Love and Liberty

I write about quite a few BBC shows here, but very few ITV ones… Largely because ITV1 is rubbish, while the BBC at least tries occasionally. However, ITV tried something interesting last night, albeit with half a million fewer viewers than the announcement of Matt Smith for Doctor Who. Demons is Gene Hunt’s Philip Glenister’s new vehicle, not a Quattro but a British attempt at Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You can catch it again tonight at 8pm on ITV2, followed by the even more implausible Van Helsing – for classier horror pastiche, I’d turn to ITV3 at 7pm for Carry On Screaming (with Carry On Cleo following at 9pm). Oh, and if you spot this a bit later, both channels have a +1 shadow, so you can just add an hour to the time and tune in then.

Demons

Any thought that Demons was going to be a great success was demolished by three things in the first three minutes: the naff CGI gremlin of the pre-titles sequence; the even naffer opening titles, which appear to have been borrowed from a 1998 video game; and Mr Glenister’s hilarious American accent. For several minutes, listening to his cod drawl and looking at his ’40s gumshoe drag, I wondered if he was doing a murder mystery weekend or some other diegetic play-acting, but no, it seems to have just been for a bet. And, perhaps, because in American series Buffy the Vampire Slayer the wise old (actually middle-aged, but most of the cast look teenish) tutor Rupert Giles who tells pretty young Buffy her destiny, reveals the world of the undead and demons all around her and teaches her how to use her amazing natural abilities has a stereotyped ‘English’ accent, while in British series Demons the wise old (actually middle-aged, but most of the cast look teenish) tutor Rupert Galvin who tells pretty young Luke his destiny, reveals the world of the undead and demons all around him and teaches him how to use his amazing natural abilities has… You get the idea.

Young lead Christian Cooke as Luke Rutherford was in uniform as Ross in The Sontaran Stratagem from last year’s Doctor Who, and out of his clothes a lot in Echo Beach. Guess which option Demons goes for? Not many minutes have gone by before he’s wandering around his flat in a pair of tiny trunks, the camera crawling over his abs and lingering on his legs in a way that would make Sarah Michelle Gellar say, ‘Ooh, that’s a bit exploitative.’ Still, he’s quite pretty (if he could do with putting on a few years, stone and hairs). And life for him, his he-doesn’t-think-she’s-his-girlfriend and his unwitting mother (“Have you tried not being the Slayer?”) will never be the same once his long-missing godfather Rupert turns up. In a rare difference from Buffy – other than Buffy being a terrific series, and Demons a mediocre one – Luke is raised by his mother alone not because his father ran out on them, but because he died in a-not-in-fact-the-car-crash-they-were-told. In fact, Luke is now the last descendent of the Van Helsings, and Rupert’s turned up at the door to bond because, after years of innocence, the monsters have tracked him down and it’s time to give Luke his father’s lightsabre bring Luke to his father’s secret library, the Stacks (yet another thing to wind up Lawrence Miles).

Anyway, the CGI gremlin gives way to a misshapen demon-bloke in a big overcoat, apparently dragging up as the macho-dragged-up Mr Glenister, and then we get to meet the main villain behind him, who’s Mackenzie Crook dressed as a cockatoo. Gosh, and he’s invulnerable to one of Q Division’s magic demon-melting guns! Gosh, but not the other! At least Zoë Tapper’s much less anonymous than she was in Survivors. It’s got some potential, but the first week hasn’t delivered much on it. Charlie Brooker finds it a bit offputting, though it was the preview from elsewhere in this week’s Guardian Guide that put its finger on it:

“The end result… veers too much towards a splicing of Hollyoaks and Torchwood.”

Both of those are quite watchable, as far as I’m concerned, though I don’t find myself keeping up with either as religiously as I might, and don’t miss either when they’re not on. Let’s hope later episodes do a better job of making me watch with enthusiasm. In the meantime, I’m tempted to stick on some old episodes of Buffy or Ultraviolet, but I suspect that’ll make me rather less tempted to return to the apparently inferior new one.

Oh, yes, and Van Helsing to follow at 9pm… Van Helsing was a bookish, religious man who used his scientific and mythological learning to defeat vampires. So let’s make him a pumped-up walking armoury for the Pope! That’ll work. An attempt to launch the same sort of franchise as the film of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (we suspect Zoë Tapper’s character in Demons may have an unnatural amount in common with her namesake in ‘LXG’, too), this fails for much the same reasons, though is a rather worse film; instead of realising that the dumb bits got in the way of adapting a clever, witty and dark comic, this scoops out any bits that look clever or witty and just goes for a big dumb action flick. I do have a sneaking fondness for it, despite all that, thanks to a pretty good leading actor in the ludicrous title role and all its little homages to my beloved Universal monster movies of the ’30s and ’40s. I’d rather watch most of them, though.

Carry On Screaming / Carry On Cleo

The Carry On films are undoubtedly one of the greatest parts of Twentieth Century British culture, and I’ve written before that, rather than the Gordon Brown squeezing some joyless work ethic into a laboured definition of Britishness and boring kids to death with it, they should just show every child in the land Carry On Cleo and Carry On Up the Khyber, because they do a much better job of communicating what being British is all about than anything Hazel Blears wants to test us on.

The Carry Ons are, of course, a real mix – they run all the way from one of the greatest films ever made right down to pretty terrible. The best has to be Carry On Up the Khyber, and I’m sure there’s a mathematical formula somewhere that can predict the likely quality of a Carry On by looking at the strong correlation between the number of the regular ‘team’ working on each film and how good it is, with high weighting given to Kenneth Williams and Sid James, then Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Barbara Windsor, Bernard Bresslaw (controversially, I’d say the Carry On actor with the widest range) and so on. That’d make Carry On Loving the limit of the standard deviation, I suppose. But an easier way to do it is to say that, in common with my love of historicals, the ones with dressing up are generally better than the modern day ones. So, while the best of the ones set in ordinary life is probably Carry On Doctor, there are at least four films in the series that are quite a lot better. Gnashing at Khyber’s heels, I’d go in no particular order for Carry On… Don’t Lose Your Head, Carry On Screaming and Carry On Cleo. So it’s rather fun that two of them are on tonight, back-to-back.

Carry On Screaming was my favourite of the films when I was a little boy, and it’s easy to see why – it’s a Hammer spoof that was turning up on TV just as Doctor Who was doing the same sort of thing. It even sees Jon Pertwee gruesomely murdered, and who could complain about that? There’s no Sid, but manic detective Harry H Corbett is a fantastic replacement, whether paired in an hilarious double act with Peter Butterworth or acting opposite Fenella Fielding’s fabulously smouldering performance. The wordplay of the “Whereabouts?” “Hereabouts” and “Watt’s his name!” scene is utterly sublime, and Bernard Bresslaw’s toes are very rude. The film’s stolen, though, by Kenneth Williams’ reanimated Dr Watt, who’s having difficulty with his regeneration and even more with a mummy he wants to get moving.

“Frying tonight!”

Carry On Cleo is another cracker, spoofing (and borrowing expensive props from) Cleopatra with the perfect relationship between Sid and Kenneth as Mark Anthony and Julius Caesar. And the two of them supply far too many of my favourite lines:

“Blimus!”

“Ooh, I do feel queer!”

“Friends, Romans…”
“– Countrymen.”
“I know!”

