In 1986, during Season Twenty-Three's 'Trial of a Time Lord', Bob Holmes (with contributions from others including Philip Martin, Eric Saward and Pip and Jane Baker) introduced a character that instantly gripped the imagination of pretty much the entire fanbase at the time...the Valeyard. He began the story as the prosecutor in the titular trial of the Doctor, but by the end he was revealed as something far more shocking--a future incarnation of the Doctor, a distillation of all his worst impulses into living form. He instantly became a major, core element of the mythos of the series...
Well, no, actually he didn't. In fact, apart from a few audio stories (I think that Beep the Meep may actually have appeared more often than the Valeyard) and a mention in the Season Seven finale, the Valeyard has been rather conspicuously absent for a character who would seem to have so much storytelling potential. In point of fact, for the longest time he was not only absent but forbidden: The Virgin submission guidelines made it clear that any pitch featuring the Valeyard, explicitly stating that they felt he had no storytelling potential and was a crutch used by bad writers in order to make their stories seem more significant.
Is that true? Certainly, you could argue pretty persuasively that any story that features the Valeyard could be done just as easily with the Master; he's already the Doctor's "dark mirror", so in a lot of ways the part is already taken. (It's probably significant that the one major Valeyard story featured the Master helping the Doctor against the Valeyard.) But surely there has to be something that can be done specifically with the Valeyard that can't be done with a generic "evil Time Lord scientist", right? There has to be something particular and special about the idea of the Doctor's potential corrupted and debased into cruelty and sadism?
But the Valeyard we see on screen has nothing to him beyond cruelty and sadism. He's evil. Full stop. The Doctor's "dark mirror" is a murderous sociopath who does evil things for evil's sake, or at least that's how he's played in 'Trial'. He's a sneering, preening, gloating villain who wants to cause chaos for its own sake. If he's the Doctor's dark mirror, then the Doctor must be a humble, self-effacing sort who's interested in preserving order and..
Ah. Yes. There it is.
The Doctor has never been an unambiguously, uncomplicatedly "good" individual. He's a mercurial creature of chaos in his own right, toppling governments and dashing off into the night without ever caring what results he leaves behind. He's at times callous, at other times startlingly sympathetic over trivial details. He's refused to kill his enemies because he believes deeply in compassion...and he's steered whole fleets of alien conquerors into the sun with a casual "good riddance". He's burned whole planets, and sacrificed his life to save a single man. He is perhaps the most strikingly complex protagonist in television history...and yet his "dark mirror" is just a typical Man in the Black Hat who comes up with complicated-yet-rubbish schemes. (Am I talking about the Valeyard or the Master? Yes.)
For the Valeyard to work, he'd have to be far more like the Doctor than he is. He'd have to be a capricious monster, one just as willing to spare an entire world from his depredations simply because he liked the color of the sky as he was to crush a sparrow underfoot for singing out of tune. He'd have to be an agent of order as well as chaos, perfectly willing to spend decades on a trivial task because it was worth doing right and then dashing a whole civilization to dust with a few whispered words. In short, a dark and twisted incarnation of the Doctor would be very difficult to distinguish from...the Doctor. The difference between the Doctor's best self and his worst impulses is a matter of degree and emphasis, as he himself has admitted on occasion. ("Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.") Ultimately, the reason the Valeyard is so underused is because he's superfluous to requirements. The Doctor has all the darkness he needs without having to outsource it.
Showing posts with label doctor who. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doctor who. Show all posts
Monday, September 28, 2015
Friday, June 19, 2015
Some Horn-Tooting!
For those of you who enjoyed the original 'Outside In', which contained an essay on every story in the classic Doctor Who series by a different author for every story, the sequel is coming soon from ATB Publishing! This one will have, as you can see from the proof cover, 125 essays by 125 authors on 125 different episodes of 'Doctor Who'. I'm in there, writing about "The Christmas Invasion" and making what I think is a pretty credible case that it is not only meant to bookend "Rose", but also that it's meant to foreshadow the Tenth Doctor's descent into the Time Lord Victorious and eventual regeneration. I look forward to the book's arrival (once the madness of sorting out 125 author copies is past) and to talking about it at cons!
Friday, June 28, 2013
I Must Be Getting Desperate For Topics
The real reason my posting schedule gets a little bit sparse at this time of year has nothing to do with lack of time and everything to do with lack of ideas. I get so consumed by work that I don't really pay attention to the world, which makes it hard to write about things that aren't the financial industry's decision to spend years and years depersonalizing the home mortgage process and getting personal influence out of the home valuation process by putting barriers between the loan officers and the appraisers so they can't communicate...then start requiring references from a financial institution for all new appraisers. (As you can imagine, this is something I can talk a lot about.)
So at this point, I'm just going to tell you about a dream I had the other day. In it, I was watching a "lost" Eccleston episode of 'Doctor Who', and marveling at the sheer audacity of Russell T. Davies. Because I knew that while the casual viewer wasn't going to notice it, Davies had gone and made the story into a mashup of "Vengeance on Varos" and "Timelash", and was demonstrating that there was really nothing wrong with the ideas, only the execution. In it, the Doctor and Rose and Jack landed on a degenerate former colony where the inhabitants had developed a Roman-esque Imperial Court, and the Doctor was framed by the Emperor as the ringleader of the rebels (who didn't really exist--they were just a convenient excuse to crack down on people) and sentenced to the Mindlash. (As a subplot, there was a faction who planned to use the Doctor to assassinate the Emperor and then execute him for that. Not many good guys in this one.)
The Doctor, in turn, found out that the Mindlash was actually a piece of broken technology from the original colony ship, an artificial intelligence that functioned as the ship's psychiatrist. Unfortunately, this one had become rather severely degraded, and was convinced that the default state for "sanity" was the 17th century explorer Vasco de Gama. The Doctor was deemed incurably insane for not believing himself to be a Spanish sailor from the Age of Exploration, and the machine decided that the best way to "cure" him was to erase his brain patterns entirely.
I woke up before the end, but I'd already guessed it--the Doctor had been talking to the Captain of the Imperial Guard, who was a good man who knew that the Court had become too decadent to survive, and I figured that in traditional Ninth Doctor fashion, he was going to win not through direct action but by inspiring someone else to do good. But it was an awesome episode, full of jokes and twists and courtly intrigue. I wish you could have seen it.
So at this point, I'm just going to tell you about a dream I had the other day. In it, I was watching a "lost" Eccleston episode of 'Doctor Who', and marveling at the sheer audacity of Russell T. Davies. Because I knew that while the casual viewer wasn't going to notice it, Davies had gone and made the story into a mashup of "Vengeance on Varos" and "Timelash", and was demonstrating that there was really nothing wrong with the ideas, only the execution. In it, the Doctor and Rose and Jack landed on a degenerate former colony where the inhabitants had developed a Roman-esque Imperial Court, and the Doctor was framed by the Emperor as the ringleader of the rebels (who didn't really exist--they were just a convenient excuse to crack down on people) and sentenced to the Mindlash. (As a subplot, there was a faction who planned to use the Doctor to assassinate the Emperor and then execute him for that. Not many good guys in this one.)
The Doctor, in turn, found out that the Mindlash was actually a piece of broken technology from the original colony ship, an artificial intelligence that functioned as the ship's psychiatrist. Unfortunately, this one had become rather severely degraded, and was convinced that the default state for "sanity" was the 17th century explorer Vasco de Gama. The Doctor was deemed incurably insane for not believing himself to be a Spanish sailor from the Age of Exploration, and the machine decided that the best way to "cure" him was to erase his brain patterns entirely.
I woke up before the end, but I'd already guessed it--the Doctor had been talking to the Captain of the Imperial Guard, who was a good man who knew that the Court had become too decadent to survive, and I figured that in traditional Ninth Doctor fashion, he was going to win not through direct action but by inspiring someone else to do good. But it was an awesome episode, full of jokes and twists and courtly intrigue. I wish you could have seen it.
Friday, May 03, 2013
Review: The Wheel of Ice
'The Wheel of Ice', by Stephen Baxter, is the latest in the untitled series of "hardcover Doctor Who books by Proper Science Fiction Writers" that began with Michael Moorcock's 'The Coming of the Terraphiles'. It's interesting, really, how little difference there is between the Proper Science Fiction Writer books like 'Wheel' and the better parts of the existing Doctor Who series--this isn't a knock on Baxter so much as it is a paean to the way that the Doctor Who novels have produced quite a few stellar science-fiction writers who've gone on to have excellent careers of their own. Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, Russell T Davies, Ben Aaronovitch...there's no shortage of people who made their mark as a Doctor Who writer and went on to bigger and better things.
Many of them, in fact, were writing Doctor Who in the period that Baxter first began his own career, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine that 'The Wheel of Ice' was a novel whose genesis was as a Missing Adventure that Baxter didn't wind up publishing. It might sound like more of a stretch to those unfamiliar with Baxter's career, but he did wind up having a short story in one of the later, non-Who Decalogs for Virgin, so he was clearly aware of them as a market. And as this book shows, he's clearly also a huge Doctor Who fan. This story is so filled with kisses to the series' past that it reads much like the first-time work of a Cornell or a Gatiss, someone utterly filled to the brim with talent but desperately afraid that this will be their only Doctor Who book and they'll have to fit in every single continuity reference right now or they'll never get another chance to bring up T-Mat and the Ice Warriors and the Karkus and and and--
Despite the slightly intrusive nature of the fan references, the Doctor Who aspects of this Doctor Who book are handled excellently. Jamie is wonderful, accessible and interesting and funny and resourceful all at once, while Zoe is written by someone who clearly gave the character's background actual thought instead of just treating it as a reason for her to act "smart". One of the other reviews I read of this book disliked the fact that she spends time near the end babysitting someone else's kid, but I liked the way that we saw Zoe doing something she never did on television...heck, maybe something she never thought she would do...and being very interesting while doing it. The Doctor isn't entirely Troughton--there are times he feels a bit Pertwee--but he's very recognizably the Doctor, in a wonderful way.
