John: So it might be a loaded question, but I just have to start this off by asking. Was that what you imagined the Doctor was doing when he wandered into the interior of the TARDIS at the beginning of ‘Birthright’ and didn’t come back out until the very end?
Dee: No. I’d rather hoped it was something more... I don’t know the right word for this, but this is not what I imagined. I was even more disappointed when he showed up in the cruise ship. I mean, really? I am hoping his weirdness is a side effect of what he did to the TARDIS, and serve him right!
John: I think his weirdness was...well, I don’t want to say that as a writer, David Banks makes a terrific actor, but I do think he was wandering pretty far afield in his interpretation of the Doctor. I understand that some people might see the Doctor as an eccentric sage, but there’s more than a hop-skip-and-jump from that to making him a portable Lao Tzu, complete with his own miniature jade pagoda. It felt like he was writing about a character he’d made up that interested him, and then slapped the “Doctor” label on that character. I’d say his original characters were better, but really the only good character in this one was Ruby. And even she was your basic “plucky young lass”, as comes kitted standard in the new series. Or did you like the supporting cast better than I did?
Dee: This isn’t a mature novel. It feels a lot like a teenage fanfic, and accordingly the characters aren’t developed. Ruby was way too young to have the position she had. None of the other characters are given any kind of development at all. I also think that the diversity of the cast was a very paint-by-numbers thing: Oh, let’s have a black guy, and if we have one of them we need an Asian woman. That’s even more problematic given the links to Tomb of the Cybermen, which wasn’t exactly the most racially sensitive of episodes either. The thought processes we’re shown of any given supporting character are interchangeable. A couple of times I had to check who was the focal character in question.
John: I do think that Bono was there as a deliberate counter to Toberman in ‘Tomb’--sort of a “Look, this African-American character is really really smart and well-spoken as well as being physically powerful!” thing. Which made me uncomfortable in a whole different way, because there’s nothing quite like tone-deaf overcompensation for racism to compete with tone-deaf oblivious racism for cringe-worthiness. Other than that, yes, I think pretty much everyone is either undeveloped or developed poorly. He was clearly trying very hard with Mike Brack; the character has a dark secret, a Byronic brooding intensity, and winds up making a heroic attempt to save the day at the cost of his own life...only to turn up alive at the end and win the heart of the female lead.
Or, at least, that’s what Banks was aiming for. In practice, Brack is just a grumpy asshole who drinks a lot and has no chemistry with Ruby’s character, to the point where you’re sort of surprised at the end when Banks seems to imply that they get together. (Really, does this make any sense as a romance? “Yes, I know I came off like an arrogant prick and a creepy stalker. But it’s only because I didn’t want to tell you that I’m the guy who crippled your dad!”)
Dee: Yeah... absinthe isn’t as edgy as Banks thinks it is, either. And I really wasn’t paying attention at the point where he implies they get together, because I was all riled up at the Doctor and didn’t really care about the supporting cast.
I keep coming back to “The Impossible Planet.” There are so many parallels, but it succeeds where “Iceberg” fails because you end up caring about the characters early on. It’s not just the classic “base under siege” elements becoming boring, either. The creepy sneak-up-and-convert Cybermen are more effective than new series Cybermen. But you have to care about the characters being converted, and here I just don’t.
John: It helps that in most “base under siege” stories you actually get, you know, bases under siege. The good Cybermen stories worked because there was a sense of claustrophobia that was almost tangible; the characters were either trapped inside by the monsters, or trapped inside with them. Banks keeps skipping away from key points in the action (the capture and brainwashing of all the station personnel, the planting of the bomb, the Doctor’s escape...) to go faff about on the cruise ship for another sixty pages or so. Which would be almost unforgivable in and of itself, but ultimately the cruise ship turns out to have nothing to do with the Cybermen’s plans. Brack isn’t working for them, Straker isn’t allied with them...they just happen to be passing by when the Cybermen need a convenient source of body parts. And then, just as that becomes important, we jump back to the army base! It’s like Banks has a pathological aversion to drama.
Dee: And that further sabotages feeling any sympathy for the Doctor, in my opinion. I can’t shake the feeling he didn’t really do anything, even though if I recount the plot he did do quite a bit. We just never saw it. It’s hard to like a book without any real developed heroes.
