Who Reviews Boom Town by Tony J Fyler

 

Boom, boom, Tony’s shakin’ the room. 

A lot of the stories in the first season of revived, 21^st century Doctor Who were designed specifically to move away from the somewhat casual Classic style of storytelling where there were no long-term consequences. 

Tardis errors lead to Rose being reported missing for a year and her boyfriend Mickey being the chief suspect in her murder, for instance. The plan of the Slitheen leads to a change of government in the UK, and so on. 

Boom Town more than most though is a tale of the consequences of the Doctor’s rather lazy approach to tidying up until now. 

Six months after the Slitheen-in-Downing-Street debacle, one of the family is left both alive and free to start another chapter in her life. Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen – better known by her human alias, Margaret Blaine - has become mayor of Cardiff, and has plans for a new power station. It’s an intentionally flawed plan, which will open up Cardiff’s space-time rift, turn the planet into slag and allow her to power a kind of space surfboard out of Dullsville, Milky Way. 

In the fundamentals of its plot, it’s deeply ropey – perhaps understandable as it was a Davies replacement for another story by a different writer that got SNAFU’d by a scheduling conflict. Intensely plotted, it is not. There’s also rather too much comedy teleporting at the front end of the story, which becomes tedious in a hurry, especially as the Doctor and Rose have picked up Captain Jack Harkness since they last met the Slitheen, and Mickey Smith’s along for the ride too. Crowded Tardis alert, despite Mickey’s attempt to draw Rose off for a hotel bunk-up. 

But here’s where having a genius running your show pays off. 

Because while the plot elements are sketchy and mostly recycled, Russell T Davies manages to turn Boom Town into an intense, sweaty, claustrophobic examination of good and evil, upbringing and free will, while also bringing in the responsibility to deal ‘humanely’ with people who, if extradited, will be killed. It stops short of expanding into discussions of the rightness and wrongness of a state death penalty, but for the majority of Boom Town, Davies more or less plays 12 Angry Men And 1 Slitheen. 

The genius about that is that you start off more or less expecting to know the moral ins and outs of the case, and your position on it. But Eccleston’s Doctor is perhaps more of an angry man than you might be expecting, and he is relatively unsympathetic to Blon’s position as a child of a family of thieving, disreputable space-gits. Siphoning some hardcore Sixth Doctor moral indignation into his post-time war persona (a trend which of course continued with David ‘one chance’ Tennant’s Tenth Doctor), he feels more inclined than many viewers would be immediately comfortable with to lay a sentence on Blon which, while keeping his own hands technically clean, amounts to death at the hands of her peers on Raxacoricofallapatorius. 

As the long night trapped in the Tardis continues while the time machine refuels, various viewpoints are chipped in by all the Tardis travellers – making the most of the full Tardis scenario by at least giving them something useful to do within the claustrophobic micro-drama. Blon herself is a strong advocate for mercy, but also a strong example of desperation – taking every potential advantage, trying every potential tactic – including seduction, flattery, the moral high ground and venom-injection. Slowly, the tone shifts. We begin to see Blon in the light of some criminals in our own society, who are not mad, but just habitually, incorrigibly bad as a result of their upbringing, circumstances or just because they like it. What do you do with people who will absolutely take compassion as weakness, show you no mercy and would happily kill you if the chance arose? Does their fundamental ‘badness’ make it alright to extradite them to a place that will absolutely kill them? Would they always have been bad, irrespective of their upbringing and circumstances? 

That’s a question that ends up being important, because of course, in a science fiction show you can sometimes dodge having to actually answer the hardest questions you pose for yourself. After a long, dark and somewhat uncomfortable night of the sole for all concerned – especially the people who want to believe the Doctor is a force for good, always, in the universe – what we get as an answer is a slightly cop-out reset button, with Blon being returned to her foetal stage as an egg, and given the opportunity to grow up all over again, with a different family, not the Slitheen. 

In itself that creates an interesting idea for a second sequel, but eleven series later, we have yet to revisit a grown-up one-time Blon in her second life, so we’re left more or less to assume she’s been saved from the programming of her family, and allowed to live a healthier, less planet-destroying life on Raxacoricofallapatorius. 

Is Boom Town the best Doctor Who story ever? No, there are very few fans who would claim it as even really in their top ten. But what it does deliver is a tight examination of various moral positions over life, death, crime and punishment. As such, it draws us in and makes us come to better terms with several members of the 2005 Team Tardis. Most crucially, it allows us an unusual amount of time sitting still with the Doctor, and interestingly probes his positions on all these fundamental questions in this incarnation. This incarnation, which is still scarred following the time war, is quicker to jump to judgments than either earlier or later Doctors, and more ready perhaps to justify his harsher stances than might be comfortable for some fans. 

The whole Ninth Doctor era is the story of the healing and rehabilitation of the traumatised Doctor under the improving influence of Rose Tyler. By the time of Boom Town, he’s become less rigid in his positions than he was, for instance, in Dalek – but it will actually take all the way until The Parting Of The Ways for him to realise how healed he is. In Boom Town, we see him still not taking any nonsense – but perhaps, given the ending, prepared to accept that not all things that rub him the wrong way are nonsense, and that even if he still thinks they are, they’re worth trying because they make the people around him happier. The Doctor who’s learned how to dance again, how to take joy in simple things with Rose, and even Jack, is beginning to unbend his rigid moral judgments by the end of Boom Town – and he’s becoming noticeably more like a Classic Doctor as he goes.

Who Reviews Aliens of London/World War Three by Tony J Fyler

 

Excuse Tony shaking his booty.

To some extent, each episode of Series 1 of Doctor Who, back in 2005, was an example piece of the things Doctor Who could do, the journeys it could take and the moods it could evoke. 

While Rose was a primer in mystery and mayhem and why a modern companion would go travelling with the madman in his box, The End Of The World took us to far off times and gave us space diplomats meets Agatha Christie. The Unquiet Dead gave us the celebrity historical and the creep-out aliens-as-supernatural story. 

And then…well, then there was Aliens of London and World War Three. 