And the plot is exactly what you'd expect from Baxter, a hard sci-fi story that excellently synthesizes the genre with the humanist elements of New Wave science fiction. The characters are all sympathetic and interesting (especially MMAC, the robot raised as a human to calibrate its AI, who could sustain a novel all by himself) and the Big Idea at the story's heart is suitably big. And because this is Doctor Who, the series without a formula, you really can't be sure how things are going to go until the final page. Really, the only flaw is that Florian Hart, the human villain of the piece, can't decide whether she's a heartless mining tycooon or a comic-book supervillain. (Once you drop lines like, "You may have defused the bomb, Doctor, but you won't find it that easy to escape my wrath!" you've pretty much closed down the first option.)
On the whole, I'd happily recommend this one, and I think it's great that they're doing books like this again. Classic Series stories, written by great sci-fi writers, with appeal to adults...it's almost like the Virgin years all over again.
Many of them, in fact, were writing Doctor Who in the period that Baxter first began his own career, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine that 'The Wheel of Ice' was a novel whose genesis was as a Missing Adventure that Baxter didn't wind up publishing. It might sound like more of a stretch to those unfamiliar with Baxter's career, but he did wind up having a short story in one of the later, non-Who Decalogs for Virgin, so he was clearly aware of them as a market. And as this book shows, he's clearly also a huge Doctor Who fan. This story is so filled with kisses to the series' past that it reads much like the first-time work of a Cornell or a Gatiss, someone utterly filled to the brim with talent but desperately afraid that this will be their only Doctor Who book and they'll have to fit in every single continuity reference right now or they'll never get another chance to bring up T-Mat and the Ice Warriors and the Karkus and and and--
Despite the slightly intrusive nature of the fan references, the Doctor Who aspects of this Doctor Who book are handled excellently. Jamie is wonderful, accessible and interesting and funny and resourceful all at once, while Zoe is written by someone who clearly gave the character's background actual thought instead of just treating it as a reason for her to act "smart". One of the other reviews I read of this book disliked the fact that she spends time near the end babysitting someone else's kid, but I liked the way that we saw Zoe doing something she never did on television...heck, maybe something she never thought she would do...and being very interesting while doing it. The Doctor isn't entirely Troughton--there are times he feels a bit Pertwee--but he's very recognizably the Doctor, in a wonderful way.
And the plot is exactly what you'd expect from Baxter, a hard sci-fi story that excellently synthesizes the genre with the humanist elements of New Wave science fiction. The characters are all sympathetic and interesting (especially MMAC, the robot raised as a human to calibrate its AI, who could sustain a novel all by himself) and the Big Idea at the story's heart is suitably big. And because this is Doctor Who, the series without a formula, you really can't be sure how things are going to go until the final page. Really, the only flaw is that Florian Hart, the human villain of the piece, can't decide whether she's a heartless mining tycooon or a comic-book supervillain. (Once you drop lines like, "You may have defused the bomb, Doctor, but you won't find it that easy to escape my wrath!" you've pretty much closed down the first option.)
On the whole, I'd happily recommend this one, and I think it's great that they're doing books like this again. Classic Series stories, written by great sci-fi writers, with appeal to adults...it's almost like the Virgin years all over again.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Why I Love My Job
I was asked to write the following quiz up by my boss, to distribute to the new hires. Let me repeat that: I was asked to write this by my boss, to distribute to the new hires.
in1. My ideal spaceship is:
a) the size of a small city, and capable of traveling at Warp 9
b) able to make the Kessel Run in less than two parsecs
c) blue, rectangular, and bigger on the inside
d) like a leaf on the wind; watch how it soars
e) don't know/no opinion
2. Who would win in a fight between these characters?
a) Kirk
b) Luke Skywalker
c) River Song
d) Buffy
e) Um...you know these are all fictional characters, right?
3. Which is cooler?
a) a phaser
b) a lightsaber
c) a bow tie
d) a wooden stake
e) an electric guitar
4. Vampires are:
a) aliens that draw the salt out of human bodies
b) dark Jedi that feed on the Force
c) fish people with perception filters
d) soulless monsters that drink human blood (with two notable exceptions)
e) sparkly and popular with teenagers right now
5. The handiest tool in the universe is:
a) a tricorder
b) an astromech droid
c) a sonic screwdriver
d) another wooden stake
e) a Swiss army knife
6. Telepathy is possible...
a) sure! Lwaxana Troi has it!
b) With the Force, young Padawan, all things are possible.
c) Yes, but don't make a habit of it.
d) Yes, but it drives you insane. (Unless you live on a spaceship.)
e) No. Don't be silly.
7. The scariest thing in the universe is:
a) the Borg.
b) the Death Star.
c) a Dalek.
d) a giant snake that used to be the town's Mayor.
e) a king cobra.
8. When someone dies...
a) You have to return their body to their home planet.
b) They get a blue ghost body.
c) They regenerate.
d) Joss Whedon marks another notch on his writing desk.
e) Let's not discuss that at work, shall we? It's a very serious topic.
9. A good length for a series is:
a) Seven years.
b) Three movies. That's where they should have stopped.
c) Fifty years and counting.
d) Seven years. You hear that, FOX? Not one, not two. SEVEN.
e) I don't know, it depends on the series. Which one were you talking about?
10. The best movie ever made is:
a) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
b) The Empire Strikes Back.
c) Doctor Who and the Daleks.
d) Either Serenity, Cabin in the Woods or Avengers. Don't make me choose!
e) Citizen Kane.
in1. My ideal spaceship is:
a) the size of a small city, and capable of traveling at Warp 9
b) able to make the Kessel Run in less than two parsecs
c) blue, rectangular, and bigger on the inside
d) like a leaf on the wind; watch how it soars
e) don't know/no opinion
2. Who would win in a fight between these characters?
a) Kirk
b) Luke Skywalker
c) River Song
d) Buffy
e) Um...you know these are all fictional characters, right?
3. Which is cooler?
a) a phaser
b) a lightsaber
c) a bow tie
d) a wooden stake
e) an electric guitar
4. Vampires are:
a) aliens that draw the salt out of human bodies
b) dark Jedi that feed on the Force
c) fish people with perception filters
d) soulless monsters that drink human blood (with two notable exceptions)
e) sparkly and popular with teenagers right now
5. The handiest tool in the universe is:
a) a tricorder
b) an astromech droid
c) a sonic screwdriver
d) another wooden stake
e) a Swiss army knife
6. Telepathy is possible...
a) sure! Lwaxana Troi has it!
b) With the Force, young Padawan, all things are possible.
c) Yes, but don't make a habit of it.
d) Yes, but it drives you insane. (Unless you live on a spaceship.)
e) No. Don't be silly.
7. The scariest thing in the universe is:
a) the Borg.
b) the Death Star.
c) a Dalek.
d) a giant snake that used to be the town's Mayor.
e) a king cobra.
8. When someone dies...
a) You have to return their body to their home planet.
b) They get a blue ghost body.
c) They regenerate.
d) Joss Whedon marks another notch on his writing desk.
e) Let's not discuss that at work, shall we? It's a very serious topic.
9. A good length for a series is:
a) Seven years.
b) Three movies. That's where they should have stopped.
c) Fifty years and counting.
d) Seven years. You hear that, FOX? Not one, not two. SEVEN.
e) I don't know, it depends on the series. Which one were you talking about?
10. The best movie ever made is:
a) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
b) The Empire Strikes Back.
c) Doctor Who and the Daleks.
d) Either Serenity, Cabin in the Woods or Avengers. Don't make me choose!
e) Citizen Kane.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Reviews: 'Plague of the Cybermen', 'The Dalek Generation', 'Shroud of Sorrow'
One of the nice things about the return of Doctor Who to our screens is the way that it also gives a shot in the arm to the nigh-dormant book line. As someone who really spent most of his formative fan period during the Wilderness Years, I'm thrilled to see any new book. Was I thrilled after reading them? Well...
Plague of the Cybermen: This one was not so much "thrilling" as "standard". Everything about this was absolutely straightforward and done according to the tropes of Doctor Who, with just the minimal amount of energy to keep you from falling asleep while reading. The Doctor arrives in a vaguely European, vaguely pre-industrial village so generic that I literally expected the big twist to be that it wasn't Earth, and begins to track down the source of mysterious deaths and disappearances. (Hint: The novel is called 'Plague of the Cybermen'. There are a limited number of ways to surprise the audience with the cause of the disappearances.)
The actual plague is dealt with in about the first thirty pages, and proves to be more or less irrelevant to the plot; it's there mostly because "...stuff, I guess of the Cybermen" wouldn't have been a great title. The Doctor finds a villager who's sufficiently spunky-yet-vulnerable to be his pseudo-companion, and they investigate anachronistic technology, a castle with hidden passageways, grave robbings, and mysterious disappearances until Justin Richards has filled out enough of the page count. Then the Cybermen come out in force and rampage a bit, until the Doctor does something clever and vaguely inspiring and they all die. (I'd say "spoilers", but really, you can pretty much see this one coming from about page one.) I's not bad, I'll stress. Justin Richards is incapable of turning in a truly bad novel; he's just too competent on a fundamental level to make mistakes in plot, character or tone. But at the same time, he's not really trying to turn in a great one, either. Just "good enough". It feels weird to say that the two weakest books of the last few years have both been his, but that's as much a tribute to his work as an editor as it is an indictment of him as an author. Even so, I wish he'd done more of that great editorial work and commissioned someone else for this slot.
The Dalek Generation: Technically speaking, this is the work of a first-time author, but Nicholas Briggs has written a lot of Doctor Who. Just not for the novels. He's a veteran of the Big Finish range (where he wrote excellent stories like 'Creatures of Beauty' and...um, less than excellent ones like 'The Sirens of Time') and he's probably best known to the average passerby as the voice of the Daleks and Cybermen on the new series. So all in all, it's about time that he wrote a novel. How was it?
Well, the concept is glorious. It's set in a distant galaxy where the Daleks are the benevolent creators of an interplanetary utopia known as the Sunlight Worlds, and an entire generation of humans knows them as nothing other than benefactors. When the Doctor shows up and tries to denounce them as evil, he's prosecuted for incitement to hate crimes. Every part of this is nothing short of brilliant. Having seen the Daleks as often as we have, it's easy to understand (as the Doctor does) that this has to be part of some sinister scheme. But it's rare to see the Daleks portrayed as such utterly Machiavellian schemers; Briggs shows them as clever, patient, and manipulative, which is something that's more often told than shown. And Briggs revels in showing the whole thing from just enough of an outside perspective that we can see how the Doctor is reduced to utter impotence in the face of this gambit; he can't rally a population to fight the Daleks when they don't have anything they want to fight against, and seeing him reduced to a ranting nutter in the street is genuinely unsettling in a way that the series rarely is.