John: Or any real developed anything, for that matter. This one felt like opening a Christmas present and finding out that the giant box contained one action figure and a million foam peanuts. Luckily, we’re pausing in the books for a little bit to look at how the Cybermen should be done. Join us next time for our first Side Trip, to Marc Platt’s ‘Spare Parts’!
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Iceberg
It's interesting to read 'Iceberg' and look at what 1993 expected the year 2006 to be like. One of the truly delightful things about Doctor Who is that with fifty years under its belt, the series has actually outlived many of the futures it predicted. (In fact, there's a double irony to this book's setting, as it's a book set in 2006 written in 1993 that connects to a TV show set in 1986 written in 1966.) Banks doesn't get everything right, of course; the ecological collapse predicted here hadn't quite occurred, and his prediction of teledildonic booths replacing peep shows hasn't come true even today. (Although I think that's less due to the problems inherent in creating convincing virtual reality and more due to the question of just how you'd clean the booth between patrons.) And some elements, like Ruby's mixed-race heritage earning her extra pat-downs and questions about her native country, are downright prescient.
It's easy to think about questions like this, because the central plot of 'Iceberg' is about as interesting as unflavored gelatin. There's a degree of padding that only really staggers you when the novel is over; Pam Cutler's entire character, and all the walloping great contrivances needed to make the commander of the Antarctic base the daughter of the character who was the commander of the Antarctic base in 'The Tenth Planet', turns out not to matter to the plot one tiny little bit. She has a two-sentence conversation with the Doctor and then disappears from the rest of the novel. Mike Brack, Lord Straker, the Panamanian "arms" shipment, the hidden level to the cruise ship, the mysterious device Brack is building, his obsession with efficiency, the escaped terrorist...all of it turns out to be a series of re herrings that never turn out to be important. Basically, if you were to diagram the plot, it would be a fifty-page novella about FLIPback with a subplot sucking up all the nutrients like a twenty-pound goiter.
The novel's "theme" really just consists of shoehorning in references to Lao Tzu and 'The Wizard of Oz', without any real underlying logic. Banks doesn't put in Taoist references because the book is a Taoist metaphor; he puts them in because he wants at least some part of the book to sound smart. The 'Oz' references, on the other hand, are supposed to be a deliberate metaphor; Ruby, you see, is Dorothy, going on a trip "over the rainbow" on the Elysium to a magical land (the Antarctic) where she faces wicked monsters (the Cybermen) and wizards who are not all they seem (the Doctor) and gains great insight into herself...OK, that bit kind of got left off. Much like the Taoist insights. Or, really, any subtext at all. This is a book that means exactly what it says, no less and (unfortunately) no more.
Which brings us to the roughest part. I once commented on how tedious the prose was in 'The Pit', but there's something almost hypnotically dull about the sentence structure of 'Iceberg'. "She shook from the guts with forgotten sadnesses. The hopes that had turned to dust. The disappointments. Her mother's death. The loss of her father's love. The hate inside her. All of it hurt. Like the deep throbbing hurt in her thigh." Any second, I expected Banks to start going into how sand was rough, not smooth like Padme.
Really, the whole thing is mainly notable for its vapidity; it only comes to life even a little when Banks is writing from the Cybermen's perspective. It seems to be the only thing he's interested in; having been a Cyberman himself on-screen, he's really enjoying getting inside the heads of the Doctor's enemies. Maybe if he'd done the whole thing from the Cyber-point of view, it would have been a worthwhile book. But unfortunately, that's one idea that even the experimental New Adventures couldn't get behind.
It's easy to think about questions like this, because the central plot of 'Iceberg' is about as interesting as unflavored gelatin. There's a degree of padding that only really staggers you when the novel is over; Pam Cutler's entire character, and all the walloping great contrivances needed to make the commander of the Antarctic base the daughter of the character who was the commander of the Antarctic base in 'The Tenth Planet', turns out not to matter to the plot one tiny little bit. She has a two-sentence conversation with the Doctor and then disappears from the rest of the novel. Mike Brack, Lord Straker, the Panamanian "arms" shipment, the hidden level to the cruise ship, the mysterious device Brack is building, his obsession with efficiency, the escaped terrorist...all of it turns out to be a series of re herrings that never turn out to be important. Basically, if you were to diagram the plot, it would be a fifty-page novella about FLIPback with a subplot sucking up all the nutrients like a twenty-pound goiter.
