Well-Thumbed

This month's DWM comes, as i'm sure you've all noticed, with a free Target book. It's a little annoying that my copy came with 'The Making Of...' and not a novelisation (a blue-spine would've been sweet) , more so given that the rather excellent article within speaks solely of the novelisations and not the 'factual 'ephemera (although describing 'K9 And Other Mechanical Creatures' as factual is like describing 'Midsomer Murders' as watchable).

What all of the mini-essays in that article come very close to saying is that the Target Who world is better than the TV one. Books, like radio, allow the mind to paint far greater pictures than the limitations of television studios/budgets/imaginations will allow, we all know that... what's spoken of less is how it gives the reader/listener the opportunity to (for want of a far far better and more appropriate and less wanky expression) psychoanalyze what's going on in the story. Terrance's 'Terror of the Autons' is superior to Holmes' Tv story not just because it actually gives us a brillaint Nestene creature ("part spider, part crab, part octopus" beats 'crackly little fuzzy cloud superimposed over some eletrcity pylons' every time), but because it lets us feel Jo Grant's total fear and apprehension when stalking the Master. And, for fanboys, it also gives us little bits of lore that connect the story to other Who stories, so the master's bomb is referred to as "a Sontaran fragmentation grenade."

The last books of the original run performed these functions even better, with Uncle Ben's 'Remembrance' book giving us excerpts from Dalek mythology as well as the interior monologues of Professor Rachel Jenson (her horror at Ace, and what sort of a world could have spawned someone like her, is utterly brain-buggeringly brilliant). Marc Platt's 'Ghost Light' even has Ace pondering the subject of the Doctor's sexuality.

Would novelisations work today? Well, yes... but be careful what we wish for! Do we want the dumbed-down novelisation style of the Sarah Jane or Primeval novelisations? It's weird, but novelised stories aimed at (largely) children these days follow a Scholastic-style approach in ways that other 'proper' kid's books don't need to follow. Modern children's literature can be as fluid and individulaistic in ways that the namby pamby Scholastic-style editors would find shocking, controversial and offensive ("hey, let's get Melvyn Burgess to novelise 'Invasion of the Bane' and see what he does with the naked Luke..."). It's only because a text is seen as a TV property that they make it play safe. No scantily-clad Abby in the Primeval kids books (but plenty in the differently-marketed 'adult' original novels).

For novelisations to work in the ways they did in the old days, we'd need a pre-DVD, pre-PR, pre-dumbed down culture. Unless BBC Worldwide and their ilk have a massive rethink, that's probably not going to happen.

(p.s. pointless fact, but i finished reading 'Dr Who and The Zarbi' a while back and even Bill Strutton describes the Animus as being a bladder...)

"Wow, it's the fab Third Doctor!"

One of the best things about the massive success of the Beeb's kids title 'Doctor Who Adventures' (and I mean bizarrely massive success, last year it had the largest rise in regular readership of any other publication in the UK) is that it's starting to do what the old 'Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly' did for us older fans back when we were kneee-high - get us hooked on The Backstory. Actually, to call it backstory is a little disingenuous and makes it sound like i'm talking about a story arc in an American sf tv show. No, what DWA is doing is getting kids hooked on The Myth. Think back to when you were first finding out about the show, and that it had a past. A past... one that stretched back to before you were born. And that you could find out about this past, and that it even cropped up from time to time in the show you 'know and love' today. (what? The Doctor met the Macra before?? Who's Davros?? When did the Doctor and the Master fight the Sea Devils??)

All part of the magic. And it means we now have the younger fans treating the 'classic series' as the same as the 'new series' - as it should be!! Hence this extremely delightful picture in this weeks' DWA...


'Doctor Who Adventures' - its grammar might be ocassionally indecipherable ('Cool makes!') and it has far too many adverts for books about farting dinosaurs, but on the whole you gotta love it.

Flat Screens: Dr. Who as/and the postmodern

I've just been rejected for an Argos card on grounds of a credit check (boo hiss). In some ways this makes me a little happier, as I was going to buy a massive flatscreen telly. Why would this make me happy? Well...

I've been thinking about Who as a postmodern product (aswell as a product of the postmodern). As television enters its new age (enters? heck, most people I know are already there!) I am becoming anxious about our desires for the latest t.v tech, and also what this latest tech 'means'. I wish I could say this was in no related to my own frustrated consumerist desires (translation: 'worrying about not being able to buy/keep up with it'). In many ways this would be less of a problem if I hadn't a) read Baudrillard and b) actually seen HD (a friend has it and boy was I drooling).