If that two-part story had a fundamental mood, it was contemporary alien batcrap craziness.

Alien invasions that aren’t alien invasions. Big Ben destroyed. Pigs in spaceships. Farting aliens with zips in the heads of fat-suits. Baby-faced aliens with giant, powerful claw—tipped bodies. 

To say nothing of the Doctor watching alien invasions on the TV. 

Aliens Of London and World War Three are, above all, an exercise in new storytelling forms for Doctor Who – using modern new reporting, with both real and invented news reporters, showing real seats of power under threat. It was inevitable when Russell T Davies took over Doctor Who that this kind of ‘realistic’ storytelling would be coming. It had been a hallmark of his work for decades by the time he took the big chair. But with fifteen years of hindsight and more, it’s difficult to remember how innovative it was for Doctor Who. Yes, over the years, there had been occasional dabblings with news reports – The Daemons and the Eight Doctor TV story, to name just two. But the brightness, the speed, the use of the medium as part of the narrative structure, had never been used as well as it was in Aliens Of London and World War Three.

The dabblings with UNIT were a lovely touch, and the double-cross that ended Aliens Of London was both well thought-through and shocking. The use of Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones, the backbench MP who still has concerns even as the world might be ending, was sublime – especially when she’s forced to hide in a cupboard while the Slitheen unmask and kill. That the horror of that moment is both inherently comical, but is played utterly straight by Wilton, is a thing of beauty, and a mark of 21^st century Who’s style. Underplay, or play for reality, wherever possible – especially when the aliens themselves are absurd. 

And perhaps as much as anything, Aliens Of London and World War Three are an object lesson in 21^st century Who by virtue of how they deal with the suspicions of Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith. 

Neither of them have any real reason to trust this interloping Doctor, and when the story begins, neither of them do. But by its end, the Doctor has done what he can to reassure Jackie that he will put Rose’s life before his own, and Mickey has hacked into an international missile defence system  to blow the Slitheen to bits, guided step by step by the Doctor. 

Let’s talk about the Slitheen for a minute. 

More than anything else, the mark of the Slitheen is an utterly classless disregard for anything other than themselves (Gosh – wonder what that feels like). Their plan is classless and almost absurdly overcomplicated for the perceived reward – sell the cindered remains of the Earth to the highest bidder for spaceship fuel. That disparity elevates the level of their contempt. Their language is scornful of the humans they intend to destroy, their pretences crass and comic as they constantly apologise for the farts that follow them everywhere. When unmasked, they revert to primitivism – nakedness and primal hunting are what guide them, smelling out their victims like any predatory beast. 

They’re also interesting in the world of Doctor Who by being villains who aren’t a complete race of species, but just a family. A mafia-style family in some regards, determined to make the fastest bucks the universe will allow, but also in a very real sense, they’re repugnant hoorays, over-privileged, fact-light robber barons with a hunting obsession, who see themselves as better than everyone. 

And they find a home in Downing Street to hatch their plans. 

Between the modern drama storytelling techniques, the unusual villains, the batcrap-crazy elements of whimsy that, to be fair, were always a fundamental element of Classic Doctor Who (remember the killer armchair and the deadly daffodils?), and the thoroughly new idea that the Doctor’s actions might have real-world consequences on our Earth just as readily as they might on Peladon or Sarn, Aliens Of London and World War Three mark not only the stamping on the show of a new brisk relevance, but also a yanking into the 21^st century of the show’s storytelling style. 

The Doctor’s companions having family connections was to become a huge mark of the show for the whole of the Davies era, and to some extent the Moffat era too, and it’s in Aliens Of London and World War Three that the notion really begins that we’re moving towards a version of Doctor Who where there’s less Classic-style ‘cover-ups to keep people ignorant’ as with the Loch Ness Monster in the Thames, and more towards a world in which at least some people remember the previous escapades of aliens and the Doctor. 

As such, even if the realization of the Slitheen, either in terms of their story value or their look, isn’t the stuff of legends, there’s a lot in Aliens Of London and World War Three that make them memorable. You might never necessarily find yourself so bored as to go “I must watch this again right now!” But if you do, you’ll remember why, when you first watched it, you were swept along by the mystery, the what-the-hellery, Rose’s family connections and the weird, zip-headed farting aliens. 

If they’re never Genesis of the Daleks or The Caves Of Androzani, Aliens Of London and World War Three sit happily among the likes of Destiny Of The Daleks or The Dominators – barking mad from start to finish, but reliably watchable Who with lots of people who will remember them fondly.

Who Reviews Dalek by Tony J Fyler

 

Tony hears a cry in the dark.

After some wrangling over whether or not the new, revived Doctor Who would have access to the Classic show’s greatest villains, the Daleks, the honour – and also the potentially poisoned chalice – of bringing them back to the screen in a brand new 21^st century way was given to writer Rob Shearman. 

Always a writer whose work provoked thought and left readers or listeners pondering on deeper themes, Shearman seems to have got the gig mostly on account of a Big Finish audio drama by the name of Jubilee. By far the more complex of the two projects, Jubilee had at its heart the rebuilding of the brutal reality of the Daleks on a world where they had become funny, the butt of jokes and gags, legends more of marketing than death or fear.

While the plots of Jubilee and Dalek are entirely different, it’s possible to see the plot of Jubilee almost as the writing brief for Dalek. 

By 2005, the Daleks in the wider public imagination had become the butt of jokes. Their inability to climb stairs was common knowledge, and no amount of fan-wailing about Remembrance of the Daleks could shift the dial of public consciousness on it. The uselessness of the sink plunger attachment had led them to ridicule as the avatar of the make-do-and-mend ‘silliness’ of Classic Doctor Who. The idea may have been unjust more often that it was warranted, but the idea of ‘shaky scenery’ was epitomised in the public image of the Daleks. Even among fans, there was a certain smirk over the hysterical self-destruction to which the Daleks put themselves the moment their ‘vision was impaired.’

Quite the challenge then, to rescue the Daleks from the public perception of silliness.