The novel's "theme" really just consists of shoehorning in references to Lao Tzu and 'The Wizard of Oz', without any real underlying logic. Banks doesn't put in Taoist references because the book is a Taoist metaphor; he puts them in because he wants at least some part of the book to sound smart. The 'Oz' references, on the other hand, are supposed to be a deliberate metaphor; Ruby, you see, is Dorothy, going on a trip "over the rainbow" on the Elysium to a magical land (the Antarctic) where she faces wicked monsters (the Cybermen) and wizards who are not all they seem (the Doctor) and gains great insight into herself...OK, that bit kind of got left off. Much like the Taoist insights. Or, really, any subtext at all. This is a book that means exactly what it says, no less and (unfortunately) no more.
Which brings us to the roughest part. I once commented on how tedious the prose was in 'The Pit', but there's something almost hypnotically dull about the sentence structure of 'Iceberg'. "She shook from the guts with forgotten sadnesses. The hopes that had turned to dust. The disappointments. Her mother's death. The loss of her father's love. The hate inside her. All of it hurt. Like the deep throbbing hurt in her thigh." Any second, I expected Banks to start going into how sand was rough, not smooth like Padme.
Really, the whole thing is mainly notable for its vapidity; it only comes to life even a little when Banks is writing from the Cybermen's perspective. It seems to be the only thing he's interested in; having been a Cyberman himself on-screen, he's really enjoying getting inside the heads of the Doctor's enemies. Maybe if he'd done the whole thing from the Cyber-point of view, it would have been a worthwhile book. But unfortunately, that's one idea that even the experimental New Adventures couldn't get behind.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Iceberg
I know I said the last book was fanwanky. I don't take that back in the least. This book is even more fanwanky than the last, and it didn't make me feel any better about the Doctor leaving Ace and Benny to fend for themselves. Right now, I'm pretty darn disgusted with him.
So what was the Doctor doing while Ace and Benny were off coping with the deliberately-crashed TARDIS? Stowing away on a cruise ship, kind of foiling a Cyberinvasion. I say "kind of," because really some of the humans do a fairly credible job of handling parts of it themselves.
Don't get me wrong, without the Doctor things would have been far worse. And yet the real moments of bravery in this book are all human. Some are fairly improbable. Some are realistic. Some completely sabotage the suspension of disbelief. And some of them are completely offscreen.
And that's where this book falls down: it's very much "tell, don't show." I could be charitable and say that's because the main character is a reporter, but it doesn't excuse everything. She tells us, for instance, that she saved the Doctor's life. We could have gathered that by her thought process in the previous scene and her noting she has a syringe. We could have been shown the plunger going on and the effect of the medication on a guy with two hearts. But no, we are told instead. We are told about her father's problematic relationship with her mother and what happened after the accident. We are told about an artist's suspected arms deals. We are told that the Cybermen have taken over certain people, but it's never shown how they reacted. One moment most of the base is fine, the next they're Cyber-pawns.
I could have forgiven a lot if there was more show than tell, but at the end of the book the offer the Doctor makes to Ruby made me want to throw the book against the wall. This is probably a personal thing, but given the state of things with Ace and Benny it irritated me beyond belief. The poly community has a saying for one of the biggest mistakes you can make in a relationship (and this goes for friendships as well): "Relationship broken? Add more people!" Adding more participants to a malfunctioning group is not the way to fix anything. It's a really good way to make it completely splinter. And yet the Doctor was ready to bring Ruby into the TARDIS? Thank goodness that wasn't a real reset of the status quo, because it's a complete disaster waiting to happen. The Doctor needs to either focus on the current crew, or "break up" with them. I can only imagine the reaction Ace would have to Ruby. Benny's might have been more measured, but both of them would have been justified in telling the Doctor to go do anatomically impossible things if he'd shown himself with a new Companion.
I am really hoping the next book is better. The highs of the New Adventures are wonderful. The lows... well, they're pretty darn low.
So what was the Doctor doing while Ace and Benny were off coping with the deliberately-crashed TARDIS? Stowing away on a cruise ship, kind of foiling a Cyberinvasion. I say "kind of," because really some of the humans do a fairly credible job of handling parts of it themselves.
Don't get me wrong, without the Doctor things would have been far worse. And yet the real moments of bravery in this book are all human. Some are fairly improbable. Some are realistic. Some completely sabotage the suspension of disbelief. And some of them are completely offscreen.
