August Anna is providing us with a guest post on the relationship between McCoy’s Doctor and Odin.)

It may seem strange to harp on the plot holes of this story, given that I don’t usually do that. After all, it’s not like the understanding of Norse runes in this story is actually any weirder than the series’ understanding of physics in many other stories. But there is something subtly different about the distortions here. For one thing, this starts to tack towards playing fast and loose with history, something Doctor Who has, of course, never ever done in any way shape or form.…

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Reach out and touch faith.

And so look, I’m just going to be flat-out cutting and nasty to a segment of the world here. And I’ll admit, I’m doing this in part for personal reasons, because the same “it doesn’t make sense” arguments that are raised about these stories are trotted out for large swaths of postmodern theory and philosophy that are kind of important to me and my life, and they’re used to marginalize my discipline in ways that are directly responsible for why there are no jobs in my field and I’m living in my parents’ basement. So I take this “it doesn’t make sense” argument a little personally, and in that spirit, I’d like to point out that the argument is not “it doesn’t make sense” but rather “I’m too thick to understand it.” It’s just that in a handful of cases – television and the humanities mainly – one’s inability to understand something is somehow the fault of the people who do understand it. Curiously, this logic does not apply to, say, quantum physics. Though increasingly it does seem to apply to climate change and evolution.

In light of this it is worth looking to the end of the story, with Ace’s assertion that she should have blown Gabriel Chase up instead of burning it down. This is perfect. Ace rejects arson, an approach that leaves a physical remnant – a Ghost Light of the mansion – in favor of explosion, an approach that would have blasted Gabriel Chase outwards, laying waste to the very notion of its identity as a fixed and certain point in space. Note also that the Doctor’s response, “Wicked,” is not merely a reiteration of Ace’s own slang but a reiteration of what Mrs. Pritchard accuses Gwendolyn of being when she begins to reject the constructed reality of Josiah’s household in favor of the truth about who her mother is, “wicked” being, in other words, a synonym for the rejection of illusion in favor of material practicality.

But it’s not right to suggest that Evil of the Daleks provides an origin for this story’s viewpoints. Ghost Light isn’t just a reiteration of 1967’s themes. It’s a return to them after a significant and substantial departure imposed by the implications of The War Games. The fact that the program drifted away from the unfettered mercury of the Troughton era and here returns to it full force is distinct from its development. Negating the negation of the mercury is distinct from mercury itself. Even the rooting of the program in mercury is fluid and changing, shifting endlessly.

The other major antecedent is, of course, 100,000 BC. Both stories, after all, feature cave men who worship overtly solar figures. Light is a reiteration of Orb. And so the very starting point of the series – its first story – is made suspicious. Light, a dangerous figure because he represents absolute and unchanging stasis – symbolically reflects the actual starting point of the series. Of course, the specific part of that story it reflects is the one nobody talks about – the lost back three quarters of the opener.…

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K-KLACK!

It’s July of 1991. Songs that hit number one this month are Jason Donovan’s “Any Dream Will Do” and Bryan Adams “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” while Erasure, Paula Abdul, and Guns N’ Roses also chart. In real news, the Warsaw Pact is dissolved, Boris Yeltsin becomes the first elected president of Russia, and Mike Tyson and Jeffery Dahmer are both arrested.

While in literature, the final Target novelization of the Sylvester McCoy era comes out as Ben Aaronovitch’s Battlefield is novelized by Marc Platt. For its part, Battlefield was transmitted from September 6-27 of 1989. During this time Black Box were at number one with “Right On Time,” while Alice Cooper, Tears for Fears, Tina Turner, Madonna, and, once again, Jason Donovan also charted. In real news, the IRA murder Heidi Hazell, the wife of a British soldier. John Major replaces Nigel Lawson as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The final election held under apartheid takes place in South Africa, and Vietnam withdraws from Cambodia after eleven years.

(In the gap between Battlefield and Greatest Show in the Galaxy, for reference, the famed fatwah on Salman Rushdie is issued, leading to the UK and Iran breaking off diplomatic relations. The Ayatollah Khomeini also, coincidentally, dies. Communism begins to fall on a number of fronts, most notably in Poland, where the recently unbanned union Solidarity wins elections. Communism stands up rather better in China, meanwhile, which just runs people over with tanks instead of allowing democratic reform. The poll tax is introduced in Scotland, the Exxon Valdez crashes, and the Hillsborough disaster kills 96 Liverpool supporters in Sheffield, followed by what is a strong contender for the most sickening moment in Rupert Murdoch’s career as the Sun falsely blames Liverpool fans for the tragedy.)

But in many ways, all of this is secondary to the Battlefield of 1991, and this fact is very important. Because one thing that happened during the Sylvester mcCoy era was that the novelizations of stories suddenly became important in a way that they hadn’t been since Malcolm Hulke was writing them – a fact that would prove extremely important when the series found itself continued as a line of novels from Virgin Books.

It’s a small sample size, due to there just not being that many Sylvester McCoy stories. There are about four novels that people really point to as dramatically expanding the scope of what the novels were: Remembrance of the Daleks, Battlefield, Ghost Light, and The Curse of Fenric. But these four proved to be significant simply because they provided the blueprint that the better entries in the Virgin line would follow.