And, of course, the famously nicked from Frank Muir and Denis Norden but unbeatably delivered by a phenomenally camp Kenneth Williams:

“Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”

All that, and Amanda Barrie’s poisonous asp, Jim Dale actually pulling off the heroic lead from Flintstones Britain, and a few Doctor Who connections. There are similar scenes and one of the same actors as in The Romans, actors who’ve appeared in half a dozen other Who stories, and at least two crossovers with The Key To Time series: Sosages, Captain of Cleopatra’s bodyguard, is no doubt the man from whom the Doctor learned his sword skills; and Terrance Dicks’ novelisation of The Stones of Blood carries a rare out-and-out in-joke on Jon Pertwee playing the soothsayer who warns Caesar about his assassination when the Doctor thinks to himself in an aside:

“He’d always got on very well with Julius Caesar, though you couldn’t really trust him. And, of course, he’d never listen to advice. Even when the Doctor had gone to all the trouble of dressing up as a soothsayer, and croaking ‘Beware the Ides of March’, old Julius wouldn’t listen.”

Of course, if you’re fed up with everything on all 637 channels, there’s always The Randomness Times (in an aside to the first ‘issue’ of which, Lawrence Miles notes that ITV is “ten years late with its Buffy homework”).

Labels: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Carry On, Comedy, Comics, History, Jon Pertwee, Life On Mars, Matt Smith, Reviews, The Key To Time

The most marvellous thing Doctor Who brings me in 1994 is Richard, obviously, but you can’t buy one. Low-budget video Shakedown – Return of the Sontarans beats any BBC Sontaran story, while the Master returns in a book (but which? Dun-dun-dahh…!). New Adventures highlights include Conundrum’s fun and games, Tragedy Day’s telethon satire (and openly gay character), and hugely entertaining Sherlock Holmes-Doctor Who-Cthulhu hustle crossover All-Consuming Fire. And with Sylv’s Doctor doing brilliantly, a new range beckons for the rest…

Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures – Venusian Lullaby

“‘Remember us, Doctor,’ he breathed. ‘I beg of you, remember us all.’”

What would you do if your world was doomed? Paul Leonard offers black humour, desperation, horror and acceptance from the series’ most perfectly alien race and culture in a perfect novel for William Hartnell’s Doctor, a grand historical tragedy from the history of another world.


This is one you’ll have to track down second-hand to read, and you really should, you know. For some reason, Billy’s Doctor seems to be the most author-proof of the first six Doctors in print, with more of ‘his’ original novels succeeding than for the others, and this is the best of the lot.

Labels: Books, Doctor Who, Gay, Personal, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, Richard, Sherlock Holmes, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell

There’s one old Doctor on radio and a whole bunch of them in both documentary Thirty Years in the TARDIS and an East End anniversary knees-up, but it’s New Adventures firsts that really make this year brilliant. There’s Gareth Roberts’ clever, funny debut The Highest Science; Kate Orman’s The Left-Handed Hummingbird, mixing the Sixties, drugs, pain and the Titanic; Blood Heat’s gripping alternative universe of Silurians and multiple endings is a superb second novel, though the author’s first beats it…

Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Lucifer Rising

“Everything is history, if you look at it from the right perspective.”

Jim Mortimore and Andy Lane kick off with possibly the best New Adventure: a murder mystery; breathtakingly imaginative alien worlds; Gladstone; exploring the Doctor in a sublime introduction, comic moments and his darker side… And, as across the whole series, the shadow of the Daleks.


Here’s another one that’s long out of print and well worth tracking down, though to whet your appetite the Prelude written for Doctor Who Magazine is available online.

Labels: Books, Daleks, Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee, New Adventures, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

…Not David Morrissey* (look, I think we all knew that before Christmas, didn’t we?)
…To be revealed this evening at 5.35 on BBC1, in a special edition of Doctor Who Confidential called The Eleventh Doctor (but mainly celebrating the first ten**)
…Not actually going to appear in an exciting adventure on TV for another year yet, so don’t get too excited today
…Oh, who am I kidding, the most exciting announcement since, ooh, Christopher Eccleston was cast or Tom left
…Paterson Joseph, according to the smart money. Or James Nesbitt. Or Matt Smith. Or Rupert Penry-Jones. Or Chiwetel Ejiofor. Or…

But in the meantime, BBC1’s been showing wall-to-wall broadcasts of a trailer with all the first ten Doctors! They’re plastering the airwaves and the internet with pictures of William Hartnell and Sylvester McCoy because they know that will get people watching in their millions! Truly, the time of restitution has come.

(Long) Goodbye, David Tennant

I remember the emotional roller-coaster of the last few days of October and first few of November – up to my parents to see the dentist for urgent drilling, lurching back in time for my birthday and the news suddenly breaking that David Tennant was leaving, then the joy of Obama and heartbreak of Proposition 8 – and the couple of months since have been a frenzy of media speculation. There’s been nothing like it since Tom Baker left (and sorry, Lawrence, otherwise the most comprehensive tipping about the eleventh Doctor of many, many on the Internet and probably even responsible for the Billie Piper rumour, but there was nothing like as much attention when Peter went).

I’ll miss David Tennant, though I know Jennie’s rejoicing (and I never got round to replying to all of her very persuasive points against him). I’d have liked him to do one more year, if not expecting the role to be prised from his cold, dead hands. In part, that’s because it would have helped the new production team settle in; in part, because stretching the last year out with just the occasional special feels like a bit of a let-down rather than a solid goodbye; and in part because I do actually rather like him as the Doctor.

I thought David was terrific in The Christmas Invasion, though I was disappointed to find him very uneven and often too cartoony in 2006. Last year, though, I thought he really hit his stride; the 2007 season is easily his best for me, with a strong through-story and a great central performance. I think what changed is that Russell T Davies discovered that what David does really well is suffering, and put him through the wringer. Moments like his confession to Martha at the end of Gridlock, his despair as John Smith in Human Nature, or his grief over the Master at the close of Last of the Time Lords gave real weight to already marvellous stories. And, I have to admit, a bit of me’s rankled that just a handful of stories after all the emotional investment of a cop-out fake regeneration we’re being asked to care about the real one: you can’t ask “Why would I want to?” and then do it anyway, though I admit that in retrospect there have been stronger than usual intimations of mortality in every episode from Midnight on.

Who Would I Cast?

This time round… I really don’t know who I’d cast. My preference is instinctively for someone old, authoritative but unpredictable, though for the last few years it’s been clear that younger, sexier actors who can have their backs ruined by lots of running. Had the series come back in the 1990s, I’d have said like a shot that it should be Graham Crowden, having seen the demented majesty of his Dr Jock McCannon in A Very Peculiar Practice and his child-like enthusiasm as Tom in Waiting For God (a little like the original casting of William Hartnell for his tough sergeant from the likes of The Army Game and his pathetic old trainer from This Sporting Life, it suddenly occurs to me). And when time travel is a reality, of course, I hope the 393rd Doctor Who production team will cast Alastair Sim. Perfect!

But the Doctor doesn’t have to be Scottish… I remember on a fan e-group I used to belong to, when David Tennant was announced back in 2005 there were people who argued that he was Scottish, and that wouldn’t do, and that he was far too young – ignoring that previous Doctors had both played the part as far more Scottish and been several years younger. I suggested some actors that I thought were terribly good, and might make suitable Doctors, being neither too young nor ostentatiously from Scotland: for some reason Adrian Lester, Judi Dench and Bruce Boxleitner seemed to press people’s buttons, too.

OK, Is It Going To Be Paterson Joseph, Then?

I suspect the Doctor is very unlikely to be American, quite unlikely to be a woman (though the first woman tipped for the job way back in 1980, Joanna Lumley, did the best job of many sort-of cast in 1999), but quite likely to be black. There are as many runners and riders as there are agents, tabloids and fans to promote them. James Nesbitt’s been a top tip for his work with Steven Moffat, but the fact that David Tennant’s been telling fans to stalk him for months (well, and Wee Jimmie Krankie) suggests that he may not be the actual chap. Like David Morrissey, I might even put money against (too late). Harry Lloyd could be brilliant, but is probably too young (oh, dear, I’m at it now), and Matt Smith both too young and a bit too insipid when I’ve seen him… The big question, really, seems to be not ‘Who will it be from this big list?’ but ‘Will it be Paterson, or a surprise?’