And that's where this book falls down: it's very much "tell, don't show." I could be charitable and say that's because the main character is a reporter, but it doesn't excuse everything. She tells us, for instance, that she saved the Doctor's life. We could have gathered that by her thought process in the previous scene and her noting she has a syringe. We could have been shown the plunger going on and the effect of the medication on a guy with two hearts. But no, we are told instead. We are told about her father's problematic relationship with her mother and what happened after the accident. We are told about an artist's suspected arms deals. We are told that the Cybermen have taken over certain people, but it's never shown how they reacted. One moment most of the base is fine, the next they're Cyber-pawns.
I could have forgiven a lot if there was more show than tell, but at the end of the book the offer the Doctor makes to Ruby made me want to throw the book against the wall. This is probably a personal thing, but given the state of things with Ace and Benny it irritated me beyond belief. The poly community has a saying for one of the biggest mistakes you can make in a relationship (and this goes for friendships as well): "Relationship broken? Add more people!" Adding more participants to a malfunctioning group is not the way to fix anything. It's a really good way to make it completely splinter. And yet the Doctor was ready to bring Ruby into the TARDIS? Thank goodness that wasn't a real reset of the status quo, because it's a complete disaster waiting to happen. The Doctor needs to either focus on the current crew, or "break up" with them. I can only imagine the reaction Ace would have to Ruby. Benny's might have been more measured, but both of them would have been justified in telling the Doctor to go do anatomically impossible things if he'd shown himself with a new Companion.
I am really hoping the next book is better. The highs of the New Adventures are wonderful. The lows... well, they're pretty darn low.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Chat: Birthright
Dee: I know John usually starts these, but holy cow, I have stuff to say about this one. For starters, the more I got to thinking about it, the more I disliked this book. I am so. Very. Tired of TARDIS-rape. At this point, when I find myself saying “Well, say what you will about ‘The Pit,’ but at least the TARDIS wasn’t raped in it,” you start to get the idea that maybe they need a new plot.
John: I actually feel very guilty, because it didn’t even occur to me until you pointed it out, but once I saw it, man, it was not something I could deny. And it isn’t even something you can defend on the grounds that “it’s just a machine”, either; Robinson explicitly genders the TARDIS in the big virtual reality sequence that makes up the climax of the book (because it wouldn’t be a New Adventure without some sort of symbolic dreamscape-y thing.) About the nicest thing you can say is that Neil Gaiman does something similar, but a) tu quoque is not a valid defense, b) Gaiman makes sure that the TARDIS isn’t “at home” when it happens, so it feels less explicitly like an invasion, and c) Neil Gaiman handles it better on all sorts of levels. Which I’ll leave to you to detail, because I know you have thoughts on that too.
Dee: I admit that I’m going with an interpretation that many fans won’t want to consider because it’s, well, not fun and people want their DW to be fun. I’m going to contrast “The Doctor’s Wife” with “Birthright,” yes, and admit there are superficial but not-trivial similarities. First off, the Doctor’s impulsive actions (and I don’t care how much handwaving people do about “Seven had to do this,” it reads like an impulse action) set off the action in both sets. In both, two companions are trapped without the Doctor and have to make their way through minefields they wouldn’t have had to face with more information. In both, innocent bystanders die (although it’s not surprising the NA book has a higher body count). Both contain substantial amounts of background information which will set the tone for future adventures. Am I missing anything besides the critical TARDIS bits, which I’ll address?
John: I don’t think that Seven’s actions felt impulsive at all, which is in a way the worst thing about it. Robinson is really taking the “master manipulator” aspect of McCoy’s Doctor to its ultimate limits, which makes him out to just be a heartless bastard, and there really is an almost premeditated cruelty to his actions in this book. Yes, it’s meant to be a predestination paradox, but the guilt he shows at the end suggests that it’s not really one at all--he did all these things before ‘Iceberg’, not after it, and he’s really just finishing the job he started. Muldwych is really where you get the “future Doctor stuck in his own Web of Time” stuff, not Seven. But I’m digressing...no, I think you’ve hit the other similarities there. Feel free to go on with the critical TARDIS bits.