HD promises 'realer' images. The images are certainly sharper, clearer etc. About the hyperreal conundrum of the 'real' fake image we need not elaborate. Two things: one, this is how new tv tech has always been marketed (marketed itself?). Mark Gatiss wittily alluded to this in 'The Idiot's lantern', with the family gathered round the primitive set (grainy, convex, and not so much black and white as black and blue) and the granny saying "look at the picture, it's so clear!". Cinemascope (okay, that's film but the tech is the same) was hyped with "you can see it without glasses!". Which brings me to my second point: I do wear glasses. In order for me to fully make out a precise image, I have to process the image through another piece of technology, through yet another lens. How do I know what I am seeing is what everyone else is seeing, or what I'm 'supposed' to see? (how does anyone?)

In many ways Who can be seen as contributing to 'the death of history', as the value signifiers of history are meaningless in our hyperreal world of mix'n'match, streaming, referencing and cultural recycling. Best example? Lawrence Miles' mediations on the ahistoricism of the New Series' historicals - the way characters from history are used as characters of fiction, with no thought given as to shoiwng us 'why' these people were so great, or so clever. (his view of Moffat's Madame dePompadour as a virtual blow-up doll may seem offensive, but only because it is so horribly on the button) Second best example is Agatha Chrsitie's reaction to Donna telling her about films in 'The Unicorn and the Wasp': "Moving pictures?" ... as if somebody from 1926 would have no idea what films were. It's because we, and Who, live in the hyperreal age, where history (which no longer exists as anything other than travelogue or referrant for fundamentalists) is meaningless - Agatha doesn't know what films are, because she's from olden days, and in olden days they didn't have things that we have now.

(third best example is the kids from 'Totally Doctor Who' decorating a 1910 studio set with a picture of Churchill circa 1945, and not being remotely embarrassed)

Who presents us with fictional images, but it also employs the use of 'real' fiction, i.e. tv news. In an obvious way this is merely a clear budget-saving device. It's far easier to have a fake CNN reporter tell us that the entirety of America has been transformed into Adipose than it is to show it. However, in other ways it is done not as budget-saving device but to reinforce the illusion of reality (a loaded term!) .. e.g. the 'Ghostwatch' weather report. In classic Who, erzatz tv reports were used in order to get the audience to question the veracity of media, and media reporting - the pieces to camera of the reporter in 'The Daemons' contrast with the way the reporter is mocked by the archaeologists off-camera, and the reporter in 'The Web of Fear' is clearly shown to be a smug imbecile, trying to twist people's words into fitting his story. Modern Who is much less questioning of the media - 'The Long Game' stands as its most significant contribution to postmodern critique, but had a lot of its bite removed when placed in the context of it being just a big old plan orchestrated by the Daleks.

So... given all of the above I know I should be much more resistant to the medium of tv than I am. Who may be a tv show, but it's much more than just a tv show, it's an idea. This is why its obvious love for/embracing of tv is so... strange. It used to be a very bookish programme, but -as has also been noted in fandom- books are mere fetish objects in postmodern Who, reference points to the old age, things that are held in libraries just waiting to be scanned for clues (c.f. 'Tooth and Claw') rather than read for personal enjoyment or learning for learning for learning's sake.

I know I'm a stick in the mud (despite my drooling over Blu-Ray), but maybe being a stick in the mud is better than forcing myself to go with the flow and surrendering my literacy and intellect totally. For the time being at least....

Wrong turning

Just as a thought... somebody in O.G mentioned, re: the events of 'Turn Left', that they could breathe a sigh of relief that 'they wouldn't have been affected' by the events in that parallel Earth (e.g. nuclear explosion in south of England, refugee programme, Labour camps, "England for the English" etc) as they were upper class and living in the North. (lucky bastard!)

This prompted a 'would YOU have been safe?' discussion based mostly on location, but that misses a couple of points. Firstly, the glaring fact that the Noble family are decapmed to Leeds; secondly, that gun-happy soldiers are on the streets; and thirdly, the 'foreigners relocation' programme would probably not stop at just getting rid of 'the non-Brits' (does it ever? The Nazis wanted rid of first the Jews, who they saw in racial terms, then everyone from gays, Communists, gypsies, the mentally ill, yadda yadda...).

So whichever way you look at it, the 'Turn Left' social order is one that's shot to fuck and nobody will be exempt.

(there is a fourth point, and that's that according to Mrs Noble "it's not safe at night!!" ... but then, that's one point which seems, sadly, to genuinely be reflecting the way the society we're actually in is going.)

Throbbing Bristles

I've embarked on a (possibly foolhardy) mission to collect the entirety of the BBC's audio Dr.Who output on CD (actually, scratch that 'possibly' - I might very well have to pay good money for the music of Carey Blyton at some stage). I've started, sensibly enough, with something that has a number 1 on it, as being only slightly unashamedly anal I find something comforting about the illusion of numerical progression - namely 'Doctor Who at the Radiophonic Workshop Volume One: The Early Years'.