It’s difficult to think how Paterson Joseph has been on the boil for so many weeks, having first been the ‘surprise’, without some sort of discreet plugging from inside sources. So, is he just a big bluff? Pretty much every other surprise story that’s leaked out in the last four years has turned out to be true, and there was that slip in an interview from one of his co-stars in Survivors (in which he was rather good, if underused, and given a cliffhanging ‘He’s been shot in the chest so he doesn’t have to be in the second series if, cough, he’s cast in anything else’), but you never know – this could be the one. It’s got to the stage that it could almost be a disappointment either way: disappointed that he’s not a surprise, or all keyed up to expect him and disappointed if it’s someone who doesn’t seem as good. I’m sure whoever it is will cope, though.

Back in 2005, when I was thinking of potential Doctors who were either black, female or American – all attributes I knew would wind up some fans, but trying to come up with actors I’d rather like in the part as well as for mischief-making – three black actors all sprang to mind. They were Adrian Lester (charismatic and sexy), Don Warrington (charismatic and authoritative) and, of course, Paterson Joseph (charismatic and dangerous). I went for Adrian, simply, because I was wary I was associating the other two too much with one Doctorish part and thinking ‘that was good’: respectively, Rassilon in Doctor Who CDs (particularly Neverland, ironically) and the Marquis de Carabas in Neverwhere. Neverwhere was the first time I remembered seeing Paterson Joseph in anything, and – appropriately for a series that felt very much like someone trying to do something very like Doctor Who – he instantly seemed to be playing a Doctor-like character perfectly. It’s precisely because of that that I had reservations a decade later, because although his playing of that role was a perfect ringer for the Doctor, I don’t want the Doctor to be just a repeat of AN Other Role. I can remember long wariness of polls during the wilderness years where fans pleaded for the Doctor to be played by, say, ‘Captain Picard’ or ‘Mr Giles’, rather than looking at the whole range of the actors who’d played them.

Despite all that, Paterson’s a fine actor, and it’s been enough time since Neverwhere that I’m sure he could do something new and exciting even in much the same part, and for anyone, sorry to feel I have to say this, who complains that the Doctor’s never black before… Oh, get a life. If you’re a racist, have you ever actually watched the show? And if you’re just a pedantic, conservative fan, you’re wrong, too. As I wrote a couple of months ago, we saw a potential black Doctor in The War Games in 1969. He’s up there, right on screen, no denying it, when the Time Lords offer a choice of new bodies to Patrick Troughton’s Doctor on his execution and the Doctor turns them all down. The Doctor calls out “Too fat” as part of looking for excuses for the lot of them, and I’ve never spotted anyone trying to mis-hear it as “Too black” (since then, we’ve had a fat Doctor, and a thin one, too, so you can't use those excuses either. Yay!). So, that’s 39 years out of the 42 that we knew the Doctor could change body that we knew he could change not just his hair colour but his melanin count (or alien equivalent), too. And only a few minutes to find out…

Are you excited? I am.


5.40 update: Well, he’s going to be really young, so it’s not a woman, and it’s not Paterson – now forever the former next Doctor, poor man. It’s a surprise. Is it really Russell Tovey after all, with Russell T Davies so jealous? He’s brilliant and sexy, but I’d probably slightly go for Harry Lloyd now, who’s both, too. Of course, if it’s Matt Smith, ignore what I said above, because I’ve always thought he was a very mature and exciting actor. Ahem.

And now William Hartnell’s on BBC1! In prime time! After being in the titles! Oh, heaven. I suppose a CGI Billy’s out of the question? Russell’s praising his range, as people damn well should. Ooh, and my favourite Troughton scene, too…

Yes, I have fallen into liveblogging this. I may pop.

5.50: The next Doctor’s 26 (and I’m officially old). It’s surely Matt Smith, and I refer you to the paragraph above. No, not that far above. That was an impersonator. Three above. It’s what I said all along, honest, guv. Excitingly, there’s also a man on screen who I’ve met with Millennium, as his welcome to the scariness that is to come.

The Doctor Who Forum has almost certainly melted down. I’m not even looking.

5.59: Matt Smith. The Eleventh Doctor. He’s on screen now.

Wow.

And he says Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes! He’s right.

They’re showing a favourite Confidential montage to close – I suspect it was cut together personally by David Tennant – and I’m grinning and teary-eyed. My favourite Billy line, too. And I whooped when it cut to the new Doctor at the final shot. I don’t care that he’s 26. I just want him to be marvellous.


If you’ve just watched The Eleventh Doctor and been taken with some of the Twentieth Century Doctors, incidentally, there’s a bewildering array of their stories available on DVD (and more every month). If you can’t decide which to go for, here are some tips I prepared earlier.


Next, what about the next Master? Who can live up to the legend?

There’s no doubt, of course – albeit too late for the Christmas number one – about the new hit sweeping the nation (later: in between making toptastic poptastic hits, Will has even prepared a fact-file on Matt Smith. Is there no end to the man’s talents?). Sunday Update: there are more versions! Soon it’ll be better-covered than Yesterday.

Comedy links pre-prepared, of course, because now I’m all emotional.


* And you can trust me on this, because the last time I was so sure about who a wide-open pick wouldn’t be, I knew there was absolutely no way John McCain could possibly pick Sarah Palin.

** (See *)

Labels: A Very Peculiar Practice, Blogs, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Fandom, Joanna Lumley, Matt Smith, Music, Sylvester McCoy, Top Tips, William Hartnell

The New Adventures increase in breadth and confidence, with cyberpunk future histories and the series’ defining companion, archaeologist Professor Bernice Summerfield. Andrew Cartmel writes urban nightmares of poverty, pollution and profiteering private corporations; Ben Aaronovitch’s nuts become infamous; Marc Platt’s Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible is one of the stand-out novels, turning the series inside-out with a new, old mythology; and another favourite is…

Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Nightshade

“In her shock, Betty could have been forgiven for not recognising the creature. But, in point of fact, over twenty years late, her brother Alf had come home to stay…”

A Christmas ghost story from Mark Gatiss. Imagine! A Quatermass evocation of ageing actors, ancient evil and radio telescopes, this is the first Doctor Who since 1977 to scare me (read in a dark, strange room). What could terrify a fan more than killer nostalgia?


This is one of the easiest New Adventures to track down – long out of print, but available for free as a BBC eBook, with new illustrations, notes by the author and, most excitingly of all, even MP3s of the ‘soundtrack’ from Cybertech, who released CDs of superb Doctor Who-inspired music in 1994 and 1995. I could have lauded them under those years, but the one that always stood out most for me was the ‘Nightshade TV Theme’… This was also the first novel to have a special Prelude written for Doctor Who Magazine, and that’s available online, too.

Labels: Books, Doctor Who, Music, New Adventures, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Quatermass, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

It’s far from being all over. Happy New Year, and happy (or, often, emotionally mangling) New Adventures! The 1963 Pilot episode’s TV premiere and the wildly creative Battlefield novelisation both suggest new beginnings, and Virgin starts publishing Doctor Who’s most cohesive and inspiring continuation between 1989 and 2005. A linked theme of the villainous ‘Timewyrm’ runs through such books as Terrance Dicks’ Nazis-and-time-warlords novel Exodus and…

Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Timewyrm: Revelation

“You mean I’m dead?”
“…Oxygen starvation, brought about from finding yourself on the moon having believed the place to be Norfolk. I do believe that’s unique.”

Paul Cornell expands the boundaries of Doctor Who original novels in a story too broad and too deep for television, beautifully illustrated by Andrew Skilleter’s cover of the Doctor. Dancing. With Death. On the Moon. In front of the school bully. And a sentient church.