Dee: OK, so. Gaiman first of all, as you’ve said, removes the Doctor from the TARDIS. In this case, it’s more like a kidnapping and home invasion than a rape. (Still not good, mind you, but.) Where the TARDIS in “Birthright” is suffering terribly and no one can stop it, the TARDIS in “The Doctor’s Wife” seems more bemused by her state. Perhaps it’s because she gets to talk to the Doctor, and there is the second, critical difference between the two: in “The Doctor’s Wife,” they are a team, allies against the forces that took her from her home and are trying to kill her. In “Birthright,” the Doctor actually harms her himself, then shows up as if nothing had happened. In Gaiman’s story, the Doctor assists the TARDIS to get back where she belongs and then acknowledges her righteous anger, then spends time carefully repairing her and being loving to her in the only way he can. In “Birthright,” none of that happens.
John: Yes. Pretty much exactly yes. Robinson’s Doctor is someone who really does not care who or what gets hurt. He’s looking at the Big Picture, and everyone involved in this book is a detail. Which, I do understand, is what Robinson is trying for; he’s saying that this is the ultimate extension of the Doctor as the NAs portray him, but...there’s a limit to how far you can push the character and still have him be someone you want to come back and read about next month. This is about as far as it can go, I think. When he’s a pointless dick to Benny, Ace and the TARDIS in one book (and it is, as far as we can tell, utterly pointless--there’s never a reason for him not to let Ace or Benny in on his master plan) then we’re probably pushing the envelope. I think there’s a good reason that after ‘Iceberg’, we get a solid five novels of him getting his comeuppance for this kind of thing.
Dee: I know they were trying for the virus metaphor here. It doesn’t work, though, and a large part of that is that they have already done that with Ishtar. This isn’t new, it’s not novel, and there’s no sense of warmth or caring behind it. Amy and Rory weren’t supposed to get trapped in the TARDIS; Bennie and Ace were set up. Eleven cares deeply about Rory and Amy and Sexy, and he hurts deeply at the end. Seven just waltzes in. And if he wants Ace to be less bitter, he could stop poking and prodding her, by the way.
John: Yeah. This is a Doctor who is going out of his way to be the most manipulative dick he can possibly be. It never feels like Jared Khan or the Charrl are the kinds of threats that he needs to go eight million miles out of his way to deal with in the specific way he does (unless you buy into Muldwych’s “the Charrl are the nicest, bestest, sweetest, gentlest carnivorous insects that plan to wipe out the human race and use the pitiful survivors to incubate their eggs” bit, which was a pretty rough example of ‘tell, don’t show’ by itself.) This feels like the author wrote a normal plot, and at every stage where chance, coincidence or happenstance would normally occur, he just wrote in, ‘And the Doctor was behind that too’ without ever turning the story inside out to figure out what the Doctor was thinking when he did something. (Which is, I suppose, a point in favor of the predestination paradox idea...this is a book that can literally only work if at some point Ace and Benny sat down and told him everything that happened, and he said to himself, ‘Bugger, that was stupid. But I guess I’ve got to do it now!’)
Dee: It was doing OK... not great, but OK... until Ace knocked out Benny. From there, I just wanted to throw the book. Before that, I was at least enjoying watching Benny chasing around fin-de-siecle London. It was marginally entertaining, and as I said, Robinson did a far, far better job of it than some others. I found myself wishing that not all the East Enders had hearts of gold under their shabby exteriors, but that’s not an unexpected way to draw stock characters. But after that... just no. I didn’t care how it ended.
John: Do you care how this chat about ‘Birthright’ ends?
Dee: RAGE HISS SPIT AND FYI I AM NOT ENJOYING “ICEBERG” EITHER!!! **pantpantwhew** OK, I feel a little better now.
John: Very few people do. Enjoy ‘Iceberg’, that is. Still, we’re going to give it our best effort next time!
John: I actually feel very guilty, because it didn’t even occur to me until you pointed it out, but once I saw it, man, it was not something I could deny. And it isn’t even something you can defend on the grounds that “it’s just a machine”, either; Robinson explicitly genders the TARDIS in the big virtual reality sequence that makes up the climax of the book (because it wouldn’t be a New Adventure without some sort of symbolic dreamscape-y thing.) About the nicest thing you can say is that Neil Gaiman does something similar, but a) tu quoque is not a valid defense, b) Gaiman makes sure that the TARDIS isn’t “at home” when it happens, so it feels less explicitly like an invasion, and c) Neil Gaiman handles it better on all sorts of levels. Which I’ll leave to you to detail, because I know you have thoughts on that too.
