Another preview essay from my end-of-year collection Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons, available for preorder at this link (and in the UK here). There it will be accompanied by a book-exclusive interview with Peter Harness about The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion. And to answer the question that people have asked in comments every week, yes there will be a print version; it’ll go up closer to release.

One of the most exciting talents to emerge in science fiction and fantasy recently is undoubtedly Peter Harness, who, over roughly a thirteen month period, put his name to ten of the best genre scripts on television in the form of the Doctor Who episodes “Kill the Moon,” “The Zygon Invasion,” and “The Zygon Inversion” and the entire run of the BBC’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell adaptation. Any one of these would make him one of the most compelling voices of the past few years; their aggregate is as extraordinary a creative run as exists.

Or at least that’s generally been my opinion, which I’ve spouted on the Internet a few times, leading to the amusing consequence of Mr. Harness getting linked to my blog and reading it and enjoying some of the bits that weren’t about how clever he was as well. Which led to him sitting down for two interviews about his work, transcribed in the two chapters following this. So consider this the annoying bit where the interviewer talks for too long before getting to the good stuff. I’ll try to make it a really sprawling set of remarks that offers something approaching a general theory of how politics and science fiction interact, so as to really give the authentic “shut up and get to the interviews” experience.

I think the obvious starting point when talking about Harness’s work is that it is overtly and consciously political. It’s equally obvious at this point that Harness’s politics are at a minimum leftish. Despite this, however, both of his Doctor Who stories were, to varying degrees, embraced by right-leaning chunks of fandom, generally in the belief that their political views were being supported by the episodes. In both cases I think this is straightforwardly based on inattentive readings of the episodes, but it’s nevertheless striking, especially in a year where discussions of politics and science fiction have become increasingly split into two camps neatly mapping the left/right divide, a process largely driven, let’s be clear, by Vox Day and his inane “pink vs blue SF” rhetoric.

A key phrase in all of this, and generally one slung around with reckless imprecision and universal contempt, is “message fiction.” At this point the mere inclusion of any sort of diversity in the cast seems to qualify as a “message,” such that even stories like Rachel Swirsky’s “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” in which a group of drunks who beat a man into a coma in the mistaken belief that he’s gay or Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, which features a genderless species as “message stories.”…

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As I’ve said many a time, what I want out of Doctor Who is something I’ve never seen before. And so I’m not going to argue with anybody who puts this among their masterpieces. If you want to claim it as the equal of Listen or Blink then be my guest. For me, it’s a solid 9/10, and won’t be ahead of The Zygon Inversion in my rankings, so the result is that we’re going to start defensive and then move to the positive.

I suspect the crux of my disagreement with those who will put it higher is simply how much one values the basic idea of the “experimental” in Doctor Who. Which in some ways brings us back to Sleep No More, and in others back to In the Forest of the Night, two episodes that were distinctly experimental and also distinctly flawed. In both cases I value them considerably more than the consensus, and specifically for the odd things they did. And moreover, yes, obviously anyone who’s read any of my work on Doctor Who recognizes that I love its weird tradition, which has always been a huge part of the show, from The Edge of Destruction on. I’m definitely in the general camp of fandom that thinks The Mind Robber, The Deadly Assassin, Warrior’s Gate, and Vengeance on Varos are all cool just for being what they are.

But equally, the “experimental” field is crowded these days. At even the stingiest definition you’ve got to tag Listen, Last Christmas, Sleep No More, and Heaven Sent as experimental episodes in the last two years, and I’d be inclined to widen the net, and count bits of relatively non-experimental episodes like the Beethoven’s Fifth bits of Before the Flood and the two-hander first half of The Woman Who Lived, as well as much of In the Forest of the Night and the direct to camera bits of Kill the Moon. By and large this is why I’m loving the show so much right now. But it causes a small but distinct problem for something like Heaven Sent, which is that the fundamental limitations of how experimental Doctor Who can be really become visible when they’re run up against as often as they are these days. Doctor Who can do brilliantly experimental takes on all sorts of genres: western, Vikings, Restoration comedy, political thriller. But it can’t do an experimental take on experimentalism. That’s just not what it’s for.

This isn’t helped by the fact that the fundamental limitations of how experimental Moffat can be have long since become visible, and for the admirable reason that he keeps punching away at them with glorious stubbornness. This is, somewhat flagrantly, the basic concept of Time of the Doctor done as the show-off sequence in the middle of His Last Vow, with a middle finger emphatically raised at the entire “Moffat fetishizes the Doctor and this is a problem” crowd.