Next to that, the actual plot (Spoilers: The Daleks aren't really good guys after all!) is kind of boring, but it does provide a reasonable explanation as to why the Daleks are doing everything. My only real complaint is that it seems like they're heading towards an ending that makes the Doctor's hiding in misery in Victorian London make sense, but they pull back. The ending should be very bleak, and it's sort of "whew, that was too close! Better stop traveling and righting wrongs, then."
Shroud of Sorrow: Another new writer for the novels, and unlike Nick Briggs, Tommy Donbavand doesn't have a ton of Who credits in another medium. He's a genuinely new voice for the range (and as an aside, Justin Richards has been doing an admirable job of this lately. Oli Smith, Una McCormack, James Goss, Paul Finch, George Mann, Naomi Alderman...that's a lot of new authors getting their shot, and there've been a lot of successes in that batch. Yay Justin!) How did he do? Well, the concept is strong, and thematically linked to the 50th anniversary; the Shroud feed on grief, and the death of Kennedy (which, of course, took place the same weekend as the debut of a certain television series) has provided them with a feast to end all feasts. It's a strong idea, and for the first three-fourths of the book, it's quite well executed. Donbavand has a good ear for dialogue, and evokes the slightly fairy-tale feel of Matt Smith's character quite well. The plot also jumps straight into gear; there are no slow, creeping menaces here. The Shroud rapidly spreads over a whole city, and the Doctor's got maybe eleven hours before Earth is irretrievably parasitized. (Although I'm not crazy about the idea that if your grief gets "eaten", another emotion gets stronger to fill the breach. As menacing fates for the human race go, it's been topped.)
The book goes off the rails a tiny bit towards the end, when the Doctor goes to a planet previously victimized by the Shroud and finds...um, clown therapists. Who travel to Earth in a dimensionally transcendental clown car to battle the Shroud with laughter. I think this is one of those concepts that will either work for you or it won't. For me, it didn't. And after that, we get several more strategies deployed to battle the Shroud at the rate of about one every other page, which is a bit too fast paced even for me. On the other hand, this section does contain one of the finest sequences in the book, where the Doctor lures the Shroud to him with memories of the Brigadier's funeral. It's a wonderful tribute to one of the show's touchstones. On the strength of that, and some of the other vivid and clever sequences, I'd like to see another book from Tommy Donbavand, even if this one contains a few first-time writer flaws.
Plague of the Cybermen: This one was not so much "thrilling" as "standard". Everything about this was absolutely straightforward and done according to the tropes of Doctor Who, with just the minimal amount of energy to keep you from falling asleep while reading. The Doctor arrives in a vaguely European, vaguely pre-industrial village so generic that I literally expected the big twist to be that it wasn't Earth, and begins to track down the source of mysterious deaths and disappearances. (Hint: The novel is called 'Plague of the Cybermen'. There are a limited number of ways to surprise the audience with the cause of the disappearances.)
The actual plague is dealt with in about the first thirty pages, and proves to be more or less irrelevant to the plot; it's there mostly because "...stuff, I guess of the Cybermen" wouldn't have been a great title. The Doctor finds a villager who's sufficiently spunky-yet-vulnerable to be his pseudo-companion, and they investigate anachronistic technology, a castle with hidden passageways, grave robbings, and mysterious disappearances until Justin Richards has filled out enough of the page count. Then the Cybermen come out in force and rampage a bit, until the Doctor does something clever and vaguely inspiring and they all die. (I'd say "spoilers", but really, you can pretty much see this one coming from about page one.) I's not bad, I'll stress. Justin Richards is incapable of turning in a truly bad novel; he's just too competent on a fundamental level to make mistakes in plot, character or tone. But at the same time, he's not really trying to turn in a great one, either. Just "good enough". It feels weird to say that the two weakest books of the last few years have both been his, but that's as much a tribute to his work as an editor as it is an indictment of him as an author. Even so, I wish he'd done more of that great editorial work and commissioned someone else for this slot.
The Dalek Generation: Technically speaking, this is the work of a first-time author, but Nicholas Briggs has written a lot of Doctor Who. Just not for the novels. He's a veteran of the Big Finish range (where he wrote excellent stories like 'Creatures of Beauty' and...um, less than excellent ones like 'The Sirens of Time') and he's probably best known to the average passerby as the voice of the Daleks and Cybermen on the new series. So all in all, it's about time that he wrote a novel. How was it?
Well, the concept is glorious. It's set in a distant galaxy where the Daleks are the benevolent creators of an interplanetary utopia known as the Sunlight Worlds, and an entire generation of humans knows them as nothing other than benefactors. When the Doctor shows up and tries to denounce them as evil, he's prosecuted for incitement to hate crimes. Every part of this is nothing short of brilliant. Having seen the Daleks as often as we have, it's easy to understand (as the Doctor does) that this has to be part of some sinister scheme. But it's rare to see the Daleks portrayed as such utterly Machiavellian schemers; Briggs shows them as clever, patient, and manipulative, which is something that's more often told than shown. And Briggs revels in showing the whole thing from just enough of an outside perspective that we can see how the Doctor is reduced to utter impotence in the face of this gambit; he can't rally a population to fight the Daleks when they don't have anything they want to fight against, and seeing him reduced to a ranting nutter in the street is genuinely unsettling in a way that the series rarely is.
Next to that, the actual plot (Spoilers: The Daleks aren't really good guys after all!) is kind of boring, but it does provide a reasonable explanation as to why the Daleks are doing everything. My only real complaint is that it seems like they're heading towards an ending that makes the Doctor's hiding in misery in Victorian London make sense, but they pull back. The ending should be very bleak, and it's sort of "whew, that was too close! Better stop traveling and righting wrongs, then."
Shroud of Sorrow: Another new writer for the novels, and unlike Nick Briggs, Tommy Donbavand doesn't have a ton of Who credits in another medium. He's a genuinely new voice for the range (and as an aside, Justin Richards has been doing an admirable job of this lately. Oli Smith, Una McCormack, James Goss, Paul Finch, George Mann, Naomi Alderman...that's a lot of new authors getting their shot, and there've been a lot of successes in that batch. Yay Justin!) How did he do? Well, the concept is strong, and thematically linked to the 50th anniversary; the Shroud feed on grief, and the death of Kennedy (which, of course, took place the same weekend as the debut of a certain television series) has provided them with a feast to end all feasts. It's a strong idea, and for the first three-fourths of the book, it's quite well executed. Donbavand has a good ear for dialogue, and evokes the slightly fairy-tale feel of Matt Smith's character quite well. The plot also jumps straight into gear; there are no slow, creeping menaces here. The Shroud rapidly spreads over a whole city, and the Doctor's got maybe eleven hours before Earth is irretrievably parasitized. (Although I'm not crazy about the idea that if your grief gets "eaten", another emotion gets stronger to fill the breach. As menacing fates for the human race go, it's been topped.)
The book goes off the rails a tiny bit towards the end, when the Doctor goes to a planet previously victimized by the Shroud and finds...um, clown therapists. Who travel to Earth in a dimensionally transcendental clown car to battle the Shroud with laughter. I think this is one of those concepts that will either work for you or it won't. For me, it didn't. And after that, we get several more strategies deployed to battle the Shroud at the rate of about one every other page, which is a bit too fast paced even for me. On the other hand, this section does contain one of the finest sequences in the book, where the Doctor lures the Shroud to him with memories of the Brigadier's funeral. It's a wonderful tribute to one of the show's touchstones. On the strength of that, and some of the other vivid and clever sequences, I'd like to see another book from Tommy Donbavand, even if this one contains a few first-time writer flaws.
Friday, April 12, 2013
"Who Are You, Doctor?"
The Doctor attempted to rub his head, but was distracted by the strangely familiar tugging sensation on his other wrist when he reached up. He spent a moment or two moving each hand in turn, noticing the way that the other was forced to follow. As his vision cleared, he was finally able to place it--of course. His hands were cuffed together. That would explain it. And likewise, the pain in his head and foggy vision would imply being knocked unconscious. He smiled. For the first time since he'd come to Babylon 5, the Doctor felt like he was finally on familiar ground.
"You didn't answer the question," the voice rang out in strident, arrogant tones. "Who are you?"
The Doctor rolled onto his back and looked up at the man in Victorian dress. "I'm the Doctor. And you are...?"
"Unacceptable!" the man shouted. He cracked his cane against the ground and pain flared up through the cuffs, into the Doctor's arms, and across his entire body.
"Ah," the Doctor said mournfully, half to himself. "It's one of those sorts of conversations, then. Yes, you look the sort. Always a bit too excited about the wrong answers, always a bit too eager to crack the whip. No, don't bother responding, I've heard it all before. You couldn't have 'sadist' written all over you more obviously if you were at a BDSM convention full of graffiti artists." With a bit of effort, he sat up. "Now I'm sorry, you had a question for me?"
"Yes, Doctor," the man said, making a visible effort to control his petulant fury. "My masters wish to know more about you. If lives are to be entrusted into your care, if the future is to depend on you, then they must be sure that you are doing the right things for the right reasons. And so I will ask, as many times as I have to until they are satisfied or you are dead. Who are you?"
"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, slowly and delicately rising to his feet. "Is it a curriculum vitae that they're looking for? My monster-fighting résumé? Let me see, I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey--actually, I'm the last Time Lord from the former planet Gallifrey, it's rather a long story and you don't strike me as the patient sort. I've fought the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Slitheen, the Adipose, well I say I fought them but they were actually babies, so it was really more sort of giving their governess a stern talking to, I've died ten times, well, call it nine and a half, and I travel through time and space in a box that's bigger on the inside than the outside. And if you believe even half of that, you're far more open-minded than I'm giving you credit for, so why don't we just skip to the bit where you say..." The Doctor smiled grimly, gesturing in expectation.