Dee: I admit that I’m going with an interpretation that many fans won’t want to consider because it’s, well, not fun and people want their DW to be fun. I’m going to contrast “The Doctor’s Wife” with “Birthright,” yes, and admit there are superficial but not-trivial similarities. First off, the Doctor’s impulsive actions (and I don’t care how much handwaving people do about “Seven had to do this,” it reads like an impulse action) set off the action in both sets. In both, two companions are trapped without the Doctor and have to make their way through minefields they wouldn’t have had to face with more information. In both, innocent bystanders die (although it’s not surprising the NA book has a higher body count). Both contain substantial amounts of background information which will set the tone for future adventures. Am I missing anything besides the critical TARDIS bits, which I’ll address?
John: I don’t think that Seven’s actions felt impulsive at all, which is in a way the worst thing about it. Robinson is really taking the “master manipulator” aspect of McCoy’s Doctor to its ultimate limits, which makes him out to just be a heartless bastard, and there really is an almost premeditated cruelty to his actions in this book. Yes, it’s meant to be a predestination paradox, but the guilt he shows at the end suggests that it’s not really one at all--he did all these things before ‘Iceberg’, not after it, and he’s really just finishing the job he started. Muldwych is really where you get the “future Doctor stuck in his own Web of Time” stuff, not Seven. But I’m digressing...no, I think you’ve hit the other similarities there. Feel free to go on with the critical TARDIS bits.
Dee: OK, so. Gaiman first of all, as you’ve said, removes the Doctor from the TARDIS. In this case, it’s more like a kidnapping and home invasion than a rape. (Still not good, mind you, but.) Where the TARDIS in “Birthright” is suffering terribly and no one can stop it, the TARDIS in “The Doctor’s Wife” seems more bemused by her state. Perhaps it’s because she gets to talk to the Doctor, and there is the second, critical difference between the two: in “The Doctor’s Wife,” they are a team, allies against the forces that took her from her home and are trying to kill her. In “Birthright,” the Doctor actually harms her himself, then shows up as if nothing had happened. In Gaiman’s story, the Doctor assists the TARDIS to get back where she belongs and then acknowledges her righteous anger, then spends time carefully repairing her and being loving to her in the only way he can. In “Birthright,” none of that happens.
John: Yes. Pretty much exactly yes. Robinson’s Doctor is someone who really does not care who or what gets hurt. He’s looking at the Big Picture, and everyone involved in this book is a detail. Which, I do understand, is what Robinson is trying for; he’s saying that this is the ultimate extension of the Doctor as the NAs portray him, but...there’s a limit to how far you can push the character and still have him be someone you want to come back and read about next month. This is about as far as it can go, I think. When he’s a pointless dick to Benny, Ace and the TARDIS in one book (and it is, as far as we can tell, utterly pointless--there’s never a reason for him not to let Ace or Benny in on his master plan) then we’re probably pushing the envelope. I think there’s a good reason that after ‘Iceberg’, we get a solid five novels of him getting his comeuppance for this kind of thing.
Dee: I know they were trying for the virus metaphor here. It doesn’t work, though, and a large part of that is that they have already done that with Ishtar. This isn’t new, it’s not novel, and there’s no sense of warmth or caring behind it. Amy and Rory weren’t supposed to get trapped in the TARDIS; Bennie and Ace were set up. Eleven cares deeply about Rory and Amy and Sexy, and he hurts deeply at the end. Seven just waltzes in. And if he wants Ace to be less bitter, he could stop poking and prodding her, by the way.
John: Yeah. This is a Doctor who is going out of his way to be the most manipulative dick he can possibly be. It never feels like Jared Khan or the Charrl are the kinds of threats that he needs to go eight million miles out of his way to deal with in the specific way he does (unless you buy into Muldwych’s “the Charrl are the nicest, bestest, sweetest, gentlest carnivorous insects that plan to wipe out the human race and use the pitiful survivors to incubate their eggs” bit, which was a pretty rough example of ‘tell, don’t show’ by itself.) This feels like the author wrote a normal plot, and at every stage where chance, coincidence or happenstance would normally occur, he just wrote in, ‘And the Doctor was behind that too’ without ever turning the story inside out to figure out what the Doctor was thinking when he did something. (Which is, I suppose, a point in favor of the predestination paradox idea...this is a book that can literally only work if at some point Ace and Benny sat down and told him everything that happened, and he said to himself, ‘Bugger, that was stupid. But I guess I’ve got to do it now!’)