This is one you’ll have to track down second-hand, and it’s not on DVD, I’m afraid…

Labels: Books, Doctor Who, New Adventures, Pictures, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell

It’s the end of an era. With every year’s-worth of these nuggets I’ve aimed to say only positive things, but this year makes that difficult to manage: the BBC have cancelled the series and, though they aren’t admitting it, we know. In the books, Target are approaching their final novelisations too, but this year’s are not only of superb quality but, against all hope, herald something new. Survival is crisply written and evocative; Ghost Light intense and densely packed with detail; and in…

Doctor Who – Remembrance of the Daleks

“For one vertiginous moment the Dalek Supreme wanted to skip.”

Like one of the first Targets, this one of the last novelises an all-out action story and effortlessly beats it. Ben Aaronovitch’s stunning novel goes at a relentless pace (like its supercharged Daleks), but there’s still room for compelling emotion and extracts from never-written books.


If there’s one second-hand Doctor Who novelisation to trace, it’s probably this one. Let’s hope the New Year brings a CD talking book of this, too. The DVD of the TV story is probably best-bought in the comprehensive Davros box set, where it boasts many impressive extras (and special effects) not seen on the original release.


It’s 11.59pm on the last day of the ‘real’ year, and that, of course, means that I’ve posted this through the magic of cheating several hours ago. With luck, Richard and I will now be in Cambridge, though probably not this time watching The Curse of Fenric. You never know, though. But if you think 1989-90’s end of an era means the end of Doctor Who…

Labels: BBC, Books, Cambridge, Doctor Who, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

Doctor Who’s last year on TV for a while is among the best, with a dark and complex feel, female empowerment and echoes of magic… In books we get The Nightmare Fair, on stage it’s The Ultimate Adventure, and what’s on screen is jaw-dropping. The Brigadier gets a final stand-off against a demon; Ghost Light’s evolutionary parable has great ideas, dialogue and characters; Survival is both domestic and otherwordly, and offers the perfect epitaph; and vampirism is reinvented in…

The Curse of Fenric

“Objects can’t harm us – it’s human belief. And you stopped believing when the bombs started falling.”
“I’m not frightened of German bombs.”
“Not German bombs… British.”
“On German cities. British bombs killing German children.”

Horror, war and politics mingle with influences from Norse mythology through Alan Turing to John Carpenter in a brilliant story so fizzing with ideas that it’s been a huge influence on Doctor Who ever since. The lead characters, performances and emotional grounding are superb, too.


This has one of the best DVD releases, not just crammed with the pristine original broadcast adventure, documentaries and other extras but featuring a second disc with a complete new movie-length cut of the story that in many ways is the definitive version. Or there’s the episodic special edition that makes this the story most worth tracking down the VHS for. And one day, I’ll learn how to override copy protection and do my own edit from the feature-length version, with the cliffhangers I want (and to make Richard’s favourite story just right for him). If you find the book, of course, that has whole new bits again…

Labels: Doctor Who, DVD, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

The Doctor’s taking on mighty enemies: Remembrance of the Daleks is brilliantly made and intelligently scripted, from the pre-titles to the flying Daleks; The Greatest Show in the Galaxy mixes scary clowns and ancient powers; both have alarmingly large explosions. In shops, Doctor Who videos start affordable releases. And one night, the Doctor just turns up and topples an empire…

The Happiness Patrol

“Why don’t you do it, then? Look me in the eye? Pull the trigger – end my life?”
“No…”
“Why not?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, you don’t, do you… Throw away your gun.”

An impeccably liberal parable in which state-dictated happiness is no happiness at all – the dictator may seem like Mrs Thatcher, but her policies are sheer New Labour. Plus, her executioner’s a giant killer sweet, and there’s a wonderful moment with a foot and an umbrella.


There’s no DVD as yet (sometime in the next four years), but a second-hand search can track down the novelisation and the VHS.

You might also like to read Will’s The Sound of Empires Toppling on the many different targets of the satire here.

Labels: British Politics, Daleks, Doctor Who, Liberalism, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Utopia, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor in a series that’s brightly coloured and inspired by comics and modern life. Dragonfire brings streetwise new companion Ace and a host of film references (from zombies to noirish love and betrayal, and a villain’s horrible death from Indiana Jones), but I particularly love…

Paradise Towers

“Are these old ladies annoying you?”
“No.”
“Are you annoying these old ladies?”
“No, she isn’t! …And I do wish you wouldn’t keep breaking down our door to ‘save’ us.”
“That’s the third time we’ve had it repaired, and it’s not as if we’ve ever been in any trouble!”

A scintillating script and grimy sets make good, old-fashioned Doctor Who inventive again – no longer in a stylised English village, but a stylised tower block. Bureaucracy gone mad, urban gang warfare, cannibal Mary Whitehouse types who’ll do anything to maintain their lifestyle… It’s a scream!


This one’s not out on DVD yet, so it’s worth tracking down the novelisation or the VHS… Rather disconcertingly, I once met the author through his ex, who was my ex’s disturbing landlord (‘with hilarious results’).

Labels: Comics, Doctor Who, Indiana Jones, Mary Whitehouse, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

In theory there’s just one mammoth TV story (and another on radio) this year, though breaking into four mini-stories to kick down the fourth wall and put the Doctor on trial. Colin’s terrific, more mellow then more passionate than ever against the also terrific Michael Jayston, an evil, er, spoiler (go on, guess). The penultimate episode brings Colin’s greatest speech, amazing revelations and head-spinning weirdness, but the most memorable moment comes in…

The Trial of A Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet

“Planets come and go… Stars perish; matter disperses, coalesces, forms into other patterns. Other worlds. Nothing can be eternal.”

The stunning opening shot’s still one of the series’ best special effects, the score’s fantastic, a murderous mercenary’s like a seedy, greedy alternative Doctor – and the Doctor himself learns not to talk down to robots: they may be having an existential crisis and take umbrage.


The Trial of a Time Lord was released as one story in a VHS tin box titled, in some shops, “Trial of a Time Tin”; you might also track down The Mysterious Planet as one of four individual books. The best option, though, is as usual to buy the DVD, an extras-packed release of the whole Trial, with one mini-story to each disc (though there’s no isolated music, which is a rare let-down).

You might also like to read Millennium’s Mysteries of Doctor Who #1: Just What Is so Mysterious about Ravolox?

Labels: Colin Baker, Doctor Who, DVD, Michael Jayston, Music, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

More monsters, still more vivid villains and rich themes: cannibalism, transformation and television feasting on itself. Vengeance on Varos anticipates reality TV with an irresistible new villain; Colin Baker’s passionate Doctor is interested in everything, soaring when paired with Patrick Troughton against a chef fancying best end of Jamie in The Two Doctors (also, with The Myth Makers, an outstanding novelisation). In the comics, the Doctor’s having more hallucinatory adventures with an occasional penguin. And the postmodernism hits a stylish climax in…

Revelation of the Daleks

“Bring that woman to me. And while you are there, destroy that prattling DJ!”

Hobbies at the funeral parlour: sex, bitching, voyeurism and building armies of whited sepulchre Daleks. Hugely influential, this blazes with pitch-black humour, pop culture and the utter horror of ‘immortality’. Of many fabulous guest stars, Davros’ cackling and tempting steals the show (and your relatives).


Though this was one of the very few Twentieth Century Who TV stories never novelised, it’s been released twice on VHS and twice on DVD (complete with extras like documentaries and new effects), each second time in a Davros box set. The DVD Davros box set’s particularly worth buying, as it includes a mass of audio stories too, and several places are selling it for half price or less right now… Audio Who giant Big Finish is the best bargain as I write, offering it at £40 instead of £100.