"Unacceptable!" The cane cracked against the floor again. The Doctor staggered but did not fall. "Listen to yourself, Doctor! That's not who you are, merely what you've done! Where you're from! You're so filled with blinkered, arrogant pride over your history that you haven't even thought about the question! How can you come here, set yourself up as savior, ask people to follow you into death--"
The Doctor raised himself up to his full height. "I have never asked them to follow me!" he roared. His eyes were filled with ageless sorrow. For the first time in three centuries, the inquisitor flinched. "I have traveled this universe for eleven hundred years, and I have seen agony beyond your capacity to understand. And where I go, I try to help. Because, well..." he shrugged. "What else am I supposed to do? Cluck my tongue and step back into the TARDIS? I've seen where that path leads, I have seen what happens to people who decide that not everyone is worth helping, and I cannot follow it. I would die first. I have died first.
"And so where I travel, when I see pain...I help. A little. Have I succeeded? I like to think so. I know there are a few worlds...well, a few galaxies...well, a few universes, no false modesty here...that wouldn't be around if not for me. But I have never...I have NEVER...told anyone that I am their savior. I've never been anything other than what I am. I'm just a traveler who's sometimes in the right place at the right time to do something good. I'm just a clever old Doctor who tries to fix things when they're broken. I might save people, but I'm no savior. I'm a madman with a box. No more, no less."
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim wand. He touched a button, and with a high-pitched whirr, the cuffs sprang free. He caught them before they reached the floor and handed them to the inquisitor. "And if that answer doesn't satisfy your masters, then I suggest they come and ask me themselves. Because unlike them, I'm not hiding from anything."
"You didn't answer the question," the voice rang out in strident, arrogant tones. "Who are you?"
The Doctor rolled onto his back and looked up at the man in Victorian dress. "I'm the Doctor. And you are...?"
"Unacceptable!" the man shouted. He cracked his cane against the ground and pain flared up through the cuffs, into the Doctor's arms, and across his entire body.
"Ah," the Doctor said mournfully, half to himself. "It's one of those sorts of conversations, then. Yes, you look the sort. Always a bit too excited about the wrong answers, always a bit too eager to crack the whip. No, don't bother responding, I've heard it all before. You couldn't have 'sadist' written all over you more obviously if you were at a BDSM convention full of graffiti artists." With a bit of effort, he sat up. "Now I'm sorry, you had a question for me?"
"Yes, Doctor," the man said, making a visible effort to control his petulant fury. "My masters wish to know more about you. If lives are to be entrusted into your care, if the future is to depend on you, then they must be sure that you are doing the right things for the right reasons. And so I will ask, as many times as I have to until they are satisfied or you are dead. Who are you?"
"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, slowly and delicately rising to his feet. "Is it a curriculum vitae that they're looking for? My monster-fighting résumé? Let me see, I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey--actually, I'm the last Time Lord from the former planet Gallifrey, it's rather a long story and you don't strike me as the patient sort. I've fought the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Slitheen, the Adipose, well I say I fought them but they were actually babies, so it was really more sort of giving their governess a stern talking to, I've died ten times, well, call it nine and a half, and I travel through time and space in a box that's bigger on the inside than the outside. And if you believe even half of that, you're far more open-minded than I'm giving you credit for, so why don't we just skip to the bit where you say..." The Doctor smiled grimly, gesturing in expectation.
"Unacceptable!" The cane cracked against the floor again. The Doctor staggered but did not fall. "Listen to yourself, Doctor! That's not who you are, merely what you've done! Where you're from! You're so filled with blinkered, arrogant pride over your history that you haven't even thought about the question! How can you come here, set yourself up as savior, ask people to follow you into death--"
The Doctor raised himself up to his full height. "I have never asked them to follow me!" he roared. His eyes were filled with ageless sorrow. For the first time in three centuries, the inquisitor flinched. "I have traveled this universe for eleven hundred years, and I have seen agony beyond your capacity to understand. And where I go, I try to help. Because, well..." he shrugged. "What else am I supposed to do? Cluck my tongue and step back into the TARDIS? I've seen where that path leads, I have seen what happens to people who decide that not everyone is worth helping, and I cannot follow it. I would die first. I have died first.
"And so where I travel, when I see pain...I help. A little. Have I succeeded? I like to think so. I know there are a few worlds...well, a few galaxies...well, a few universes, no false modesty here...that wouldn't be around if not for me. But I have never...I have NEVER...told anyone that I am their savior. I've never been anything other than what I am. I'm just a traveler who's sometimes in the right place at the right time to do something good. I'm just a clever old Doctor who tries to fix things when they're broken. I might save people, but I'm no savior. I'm a madman with a box. No more, no less."
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim wand. He touched a button, and with a high-pitched whirr, the cuffs sprang free. He caught them before they reached the floor and handed them to the inquisitor. "And if that answer doesn't satisfy your masters, then I suggest they come and ask me themselves. Because unlike them, I'm not hiding from anything."
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
"What Do You Want, Doctor?"
I absolutely cannot get this scene out of my head, so...
Anyone walking through the Zocalo would have noticed nothing more than two nice young men. They might even have spared a passing thought to just how nice they seemed; both of them were well-kept and smartly-dressed, a far cry from the usual riff-raff and shady sorts that were attracted to Babylon 5. Admittedly, the bow tie made one of them look a little old-fashioned, but there was nothing wrong with that. Two nice young men, smiling pleasantly and having a friendly chat. Nothing to draw much attention. Nothing worth talking about. Nothing worth a second glance. That's what anyone walking through the Zocalo would have thought...because they weren't looking at either man's eyes.
"So tell me, Doctor," Morden said, "what brings you to Babylon 5? What do you want?"
The Doctor smiled. It didn't make him look younger; far from it. The smile was the weary, cynical grin of a thousand years, entirely out of place on such a young face. "'What do you want?' That's a dangerous question. Possibly the most dangerous question in existence. Well, apart from 'What does this button do?' and 'Do you think I should cut the red wire first?' Both of which tend to get some remarkably shirty and unhelpful reactions--"
"How can it be dangerous, Doctor?" Morden smiled disarmingly. It didn't make him look younger, either. Morden smiled the same way that burglars jimmied open windows. "It's just a simple question. I'm trying to help you. And I can't help you unless you tell me what you want."
"But that's exactly why it's dangerous. When I answer that question, I give you information about what it is that I value. If I answer, 'Jammie Dodgers'--" the Doctor held up a hand quickly-- "just as a hypothetical example, mind you, I have some in my pocket already, they're a bit fluffy but still perfectly good--but if I do answer 'Jammie Dodgers', then you have a hold on me. If I have something you want, or something you need, you can get it from me by promising me Jammie Dodgers." The Doctor's tone was light, his voice rattling through the words as though they were in a hurry to leave, but his eyes were as cold and dark as galaxies.
"And since you know what I value, but I don't know what you want, you can make it seem as though your offer is highly prized...and mine almost worthless. Why wouldn't I trade whatever little trifle you ask for in return for my heart's desire? And before you know it, you're asking for a little more each time and giving away a little less, and I don't even realize the value of what I've lost and what you've gained, and I don't notice how much power you have over me until I've given away an entire universe...for a single stale biscuit." The Doctor leaned forward in his seat. His smile had vanished entirely. "A person who knows exactly what people want is the second most dangerous man in the universe, Mister Morden."
Morden stared back, his own smile still present but looking decidedly strained. "It sounds like you've already made up your mind, then," he said. "That's a shame, Doctor. I think my associates would have been very interested in you."
The Doctor looked to Morden's immediate left. Then his immediate right. "Oh, I suspect they will be anyway. People like them usually are. Assuming you have a very broad definition of the word 'people', which I generally do. I'm sure I'll be seeing you again, Mister Morden. Just like I'm sure you'll be seeing me." He rose to leave.
Morden let him get almost out of earshot before his curiosity got the better of him. "Doctor?" he called out.
The Doctor turned, looking as though he wasn't obeying quite the same laws of physics as everyone else did when he did so. "Yes?"
"You said the second." Morden's voice was very steady when he asked. It was the sound of someone trying very hard not to sound nervous. "What would the most dangerous man be?"
The Doctor smiled sadly, the sort of smile given by a teacher when a prize pupil made an expected mistake. "I should have thought that was obvious," he said softly. "The most dangerous man in the universe is a man who doesn't want anything you can provide." He turned away again, and his casual, "Goodbye, Mister Morden," was lost in the crowd.
Morden looked to his left. Then to his right. If he spoke, it was nothing anyone in the Zocalo heard.
Anyone walking through the Zocalo would have noticed nothing more than two nice young men. They might even have spared a passing thought to just how nice they seemed; both of them were well-kept and smartly-dressed, a far cry from the usual riff-raff and shady sorts that were attracted to Babylon 5. Admittedly, the bow tie made one of them look a little old-fashioned, but there was nothing wrong with that. Two nice young men, smiling pleasantly and having a friendly chat. Nothing to draw much attention. Nothing worth talking about. Nothing worth a second glance. That's what anyone walking through the Zocalo would have thought...because they weren't looking at either man's eyes.
"So tell me, Doctor," Morden said, "what brings you to Babylon 5? What do you want?"
The Doctor smiled. It didn't make him look younger; far from it. The smile was the weary, cynical grin of a thousand years, entirely out of place on such a young face. "'What do you want?' That's a dangerous question. Possibly the most dangerous question in existence. Well, apart from 'What does this button do?' and 'Do you think I should cut the red wire first?' Both of which tend to get some remarkably shirty and unhelpful reactions--"
"How can it be dangerous, Doctor?" Morden smiled disarmingly. It didn't make him look younger, either. Morden smiled the same way that burglars jimmied open windows. "It's just a simple question. I'm trying to help you. And I can't help you unless you tell me what you want."
"But that's exactly why it's dangerous. When I answer that question, I give you information about what it is that I value. If I answer, 'Jammie Dodgers'--" the Doctor held up a hand quickly-- "just as a hypothetical example, mind you, I have some in my pocket already, they're a bit fluffy but still perfectly good--but if I do answer 'Jammie Dodgers', then you have a hold on me. If I have something you want, or something you need, you can get it from me by promising me Jammie Dodgers." The Doctor's tone was light, his voice rattling through the words as though they were in a hurry to leave, but his eyes were as cold and dark as galaxies.