Dee: It was doing OK... not great, but OK... until Ace knocked out Benny. From there, I just wanted to throw the book. Before that, I was at least enjoying watching Benny chasing around fin-de-siecle London. It was marginally entertaining, and as I said, Robinson did a far, far better job of it than some others. I found myself wishing that not all the East Enders had hearts of gold under their shabby exteriors, but that’s not an unexpected way to draw stock characters. But after that... just no. I didn’t care how it ended.
John: Do you care how this chat about ‘Birthright’ ends?
Dee: RAGE HISS SPIT AND FYI I AM NOT ENJOYING “ICEBERG” EITHER!!! **pantpantwhew** OK, I feel a little better now.
John: Very few people do. Enjoy ‘Iceberg’, that is. Still, we’re going to give it our best effort next time!
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Birthright
Wow. Now this here is some serious fanwank. It makes sense, don't get me wrong, but it's wanky.
On the one hand, we have the Doctor off doing he-knows-what, his absence more of an annoyance than a chance for Benny and Ace to stretch their legs. One of the annoying parts of the novel was how very often the women go off on inner rants about this. Not that they aren't entitled, but I found myself skipping paragraphs. It felt as if the author noticed the book was coming in short and padded it with grumps about what a manipulative shit Seven is.
And good lady, the timey-wimey got thick. I've knitted cable scarves with fewer twists in them. I could have enjoyed it more if there had been fewer clearly-Doctor-dropped clues. As it was, every time Benny got into a rhythm of her own, there was another drop (and another rant, of course). At least Ace got to do some organizing and figuring out of her own, a talent I wish was used for more than military purposes.
Now the big gripe: I hope we don't see the TARDIS have to expel someone/thing again soon. I really got my fill of that over the first seven books, and here we are again. It starts to feel like that's what excited the editor more than anything: watching the rape of the TARDIS. That's what it is, and it is becoming seriously uncomfortable. All the virus metaphors in the world can't obscure it by now, especially in a novel of what is essentially sisterhood.
The plot worked, and it was much better in its take on the East End than the joke that was "The Pit." It did try hard. Ultimately, though, this was a novella that got overexpanded.
On the one hand, we have the Doctor off doing he-knows-what, his absence more of an annoyance than a chance for Benny and Ace to stretch their legs. One of the annoying parts of the novel was how very often the women go off on inner rants about this. Not that they aren't entitled, but I found myself skipping paragraphs. It felt as if the author noticed the book was coming in short and padded it with grumps about what a manipulative shit Seven is.
And good lady, the timey-wimey got thick. I've knitted cable scarves with fewer twists in them. I could have enjoyed it more if there had been fewer clearly-Doctor-dropped clues. As it was, every time Benny got into a rhythm of her own, there was another drop (and another rant, of course). At least Ace got to do some organizing and figuring out of her own, a talent I wish was used for more than military purposes.
Now the big gripe: I hope we don't see the TARDIS have to expel someone/thing again soon. I really got my fill of that over the first seven books, and here we are again. It starts to feel like that's what excited the editor more than anything: watching the rape of the TARDIS. That's what it is, and it is becoming seriously uncomfortable. All the virus metaphors in the world can't obscure it by now, especially in a novel of what is essentially sisterhood.
The plot worked, and it was much better in its take on the East End than the joke that was "The Pit." It did try hard. Ultimately, though, this was a novella that got overexpanded.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Birthright
'Birthright' feels a lot like a ghost story where the ghost is the Doctor.
Really, I want to stop there, because I don't think I can do a better job of summing it up in one sentence than that, but it probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense on its own so I'll explain. This is mostly known for being part of a two-book sequence that takes place simultaneously with 'Iceberg'. 'Iceberg' is a companion-free story with the Seventh Doctor, and this is a Doctor-free story starring Benny and Ace. But let's face it, a Doctor-free Doctor Who story is kind of a nightmare brief, despite some really good episodes of the new series that pulled it off, and this one's been given to Nigel Robinson, whose previous book was...well, let's just say it was not well-received and leave it at that.
But here, he does something very different and fascinating. I don't know if it's the first time anyone's ever done it, but this is certainly the first book that decides to look at the world as a series of consequences of the Doctor's actions. Jared Khan has been chasing the TARDIS for seven hundred years, and his trail is like a tangled thread winding its way through the Doctor's adventures. Margaret Waterfield lives her entire life in the wake of the Doctor's decisions, and Benny and Ace do as well in their own way. Whether it's the Doctor's past or the Doctor's future (not just in the obvious sense, although we'll get to Muldwych later) they can't escape the effect he has on their lives. And by implication, none of us can. We are all the way we are--human history is what it is--because one person made a series of decisions that caused it all. It's hard not to see why people can hate the Doctor when he's viewed in that light. If he's responsible for everything, surely he bears a share of the guilt for the problems we face? It's a question that Benny is still asking herself at the end of the novel.