Labels: Colin Baker, Comedy, Daleks, Doctor Who, DVD, Jacqueline Pearce, Patrick Troughton, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

Monsters are back in a big way – old ones like Silurians and Daleks, new ones burrowing under the earth in Frontios, some as big as (actually, rather bigger than) your head in The Awakening, while in print there’s a renaissance starting for the Target books, too. Vivid style and colour collide in a more dangerous Universe, which does nice Doctor Peter a power of good: he steadily gains more edge, eventually getting mad as hell and exploding into Colin Baker in…

The Caves of Androzani

“Your sense of humour will be the death of you, Doctor. Probably quite soon.”

Peter’s best story unites ‘arthouse’ and ‘macho’, with a terrific script, dazzling direction, rattlesnake-eerie music and compelling actors. A cynical desert war, noirishly twisted love and graveyard humour meet for a revenge drama where everyone’s destroyed in a chain reaction from picking on an innocent.


You can read the book, but it’s such an extraordinary visual and aural experience that you should get hold of the old VHS or, better, buy the DVD, complete with an isolated score that it’s a pleasure to chill out to. The director’s so good he’s doing the new Doctor Who stories these days, too.

Labels: Colin Baker, Doctor Who, DVD, Film Noir, Music, Peter Davison, Pictures, Reviews, Style, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

There’s a party (with added hangover) mood this year for Doctor Who’s twentieth anniversary, the celebrations finishing up in a big get-together with five Doctors where everyone’s slightly the worse for wear (incidentally, a happy Christmas to all of you at home!). Stories of old glories turned sour carry echoes of vampirism and the Flying Dutchman: the melancholic Mawdryn Undead; the captivating Enlightenment, which mixes ships, space and soulless wanderers’ cocktail parties before climaxing in a festival that’s not quite what the participants want or expect, much like…

Snakedance

“He calls himself ‘the Doctor’, though personally I rather doubt it.”

A busy world looks forward to its biggest festival, but some party poopers claim everyone’s forgotten its true meaning. It’s true, but no-one’s happy when they find out what it is. Snakemas treats include future sit-com stars, memorably scary images and the Demonic Antiques Roadshow.

And, of course, at 6pm tonight there’s another festive multi-Doctor story. Or is it?


See if you can track down the VHS, or perhaps the book; it’s not out on DVD yet, but I’m betting that, when it’s eventually released, it’ll be in a double-pack with Kinda, the story introducing the evil Mara from the inside that we meet again here.

Labels: Doctor Who, Peter Davison, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

Peter Davison’s time as the Doctor begins with a vibrant mix of stories and ideas, set to rather beautiful music. There’s a return to adventures in history with Black Orchid and The Visitation, and the divide between this vulnerable Doctor’s main themes opens up with arthouse stories like Castrovalva and Kinda, each exploring reality, identity and the dark places of the inside, versus macho stories like gripping Cyberman near-movie Earthshock. And in Doctor Who Monthly…

The Tides of Time

“The scanners indicate a large, hollow plastic object… No means of propulsion… No mechanism whatsoever… In short…
“A giant toy duck!”

Steve Parkhouse and Dave Gibbons create rich worlds that journey from village greens through demonic maelstroms and magnificent Gallifreyan four-dimensional vistas to galactic wars. Mind-expanding, surreal and moving, this remains DWM’s greatest work, influencing many later Doctor Who strips and series writers like Paul Cornell.


Originally printed in issues 61-67 of Doctor Who Monthly – which later became the Doctor Who Magazine that still continues today – this was reprinted in US comics, but the best way to read it now is the beautifully cleaned up 2005 Panini graphic novel collecting the complete strips of Peter Davison’s time, naturally titled The Tides of Time.

Labels: Comics, Doctor Who, Music, New Adventures, New Beginnings, Peter Davison, Pictures, Reviews, The West Wing, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

It’s two days ’til Christmas and you’re in a panic over those presents you’ve not yet bought. So, in a last-minute attempt to help, I’ve been reading four thrilling books for this festive season: The Doctor Who Storybook 2009; Doctor Who – The Official Annual 2009; J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard; and The Tangerine Book, The Lib Dem Voice 2008 Annual (some mistake, surely). All of them are worth a read, though the least impressive is “The Official Doctor Who Annual”, which will neither take long nor be very satisfying. And all the others lack puzzle pages.

Doctor Who – The Official Annual 2009 and…

When I was a boy, The Doctor Who Annual was a regular Christmas fixture. I loved them, though they tended to be a bit bonkers and have very little to do with the TV series, either in the bizarre, abbreviated stories or in the pictures, which varied wildly in quality but usually had in common that they’d paid only for the Doctor’s image and so the other series regulars would look nothing like the way they were meant to. These days the rights of the old ones have reverted to the BBC, so they’ve started including them in pdf form on some of the DVDs: you can find The Dr Who Annual 1977 on The Hand of Fear, and I recently re-read it as a control sample to this year’s two competing new Annuals. It was the first I was ever given as a child, and while the stories are, I have to face it, terrible, the brilliantly surreal artwork still grabs me, especially on the dark, intense, absurd comic strips. But the fascination doesn’t just come in goggling at the art or wondering how the writers got paid, but in puzzling out the brainteasers – old Annuals tended to have off-the-shelf but incomprehensible things with matches that you were either really proud of finally working out or looked at the answers and tried it on other people to make sure they couldn’t get it either, though this one’s less copyable optical illusions – and reading the masses of educational articles about then-modern-day rocketry and the occasional feature on Greek mythology. Thinking Doctor Who was a mix of outer space and ancient myths seemed a slightly odd mix at the time, but it managed to anticipate the approach taken on screen by script editor Anthony Read by about a year…

So how do this year’s Annuals match up? And why are there two of them? Well, the Annual made a comeback in 2005 with the return of the TV series, with that summer seeing publication of The Doctor Who Annual 2006 from Panini, publishers of Doctor Who Magazine. It was fun and much in the style of the old Annuals, with thrilling adventures in time and space both in comic strip and text form joined by puzzles and informative features (including an outrageously fannish extrapolation of the canon from one Russell T Davies), though – unlike the way they used to work – this one had lots of pictures from the proper series and was largely accurate, which was forgivable if not quite in the spirit of the thing. This clearly sold so well that the following year the BBC decided to produce the Annual themselves, while raking in more cash by still licensing Panini to produce their Annual-format Storybook. I remain prejudiced against the BBC’s in-house Annuals for splashing the word “Official” about, as if Panini’s was some unofficial knock-off instead of something from which the BBC were getting a great deal of money. Reading the two for 2009, just as in 2008 and 2007, the BBC version will remain the season’s top seller, but it’s not a patch on the one put together with more thought and effort.

Take a glance at The Official Annual. Pictures of the Doctor and the Red Christmas Dalek slapped on it in shiny silver and pink – it looks more like the wrapping paper than a present. You immediately notice that there’s far more from the TV series than there was in 1977: it looks almost like an official publicity pack, full of photos and summaries of the stories. But there’s far less in the way of imagination, with a comparatively tiny amount of artwork and much larger type. I miss the factual features shoehorned in with little relevance to the TV series, though I suspect most kids won’t, and it really could do with a more challenging brainteaser than a maze with bees seeded through it to show you the way. So, my initial feeling was that it was talking down to kids to a far greater extent than the old Annuals.