Shearman’s script was stripped back and simple in terms of what it actually did. A single, final Dalek in all the universe, being tortured by a venal, special collector of curiosities. How would it break free, restore itself to the universe, and bring about the literal resurrection of the Daleks? 

There are things worth saying about the script beyond this though. In removing Gallifrey from the equation of the Doctor Who universe, Russell T Davies had given the Ninth Doctor a troubled history and a darkened character compared to almost all his predecessors. The legend of the last great time war shuddered through that first new series. And as much as Dalek had to re-establish the Daleks themselves as a genuine threat in the 21^st century, it also had a bigger job to do. It had to show us the new Doctor in his most extreme moment of stress – faced with the enemy that had taken everything from him, possibly even the version of himself he used to know. The version of the Doctor before the time war. The version armies of Classic fans knew and loved – the one who would always strive for the little people of the universe against the bullies. Especially against the metal-hided bullies known as Daleks. 

The symbology of Dalek is straightforward but satisfying. A Dalek is, at its most fundamental, a screaming Nazi child locked in the dark. So we initially find the ‘Metaltron,’ as Henry Van Statten calls his pet, alone in the dark and screaming. And when the Doctor and Rose first encounter it, it’s a masterpiece in experience – not to say a masterpiece in acting. The Doctor has rarely if ever been quite as scary as the Ninth when he comes face to face with the de-weaponed, tortured Dalek. He laughs at a creature in pain and torment. He rails at it. Rages at it. And for the first time, both Rose and we are scared of this powerful stranger whose hand we’ve grabbed. 

Rose, on the other hand, who comes to the Dalek with none of the Doctor’s long experience of Daleks and the hate and destruction they represent. She sees only a creature in pain, and she reaches out to touch the untouchable thing.

It’s a neat touch that her compassion is what brings the rebirth of the Dalek, and the accompanying calamity that such a rebirth entails. 

From there, the allusions come thick and fast. The rebirth is literal, the damaged, wounded, chained abomination is repaired by a touch of time energy. It tastes that baptismal Dalek taste – death by gunstick – and it absorbs all the knowledge our connected world can feed it. It’s faced with staircases, and with the lazy human certainty that it cannot follow its prey up such human devices. 

And then it confounds expectations, rising into the air, and coming relentlessly on. And on broadcast, generations of fans turned to their disbelieving families and friends and jumped up and down in triumph, pointing and going “SEE?! I TOLD YOU SO!” 

It was faced with inquisitive humans, and the lazy notion was put to it – “What are you going to do? Sucker me to death?” 

What happened next surprised both new viewers and long-term fans with the power of that sink plunger – and it’s arguably in that moment, more than the ‘Dalek Climbing Stairs’ scene, that Shearman won his greatest victory over the lazy stereotypes of Dalek (and Doctor Who) ‘silliness.’ 

As the Dalek rises through the levels of Van Statten’s complex, it gains more power, more danger, both in real and practical terms and as the Doctor, the only person in the building with previous experience of Daleks, begins to get through to the humans about what a Dalek is, what it means, and what it will undoubtedly do when it breaks out of the complex. It will kill – because it honestly believes that humans, and that anything non-Dalek deserves to die.

It’s worth noting that the rebirth of the Dalek as a credible threat for 21^st century Doctor Who depended on more than the script. The fundamental Dalek design by Raymond Cusick had always had a particular menace to it by virtue of its total separation from every human archetype, but its fair to say that over the years of Classic Who, the Dalek props had begun to look a little tatty, and sometimes silly, and made of wood. 

When the Dalek found its rebirth in 2005, it had a phenomenal new prop design – seemingly cast in bronze, heavy on rivets, a genuine, believable personal tank for the new century.

When it subsequently did things Daleks had never done before – flying, rotating its mid-section for the extra-rapid dealing of death, the joyously logical, economical mass destruction of its enemies, it was like seeing a Dalek for the very first time. It was a new thing, a new thrill. And it absolutely cemented the reasons you should be scared of a Dalek back in place. 

But Shearman’s script was more successful than that. Yes, he brought the Dalek back and made it shine along our shivering muscles again. But he also forced the dilemma of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, of consequences, into the world of Doctor Who. The Doctor, the ultimate finder of clever solutions, when all else has failed him, picks up a gun, determined to rid the universe of the last stinking Dalek in existence. 

But between him and that destiny stands Rose Tyler. 

The girl who can tell the last of the Time Lords no. 

The girl who demands he find a better solution. Who puts herself between the weak in the universe in the bully, even when the bully is the Doctor himself. 

The girl who, like an infection of the Human Factor, changed the nature of the Dalek itself. Made it feel the horror of compassion, trapped as it is in its tank, in the dark, in its swirling seethe of chemical hatred and loathing. Its rebirth cost it almost everything it knows. 

Everything it held sacred and pure about its Daleks self. 

And the Dalek did another new thing – at least, a new thing in TV Who. It self-destructed, not in a hissy fit of blindness, but in a calculated suicide, using the baubles on its skirt to explode itself. Dalek gave us one more lesson about what a Dalek is. It is extreme. It may have no alternative, engineered and maintained in its hatred and its extreme beliefs, but it would rather die a Dalek than live with a compassionate corruption and a pointlessness that sickens it. It will die, rather than bend, rather than expand its thinking. The Dalek was originally born from the imagination of Terry Nation as a warning against Nazi thought, Nazi power. Rob Shearman’s Dalek helped remind us that extreme and rigid thought was corruptive, whether you’re born and raised in those thoughts, or whether, like the Doctor, you acquire them along the way.

Rose Tyler, the girl who can see more sides, the girl who talks to cleaners and engineers just as easily as queens and ambassadors, makes her case to both the Dalek and the Doctor. The Dalek, inherently inflexible, cannot live with the idea of a wider universe than itself and its position. And in Dalek, we see a Doctor who hasn’t been able to see that either for a while. The influence of Rose Tyler though persuades us that he eventually will. That he will come back to the truth of himself. 