And jolly good it is too. Mark Ayres' sleevenotes (for it is he) refelct on how the early show's music, effects and "atmospheres" intermingled with each other, some stories' soundtracks being entirely composed of 'special effects', punctuating the narrative in the places conventional music would ordinarily go. He notes that 'The Mind Robber' is one such story - incredibly, I've never noticed this before and that's one of my favourite stories! Better dig it out and have another look (or rather, listen)!

Listening to it as an album is a very strange experience, delightfully so. It reminds one of just how far ahead this little corner of the BBC were in pioneering what is now routinely referred to as 'sound design'. If they weren't making sound effects for cute robots or ambient noise for metallic alien planets, they were freaking out the nation's kids (and their parents) with theme tunes made up entirely from recorded sounds that were then bent entirely out of shape with old reel-to-reels - for the TARDIS effect, the sound of reality ripping apart and then being jumped through, we have Brian Hodgeson's front door keys and a piano wire to thank! (my other favourite sounds on this album include the 'Regeneration' music from 'Power of the Daleks', which uses backmasking and slowing heartbeats to suggest a physical/mental collapse, and the sounds of the Chumblie robots, which are just plain cute.

Best of all is the thrill of hearing the 'Dalek Control Room' music/effect in full. For a Who fan, if the theme tune is the National Anthem, then this is what it must have sounded like in the womb.

missing pages

Since I stopped keeping a proper (i.e. paper) diary, things have been nagging at me all the time. Chief among them is the worry that I'm losing my ability to properly understand things, because i'm not taking the time to try and sort out what my own thoughts are on subjects, nevermind what others' are. The act of writing is something I always thought was a default mode for me, and it was something that kept me going when times were bad. The thought that the ability to write, to puase long enough to turn thoughts into words, is a faculty that I might have lost, is... an unsettling one.

Things to buy: proper notebook, proper pen.
Things to do: write about my day.

Just not today...

Life Fucking Sucks, Charlie Brown

Charles M Schulz was not just a cartoonist - it is my firm (if nievely obvious) assertion that he is one of the most pertinent social philosophers who has ever lived. One of my favourite examples of his genius (although every damn line he ever drew is an example of his genius) is the sequence of strips where Charlie Brown decides to enter a Spelling Bee. It starts off innocently enough, of course. But it will end in anguish, despair, and a lesson in total humiliation...



Having heard of the spelling bee, Charlie determines that here is an opportunity to improve his self-esteem and his general lot in life. He determines that life is something you have to tackle on its own terms, rather than just sit around waiting for it to improve by itself. Contentment in life starts from self-discovery. If he sets out to enter this Spelling Bee, he will be that bit closer to self-fulfillment.


This philosophy he boldly proclaims to a sceptical-looking Lucy.


By the time the Spelling Bee arrives, his adrenaline is flowing. But he knows he can't get too carried away by events. After all, there is a lot riding on this for him.


Eventually, it is time to go to the front of the class and stand before his peers. As the event itself rushes towards him, future events are from his perspective obscured - and so as he meets his destiny head-on, a Zen-state envelops him.


But then... everything becomes, in one horrible instant, utterly real. The Spelling Bee is no longer an abstract concept or ideal. This is something actual, tangible, all around him, with the potential for harm growing with every second - and he is in the thick of it.


His failure to pass this self-imposed challenge, to spell his first word correctly, suddenly ceases to be probable and becomes, instead, inevitable.


Some say that melancholia is like a blanket - that there can be found a perverse pleasure from wrapping it around you, from wallowing self-consciously in its sadness. Charlie has yet to consciously appreciate this strange irony. There is no pleasure to be found in confronting the fact that he seems almost pre-destined to be the object of his peer group's unconcealed derision. And yet... if he is unable to consciously appreciate this, perhaps he unconsciously does so. Nobody forced him into this course of events. He accpeted it willingly. He Does It To Himself, and the world and the moment opens up into a seemingly infinite expanse of misery...


And so the Spelling Bee fades gradually into the past. Numbed by the experience, Charlie can only sit immobile, stunned into mute disconsolation. What thoughts must be tumbling horribly through his head? We don't need to ask - we can read it all in his face, that innocent expression morphing into a wibbly distortion of anxiety... of world-phobia...


And just when he thinks it's all over and done with and he can pick himself up and start going about his business, free of paranoia or bother, life again strikes a cruel blow in the form of an inseccant commentary on his failings from an aquaintance always more than eager to remind him.


Charles M Schulz. Cartoonist. Philosopher. Genius.