Being an assiduous reviewer, though, I settled down to read it properly rather than just flick through and sniff at it, and I have to admit it drew me in. This year’s Annual has upped the fiction content rather than just the publicity pack-style slapdashery, and it’s all the better for it. There are even a couple of text stories, with Most Beautiful Music quite sober and reflective, and very Whoish. I can’t say I care for the artwork on them – and very simplified style that I can just about put up with on the comic strips – but at least there is some. The three comic strips, too, are all rather fun, and this year I’ve not read Doctor Who Adventures comic frequently enough to tell if they’re reprints again, so I’ll charitably assume not. The artwork style rather works for The Time Sickness, becoming stylised rather than merely simple, while Death Disco has an entertaining script and a great solution from Donna. The Greatest Mall in the Universe, though… Well, aside from being the weakest story, there used to be a time-honoured Doctor Who traditional of the ‘doubles’ story, in which the Doctor or his companion would land somewhere and either just bump into someone who looked exactly like them or their evil enemies would build a killer identical robot. And, of course, there would frequently be hilarious shots of the actor and their stunt double together as two versions that no-one on screen could tell apart but which viewers could see looked nothing like each other. Nowadays there are just biological metacrisises, which frankly do nothing for me, and parallel-Earth Mickeys, which are a bit too sensible for a good old-fashioned bonkers ‘doubles’ story, and each used far better camera trickery and CGI face-replacement to ensure no embarrassing ‘identical’ characters that are far taller or shorter, have completely different wigs or, on rare occasions, turn blatantly different faces full-on to camera. The only thing that made up for the lack of fun was that both actors got their shirts off, really. But, though if you want to see Catherine Tate topless you’ll have to go to the West End, The Official Annual 2009 has, at last, a return to the utterly bonkers and random ‘doubles’ story and, as a special bonus, though the two ‘Donnas’ look like each other, the artist’s exceptionally bland, waiflike, apparently teenage depiction of the character has the satisfying crapness that neither double looks anything like Donna.

Though the games and puzzles are exceptionally unchallenging – the blank page encouraging you to draw a picture of yourself with a sonic screwdriver is breathtaking – I very much enjoyed the six-page mini-Sarah Jane Adventures Annual nestling within, and the tips on making an Ood T-shirt were tempting. Some of the fact file bits are quite jolly, as are the old Doctor Who Weekly-inspired Know Your Enemy pages (the Adipose is so cute… Same with the Partners In Crime ‘poster’ page) and, particularly, the Intergalactic Guide To Planets and Places, which is at times slyly amusing if you know the stories. If you don’t know the stories, there are in-depth descriptions of what happened in about half of this year’s TV adventures, with the last three interlinked episodes slightly confusingly given backwards. The feature that made me laugh aloud and get Richard to play a guessing game, though, was the Alien A-Z, which has a number of characters that aren’t actually aliens, and is forced to use some unexpected letters (you wouldn’t expect to find the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe under E for “Editor-in-Chief”) and then in the second half of the alphabet dive into the original series for inspiration. Any A-Z for kids today that omits Cybermen and includes Quarks gets my vote, even if Mr Bowdler wrote the entry on the Ood. So, not bad, but something lacking: for undemanding children.

The Doctor Who Storybook 2009

The Doctor Who Storybook 2009 has had far more care and creativity poured into it, and is all new material, though I feel the absence of articles on extinct pantheons, speculation on the future of airships and suggestions on what to do with matches all the more keenly for how enjoyable the rest of it is. Rather than variety of content, it boasts variety of contributors, with seven text stories and one comic strip, each written by a different author and each lavishly illustrated by a different artist – yes, there’s only one ordinary photo in the whole thing. Although slightly slimmer than the Annual, this has far more in it, too, with a much smaller type size that’s actually much easier to read than the Annual’s: not only is the text broken up by huge illustrations, but it’s in two columns, which is far easier on the eye than one big splodge.

After a rather fine cover painting of the Doctor and, er, a Donna with glowing teeth, you’ll see a flippant ‘letter from the Doctor’ in the style of the old Doctor Who Weekly, with new lead writer Steven Moffat appropriately taking over from Russell T Davies. You’ll be astounded to know that, in an innovative turn from his usual writing style, it’s all disjointed timey-wimey self-referentialism, but quite amusing. Similarly, Paul Magrs’ Hello, Children, Everywhere strikes out in the bold new direction of pastiching others’ fiction (this time the hot new up-to-the-minute targets of Enid Blyton and Walt Disney) – points added for Aunty Winnie’s appearance, but docked for the saccharine ending. I rather enjoyed both the James Moran’s story Grand Theft Planet! and the artwork by Daryl Joyce, which perfectly captures a grinning David Tennant. Mark Gatiss’ Cold interweaves The Ice Warriors and The War of the Worlds, with very striking art from Ben Willsher that repays several looks. Jonathan Morris’ comic strip The Immortal Emperor is all right rather than his best, but I enjoyed the art; Rob Davis clearly grew up admiring Ian Gibson’s work on 2000AD, and I liked the Count Scarlioni-esque prefiguring of the monster through his dress.

Possibly the best of the tales is Bing Bong, from the familiar pens of Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman (who also edits the Storybook), with crossovers to Sarah Jane and a central conceit that will have fuming commuters nodding in agreement. Daniel McDaid’s scrappy illustrations aren’t technically the best, but he has great energy, particularly for a great moment at the TARDIS console. The appropriately-named Keith Temple warmed me immensely with the old-Annual-feel Island of the Sirens, in which the Doctor (“Skinnyman”) and Donna (“Red”) mix and indeed flirt with Greek heroes, accompanied by strikingly stylised art from Adrian Salmon, probably the most gorgeous use of colour in the book. Nicholas Pegg’s story proves that inside a Dalek is an old softy, though (despite the book’s least interesting pictures) as it features a boy called Alex who loves history, I have a soft spot for it too. Finally, there’s Gary Russell’s The Puplet, another endearing story of children but with a deft mix of fairy-tale innocence, real world worries and humour (the sweepstake made me smile), illustrated by Andy Walker’s rather fine David Tennants. A collection to recommend, then – none of the stories quite made me go “Wow!” but, beautifully crafted, I really felt I’d got my money’s worth.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

The smallest of today’s books, and the only one that’s no sort of annual, is J.K. Rowling’s book of Harry Potter-world fairy tales, The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Though it’s pocket-sized, I suspect it’s had a massive weight of expectations put upon it. I’m sure many will be disappointed that this isn’t another brick of the adventures of Harry and friends, nor even vignettes from their lives (notwithstanding text notes from Albus Dumbledore). I’m not disappointed at all – I’ve always loved fairy stories, and these match up rather well, despite one of them putting a Bruce Springsteen song in my head. My bookshelves have several books of fairy tales I loved when a child or an adult or both: Irish ones; Arthur Rackham ones; Aesop’s Fables; gay ones; Grimm ones… Anything but Hans Very Much Too Christian Anderson, and I get the feeling Ms Rowling has similar tastes. And, of course, some of it goes to charity.

This little book has endearingly hand-inked illustrations and features five stories, all Fifteenth-Century tales from a world where magic is real, with an introduction setting out just what sort of differences that would made to the tales themselves from our own fairy stories. One, The Tale of the Three Brothers, will be familiar to readers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (and, to an extent, Chaucer), so I’m not sure I’d have placed it as the finale; the others, though, manage an air of familiarity that makes them fit in with older fairy tales (and, in one case, conjure up a feeling of The Wizard of Oz, with its message that the point of the quest is the quest).

The opening story, The Wizard and the Hopping Pot, probably isn’t the best of them on its own, but captures most deftly the feel not only of a fairy tale that you’ve read before in the distant past, but of one from the non-Muggle world. It also boasts the most enjoyable of Dumbledore’s notes (I always hear Stephen Fry reading them), ranging in thoroughly postmodern fashion across how people change fairy tales to make them more socially conservative or simply Bowdlerise them to the point where they become nauseating. It also boasts one of the book’s two most memorable images, the Hopping Pot itself, and I enjoyed the slipper. Despite all that, there’s something about it that didn’t entirely endear itself to me – perhaps because the moral of social responsibility comes at the price of an overprescriptive father-figure who’s something of a git. Gosh, you don’t think the author gives money to Gordon Brown, do you?