They also, by and large, reflect a significant change in how Doctor Who was written in the Cartmel era. The writers of the Cartmel era, as discussed previously, were the first generation to have largely grown up on Doctor Who. And for several of them – most obviously Aaronovitch and Platt – the novelizations were a part of Doctor Who.…

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I’m happy. Hope you’re happy too.

On Sunday, July 8th, 2012, I finally ended my childhood. It was January 4th, 1989. Kylie and Jason were at number one – that being Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue, of course – with “Especially For You.” The three weeks previous had been “Mistletoe and Wine” by Cliff Richard. Erasure, U2, and Phil Collins also charted. The album charts were dominated by Now That’s What I Call Music 13, a collection notable for putting Duran Duran and Transvision in direct debate on consecutive tracks and then concluding the dialectic with The Human League’s “Love Is All That Matters,” a sequencing that I assume somebody had quite a bit of fun with.

In real news, Lyndon LaRouche, perpetual US Presidential candidate/huckster and source of some delightful early Wikipedia drama (Seriously, his followers actually stalked me to a Wikipedia meet-up once. It was fantastic.), was convicted of mail fraud. Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Scotland. And two days prior to the story in question’s airing thirty-five people were killed in a three-train collision in Clapham.

While on television was The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. It’s not the last Doctor Who story I’d never seen – that was Warrior’s Gate. But past Warrior’s Gate were scattered stories I’d only seen once, nearly twenty years ago, or ones that I had seen in the sense of “they were on a television while I was in the room, but I got distracted after five minutes and stopped paying attention.” The latter describes The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, a story I’ve liked the idea of for years, but somehow never got around to paying attention to. And so it is functionally the last new piece of classic Doctor Who to me – the last unchecked box of my favorite era of the series.

Of course, twenty-nine isn’t the worst age for childhood to end at. There’s a case to be made that I’m past due. And another still that one never ends it – that one’s life is circumscribed forever by the ghosts and echoes of childhood, the ever-expanding vista of the adult world mapped endlessly in fractal geometries within the private nations of our childhood homes. The latter case is, in the end, the one I’m more interested in.

As narratives pre-ordained to reach their appointed conclusion go, my childhood is apparently solid. There are few better places to end it than The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, itself a story about the slow and declining aftermath of youthful idealism. Stephen Wyatt, who shares the crown of “Cartmel-era writers with an axe to grind” with Ben Aaronovich, is taking dead aim at 60s idealism here: a bunch of “weirdos” (as the local businesswoman insists) with names like Flowerchild and Peacepipe have sold out, gotten themselves some evil corporate sponsors, and are recreationally killing people.

This message is overlaid on a strange dreamscape of images. The quarry planet is perfectly, gorgeously wrong for the circus setting, a fact that Wyatt’s script is happy to play on, reveling in the image of a lone creepy circus out in the wasteland.…

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But… Bella! We sparkle way more than Edward!

It’s November 23rd, 1988. Robin Beck remains at number one with “First Time,” a situation resolved two weeks later when Cliff Richard unseats her with “Mistletoe and Wine.” Phil Collins, Michael Jackson, Pet Shop Boys, Rick Astley, and Salt-N-Pepa also chart.

In real news, Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan. The number of HIV positive people in the UK is pegged by a government report at 50,000, and it’s estimated that by 1992 as many as 17,000 people may die of the disease. Health Minister Edwina Currie causes a massive crash in egg sales through a carelessly worded claim about salmonella. The last shipbuilding facilities around Sunderland close. And Mystery Science Theater 3000 debuts.

While on television, Doctor Who attempts to provide MST3K with material. Silver Nemesis is the weakest of the eleven Cartmel-shaped stories: a messy and smoldering wreck of ill-defined ideas and unconfident execution. But this fact is in and of itself interesting and worth expanding on, simply because it is in many ways the only artifact of its kind: a really bad McCoy story that has no excuses based on the idea that the era was still coming together and figuring out what it was doing. This was made in between The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and The Happiness Patrol. It has no excuses. And so it’s the one point where we can meaningfully ask: what does bad Sylvester McCoy mean?

It’s easy to mistake the Cartmel era as being good because of its ideas. This is because the Cartmel era does, in fact, have some really good ideas. In this regard Silver Nemesis is in grand company. At the heart of the story is the Nemesis statue. Although it more colloquially refers to a general case of an archenemy, in mythological terms Nemesis is a primal force of retribution – the thing that balances the scales in reaction to one’s hubris. Astronomically, it refers to the idea that the sun has a twin star that has collapsed into a dwarf star, lurking unseen in the Oort cloud and causing mass extinctions according to a pre-ordained twenty-six million year cycle.

The statue Nemesis, on the other hand, travels in a quarter-century cycle in its disasters, bringing instead of extinctions various historical calamities. As About Time points out, this is hopeless – there’s no twenty-five year cycle of historical tragedies to build out from here. But the nature of this cyclic disaster is tied here to the history of the program, both extending out of its imagined past (more ancient Time Lords secrets) and tied to its debut. (This is perhaps tempting fate – changing a twenty-six million year cycle to a twenty-five year cycle is almost too apt given what happens for the program’s twenty-sixth anniversary.)

Nemesis, in other words, stalks the program as its dark other. And hey, look who’s back to accompany her: the program’s dark mirror images of humanity. For all that the story gets flak for the supposed reasoning here (“It’s the silver anniversary of Doctor Who and the Cybermen are silver, so why not add them?”)…

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