I’ll Explain Later

We’ve skipped the largely panned but relatively plot-important The Death of Art.

Damaged Goods is by some chap named Russell T Davies, which by most accounts is the most important thing about it. Ancient Gallifreyan horrors on a 1980s council estate, with no shortage of gay culture, it would be exactly what you expected Russell T Davies in the Virgin era to be if it weren’t for all the cocaine. Very much liked, though. Dave Owen at the time declared it to be “currently [his] favorite New Adventure.” Lars Pearson, more recently, but still well before the new series was announced, said that like the definite article, it is “sometimes forgotten in Virgin New Adventures tidal wave,” although it is “one of the most mature” Doctor Who stories ever. Shannon Sullivan’s rankings, which it should be noted are mostly pre-new series, puts it as the seventh best New Adventure with an 80.7% rating. DWRG Summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s October of 1996. Deep Blue Something are being one hit wonders with “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” That unsurprisingly doesn’t list as the Chemical Brothers take over with “Setting Sun.” That also doesn’t last, with Boyzone’s “Words” going to number one. Which, of course, can’t possibly hold up to the Spice Girls’ second single “Say You’ll Be There.” Celine Dion, Donna Lewis, Blackstreet, the Manic Street Preachers, the Fugees, Phil Collins, and LL Cool J also chart, so it’s exactly as bad a month as you think it is.

In news, the former prime minister of Bulgaria is assassinated. The second OJ Simpson trial begins, because once just wasn’t enough. New Zealand agrees to pay $130 million in compensation for the 150-year-old treatment of the Maori population. And Laurent Kabilia makes significant progress towards his eventual takeover of what is still Zaire at the time. And the Conservative government’s majority manages to fall to a single seat as Peter Thurnham defects to the Lib-Dems.

While in books, it’s Damaged Goods. Like Human Nature, the perspective on Damaged Goods has shifted fundamentally since its release. Upon release it was well-liked, but sandwiched in amongst the final year of New Adventures it was, if we’re being honest, forgettable. It didn’t brutally kill off Liz Shaw, come out months late and by a different author, have Benny schtupping the Eighth Doctor, reveal the secret origins of the Doctor, or add to Kate Orman’s terrifying tally of books in a relatively short period of time. It was just a very good novel by a moderately successful television writer. Russell T Davies was still years from Queer as Folk and from becoming Russell T Davies, and he was nearly a decade from being the one who brought Doctor Who back. It was still quite acclaimed – Sullivan’s rankings shut down not long after the series returned, due in part to a lack of people submitting ratings, so its high rating there can’t be entirely chalked up to a surge of new series fans – indeed, it has by some margin the fewest votes of any novel in the top ten, and the third lowest number of any New Adventure.…

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I’ll Explain Later

Return of the Living Dad, Orman’s second novel in five months and one of a staggering three-and-a-half novels she releases in a one year period (with another half coming out four months later, and another full one coming eight after that), features the return of Bernice Summerfield to the New Adventures after a… three month absence. So not really that big a gap, actually. It squares away the old plotline of what happened to her father during the Dalek wars. The answer is that he got time warped to 1983. So that’s unexpected. It’s a Kate Orman book, so everyone loves it. With Paul Cornell providing plotting assistance to boot, so, you know, even better. Lars Pearson goes with “one of Orman’s masterpieces,” Dave Owen at the time said that Orman provides “many profound insights into the lives of her characters, and indeed, people in general.” It’s eighteenth on Sullivan’s rankings, squarely in the narrow range Orman’s books all occupy.

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It’s August of 1996. The Spice Girls are at number one with “Wannabe.” Manic Street Preachers, the Fugees, Los Del Rio, Alanis Morissette, Robbie Williams, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Underworld, Backstreet Boys, IMC, Pet Shop Boys, Jamiroquai, R.E.M., George Michael, Bryan Adams, and Ant & Dec all fail to unseat them despite making it into the top ten. Alanis Morissette at least manages to dominate the album chart for the entire month. In news, NASA tentatively answers David Bowie with “yes.” Bob Dole wins the Republican nomination for President. Prince Charles and Princess Diana are officially divorced. Osama bin Laden declares a jihad against the United States.

While in books, Return of the Living Dad. But let’s jump forward a bit. Let’s have a look at last month’s Doctor Who Magazine – issue #453 if you’re reading this from the future. In it is a four page feature commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Love and War and thus of the creation of Professor Bernice Summerfield. This is, to say the least, extraordinary. It is, of course, too soon to know for certain, but it is unlikely that Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester are going to get a four-page feature in a 2015 issue of Doctor Who Magazine. Even the Eighth Doctor Adventures’ major companion, Fitz, whose six-year tenure as a companion is second only to Ace in sheer length, is unlikely to be so honored. There is, in other words, something extraordinary about Benny.

Part of it is simply that she is an enduring character. From 1992 to 1996 she was a regular companion. Even after her “departure” in Happy Endings she made three  major appearances in the eleven subsequent books, plus a brief one in So Vile a Sin. Then came a two-and-a-half year run as the lead character in the Doctorless New Adventures line from 1997-1999. Concurrent with the tail end of these were Big Finish’s audio adaptations, which were where they proved their credentials and managed to get the Doctor Who license in 1999. The Bernice Summerfield audio line continues to this day.…

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Speaking of Christmas, and the general season of gift-giving it implies, have you considered just how much all of your friends and family want copies of the first two volumes of TARDIS Eruditorum in book form? You should probably make their dreams come true.