The Fountain of Fair Fortune is probably the most predictable of the stories, but might well be one of the most popular; with its team of four friends, witch and Muggle, all helping each other out on a miniature quest, it’s the one that most resembles the shape of a Harry Potter book (if about 2 kilos lighter). Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump wins the prize for strongly resembling a particularly famous fairy tale (one of the much better ones from an author that doesn’t do a lot for me), and for having the name most likely to have been coined by Monty Python. The Tale of the Three Brothers is also familiar from many sources, not least Harry Potter itself, but is nonetheless satisfying – it has the dark feel of several people coming to grief before good wins out over greed and glory. My favourite, though, has to be The Warlock’s Hairy Heart, which goes into definite Grimm territory and uses a variation on one of my favourite creepy magical elements, used in many mythologies and fantasy books and being in a different form a key part of the later Harry Potter books, too. I’m trying not to spoil this, but adults will find an irresistible message from both the text and the illustration that if you try to deny your heart, you’ll only be governed by your testicles.

The Tangerine Book – The Lib Dem Voice 2008 Annual

For the last of today’s books, I should declare that I know several of the authors rather well, and indeed that I have a tiny snippet in there myself. It’s an anthology of the best articles published on the collaborative website Liberal Democrat Voice throughout 2008 – well, technically from December 2007 to November 2008. If you read the site, you’ll have seen approximately 723 plugs for it already this month, but don’t let that put you off.

I’m glad, however, that it’s not been called an anthology, or an almanac, or any such improving title. “Annual” sounds much more fun, and in places it’s definitely fun to read, though if you give it to your kids to read as a reward for delivering their thousandth festive FOCUS leaflet they may feel very slightly disgruntled. A bar chart, a ripped-off Bird of Liberty (set in slightly the wrong place) and a – sorry, Will – rather inadequate drawing of a bus are no substitute for the Policy Unit Puzzle Pages, Join-The-Dots Lembit Öpik, Lynne Featherstone’s Cryptic Crossword, Colour-Me-In Nick Clegg pin-up and Make Your Own Vince Cable that I hope to see in next year’s edition. To say nothing of it being paperback and only half the size of any self-respecting annual, despite having the highest page count of today’s recommendations, and – most damningly – not having got the idea of an annual, which is that it should have next year’s date on it so as not to sound out of date a week after it’s been given as a present. The two Doctor Who Annuals above, published in the Summer, full of exciting stories with poor Donna, who’s shockingly now had her brain fried and won’t be travelling with the Doctor next year? “2009,” both of them.

Still, despite suggesting a little more work to get the annual format spot-on, I’m not going to start picking out posts that should have been there but aren’t. The Tangerine Book (pretty cover, by the way) has, I make it, 153 pages with 79 articles by 34 contributors, though writers on the Lib Dem Voice team crop up for a very high percentage of the content; turn to the Index and you’ll see that, for example, Stephen Tall’s entry is much longer than anyone else’s. That’s a fair amount to read through at Christmas, particularly without pictures, but still I’m told only about 4% of just over 2,000 articles made the cut. Goodness. I can’t think of any particular favourites I missed, though I have to admit there are at least a handful which really don’t seem to justify inclusion (thin month, was it?). Interestingly, the two most-represented months – twice the page count of any of the others – are July and September, suggesting a flurry of high-quality and guest articles. That’ll be, oh, Lib Dem Conference, and… Would it be cynical to suggest, the start of the blog awards season?

There’s much to recommend here, and a very wide range of topics – tips for campaigning, criticism of other parties, criticism of our own party, philosophy, policy debate, coverage of debates, awards results (though not, oddly, for the Blogger of the Year; I didn’t win, readers, so perhaps it’s just as well I don’t get a mention in the index for the shortlist), election entrails, the odd piece or speech from an MP, addresses from aspirants to party office, and quite a bit from well outside the Liberal Democrats and Britain. You can order it cheaply at £2.11 an e-Book, and though that’s the only way to get this one of the books for Christmas (as opposed to rushing into the queues tomorrow for the others), I have to say, what’s the point in that? A pdf’s not all that much different to just reading the original blog pieces, and they have added value. No, what you want is the published paperback for the New Year, £5.99 from Lulu (plus postage, but if you buy a second copy or any of their other books, the postage is fixed at one total). And it’s a different and more relaxing experience to sit back and turn the pages when you like. For people who’d not normally look at a computer, it might draw them in; for people looking for snippets of politics on their commute; and, for people like me if there are such things, the ability to read articles at one remove without feeling the rising need to compose and post an angry comment online. Though each has a url supplied, I’ve managed to resist the temptation, though I’ve tried a couple to see if they worked (they did).

It’s difficult to pick out a favourite from such variety, though I remember enjoying Will Howells’ Something For the Weekend: The Wheels On the Bus Go Round and Round at the time, and did so again in printed form (despite the absence of some of the more animated content). Stephen Tall’s liveblog of the Make It Happen debate was one of the most interesting reads; I’m an only moderately active blogger, and many of the articles featured here reminded me of articles I’d meant to write, but never quite got round to it. This time, I blogged the same debate in more detail but over a few more hours, and so could compare Stephen’s views (much less partisan than mine, but slipping through on occasion and in agreement, for example, on Tim Farron), odd mistakes (Simon Hughes being chair of the Federal Policy Committee – heaven help us!) and splendid turns of phrase (“The Hall simultaneously orgasms”). The first article, Stephen’s “Now’s your chance, Nick,” impressively challenges then new Leader Nick Clegg, and provides a few of the choicer entries in the extensive Index, which for once repays some reading: it provides much of the additional value to the tome, through leading or silly but always justified categories such as “BBC – poor election coverage,” “Clegg, Nick – springy hair,” (all right, that’s just one of nineteen for him), “dreary archipelago,” “curtain-twitching busybody,” “freakish oddities” and “Hughes, Simon – punctuality”. And you can look up “Malta” for yourself.

We get Tavish Scott’s pitch for Scottish Leader and Ros Scott’s for Federal President; I have to admit, though I can see the value of printing what the winner said they’d do, I’d have liked to measure it against their opponents, too, to give a better perspective on why the results were as they were (with a Scott already in Scotland, incidentally, do you think our new President was accidentally allocated the wrong name? Should she actually be Ros Lochall-Activiste?). Kirsty Williams’ victory in Wales came too late for inclusion, so expect that next year. Fortunately, there are selected and annotated excerpts from two of Nick Clegg’s more interesting speeches, as the only contribution appearing under his name in The Tangerine Book is surely one of the least interesting and most vacuous things he’s ever written – a clarion call to support the Bones Commission as the answer to all the party’s problems, without a single word as to why it might be so (just like Simon Radford’s piece on vouchers, which similarly advocates a panacea without any indication of why, how or where it would work). Chris Bones’ detailed follow-up piece from two months later should be much better, but spends too much of its time ticking people off for asking impertinent questions before they were ready, and telling us that the only possible way forward for the party is to swallow his recommendations whole, because we spend too much time discussing things. I can’t help feeling that this wasn’t the best-managed announcement in the world.