Dalek did everything it had to do – and then did more. It showed us a Doctor who could be terrifying, wounded as he was by the effects of the time war. It showed us why Rose Tyler was the companion the Ninth Doctor needed. He was struggling to be the Doctor he had been for most of the time we’d known him. She could help remind him who that was, without even knowing who he’d been. She could stand between the Doctor and his darkest impulses, even when faced with the reminder of his greatest losses. 

In some ways, Dalek was above and beyond its time. 

In others, even though its structure is simple and its symbology straightforward, Dalek remains one of the shining jewels not only of the Christopher Eccleston series, but of all 21^st century Doctor Who. As much as Rose itself, it helped redefine Doctor Who for this new, emotionally engaged century, and it will always stand as the modern make-or-break Dalek story. It won its audience, it rewrote the Daleks for a new generation – and it’s still a rip-roaring watch.

Who Reviews End of the World by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s counting down

The structure of Series 1 of reinvigorated Doctor Who is a masterpiece in its own right. While Rose is the welcome mat to a whole new world of fans, focusing on the companion’s point of view, a threat to the Earth and in this case, the human and family relationships that surround the companion, bringing the worlds of soap and sci-fi together, it’s actually The End Of The End that takes the concept and shows the kind of thing it can do.

In some senses, it’s a love letter to the past, like The Curse Of Peladon with an early 21^st century effects budget and a look that blows most of Classic Who off the screen. It’s a mad collection of random aliens, trapped in an enclosed environment for a particular purpose, and then things start to go wrong. People start to die.

It’s got everything you could want from a Peladon homage – gruff aliens, silently menacing aliens, snarly-looking scary aliens who turn out to be squeaky little darlings. It has blue-skinned space station staff, CGI metal spiders which when they tiptoed across our screens in 2005 looked amazing compared to what people expected of Doctor Who effects. There are walking sexy tree-people, for goodness sake. But as the mystery unfolds of who’s killing off the visitors to the day the sun explodes – an almost-nod to Douglas Adams’ ideas of The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe – it becomes clear that the last of the genetically ‘pure’ humans is the source of trouble. Take that, people who think ‘the humans are the bad guys’ is an invention of the Chris Chibnall era.

As much as it’s about the love letter to The Curse Of Peladon though, it’s also an in-the-moment adventure with the separation of the Doctor and his new friend, an almost-test of Rose’s ability to accept and live in the wider universe, and it’s a test she takes in her stride. Yes, there are moments when her mind is blown by quite how alien the aliens are, but it’s in Rose’s ability to talk to the staff, to show an actual interest in people’s lives, and in her rejection of the mindset of the villain, the creed of species purity, that we see what this Rose Tyler girl is going to bring to our universe that can earn her the right to a wider passport in time and space alongside the best of the Doctor’s previous companions. Yes, the sun might be about to blow up, but Rose is interested in the people who go mostly ignored. Yes, the aliens might be alien, but that doesn’t mean they’re lesser than her, and she’ll stand up against notions of racial purity, species-purity and people with a sense of even inherent class entitlement, in favour of equality for all. In Rose, we see her dealing with the absolute broadening of her world on Earth. But in The End Of The World, Rose Tyler deals with the absolutely broadened palette of experiences the universe has to offer, and stands up for the values of her time and place, which are some of the best humanity had to offer at the time.

The End Of The World, as well as doing all that, stands as a statement of dramatic and comedic intent by Russell T Davies – you’re not allowed to bring weapons or religion on board the station. There’s relatively modern pop music used as incidental music alongside the score. There’s a heavyweight acting talent in the main villain role, as Zoe Wanamaker gives voice to Cassandra, the stretch of skin linked to a brain in a jar who nevertheless has ideas of her own purity. There’s social satire in the fact that she’s been tweaked and tucked until all that’s left of her is a strip of tight skin and a vicious brain. There’s some solid companion-peril, allowing the Doctor to rescue his new friend, but there’s also a big doohickey that the Doctor has to face – the big fans of spinny doom – and a connection with a random person who ultimately pays with their life for the Doctor’s necessary actions. And, more than ever in Classic Who, there’s a quiet moment, a conversation between the Doctor and his friend, where they ask him questions and don’t take no for an answer. Where Rose has that moment and gifts us the ‘Turn of the Earth’ speech, The End Of The World gives us the first real inkling of the Time War, and the first real idea that while this is absolutely the same Doctor we knew in the Classic era, he’s seen things, and possibly done things since he was the Byronic man in the Bill Hickock costume that have changed him, shown him things he never wanted to see.

And while the sun explodes, everybody’s more engaged in the drama of Cassandra and her plot than with the stellar shenanigans – the human conflict foregrounded over the space opera.

By the time we reach the end of The End Of The World, Rose has proved herself in time and space, we’ve been introduced to the first New Who statement of intent, we’ve been treated to a visual feast that knocks the whole ‘shaky sets and dodgy CGI’ mythology of Who out of the window, those who know have seen The Curse Of Peladon reinvigorated in the 21^st century, those who are new have seen a shedload of aliens, had their expectations subverted in the Moxx of Balhoon, met heroic tree-people in Jabe and the Forest of Cheem – kiss my Groot, Marvel Universe – and overall, enjoyed a murder mystery in space with none of the cliched problems people used to talk about with Doctor Who. The End Of The World takes new Doctor Who out into the universe, and for the most part, nails both the soundness and believability of the visuals for a 21^st century science fiction show and the Russell T Davies mentality and aesthetic of what that wider universe looks like, sounds like and thinks like. It proves that Rose was no fluke, that the show could stretch itself into futuristic settings, fix many of the budget-based problems of future ages, and compete in the early 21^st century market for slick sci-fi, while still possessing that barmy touch of comfortable kitsch that is forever Doctor Who. It consolidated the casually curious into solid viewers by throwing down the challenge to itself, and meeting it spectacularly.

Who Reviews Only Human by DJ Forrest

Written by Gareth Roberts

For BBC Books

Published 2005

The first time I read this novel I was very disappointed with it. I felt that Jack Harkness who travels with the 9^th Doctor and Rose, was not represented at all well in the story. He was for the most part, a babysitter for a Neanderthal. What I felt in reading it for a second time, was a different feeling altogether, although if I hit my patch I could probably fix that wrong feeling in a jiffy.