"And since you know what I value, but I don't know what you want, you can make it seem as though your offer is highly prized...and mine almost worthless. Why wouldn't I trade whatever little trifle you ask for in return for my heart's desire? And before you know it, you're asking for a little more each time and giving away a little less, and I don't even realize the value of what I've lost and what you've gained, and I don't notice how much power you have over me until I've given away an entire universe...for a single stale biscuit." The Doctor leaned forward in his seat. His smile had vanished entirely. "A person who knows exactly what people want is the second most dangerous man in the universe, Mister Morden."
Morden stared back, his own smile still present but looking decidedly strained. "It sounds like you've already made up your mind, then," he said. "That's a shame, Doctor. I think my associates would have been very interested in you."
The Doctor looked to Morden's immediate left. Then his immediate right. "Oh, I suspect they will be anyway. People like them usually are. Assuming you have a very broad definition of the word 'people', which I generally do. I'm sure I'll be seeing you again, Mister Morden. Just like I'm sure you'll be seeing me." He rose to leave.
Morden let him get almost out of earshot before his curiosity got the better of him. "Doctor?" he called out.
The Doctor turned, looking as though he wasn't obeying quite the same laws of physics as everyone else did when he did so. "Yes?"
"You said the second." Morden's voice was very steady when he asked. It was the sound of someone trying very hard not to sound nervous. "What would the most dangerous man be?"
The Doctor smiled sadly, the sort of smile given by a teacher when a prize pupil made an expected mistake. "I should have thought that was obvious," he said softly. "The most dangerous man in the universe is a man who doesn't want anything you can provide." He turned away again, and his casual, "Goodbye, Mister Morden," was lost in the crowd.
Morden looked to his left. Then to his right. If he spoke, it was nothing anyone in the Zocalo heard.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Why It Sucks Sometimes Being a Doctor Who Fan
BBC: I'm sorry, I'm afraid that we're going to have to postpone the start of your season again. Budget concerns, you know. You'll just have do make do with the back half of Season Seven and a couple of specials for your 50th anniversary.
Doctor Who Producer: But our series is a phenomenal success! It's getting astounding ratings and great audience appreciation numbers every year, year in and year out!
BBC: Well, yes, but you see it's a question of money. Doctor Who is quite expensive to make, you see, and we've got a limited budget.
Doctor Who: But when you factor in overseas sales, merchandising, spin-offs, tie-ins, and the DVD market, the show is actually the most profitable thing the BBC makes!
BBC: AHEM. We do not sully our hands with mere commerce. We are the BBC, proud guardians of the glorious cultural heritage of Great Britain! It doesn't matter how much grubby, filthy lucre your series makes--we don't even keep track of such things!* What's important is the artistic merit of what you create, dear boy.
Doctor Who: Well, our AI numbers haven't dipped below the mid-80s since the series started. By the BBC's own standards, we're making a series that everyone who watches considers to be some of the finest material on television.
BBC: Yes, and that's wonderful. But you see, it's very expensive...
(wash, rinse, repeat...)
*Not literally true, but more or less accurate; money that 'Doctor Who' merchandising doesn't go back to making more 'Doctor Who', it goes back to the BBC's general Dramatic Series pool. They might keep track of it, but it doesn't count in the series' favor, because the BBC is not supposed to be concerned with turning a profit.
Doctor Who Producer: But our series is a phenomenal success! It's getting astounding ratings and great audience appreciation numbers every year, year in and year out!
BBC: Well, yes, but you see it's a question of money. Doctor Who is quite expensive to make, you see, and we've got a limited budget.
Doctor Who: But when you factor in overseas sales, merchandising, spin-offs, tie-ins, and the DVD market, the show is actually the most profitable thing the BBC makes!
BBC: AHEM. We do not sully our hands with mere commerce. We are the BBC, proud guardians of the glorious cultural heritage of Great Britain! It doesn't matter how much grubby, filthy lucre your series makes--we don't even keep track of such things!* What's important is the artistic merit of what you create, dear boy.
Doctor Who: Well, our AI numbers haven't dipped below the mid-80s since the series started. By the BBC's own standards, we're making a series that everyone who watches considers to be some of the finest material on television.
BBC: Yes, and that's wonderful. But you see, it's very expensive...
(wash, rinse, repeat...)
*Not literally true, but more or less accurate; money that 'Doctor Who' merchandising doesn't go back to making more 'Doctor Who', it goes back to the BBC's general Dramatic Series pool. They might keep track of it, but it doesn't count in the series' favor, because the BBC is not supposed to be concerned with turning a profit.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
"Do No Harm"
I don't normally dabble in fanfic these days--if I write fiction, I'm going to try to sell it, and I've always considered fanfic to be a labor of love by definition--but I certainly have done so, and since it's already Thursday and I haven't written my Monday entry, I figured I'd show one of my efforts that never showed up anywhere else. Jump behind the cut for a Ten/Martha story called, unimaginatively enough, "Do No Harm"!
Saturday, January 05, 2013
Should We Know Who the Enemy Was?
This is sort of "old business", and very Who-related, so I apologize in advance for those of you who come here for other things and don't care much about pre-Eccleston Who. But before there was the Time Wars that destroyed the Time Lords, there was the War. Same basic premise--the Time Lords were fighting a war against a time-active power just as powerful as they are, but with two key differences--one, the war occurred in the Doctor's personal future, starting the day he died as Gallifrey's enemies finally felt safe enough to move against them. The glimpses the Doctor got of the War (starting with 'Alien Bodies') were scenes from his own personal future, but simply knowing about it warped it and brought it ominously closer.
And two, which is more relevant here, the enemy wasn't the Daleks. In fact, the enemy's identity was never satisfactorily explained. Lawrence Miles, who wrote most of the significant novels in the War arc, intended them to be someone other than the Daleks, but the novel in which he finally intended to reveal their identity was never published. Instead, then-line editor Stephen Cole co-wrote a novel called 'The Ancestor Cell', where they were explained as a collection of technobabble from the dawn of time shortly before the War arc, and Gallifrey, were neatly excised from the line never to be mentioned again.
Lawrence Miles, in turn, went on to write a spin-off series in which the Time Lords and the War are carefully changed just enough that he can use his own concepts freely, called 'Faction Paradox'. In it, the enemy is simply known as The Enemy, with the details of their identity being described as "irrelevant".
As a fan of both Doctor Who and Faction Paradox, I'm not sure this was the right move. At this point, I think that the identity of the Enemy risks drifting gradually into irrelevance if not revealed, while revealing it might drum up useful publicity for a somewhat cult spin-off. I'd really like to see Lawrence Miles (ideally) write a book that explains who the Enemy was intended to be, or if that's not possible due to rights issues (it was hinted at as being an old foe of the Doctor's in some way, shape or form) at least get it out in an interview who it was originally intended to be so we finally can put the question to rest. However, I'll admit that part of my desire just stems from being a fan who hates unsolved mysteries, so I can't say I'm unbiased here. Anyone else remember the Enemy? And do those people want to see it come back and get finally answered? Feel free to make your thoughts known in the comments!
And two, which is more relevant here, the enemy wasn't the Daleks. In fact, the enemy's identity was never satisfactorily explained. Lawrence Miles, who wrote most of the significant novels in the War arc, intended them to be someone other than the Daleks, but the novel in which he finally intended to reveal their identity was never published. Instead, then-line editor Stephen Cole co-wrote a novel called 'The Ancestor Cell', where they were explained as a collection of technobabble from the dawn of time shortly before the War arc, and Gallifrey, were neatly excised from the line never to be mentioned again.
Lawrence Miles, in turn, went on to write a spin-off series in which the Time Lords and the War are carefully changed just enough that he can use his own concepts freely, called 'Faction Paradox'. In it, the enemy is simply known as The Enemy, with the details of their identity being described as "irrelevant".
As a fan of both Doctor Who and Faction Paradox, I'm not sure this was the right move. At this point, I think that the identity of the Enemy risks drifting gradually into irrelevance if not revealed, while revealing it might drum up useful publicity for a somewhat cult spin-off. I'd really like to see Lawrence Miles (ideally) write a book that explains who the Enemy was intended to be, or if that's not possible due to rights issues (it was hinted at as being an old foe of the Doctor's in some way, shape or form) at least get it out in an interview who it was originally intended to be so we finally can put the question to rest. However, I'll admit that part of my desire just stems from being a fan who hates unsolved mysteries, so I can't say I'm unbiased here. Anyone else remember the Enemy? And do those people want to see it come back and get finally answered? Feel free to make your thoughts known in the comments!
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Thoughts on the Doctor Who Christmas Special
I showed extraordinary patience yesterday by waiting to watch this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special--most of my family was en route back to Minnesota when it aired, and far too exhausted to sit through it when they got home a bit later. As such, it wasn't until tonight that I saw the continuation of the series. Some thoughts below the cut, for those who are waiting longer still...
Friday, December 21, 2012
Why Doctor Who Doesn't Work In Fantasy
Someone (I believe it was Paul Magrs, but I'm not entirely sure) once said that the TARDIS isn't a machine for traveling in time and space, it's a machine for traveling between genres. This is certainly in evidence in the new series, with the Doctor wandering through Westerns and horror stories and all manner of big-budget Hollywood blockbusters, but it's been a part of the series almost since the beginning. Sometimes the story is a comedy, sometimes a tragedy, sometimes out and out horror, and yet somehow the Doctor seems naturally to fit into all of them. It's one of the things that has made the series so refreshingly renewable over the years; the Doctor has been able to essentially borrow from whatever's modern to make himself seem relevant.
And yet, when you look at the few attempts to blend in with fantasy, they've almost always been dreadful failures. 'Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark', 'Autumn Mist'...really, about the best of them was 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice', and that keyed on the idea that there was no such thing. Even Paul Cornell's take on "The Doctor does a trip into a fantasy universe" was his weakest novel, and he's sodding brilliant. Why is it that the Doctor can't go into a high fantasy novel the same way he can wander into a Western or a crime caper?
The most obvious answer, of course, is that Doctor Who doesn't do fantasy. It's firmly set in a rational universe with an orderly set of scientific rules, even if they are handwavy "psychic paper" and "sonic screwdriver" and "anti-plastic" type rules. People will point out that a sonic screwdriver is basically just a magic wand with a different name, but that misses the point. It's the name that's actually important. Doctor Who states that everything is explicable, even if we aren't smart enough or experienced enough or knowledgable enough to understand the explanation yet. That's a pretty key difference from a world where High Prophecy and gods simply tell you that this is the way things are.