In case you missed the Blogger of the Year Awards, dear reader, the splendid Alix Mortimer was the very well-deserved winner from those shortlisted, and she contributes several excellent articles: you might want to turn to her entertaining and informative Diary of a Conference Virgin, which has a fascinating snippet from a focus group as well as gossip (and there’s more in that series online), or her sober and extremely practical After Baby P: what can be done? Richard Huzzey and Hywel Morgan show what being a Liberal site means in mounting strong defences of the rights of, respectively, Icelanders and BNP members. The lovely Alex Foster reminds us just how thoroughtly crap Labour is on gay rights when nobody’s looking and they’ve not been forced into equal opportunities by the courts; Sal Brinton gives the details of a Tory candidate’s appalling criminal hate campaign; and Mark Pack burrows away to discover all sorts of QI-style factlets, if QI were a Lib Dem broadcast, usually with tongue ever-so-slightly in cheek. Oh, and I get a couple of paragraphs in amongst a selection of summer reading; that Stephen Tall runs off with that entry, too, as he’s the only one who thought to include a tantalising quotation from his books. Hey! I usually do that in my reviews, and I’ve forgotten to here. Oh, well, too late now. I want to get this published by four in the vain hope that it’ll influence you rushing out to the shops.

A qualified hit, then. What, putting aside my Annualish predilections for a moment, could be done to improve it? Well, undoubtedly the biggest failing is the absence of any of the comments; it wouldn’t be terribly readable to produce great screeds of them, but it would be nice to have a taster, particularly when some pertinently shoot down the articles published. The next one could do with a few fewer articles by the editorial team, and more by women (and yes, the answer to that is to write for them. Whoops, I was asked again the other week and…). There’s also something much less forgiving about certain types of mistake in print on your shelf, rather than feeling more ephemeral on your screen. Typos, misused apostrophes, punctuation moving onto the line after a sentence (particularly annoying in a heading – stand up, Hashtag taxonomies: the last word in Tweeting
?) and, in a couple of the less-well-written articles, repeated words or phrases evidently not there for effect but suggesting a clumsy vocabulary… A little polish from a copy-editor would be much kinder. I’d also slip in a blank line above and below the large quotation passages, to make the pages look less cramped.

My simplest suggestion, though, for The Lib Dem Voice Annual 2010 (as next year’s publication should be subtitled), would be for it to end with a single December entry – “10 Key Lib Dem Questions for 2010”. This one started with questions for 2008, salutary to re-read at the end of the year, but has none for 2009. And while looking back at what we got wrong is always entertaining / depressing, wouldn’t it focus minds more to look forward, too?


Christmas Eve Update: Millennium Dome, Elephant offers a Christmas present to Lib Dem Voice in the form of a Puzzle Page, ready for insertion to late editions of The Tangerine Book. Can YOU help the plucky pachyderm escape the tortured complexity that is the maze of Conservative policy? Uncannily, it looks exactly like it could fit into The Dr Who Annual 1977, too.

Labels: Blogs, Books, Comics, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, Obscure Doctor Who Jokes, Sarah Jane Smith, Scotland, Tom Baker

Christmas is, more than any time of year, the season when Christianity gets a good press. Huge numbers of people who have no time for churches for eleven months simply like the Victorian traditions and warm, fuzzy bits of the Christmas story. I’m no longer a believer (sorry, Mum and Dad), but last night I was typing to a CD of A Carol Symphony (or ‘that music from The Box of Delights’). So what could possibly go wrong for Christianity at this festive time? Turning on the radio this morning and hearing the Pope and the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool – I’m an ecumenical critic.

If there’s one thing more likely to alienate people from Christianity at Christmas than the Daily Mail shrieking that the true meaning of Christmas has been lost (in between shrieking that there’s chaos / penury on the high street, and promoting its advertisers), it’s pontiffs pontificating, particularly in ways that are self-seeking, un-self-aware and, most of all, stridently attacking love and ordering people about.

Oh, No, Not the Pope Again

Imagine the winces around the breakfast tables of British Christendom, then, when this morning brings news that the Pope chooses Christmas to attack gays and transsexuals and anyone who doesn’t fit, by nature or choice, into his prescribed worldview of sex. Hey ho. Well, we all know the old fascist has a problem there. He’s been queerbashing for years, and we bash the bishop in return. No-one can ever believe that “love” is the founding belief of this loathsome bigot. Admittedly, this morning he’s trying to reach a new low in offensiveness, arguing that people who don’t procreate (and he doesn’t recognise that that’s not all of us anyway) will destroy humanity. As Mr Quist (another fan of Christmas) points out this morning, for the leader of the Catholic Church, this is in so many ways shaky ground. But perhaps I’ve misjudged him. Maybe he was just trying to prepare the ground for his softer side. Is there something you want to tell us, your holiness? Will the New Year bring the patter of little Benedicts?

Using Dead Children To Protect Your Job

Just this once, though, I found an Anglican Bishop far more offensive than Pope Benedict; after all, I’ve had years to get used to the old bigot. If you can stomach it, then, tune in to this morning’s Today Programme and find, from around ten to eight, Thoughtless For the Day, in which the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool starts off merely by being overpoetic and then uses a boy’s murder to make special pleading against disestablishing the Church of England. A more gut-wrenching piece of opportunism is hard to imagine: ‘Save my stipend, or the little babies will get it!’ Of particular note was his one, hurried reference to a Catholic priest who was also involved; because, as is well known, there’s hardly a Catholic to be found in Liverpool, and Catholic churches can’t survive without being organs of the state. Anyone would think that would completely undermine his special pleading. Still, it’s hardly the first time shameless clerics have stood on kids to assert their special rights.

Special Rights To Discriminate Not Popular In Court Shocker

In happier news, then, last week fulminating bigot and hypocrite Lillian Ladele had her demand for special rights over anyone else rejected on appeal. She’d claimed against Islington Council, her secular employer with responsibility for representing all citizens in the borough, that her own personal religious whims should allow her to pick and choose which bit of her secular job to bother to do and which citizens to decide to reject. A registrar, she’d refused to officiate over civil partnerships, claiming this was because her Christian beliefs meant that marriage could only be for one man and one woman, for life. Aside from the fact that, sadly, civil partnerships aren’t marriages, she blatantly perjured herself by having had no problem in marrying divorcees. Oh, but they’re different – they’re not dirty gayers, as her highly-funded-by-extremist-Christians lawyer coached her not to say.

As the lovely Cosmodaddy points out, Ms Ladele was time and again offered compromises by the Council, but she decided that her knee-jerk desire to treat people unequally was so important that the basic element of the Rule of Law that everyone should be treated equally under the law was in fact a Liberal conspiracy to discriminate against her, personally. How the original court case didn’t tell her she was not only wrong but a barking egomaniac is a mystery, but thankfully the Employment Appeal Tribunal decided that her claims were obvious nonsense. As usual, it’s religious bigots calling for special rights for themselves to take rights away from gay, lesbian and bisexual people. After all, can you imagine a court ever siding with a lesbian registrar refusing to marry Christians because they’re against her beliefs, or a Grand Wizard of the KKK in obeying his sincerely held belief that mixed-race marriages are morally wrong? If you want to be a bigot, do it on your own time.

Contrast these quotes. First, the astonishing lies from her lawyer:

“She wants to make it clear that, whatever other commentators may have said, this case has never been an attempt to undermine the rights of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender communities.
“The evidence showed that Lillian performed all of her duties to the same high standard for the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender communities, as she did for everyone.”

Except for not touching them with a barge pole and refusing to do her job, obviously. To be fair, she was at least undiscriminating enough to accept gay council tax-payers’ contributions to her pay.

Then there was Justice Sir Patrick Elias, President of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, pointing out the “fundamental problem” with the original ruling that there had been religious discrimination (if a little unfair to anarchists):

“Let’s say I am an anarchist and I feel strongly that I want to go around blowing things up, but my employers object.
“It may well be that anarchy is my genuinely held belief. But it does not mean that my employer’s decision not to allow me to is discriminating against that belief.”

A Merry Christmas to all of you at home, and goodwill to all people, including the ones that self-styled Christians shriek false witness against, and here’s a seasonal song for you all.

Labels: Bigotry, Gay, Religion, The Golden Dozen, The Today Programme

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