Only Human is about a traveller, 28,000 years out of his time, unable to return, because up until he met with the Doctor, he had no clue of time travel. He had merely followed someone into a spaceship and landed on planet Earth, present time, dressed in his usual casual wear, carrying a club. As you do!

This story has a well thought out idea of a race of people who use patches for moods, so that for any wrong feeling, they type in a code, similar to a mobile phone control, on their name badge and instantly all the wrong feelings leave them. Ingenious! It did make me think of Bliss, the mood patch that had wiped out most of the human race in the ‘Gridlock’ episode.

Think back to the very first Torchwood Big Finish drama with Captain Jack Harkness – Conspiracy - when he discovered the group behind all the stories spouted by a well known news reporter, who thought the lovely girl by his side, was his daughter, but was in fact working for the Committee. Sadly, it wasn’t The Committee we know of in the Torchwood Audio stories with Big Finish.

Back to the novel – as we know, the Doctor and companions tend to have separate adventures – the Doctor goes off in one direction, and the companions veer off in another, either by accident or by default, it’s just what they do. In this story, Jack stays home and works with the Neanderthal, keeping daily journals, in which the Neanderthal, up to speed on keyboards and computers, keeps a log of his own, which I found most chucklesome.

Jack’s a lot different in this story to that of The Stealer of Dreams – yes, I’m aware, a different writer, but you get the feeling that Jack hadn’t been travelling that long with the Doctor after the first meeting of him in the Blitz with Rose Tyler. So, I’m thinking he’s quite a bit younger, than he was in the previous Jack novel. He’s still as daring with his costume choices and in his distractions especially the one outside the hospital.

On second reading, I found this novel extremely entertaining, Jack’s work was valuable to the Doctor. And while Jack was busy on Earth, the Doctor and Rose were busy enquiring after the race of people 28, 000 years in the past, who had no knowledge of computers or the digital age, or what CD’s were for, yet time travelled. And the monsters that lurked behind the Grey Door, where several of the ‘humans’ were sent, left me thinking of the creature in The Resurrection Casket, and their voices in my head were of David Tennant’s performance of the character, often sounding as if he had a  mouthful of cotton wool.

It’s a good read, and if after your first reading you’re miffed about Jack stuck in a flat babysitting, put the book back on your shelf, leave it there a few years, then read it again, and you’ll be remarkably surprised by how well it reads, and how much you’ll enjoy it.

I know I did.

Who Reviews The Ninth Doctor Comic Book Review Vol #1 by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s been weaponized.

Fact 1: Cavan Scott is a man who knows his Who.

Fact 2: Cavan Scott is a man who, if anything, knows his comic-books even better.

Welcome to the good times.

The Ninth Doctor got a staggered start in Titan’s comic-book output – Doctors Ten, Eleven and Twelve were already romping about their respective universes when Titan dipped its toe in the Ninth Doctor’s pond with a short run, a mini-series to see whether, a decade down the line, anyone would particularly buy a Ninth Doctor comic-book. You can see their point: while we yield to no-one in our admiration of Eccleston, his performance or the Doctor he built, you have to be very very careful when delivering that Doctor in the comic-book medium. You need him to be quintessentially himself, and to be – as he was defined on-screen by being – accompanied by at least Rose. You need that broodiness, that occasional shouting, moments of sudden silliness, you need it all. But you have to balance it with the different demands of the comic-book medium to those of on-screen storytelling. Even if people wanted to read more stories with the Ninth Doctor, it’s a very delicate balancing act to pull off to make him fundamentally himself all the way through and still deliver an engaging comic-book story.

You got the part where Scott knows both his Who and his comic-books, right?

In hindsight, you don’t need us to tell you he succeeded. So far, the Ninth is the only Doctor to have started with a mini-series and graduated to a full monthly run, despite exemplary work on behalf of the Eighth, Fourth and now Third Doctors (Seriously, Titan – First, Second, Fifth, Sixth? Seventh if you feel you absolutely must…). Weapons of Past Destruction was the proof of concept, the proof of market that pushed the brooding Northern Doctor into full-time production. And the fact is, you can see why that happened. Cavan Scott’s storyline starts off with a bang and a conflict between two madly outer-space species, the Lect and the Unon. The Lect look like robotic Kinder Eggs, and the Unon, to quote Scott’s Ninth Doctor, look like ‘Flying space-centaurs, all gleaming armour and pointy sticks.’ The cause of their disagreement though? That’s where things get interesting. There’s enough post-Time War angst and shouting from the Ninth Doctor, but there’s also the Ninth Doctor on fire, as he was towards the end of his life in Bad Wolf and The Parting of The Ways, absolutely riffing it, heading into danger with a yell, a mad laugh, a flared nostril and a plan he cobbles together as he goes, based largely on the idea that the universe owes him a victory and the knowledge of his own brilliance. There’s that touch of Time Lord arrogance about him, convinced he has the right stuff in every situation, and that many other life-forms are tiny and ‘made of clay’ by comparison. But in the moments when he finds his outrage, as he does fairly early in issue #2 of the story, it helps focus him, helps remind him who the Doctor is, and how he acts, even in this body, to stand between the good people in the universe and those who seek to squash them under arrogant feet.

There’s plenty of timey-wimey in the story too – at one point, Rose gets lost in the vortex and ends up working at a bazar for a while, under the tutelage of a giant octopus, making her way in a barmy universe till the Doctor and Jack come to collect her. That also hits the ‘Companion doing their own thing’ note that was relatively new to on-screen Who when the series roared back into the public consciousness in 2005.

And what Scott combines are a hundred gracenotes of the Ninth Doctor’s time with a plot that’s suitably complex to fit alongside the Bad Wolf arc, and above all, an ear for voice. Oh man, Cavan Scott has an ear for voice. Check out this extract and tell us you don’t hear the Ninth Doctor.