All of which is a very long way of saying that, slightly depressingly, this manages to be a hugely experimental one-hander that doesn’t actually do anything new aside from be a hugely experimental one-hander.…

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Indeed, no proper post today.

Here’s a free and legal copy of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, though, which American readers will probably find a necessary tonic to Black Friday, and everyone else will just enjoy on its own merits.…

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I’m joined this week by our very own Holy Boson to discuss Face the Raven and whatever else we got off talking about. Apologies for some early audio quality issues with my end; I had a mic problem that straightens out ten minutes or so in. Listen here while you face the turkey.

Also, I apologize that there will be no Last War in Albion this week; I forgot to queue it up before leaving for Thanksgiving, and lack access to key materials for adding images to it, so I’m just giving myself a holiday break on that one. Unless I get struck by some weird burst of energy and write something off-topic and absurd to post tomorrow, which is the sort of thing that sometimes happens. I do have a half-imagined essay about Placebo’s cover of “Running Up That Hill” that could exist. You never know. But realistically, see you Saturday. …

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Join Jack (i.e. me) and my buddy, actor Elliot Chapman (Big Finish’s new Ben Jackson, and recent Pex Lives guest), for our very belated Hallowe’en Shabcast, in which we chat Dracula. 

Elliot’s company have recently performed Liz Lochhead’s acclaimed theatrical version of Bram Stoker’s novel, and we use that as a subject in itself and as a springboard for a wider discussion… during which I think I can safely say that we touch upon every single piece of Dracula-related media ever created, and thoroughly cover each and every one of them.

You should know: this is the first Shabcast to experiment with a new process… Glorious Immersive Scenariosoundarama™.

Please download here.  And listen at night, in a large room lit only by candles. 

Cheers me dears.…

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Guardians of the Galaxy #2

Seriously, Bendis? Five double page spreads in your second issue? Which is to say that not a heck of a lot happens, and certainly not anything that could be called a character moment. Which is to say generally speaking an issue that demonstrates all of Bendis’s worst instincts and few of his best ones. Ah well. 

Chew #52

You know how some months I know what’s going on in this comic? This is one of those other months. Actually, genuine credit due, Layman and Guillory put a lot of work into reintroducing key concepts, so that the comic is actually followable even to a moron like me, but nothing quite spikes as “I’m invested in this” across the issue, alas.

Silver Surfer #15

Oh, man, are there still old old Marvel comics coming out? I didn’t even know. This is good and fun, as the Slott/Allred Silver Surfer generally has been, but it’s difficult to pretend that I care about the false secondary universe that the Silver Surfer created after the new universe has been created and before Secret Wars #9 has come out. Nor does it really feel like Slott and Allred have had a new idea in the last little bit. All in all, this left me cold this month.

Saga #31

Also decidedly leaving me cold, as this book has for a while, although I have to say I actually like the plot of this one, even if my usual “what the hell is happening in this comic” problems apply. The cliffhanger’s fascinating and weird, at least. The middle section almost completely loses me. But as issues of a comic I’m kind of out of love with go, this is a solid one. 

Blackcross #6

I imagine had this not been painfully delayed from #5 I’d have liked it more, although this has been by some margin my least favorite recent piece of Ellis to begin with. But a massive delay before the mostly punching sixth issue of a book that cannot be said to have had Ellis’s best pacing in recent memory… well, it’s just not terribly satisfying.

Black Magick #2

Good stuff, though things slow down after an emphatic start, essentially filling in the background on Rowan and the setting. Nothing really sparks majestically as with the first issue, but it remains competent, interesting, and, thanks to Nicola Scott, absolutely fucking gorgeous. But ultimately, the worldbuilding could probably have stood to answer some questions as well as asking them.

Darth Vader #13

This continues to be quite fun, with Gillen taking clear delight in writing the Star Wars cast, and doing a phenomenal Han/Leia scene in the process. Amusingly, Vader himself is hardly in this, although there’s loads of Aphra, and a deliciously sick final cliffhanger. So yes, all I want from a Star Wars crossover, whatever that is. 

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #2

Squirrel Girl in the 1960s. I don’t feel like this should need more explanation for why it’s awesome.…

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