Unless, of course, you don’t think they’d want a copy. Then you should think about just how good family or friends they are, and whether they deserve to have their dreams come true. Then you should get them copies anyway.

Volume 1 (William Hartnell): (US) (UK). Volume 2 (Patrick Troughton): (US) (UK).

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I’ll Explain Later

We skipped GodEngine, to someone’s sorrow, I’m sure. It had Ice Warriors and lots of continuity references.

Christmas on a Rational Planet is the debut book of Lawrence Miles, which is almost certainly the most important thing about it. It features the intrusion of the raw forces of chaos into our universe and Chris making the decision as to what the fundamental nature of the universe should be, albeit manipulated by the TARDIS. It also introduces the idea of Eighth Man Bound, a Time Lord game about previewing your future regenerations. Lars Pearson, still a number of years away from employing Lawrence Miles, calls it “delicious, but a bit text-heavy and fragmented as hell.” Dave Owen, at the time, bemoaned the release schedule, saying that if the book had “been among the first handful of New Adventures it would have been immediately seized upon as radical, unprecedented, and exhibiting a fresh approach to Doctor Who storytelling,” but suggesting that the disposable nature of the novels means that it won’t get the second reading it deserves. Shannon Sullivan’s rankings have it embodying mediocrity – at thirty-first out of sixty-one it is the median New Adventure with a 69.1% rating. DWRG Summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide (worth it for the attempt to figure out if fan rumor of a reference to every Doctor Who story is true. It’s not – Miles misses thirty-three even by a sympathetic count).

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It’s July of 1996, one of those months where the number one single changes weekly. Baddiel, Skinner, and the Lightning Seeds start us off with “Three Lions.” Then we get The Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly,” Gary Barlow’s “Forever Love,” and finally the real news in The Spice Girls’ “Wannabe.” Los Del Rio, Underworld, Celine Dion, Toni Braxton, Belinda Carlisle, and Mariah Carey also chart. While in news, Dolly the sheep is successfully cloned, Boris Yeltsin is reelected, and Eric Robert Rudolph, an anti-abortion domestic terrorist, bombs the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

In books, it’s Lawrence Miles’s debut novel, Christmas on a Rational Planet. Which means we finally have to do Lawrence Miles. Except he’s not Lawrence Miles yet. Which is an odd thing to say, but bear with me. Lawrence Miles, the grand figure of myth who provided the primary creative vision of the Eighth Doctor era, has his debut novel with Alien Bodies. That’s the book with which Miles immediately seized the crown of “most interesting writer in the line.”…

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Kate Orman’s SLEEPY is the book that actually kicks off the Psi-Powers series in any meaningful sense. Which is still not all that meaningful, as the Psi-Powers arc is infamous for its loose connections and lack of general coherence. SLEEPY tells the story of an Earth colony plagued by a mysterious outbreak of psychic powers and the various conspiracies that led to this state of affairs. These latter conspiracies dovetail out beyond the book and take us through almost to the end of the line. Being a Kate Orman book, everyone loves it. Dave Owen called it “one of the most memorable New Adventures to date.” Lars Pearson says it “has Orman at her prime, carving characters and sub-plots with the finesse of a sculptor.” And yet it’s the weak point in Orman’s oeuvre from the Shannon Sullivan poll, coming in at “only” 26th with a 71.8% rating. Of course, another way to put that is that Orman is one of four writers (Cornell, Lane, and Parkin are the others) to have put out multiple New Adventures and had them all in the top half of the charts. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s March of 1996. Oasis are at number one with “Don’t Look Back in Anger.” That lasts a week before Take That enter with “How Deep is Your Love.” That lasts until the end of the month when Prodigy take the number one spot with “Firestarter.” Celine Dion, Boyzone, Bon Jovi, Garbage, and, actually, The Beatles, or, rather, their creepy zombie “record over John Lennon’s old demos” version all also chart. As does the X-Files theme.

In news, John Howard wins election as Prime Minister in Australia. The Dunblane massacre takes place where you’d expect it to as Thomas Hamilton kills sixteen people, fifteen schoolchildren aged five to six. The mad cow disease furor properly breaks out as the British government admits that BSE has likely been transmitted to people, resulting in a ban on the export of British beef. And three British soldiers are sent to prison for life in Cyprus over the death of Louise Jensen.

While in books we get SLEEPY, which, as mentioned, properly kicks off the extremely loosely connected Psi-Powers arc. Perhaps the first question to ask is why there’s such a thing as a Psi-Powers arc in the New Adventures. They’d gone since 1994 without an arc, after all, and it was hardly like people were clamoring. On top of that, there seems like a bit of a letdown in the concept. I remember this being tangible at the time, although it’s difficult to disentangle that from the general sense of limbo that the New Adventures were, by early 1996, firmly in. They were pre-emptively superceded by the TV Movie, which, by the time SLEEPY came out, was only two months away. But there’s something more fundamental than just the fact that this was a plot arc that made its debut under a certain measure of erasure.…

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