   ‘I see the legends about you are true.’

   ‘Legends? Got to love a good legend. Go on then – what do they say? Please don’t tell me they mention the ears.’

   ‘They speak of your incessant babble.’

   ‘It serves a purpose. Self-preservation.’

   ‘To stop others hurting you?’

   ‘To stop me hurting them.’

How perfect is that? A Doctor that babbles not because he wants to, but because it’s what the Doctor used to do, and right now, in this war-scarred life, he needs every reminder he can get to claw his way back to being that man, to stop the fury and the rage and the anything-goes power of the alternative overwhelming him.

Both Rose and Jack are very true to their on-screen selves throughout this mini-series too – and importantly, they’re true to themselves at the time when this story’s set, rather than ever dipping into Torchwood Jack and Tenth Doctor Rose. Scott’s a far better writer than to allow that to happen.

Is the story perfect?

Mmmmm It’s close, but no – the first issue does involve quite a lot of not-very-much in story terms, and relies a little too heavily on the artwork and the sheer novelty of Ninth Doctor comic-books to be quite perfect, but it never even considers dabbling with the idea of badness, and it gets a lot better from the second issue on, filling its time with that delicate balance we were talking about: the Ninth Doctor imprinting himself on your consciousness just as he did on-screen while still delivering an issue-by-issue deepening of the backstory, a raising of the stakes, as war becomes complex, Rose Tyler stands between the opposing forces, and time’s new champions make a play to replace the Time Lords as arbiters of fairness in a universe of post-war chaos.

From a standing start it ramps up into a story you simply can’t stop reading – and that’s the hidden sales pitch of this collected volume. The issues, when they were released, made you want, and want more, and more, and left you at the end feeling utterly satisfied but still eager for more Ninth Doctor adventures. Here in the collected edition, you can absolutely binge on what is essentially Series 0,75 – a whole arc of moral complexity, anger, yelling, arrogance, plans, fun, silliness, humanity, teaching and Jack…being Jack. It’s the second series you always wanted Eccleston to do, and by the honesty of the voices and the complexity of the storyline, it stands up to everything Russell T Davies delivered.

Can we talk art? Oh go on, let’s talk art. We could talk about the art of The Weapons of Past Destruction till your eyes glazed over and you shuffled away with a nervous smile on your lips, in search of anyone, anyone else to talk to. Artwise, you’re looking at Blair Shedd and Rachael ‘Had a really good 2016 on the Twelfth Doctor comic-books’ Stott. You’re talking colour, vividness, strong, accurate portrayals of the Tardis crew – which when you’re reaching back ten years for your connection-point with a readership is even more important than it is when you’re delivering figures from current multi-media pop culture. Normally we’d pick out a couple of the best and most dynamic panels for you, but in Weapons of Past Destruction, the challenge is finding panels that aren’t dynamic, extraordinary or poster-worthy. If we’re absolutely pushed, there’s a fantast triptych of Doctors, Eight Nine and War on the same page, and there’s another, almost opposite panel including Troughtonesque Cybermen and Tennant Sontarans that sends a particular thrill up the geeky reader’s spine. Is the art perfect then? As with the story, there’s one issue that stops it claiming that honour, in this case the overuse of silhouette shots far beyond the point at which they’re an interesting inversion to accent the action, and into the realms of intrusive overkill of an artistic idea. But you’d be splitting nano-hairs, either with the storytelling or the artwork, to claim any issue of Weapons of Past Destruction was ruined for you by the flaws that stop it being entirely perfect.

The Weapons of Past Destruction was exciting when it was released in issue-by-issue format. Gathering the whole thing together in a single volume is a (ahem) fantastic idea, and makes it something rather more special than any of the usual collected Who volumes. This storyline, this artwork, helped fans remember their love affair with a brand new Doctor – and a brand new Doctor Who to boot. This collected volume is a ridiculous, compelling, ‘Don’t-talk-to-me-till-I’m-finished’ pleasure that (*cough* Just saying *cough*) would keep any Who fan quiet for a good few hours on Christmas Day.

Who Reviews The Monsters Inside by DJ Forrest

Written by Stephen Cole

BBC Doctor Who novel

Stephen is my new favourite Who writer. I initially thought I was reading a Steve Lyons novel purely because on merit, there is a lot of detail, a lot of action, and there’s no talking down to the reader. I now want to find other novels written by Cole, that may not necessarily be about our favourite Time Lord.

From the get go I was enthralled by the sheer magnitude of the story. The Doctor and Rose, land on a planet where before them slaves as it appears, are building a giant pyramid. On closer inspection, it turns out that they’re prisoners, and they’re on a prison planet, and are arrested for supposedly trespassing without due reason. Rose is sent to Borstal, where it’s a bit like teenage Wentworth, and the Doctor is sent to a scientific labour camp, and put to work.

In many of the Doctor and companion stories, there’s many ways of them reuniting and joining forces, good triumphing over evil. This again is one of them, but there’s a lot more than one planet in the way of them joining forces for some time. Rose, isn’t the most scientific of the bunch of companions who have travelled with the Doctor, of course, she’s a lot cleverer than Donna, but each of the companions have their own strengths, and much of Rose’s are put to the test in this, plus a lot of her weaknesses.

There’s also a surprise return of a scary monster that I’m not going to reveal, and it was interesting to discover that there are different varieties of these species, and just like human beings, these two hate each other. It seems that there’s a level of class, such as we have in our own society. One is regarded as the rag and bone merchant whereas the other is up there with the rich and knowledgeable, and you find yourself, rooting for the rag and bone merchant over the rich and knowledgeable, because underneath it all, even in those dark times when the Doctor is up against it, you can empathise with them.

Like in all stories, Rose finds a likeable ally who she becomes close to, and after some altercations with the Queen Bee of the inmates, forges long lasting friendships with many, albeit till the end of the novel when you know the Doctor and Rose will be on their merry way. There are familiar characters that you want to hope will see it through to the end. There are some you wish weren’t going to make it through at all, although, you also kind of hope the Doctor will have a showdown with them. There are a lot of showdowns in this novel.