That means that whenever the Doctor enters a fantasy universe, one of two things has to happen. Either first, he has to come up with a scientific explanation for it all. These are usually leaden and dull, and tend to reduce the whole thing to an exercise in mapping handwavy science fiction explanations onto handwavy fantasy explanations. There's nothing intrinsically exciting about a horse with a horn on it, even if it's a horn with extra brain in it that gives the horse telepathy. Fantasy is all about the poetic and the symbolic, not the literal; things are not necessarily meant to have an explanation.
The alternative is that the Doctor surrenders his narrative primacy, acknowledging that yes, this is magic and cannot be understood, even by a Time Lord. This is in some ways the far worse alternative, because the thing that's special about the Doctor when he travels to another genre is the way he warps it about himself. The Doctor is fun to read about in a Western because he doesn't carry a gun and he wanders off to talk to the Native Americans and comes back as an honorary member of the tribe. The Doctor is fun to read about in a crime caper because he wanders into the head office of the local mob boss and says, "Hello, can I have a spot of tea with you while we chat about the murders you've committed?" The Doctor is, in a good story, the center of the narrative. That doesn't happen when he goes into a fantasy story. Instead, he has to follow the rules of that world. The Doctor is never fun when he's following the rules.
I won't say that it's impossible to do a Doctor Who story that involves fantasy elements--'Battlefield' pulls it off by suggesting that a future Doctor will be the one to square the circle and deal with magic on its home ground--but for the reasons above, I think it's far riskier to try and there's less payoff. My advice to future Doctor Who authors would probably be, "If you want to write a high fantasy novel...go have fun. There's plenty of publishers out there who take 'em."
And yet, when you look at the few attempts to blend in with fantasy, they've almost always been dreadful failures. 'Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark', 'Autumn Mist'...really, about the best of them was 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice', and that keyed on the idea that there was no such thing. Even Paul Cornell's take on "The Doctor does a trip into a fantasy universe" was his weakest novel, and he's sodding brilliant. Why is it that the Doctor can't go into a high fantasy novel the same way he can wander into a Western or a crime caper?
The most obvious answer, of course, is that Doctor Who doesn't do fantasy. It's firmly set in a rational universe with an orderly set of scientific rules, even if they are handwavy "psychic paper" and "sonic screwdriver" and "anti-plastic" type rules. People will point out that a sonic screwdriver is basically just a magic wand with a different name, but that misses the point. It's the name that's actually important. Doctor Who states that everything is explicable, even if we aren't smart enough or experienced enough or knowledgable enough to understand the explanation yet. That's a pretty key difference from a world where High Prophecy and gods simply tell you that this is the way things are.
That means that whenever the Doctor enters a fantasy universe, one of two things has to happen. Either first, he has to come up with a scientific explanation for it all. These are usually leaden and dull, and tend to reduce the whole thing to an exercise in mapping handwavy science fiction explanations onto handwavy fantasy explanations. There's nothing intrinsically exciting about a horse with a horn on it, even if it's a horn with extra brain in it that gives the horse telepathy. Fantasy is all about the poetic and the symbolic, not the literal; things are not necessarily meant to have an explanation.
The alternative is that the Doctor surrenders his narrative primacy, acknowledging that yes, this is magic and cannot be understood, even by a Time Lord. This is in some ways the far worse alternative, because the thing that's special about the Doctor when he travels to another genre is the way he warps it about himself. The Doctor is fun to read about in a Western because he doesn't carry a gun and he wanders off to talk to the Native Americans and comes back as an honorary member of the tribe. The Doctor is fun to read about in a crime caper because he wanders into the head office of the local mob boss and says, "Hello, can I have a spot of tea with you while we chat about the murders you've committed?" The Doctor is, in a good story, the center of the narrative. That doesn't happen when he goes into a fantasy story. Instead, he has to follow the rules of that world. The Doctor is never fun when he's following the rules.
I won't say that it's impossible to do a Doctor Who story that involves fantasy elements--'Battlefield' pulls it off by suggesting that a future Doctor will be the one to square the circle and deal with magic on its home ground--but for the reasons above, I think it's far riskier to try and there's less payoff. My advice to future Doctor Who authors would probably be, "If you want to write a high fantasy novel...go have fun. There's plenty of publishers out there who take 'em."
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Reviews: Ghosts of India and Shining Darkness
Re-reading the classic New Adventures (alongside my lovely wife, who blogs with me about them here) has had the unfortunate side effect of reminding me just how much of a shadow of their former selves the Doctor Who novels have become since the relaunch of the new TV series. Back when people like Paul Cornell and Gareth Roberts wrote for the books, instead of the TV show, we got vibrant and exciting new fiction that felt like it was more than just a line of tie-in books. Great new authors like Kate Orman and Lawrence Miles got their voices heard, the books were aimed for the first time at my generation, and they felt like the future of Doctor Who...because, looking back, they pretty much were. The New Series Adventures don't have that same verve, even if they do occasionally score big wins like Michael Moorcock's first Doctor Who novel.
'Ghosts of India', by Mark Morris, is a pretty good example of what we get now. It's not a bad novel, don't get me wrong. You won't mistake this one for 'The Pit', or even for 'Deep Blue' by the same author. But it's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from a Doctor Who tie-in novel. The Doctor and Insert Companion Here (Donna) go to Insert Significant Time and Place Here (India in 1947, just as they were regaining their independence) and meet Insert Major Historical Figure Here (Ghandi, who's treated as a generic Wise Mentor figure for the most part with absolutely no effort to delve into the man's complex personal history) and fight Insert Alien Menace Here (the Jal Kalath, who manage to be basically an unmemorable collection of syllables that's EVIL!) to stop Insert Horrific Thing Here (evil radiation making people go insane and murderous, which is about as generic a Horrific Thing as you can get.) It's sort of a cross between a novel and a Doctor Who Mad Libs. Nothing to get upset about, nothing to get excited about, just something to while away a couple of hours reading and then put on the shelf.
But on the other hand, there are still embers of the old books flickering about if you have the patience to read through them all. Mark Michalowski, who was something of a latecomer to the old BBC line but who proved his writing chops pretty clearly, still has the enthusiasm to write something worth reading. 'Shining Darkness' mostly eschews continuity references to produce a funny, romping twist on the old "quest" story. It's still a book pitched considerably younger than, say, 'The Man In the Velvet Mask' (no companions getting STDs, you don't have to know who the Marquis de Sade was), but it's got some clever and witty sequences, the Doctor and Donna come off the page well, and there are enough red herrings floating about that the final plot twist actually caught me off-guard. It's definitely a nice reminder of how even though the new series has eclipsed the books almost completely, you can still find a few treasures in the dark.
'Ghosts of India', by Mark Morris, is a pretty good example of what we get now. It's not a bad novel, don't get me wrong. You won't mistake this one for 'The Pit', or even for 'Deep Blue' by the same author. But it's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from a Doctor Who tie-in novel. The Doctor and Insert Companion Here (Donna) go to Insert Significant Time and Place Here (India in 1947, just as they were regaining their independence) and meet Insert Major Historical Figure Here (Ghandi, who's treated as a generic Wise Mentor figure for the most part with absolutely no effort to delve into the man's complex personal history) and fight Insert Alien Menace Here (the Jal Kalath, who manage to be basically an unmemorable collection of syllables that's EVIL!) to stop Insert Horrific Thing Here (evil radiation making people go insane and murderous, which is about as generic a Horrific Thing as you can get.) It's sort of a cross between a novel and a Doctor Who Mad Libs. Nothing to get upset about, nothing to get excited about, just something to while away a couple of hours reading and then put on the shelf.
But on the other hand, there are still embers of the old books flickering about if you have the patience to read through them all. Mark Michalowski, who was something of a latecomer to the old BBC line but who proved his writing chops pretty clearly, still has the enthusiasm to write something worth reading. 'Shining Darkness' mostly eschews continuity references to produce a funny, romping twist on the old "quest" story. It's still a book pitched considerably younger than, say, 'The Man In the Velvet Mask' (no companions getting STDs, you don't have to know who the Marquis de Sade was), but it's got some clever and witty sequences, the Doctor and Donna come off the page well, and there are enough red herrings floating about that the final plot twist actually caught me off-guard. It's definitely a nice reminder of how even though the new series has eclipsed the books almost completely, you can still find a few treasures in the dark.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Side Project Announcement!
I wanted to let everyone know that in addition to this blog and my posts at MightyGodKing, I will also be posting irregularly to a blog I'm co-writing with my wonderful wife. This will be a sequential tour of my personal favorite era of Doctor Who, the novels published during the so-called "Wilderness Years" between the end of the old series and the beginning of the new. (One of the surprises that may come up is that the end of the old series and the beginning of the new doesn't come quite when you'd think it would...)
The blog is available here, and I invite you all to wander by when you have a moment. It'll encourage us to keep going with what is, ultimately, a Herculean labor...albeit a labor of love. Whether you loved the New Adventures, or whether you just kind of heard that there was a series of books out there and want to know more, stop on by!
The blog is available here, and I invite you all to wander by when you have a moment. It'll encourage us to keep going with what is, ultimately, a Herculean labor...albeit a labor of love. Whether you loved the New Adventures, or whether you just kind of heard that there was a series of books out there and want to know more, stop on by!
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Silence Vs Weeping Angel
I keep seeing this one all over the Internet as an example of one of those "immovable object meeting irresistible force" paradoxes, so I thought I should address it here.
This really wouldn't last long.
If the Weeping Angel and the Silence looked at each other, the Weeping Angel would be frozen in place until the Silence looked away. At that point, the Weeping Angel can move, and it can still see the Silence, so it wouldn't forget the Silence. It'd just charge up to it and zap it back in time 80 years or so.
At that point, it would perhaps wonder why it felt so full, but it wouldn't be much of a contest.
This really wouldn't last long.
If the Weeping Angel and the Silence looked at each other, the Weeping Angel would be frozen in place until the Silence looked away. At that point, the Weeping Angel can move, and it can still see the Silence, so it wouldn't forget the Silence. It'd just charge up to it and zap it back in time 80 years or so.