What I enjoyed about the story which has taken almost 3 weeks to finish – bedtime reading – is the sheer detail on every page. This writer knows his planets and you can picture each and every scene unfolding, especially when you discover what the Monster inside the prison is. That was a joy!

I don’t tend to rate novels that I read, as in an out of 10 or out of 5, but if I had to, I’d rate this a solid 10.

It’s a 9^th Doctor story and I only wish more novels were written for this Time Lord as they have been a joy to read so far. If you haven’t read it yet, this is a definite must. It’s all action and an edge of the seat kind of story.

Who Reviews The Stealers of Dreams by DJ Forrest

Written by Steve Lyons

For BBC Books 2005

Set on the Colony World 4378976 Delta-Four, the residents are a scared bunch of people who are not allowed to imagine anything. Not to dream. Certainly, not to use their brains to predict a possible scenario, that could have you sent to the Big White House!

I must say; I love the 9^th Doctor stories that feature Captain Jack Harkness. This is a Captain who is yet to become immortal, and for that reason, he is a stronger character. He knows that life is precious, but he is also fiercely protective of Rose Tyler and of the people he feels sorry for in the story.

When Rose, the Doctor and Captain Jack Harkness arrive on the planet, they stay in a hotel where something piques the Doctor’s interest while Rose and Jack sleep. So much so, that when Rose awakes and finds the Doctor missing, has an adventure of her own when she learns of a young man hiding from the Police. He’s a creative artist, who isn’t allowed to use fiction in any capacity. And when he’s discovered doing just that, with a bunch of fiction geeks, the four lads go into hiding. Domnic is lucky in one sense. Rose Tyler finds him. Except, after discovering the channel Static, where secret messages are hidden in the white space, even Rose begins to change; begins to see things are not all that they seem.

In the first chapter, the imagination can conjure up all kinds of monsters, and throughout the story, I really wanted to know what happened to the young girl who had suffered frightening dreams, so horrendous that monsters did lurk beneath her bed at night.

In fact, whenever a ‘fantasy crazy’ as they’re called, began talking about fictional things, and imagining, and thinking of a worst case scenario, you half expected to see something monsterish charging towards them on the next page.

The police chase was interesting, and the Doctor was keen to get to the bottom of the mystery about who Hal Gryden was; the man who ran the Static channel, who nobody had seen.

When Rose and Jack were hoodwinked either by their own imagination or by someone claiming to be Hal Gryden, you feared for their fates in the Big White House, aka the lunatic asylum. Its description was very Victorian era, and if you’re from the UK, the Victorian building and archaic torture treatment to fix the ‘crazies’ is as barbaric in the novel as you remember reading in the history books.

The Big White House is run by Cal Tyko who I imagined to be Professor Gagan Rassmussen from the episode ‘Sleep No More’, so obviously, that just upped the creepiness of his treatment even more. 

I’ve a few novels still to read of Steve’s, but if this is anything to go by. The ‘edge of the seat’ ride through the chapters. The ‘hang on a minute, did I just skip a page or two here, what just happened?’ are going to be frequent questions as I read on.

But they’re good questions, as I have to admit, picking up the final chapter I wondered if I’d missed a few pages somewhere. But it does round off the story well, and answers a few of the nagging questions I had reading through the novel.

If you’re a 9^th Doctor fan as I am, then The Stealers of Dreams is a good read. You don’t have to have read any of the other novels first, I certainly didn’t, plus I never read them in order.

I love stories which feature the good old Captain, and it’s great to see him involved in the story as much as Rose or the Doctor, and it would be great to read more of his adventures with the Time Lord, more than the few I’ve discovered he’s in with the 9^th.

If you’ve got the novel, read it. If you haven’t, buy it.

Interviews Freelance author Cavan Scott by DJ Forrest

Captain Jack is back with the Doctor

The Doctor Who Titan comic comes out in March how many stories have you planned for the 9th Doctor and Jack, and will there be any stories involving the 10th Doctor with Jack, or is there a point of order with the Titan comics where you can only write one series of stories for one Doctor at a time?

Cavan: Well, at the moment it’s just one story that stretches over the five-issues of the mini-series, although I must admit I have a little batch of potential stories stored up just in my head in case Titan ask for more!

There’s no rules that you can’t write for more than one Doctor – Robbie Morrison writes for both the Tenth and the Twelfth. I’d certainly love to have a crack at Doctor number 10!

How much fun was it writing the 9^th Doctor story involving Jack Harkness?

Cavan: Oh, more than you can imagine. I love Jack and the Doctor together – there’s lot of banter, between all three leads. And Jack’s such a great contrast to the 9^th Doctor, although they’re more similar than either will admit.

You’re signing copies of the comic at Forbidden Planet in March for the launch of the new Who stories, when and where is that?

Cavan: It’s happening at the Bristol Forbidden Planet Megastore at 6pm on March 18. I’ll also be at the London Super Comic Con signing comics on March 14, as well as appearing on a special Titan Doctor Who panel.

When Jack was with the Doctor his character was so much darker than when he was with Torchwood, will he be like this in your story too?

Cavan: Absolutely. Our Jack is definitely a cheeky chappie, yet to be weighed down by immortality.

From the covers I saw on your website there are more than one 9^th Doctor story, will Jack feature in these too?

Cavan: It’s just the one story, although every issue has multiple covers. Variant covers have become a big thing in comics these day, with fans trying to collect as many as they can.

Whose decision was it to bring Jack back to Doctor Who?

Cavan: As far as I recall, Jack was part of the conversation from the get-go. We saw so little, relatively speaking, of the Doctor, Rose and Jack together in the 2005 series, but it’s obvious from Boom Town that they’ve been travelling together for a while. This seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

Captain Jack Harkness back in Doctor Who is fantastic news and with the prospect of Torchwood radio plays in the near future, it’s almost a sweet revival of the time travelling agent.  How will he fit into the stories and given his time line, the novels, audios and tv episodes for Torchwood and Who?

Cavan: The comic takes place just after The Doctor Dances, so it’s early in his relationship with the Doctor.