At that point, it would perhaps wonder why it felt so full, but it wouldn't be much of a contest.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Dalek Vs. Jedi
I was asked about this a day or two ago, in my (apparent) capacity as expert on both Daleks and Jedi...and while it may be egotistical of me, I thought that people might be interested in my response. In a battle between a Dalek and a Jedi, who would win?
The specific question I was asked to weigh in on at first was, "Would a Dalek be affected by a Jedi's telekinesis?" This seems like a pretty good place to start, as telekinesis is one of the best weapons in a Jedi's arsenal. (Which brings up the question of why they never use it in lightsaber duels, but I'm willing to handwave that away with the assumption that equally matched Jedi either keep each other too busy with lightsaber attacks for either to bring to mind the requisite TK focus, or equally matched Jedi can block each other's telekinesis through some sort of non-visually-discernable means. I bring this up to demonstrate that I can BS with the best of them.)
The answer, I felt, is that yes, Daleks are somewhat vulnerable to Jedi telekinesis. Not totally--I think a Dalek's armor/force field, generally demonstrated to be proof against most projectile weapons, is too tough to be crushed or warped by a Jedi's telekinetic powers. Likewise, Jedi abilities have never been shown to be able to work through solid objects, so the Kaled mutant inside is probably safe from having its life-support tubes yanked out or something similar. But could a Jedi knock a Dalek over, or spoil its aim by moving the gunstick around? Yes.
Which is probably a good thing, because Dalek weaponry is generally portrayed as being not a cutting beam or a projectile, but a packet of energy that "detonates" on contact, creating a disruptive (or possibly explosive) effect that scrambles internal organs and bursts cells. In other words, the Jedi tactic of batting aside blaster bolts would be about as effective as using a baseball bat to deflect a Molotov cocktail. The first Jedi to fight the first Dalek would probably be in for a nasty surprise.
The second one, though, would probably fare better. Telekinesis could keep the Dalek's gunstick pointing in the wrong direction (or spin the Dalek's middle section around to face away) long enough for the Jedi to get into lightsaber range...and lightsabers, traditionally speaking, have been shown to be able to cut through anything. (We could argue the strength of the force-field at the lightsaber's core versus the strength of the force-field surrounding the Dalek (as exhibited in 'Doomsday', natch) but it'd be a moot point. There's not enough evidence to judge, and writerly fiat would trump real-world physics here.) So basically, the Jedi could slice up the Dalek like a layer cake, albeit a large one with a very hideous exotic dancer inside.
So the answer is ultimately "yes". After a particularly hideous casualty to serve as a tactical lesson, a Jedi could take on a Dalek. The only problem is...there's very rarely just "a" Dalek. The Dalek philosophy tends to be, "Why send in a Dalek when you can send in two thousand Daleks to do the same job?" They're also not shy on using strategies that involve expendable Dalek troops. So after the first few Daleks bite it, the Daleks are either going to attack in numbers too massive for the Jedi to deal with, or they're just going to start self-destructing whenever a Jedi gets close to them and banking on the fact that they have more Daleks than the Jedi do Jedi. ("Jedi Do Jedi" is, of course, a fanfilm that Lucas came down pretty hard on with the cease and desists.)
If you want, you can factor in the Jedi Mind Trick, but let's face it--the Jedi Mind Trick never works in the big fights. In 'Feng Shui' terms, it succeeds against unnamed characters only. Random Dalek that you have to distract so that you can sneak past? Weak-willed. Angry Dalek exploding six inches away from you? Bad news for the Jedi.
Ultimately, I think that the Daleks would win through overwhelming force, which is pretty much did in the Jedi order last time, too. Be fun to watch, though.
The specific question I was asked to weigh in on at first was, "Would a Dalek be affected by a Jedi's telekinesis?" This seems like a pretty good place to start, as telekinesis is one of the best weapons in a Jedi's arsenal. (Which brings up the question of why they never use it in lightsaber duels, but I'm willing to handwave that away with the assumption that equally matched Jedi either keep each other too busy with lightsaber attacks for either to bring to mind the requisite TK focus, or equally matched Jedi can block each other's telekinesis through some sort of non-visually-discernable means. I bring this up to demonstrate that I can BS with the best of them.)
The answer, I felt, is that yes, Daleks are somewhat vulnerable to Jedi telekinesis. Not totally--I think a Dalek's armor/force field, generally demonstrated to be proof against most projectile weapons, is too tough to be crushed or warped by a Jedi's telekinetic powers. Likewise, Jedi abilities have never been shown to be able to work through solid objects, so the Kaled mutant inside is probably safe from having its life-support tubes yanked out or something similar. But could a Jedi knock a Dalek over, or spoil its aim by moving the gunstick around? Yes.
Which is probably a good thing, because Dalek weaponry is generally portrayed as being not a cutting beam or a projectile, but a packet of energy that "detonates" on contact, creating a disruptive (or possibly explosive) effect that scrambles internal organs and bursts cells. In other words, the Jedi tactic of batting aside blaster bolts would be about as effective as using a baseball bat to deflect a Molotov cocktail. The first Jedi to fight the first Dalek would probably be in for a nasty surprise.
The second one, though, would probably fare better. Telekinesis could keep the Dalek's gunstick pointing in the wrong direction (or spin the Dalek's middle section around to face away) long enough for the Jedi to get into lightsaber range...and lightsabers, traditionally speaking, have been shown to be able to cut through anything. (We could argue the strength of the force-field at the lightsaber's core versus the strength of the force-field surrounding the Dalek (as exhibited in 'Doomsday', natch) but it'd be a moot point. There's not enough evidence to judge, and writerly fiat would trump real-world physics here.) So basically, the Jedi could slice up the Dalek like a layer cake, albeit a large one with a very hideous exotic dancer inside.
So the answer is ultimately "yes". After a particularly hideous casualty to serve as a tactical lesson, a Jedi could take on a Dalek. The only problem is...there's very rarely just "a" Dalek. The Dalek philosophy tends to be, "Why send in a Dalek when you can send in two thousand Daleks to do the same job?" They're also not shy on using strategies that involve expendable Dalek troops. So after the first few Daleks bite it, the Daleks are either going to attack in numbers too massive for the Jedi to deal with, or they're just going to start self-destructing whenever a Jedi gets close to them and banking on the fact that they have more Daleks than the Jedi do Jedi. ("Jedi Do Jedi" is, of course, a fanfilm that Lucas came down pretty hard on with the cease and desists.)
If you want, you can factor in the Jedi Mind Trick, but let's face it--the Jedi Mind Trick never works in the big fights. In 'Feng Shui' terms, it succeeds against unnamed characters only. Random Dalek that you have to distract so that you can sneak past? Weak-willed. Angry Dalek exploding six inches away from you? Bad news for the Jedi.
Ultimately, I think that the Daleks would win through overwhelming force, which is pretty much did in the Jedi order last time, too. Be fun to watch, though.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Review: Touched by an Angel
...the Doctor Who novel. Not the long-running, inspirational TV series. I've never actually seen an episode of the show, but I guess it was sort of like 'Highway to Heaven', only with less Michael Landon and more women. Which, y'know, if you like that sort of thing, I guess? Anyhow, this is about the other kind of Angel. The kind that you should never look away from. Not even for a second.
Honestly, if you're going to do a Weeping Angel time-travel head-trip story, there really is no better person to go to than to Jonathan Morris. He's one of the remaining genuinely great Doctor Who authors who hasn't made the jump to television, and his debut novel, 'Festival of Death', is probably the only Doctor Who story to out wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey Moffat himself. Combining him with the Weeping Angels is an absolutely natural pairing.
And he doesn't disappoint. The basic premise of the novel is pretty much in line with the sort of thing you'd expect from a Weeping Angel story, while at the same time providing an inventive enough twist; Mark, a depressed widower, receives a message from his own past self explaining how he can save his wife, one which leads him into an encounter with Weeping Angels and sends him back in time so that he can follow his future self's instructions. It's sort of a remix of the two basic ideas of 'Blink', a not-unheard of but well-executed version of the time travel paradox story.
And Morris continues the 'Blink' house mix idea a fair distance into the novel; we get the Eleventh Doctor's take on the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey detector ("boils eggs; that's not a bug, it's a feature"), we get some cunning interactions between the past and future Marks as the Doctor, Amy and Rory struggle to prevent history from being changed...it's nothing especially inventive, but Morris has great prose and the plot unfolds entertainingly...
And then Morris rings in the clever twist, which I'm far too nice to spoil, and it becomes obvious that he's been working hard at letting us think that this is a clever-but-unambitious time-travel head-trip story so that we don't see the twist coming. And then things get seriously clever, and Rory wears a fez. And about the ending I shall say no more, except to suggest that this one is well worth reading.
Honestly, if you're going to do a Weeping Angel time-travel head-trip story, there really is no better person to go to than to Jonathan Morris. He's one of the remaining genuinely great Doctor Who authors who hasn't made the jump to television, and his debut novel, 'Festival of Death', is probably the only Doctor Who story to out wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey Moffat himself. Combining him with the Weeping Angels is an absolutely natural pairing.
And he doesn't disappoint. The basic premise of the novel is pretty much in line with the sort of thing you'd expect from a Weeping Angel story, while at the same time providing an inventive enough twist; Mark, a depressed widower, receives a message from his own past self explaining how he can save his wife, one which leads him into an encounter with Weeping Angels and sends him back in time so that he can follow his future self's instructions. It's sort of a remix of the two basic ideas of 'Blink', a not-unheard of but well-executed version of the time travel paradox story.
And Morris continues the 'Blink' house mix idea a fair distance into the novel; we get the Eleventh Doctor's take on the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey detector ("boils eggs; that's not a bug, it's a feature"), we get some cunning interactions between the past and future Marks as the Doctor, Amy and Rory struggle to prevent history from being changed...it's nothing especially inventive, but Morris has great prose and the plot unfolds entertainingly...
And then Morris rings in the clever twist, which I'm far too nice to spoil, and it becomes obvious that he's been working hard at letting us think that this is a clever-but-unambitious time-travel head-trip story so that we don't see the twist coming. And then things get seriously clever, and Rory wears a fez. And about the ending I shall say no more, except to suggest that this one is well worth reading.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Is River Song Sexist?