Also with time lines and Who fiction novels involving Jack with the 9^th, were you given instructions as to when and where you could base the stories?

Cavan: Not really. Editor Andrew James was kind enough to ask me which Doctor I’d like to pitch for. The Ninth Doctor was a bit of a non-brainer for me. I loved writing for him – and Jack and Rose – in the Big Finish / AudioGo 50^th Anniversary story Night of the Whisper. I always said that if I had a chance to write for that TARDIS team again, I’d jump at it, so here I am!

You’ve been involved in a lot of spin offs from Doctor Who over the years, which must keep you busy!  Plus also writing for one of my favourite comics, (Beano) how do you manage your time when you’re writing and meeting your deadlines and being a family man?

Cavan: Writing is my full-time job so I make sure I treat it as such. I’m sat at my desk at 9am and work through until 5.30. I used to be a magazine editor so I’m pretty hot on deadlines and keeping plates spinning. Most of the time, none of them smash – although some of them get a little chipped from time to time!

Can you divulge what the story will be about or must we wait and see?

Cavan: Well, I can’t give too many spoilers, but the thrust of the story is that the Doctor and his friends get caught in the middle of a battle between two alien races called the Unon and the Lect. It soon becomes clear that there are weightier issues at hand. Someone is attempting to replace the Time Lords in the pecking order of the universe – and the Doctor isn’t happy about that at all!

Who Reviews Rose by Reece Morris-Jones

Written by Russell T Davies

I should probably add a caveat before I get down to writing about this. I am hugely, massively biased when it comes to Christopher Eccleston's Doctor. Whilst he does tend to appear in roles that are pretty forgettable these days (Thor 2, G.I. Joe-anyone remember his parts?), there was a time that he was THAT actor, in part due to a series of well received roles through the 90's and early 2000's. So when it was announced he was to be the new Doctor...well I was over the moon.

There's one thing New Who does right and it’s that for the most part, the actors in it can act with something approaching nuance. The old series has its moments, but each week you were more likely to tune into someone emoting on the screen like it was their first big performance down at the amateur dramatics society. So when the first thing I saw was a show that was clearly about themes, with a new Doctor and a new approach, well I was ecstatic and completely stunned. Compared the two eras of the show in feel and scale and its phenomenal the difference.

But like all Doctor Who episodes, its defined by how good its Doctor is. My god, what a good Doctor Eccleston makes. Taking elements of the Doctor we recognise and know (his childlike wonder, his arrogance, his towering intelligence as we get to watch him piece things together) and adding a harsher but melancholic edge works. There's something not quite right about this Doctor, almost an enforced cheer and as the series goes on we get to find out more about that. But as I've spend a paragraph or two getting sidetracked already, for now, let’s turn our attention to the episode Rose.

God I love this episode. Though it’s not the strongest of Eccleston's run, it's an episode determined to set a new paradigm for the show and it does that rather successfully, whilst having to do the hard work of introducing a world, characters and a setup to a whole new generation, and more importantly, make us care about it. Rose does this rather brilliantly by making the episode an introduction to the world via Rose, the new companion, herself.

It's pretty rare to see this in an episode from Davies, but Rose as a construct is a well oiled machine. Everything rattles along at almost breakneck speed. Everything is there for a reason and there's barely any flab to the script. It’s all geared to introducing us to the world of Who again and making realise just what we had been missing. Davies usual indulgences are kept in check, or at least used to best effect.

Rose and the Doctor's role in the episode itself is pretty simple. Rose discovers the Doctor one day and slowly goes down the rabbit hole until she finds a new world that was under her nose all this time. Rose herself is the focus of the episode with the Doctor being a sort of mythical figure, only appearing in short bits until about 2/3rds of the way through the episode. What is apparent though, is wherever the Doctor goes, trouble soon follows.

This does mean the Autons get the short end of the stick when it comes to being involved in the plot though. Used more as a way to being immediate tension and hurry the story along whenever it’s in fear of slowing down too much. Case in point; Rose’s (literal) descent down into the fantastic world of the Doctors' that is just outside our everyday view, results in a scene that stands as a series highlight ("Run!") and manages to make the plastic dummies scary to kids of the 21st century.

There's no real plot to talk about. The Auton's menace people a bit and the Doctor (with help from Rose) defeat them after finding the Nestine Consciousness and being forced to destroy it. Sure, the 'anti-plastic' the Doctor has is a bit naff, but Davies wisely avoids too much scrutiny falling upon it by making its introduction and use over and dealt with rather quickly.

So what doesn't work? Well, the CG effects are poor even considering the time of broadcast (something Who is just getting a handle on nearly a decade later to be honest) so Mickey's' absorption by the Auton bin (which burps-urgh) and the Nestine Consciousness itself look pretty naff, along with Eccleston being added not so artfully into old photos, Forrest Gump style.

Noel Clarke isn't bad, but it did feel like he was just getting a handle on what the character was about. The script certainly doesn't help him in this regard, making him come across as needy, selfish and a hindrance to Rose, who clearly feels like she is being held back in life. Contrast this with the much more assured debut of Rory in the Eleventh Hour and you can see the difference.

In the end, Rose does what it sets out to do. By the end of the episode we have been introduced to the principal characters of the first season, had a bit of action and set up a few things that will make sense later via, what seemed at the time was, throwaway expository dialogue. Moreover though, we had finally gotten a sense of wonder back in the TV landscape, which at the time was dominated by talking head shows that sneered at pretty much everything in the name of 'comedy'. Nice for a bit, but it quickly erodes all sense of grandeur about things.

Rose is a tonic to that and is a must watch, considering its the first glimpse we get of what the revitalized show was aiming to do. Not only that, but its an example of a show leanly trimmed down to what works, so if you enjoy watching shows with a production mindset, there's plenty to enjoy.

Who knows, you may even come to realise the truth about new Who- that David Tennant is the weakest of the new Doctors.

After that controversial comment, I think I had best take the Doctors advice and RUN!

©BBC Doctor Who 1963