Actually, I'm not even sure if "sexist" is the right word here. The predominant criticism of River Song isn't so much that she's sexist, although you do get a good few people in there engaging in the popular pastime of "faux-feminist slut-shaming"; it's that she's nothing but a gigantic Mary-Sue that Moffat has inserted into the story. According to this contingent, Moffat is making all the plots revolve around River Song, to the point where she's better than the Doctor at everything and all the important plot points involve her.
To some extent, this is simply a case of not knowing what words mean. A "Mary Sue" is a somewhat vague term, but is generally taken to be an overly idealized, absurdly talented, one-dimensional author surrogate, who is improbably lucky and succeeds where the main character fails, and who is the center of the story even in a canon that has not previously included her. That's the basic definition, as crowdsourced by the Internet.
Now let's look at River song. Since her first appearance, she's been in nine episodes. Out of 37. (Technically ten, if you want to count her cameo at the end of "Closing Time".) If this is a series that "revolves around" her, it's in a very eccentric orbit to say the least. Yes, she features prominently in the Silence arc. That's because the Silence's plan was to use her to kill the Doctor. She failed at that pretty much completely...which pretty much takes care of "improbably lucky and succeeds where the main character fails", too. The only thing she really succeeded at was at getting electrocuted better than the Doctor.
Is she more talented than the Doctor? Many people point to the fact that she can fly the TARDIS better than he can...which would be a totally excellent argument to make if it wasn't a 49-year-long running gag that for all the Doctor's Time Lord training and experience, he's actually a lousy pilot who can't get the TARDIS where he wants it to go better than one in three tries. It's the same joke they did when Romana joined the cast, and that was quite literally before lots of current fans were born.
Overly idealized, one-dimensional author surrogate? Um...unless there's something fairly important about Steven Moffat we don't know, I don't think that he really wants to be a sexy woman who shoots well, rides horses and has hallucinogenic lipstick. He wrote her as a love interest for the Doctor, yes, and he assumed that any love interest for the Doctor has to be something more than a simpering damsel in distress for him to rescue...which is a GOOD THING...but he definitely worked hard to make her more than one-dimensional. Her backstory is interesting, complicated, and paints her as more than a little damaged. Idealized, she ain't.
Which ultimately leaves us with, "She seems to know more than the Doctor. She seems to be as good at things as him. She's talented, and that makes her threatening." Which is, when you break it down, kind of a sexist argument for disliking a character. Not that this is anything new; pretty much any talented female character in fiction is going to get tagged with "Mary Sue" at some point, because women who are good at things and are admired within the story for it are always Mary Sues. (Somehow, Captain Kirk is never considered to be a Mary Sue.) Some people will always seek to tear down any female character who seems skilled and competent, because they view this as exclusively the purview of male characters. They might dress that up as concern, but it's fundamentally a sexist point of view.
Oh, plus she is naked in some scenes and thus has lady parts that she displays without shame, which makes her a Bad Person. (See previous essay.)
So is River Song sexist? Weeeeeeelll....maybe a little. Because while the Doctor's story definitely doesn't revolve around her, it's become increasingly clear that her story revolves around the Doctor. She didn't become an archaeologist because she was interested in old things, as we originally thought; she became an archaeologist to track down the Doctor. She loves the Doctor, she goes to jail for the Doctor, she occasionally attempts to kill the Doctor...there's very little in River Song's story that she does simply because she wants to. It's hard not to argue that this is a somewhat sexist angle on her character, and that she was more interesting before she became the Doctor's "bespoke assassin". Does that make her "sexist"? Probably not by itself. But it's certainly problematic.
But unfortunately, as with Amy Pond, the most sexist thing about River Song is the ways that people find to complain about her.
To some extent, this is simply a case of not knowing what words mean. A "Mary Sue" is a somewhat vague term, but is generally taken to be an overly idealized, absurdly talented, one-dimensional author surrogate, who is improbably lucky and succeeds where the main character fails, and who is the center of the story even in a canon that has not previously included her. That's the basic definition, as crowdsourced by the Internet.
Now let's look at River song. Since her first appearance, she's been in nine episodes. Out of 37. (Technically ten, if you want to count her cameo at the end of "Closing Time".) If this is a series that "revolves around" her, it's in a very eccentric orbit to say the least. Yes, she features prominently in the Silence arc. That's because the Silence's plan was to use her to kill the Doctor. She failed at that pretty much completely...which pretty much takes care of "improbably lucky and succeeds where the main character fails", too. The only thing she really succeeded at was at getting electrocuted better than the Doctor.
Is she more talented than the Doctor? Many people point to the fact that she can fly the TARDIS better than he can...which would be a totally excellent argument to make if it wasn't a 49-year-long running gag that for all the Doctor's Time Lord training and experience, he's actually a lousy pilot who can't get the TARDIS where he wants it to go better than one in three tries. It's the same joke they did when Romana joined the cast, and that was quite literally before lots of current fans were born.
Overly idealized, one-dimensional author surrogate? Um...unless there's something fairly important about Steven Moffat we don't know, I don't think that he really wants to be a sexy woman who shoots well, rides horses and has hallucinogenic lipstick. He wrote her as a love interest for the Doctor, yes, and he assumed that any love interest for the Doctor has to be something more than a simpering damsel in distress for him to rescue...which is a GOOD THING...but he definitely worked hard to make her more than one-dimensional. Her backstory is interesting, complicated, and paints her as more than a little damaged. Idealized, she ain't.
Which ultimately leaves us with, "She seems to know more than the Doctor. She seems to be as good at things as him. She's talented, and that makes her threatening." Which is, when you break it down, kind of a sexist argument for disliking a character. Not that this is anything new; pretty much any talented female character in fiction is going to get tagged with "Mary Sue" at some point, because women who are good at things and are admired within the story for it are always Mary Sues. (Somehow, Captain Kirk is never considered to be a Mary Sue.) Some people will always seek to tear down any female character who seems skilled and competent, because they view this as exclusively the purview of male characters. They might dress that up as concern, but it's fundamentally a sexist point of view.
Oh, plus she is naked in some scenes and thus has lady parts that she displays without shame, which makes her a Bad Person. (See previous essay.)
So is River Song sexist? Weeeeeeelll....maybe a little. Because while the Doctor's story definitely doesn't revolve around her, it's become increasingly clear that her story revolves around the Doctor. She didn't become an archaeologist because she was interested in old things, as we originally thought; she became an archaeologist to track down the Doctor. She loves the Doctor, she goes to jail for the Doctor, she occasionally attempts to kill the Doctor...there's very little in River Song's story that she does simply because she wants to. It's hard not to argue that this is a somewhat sexist angle on her character, and that she was more interesting before she became the Doctor's "bespoke assassin". Does that make her "sexist"? Probably not by itself. But it's certainly problematic.
But unfortunately, as with Amy Pond, the most sexist thing about River Song is the ways that people find to complain about her.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
What Is "Artron Energy"?
Frequently in Doctor Who, both in the new series and the old, there's mention of something called "artron energy", a form of energy that saturates time-travelers, in particular the Doctor but also Amy Pond, Rose Tyler, River Song, and at one point Mickey. It seems to be something that can be harnessed for power, something that has harmless (or possibly benevolent) mutagenic effects, and something that (possibly) provides resistance to strange temporal effects. But what is it, and where does it come from? Usually, people just assume that it's a form of background radiation from the Time Vortex. But because I'm more pathetically geeky than that, I'm going to suggest a stranger alternative.
The key is in the phrase occasionally used to describe the Doctor, "Complex Space-Time Event". Presumably, this differentiates him from a simple space-time event, which gives us a hint as to the nature of a CSTE. Because a simple space-time event is one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you were to be able to draw an outline of it in four-dimensional space, it would have a single continuous shape; even though it moves through three-dimensional space, it is always connected in four-dimensional space. (If I move ten feet to the left, and you could see through time, you would see me as sort of a weird John-shaped tunnel through time.)
Think of it like a stylus moving on a seismometer. The stylus moves up and down erratically, but the line is always contiguous, and always moving forward. That's a simple space-time event. Always contiguous, always in one direction.
But the Doctor doesn't. He can, for lack of a better analogy, lift his stylus up and move it back to an earlier point on the paper. The shape of the Doctor in space-time is not one long line winding its way through three dimensions, it's a series of apparently unconnected shapes in various parts of the graph. He cannot be described with the normal geometry of space-time. He is, in short, a Complex Space-Time Event.
It's my suggestion that the act of traveling in time, moving in ways that are discontiguous, builds up a "charge" almost like shuffling across a carpet builds up static. (At this point in the explanation, my lovely wife reminded me of the exchange from the series itself: "Is that really how it works?" "No! But if that makes sense to you...") Normally, it evens out because you're properly in synch with space time. But Complex Space-Time Events don't dissipate the charge normally, they build it up...and that's artron energy.
Make sense? No? Good. At least I got it off my chest.
The key is in the phrase occasionally used to describe the Doctor, "Complex Space-Time Event". Presumably, this differentiates him from a simple space-time event, which gives us a hint as to the nature of a CSTE. Because a simple space-time event is one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you were to be able to draw an outline of it in four-dimensional space, it would have a single continuous shape; even though it moves through three-dimensional space, it is always connected in four-dimensional space. (If I move ten feet to the left, and you could see through time, you would see me as sort of a weird John-shaped tunnel through time.)
Think of it like a stylus moving on a seismometer. The stylus moves up and down erratically, but the line is always contiguous, and always moving forward. That's a simple space-time event. Always contiguous, always in one direction.
But the Doctor doesn't. He can, for lack of a better analogy, lift his stylus up and move it back to an earlier point on the paper. The shape of the Doctor in space-time is not one long line winding its way through three dimensions, it's a series of apparently unconnected shapes in various parts of the graph. He cannot be described with the normal geometry of space-time. He is, in short, a Complex Space-Time Event.
It's my suggestion that the act of traveling in time, moving in ways that are discontiguous, builds up a "charge" almost like shuffling across a carpet builds up static. (At this point in the explanation, my lovely wife reminded me of the exchange from the series itself: "Is that really how it works?" "No! But if that makes sense to you...") Normally, it evens out because you're properly in synch with space time. But Complex Space-Time Events don't dissipate the charge normally, they build it up...and that's artron energy.
Make sense? No? Good. At least I got it off my chest.
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