Of course, the real problem the Doctor has, thanks to his wibbly wobbly timey wimey lifestyle, is that even he's a prisoner of his own manipulations. Some key sequences in the book involve predestination paradoxes that the Doctor logically must set up in between this book and 'Blood Heat'...does the Doctor, you wonder, rage at his future self for forcing him to send flowers to a funeral instead of attending? For that matter, how does the Doctor feel facing his own future, knowing that he's destined to be on the other side of the conversation someday and still calmly explaining to himself that he has no intention of freeing his future self from exile and imprisonment?
Because yes, that's the other thing this book is known for. "Muldwych", the mysterious Time Lord who helps the Charrl, is very strongly hinted at as being a future incarnation of the Doctor. ('Happy Endings' will later pound that hint into your skull with a sledgehammer, just for those few people who tried to suggest he might be the Meddling Monk or something, but that's for a later post.) And even though part of me will always twitch a little at "a future incarnation of the Doctor" as one of those fan-fiction concepts that everyone thinks of and almost nobody ever does well (like "the Doctor's parents", "the Doctor's time on Gallifrey with the Master", and "a second encounter with the Valeyard"...) I still have to admit that thematically, it makes perfect sense here. Everyone in this story is a pawn of larger players, higher powers; everyone has to perform the role assigned to them by fate. And by that light, it makes sense that the Doctor should also be enmeshed in the web of destiny...and who could manipulate the Doctor if not the Doctor?
Oh yes, and it's also got some great scenes and solid characterization of Benny (and Ace, I suppose, although this is an era during which Ace is at her least likable) and the plot hangs together well and it's just generally a huge improvement on 'Timewyrm: Apocalypse'. But the main thing is all the stuff about the Doctor. Which is pretty impressive, for a Doctor-free book.
Really, I want to stop there, because I don't think I can do a better job of summing it up in one sentence than that, but it probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense on its own so I'll explain. This is mostly known for being part of a two-book sequence that takes place simultaneously with 'Iceberg'. 'Iceberg' is a companion-free story with the Seventh Doctor, and this is a Doctor-free story starring Benny and Ace. But let's face it, a Doctor-free Doctor Who story is kind of a nightmare brief, despite some really good episodes of the new series that pulled it off, and this one's been given to Nigel Robinson, whose previous book was...well, let's just say it was not well-received and leave it at that.
But here, he does something very different and fascinating. I don't know if it's the first time anyone's ever done it, but this is certainly the first book that decides to look at the world as a series of consequences of the Doctor's actions. Jared Khan has been chasing the TARDIS for seven hundred years, and his trail is like a tangled thread winding its way through the Doctor's adventures. Margaret Waterfield lives her entire life in the wake of the Doctor's decisions, and Benny and Ace do as well in their own way. Whether it's the Doctor's past or the Doctor's future (not just in the obvious sense, although we'll get to Muldwych later) they can't escape the effect he has on their lives. And by implication, none of us can. We are all the way we are--human history is what it is--because one person made a series of decisions that caused it all. It's hard not to see why people can hate the Doctor when he's viewed in that light. If he's responsible for everything, surely he bears a share of the guilt for the problems we face? It's a question that Benny is still asking herself at the end of the novel.
Of course, the real problem the Doctor has, thanks to his wibbly wobbly timey wimey lifestyle, is that even he's a prisoner of his own manipulations. Some key sequences in the book involve predestination paradoxes that the Doctor logically must set up in between this book and 'Blood Heat'...does the Doctor, you wonder, rage at his future self for forcing him to send flowers to a funeral instead of attending? For that matter, how does the Doctor feel facing his own future, knowing that he's destined to be on the other side of the conversation someday and still calmly explaining to himself that he has no intention of freeing his future self from exile and imprisonment?
Because yes, that's the other thing this book is known for. "Muldwych", the mysterious Time Lord who helps the Charrl, is very strongly hinted at as being a future incarnation of the Doctor. ('Happy Endings' will later pound that hint into your skull with a sledgehammer, just for those few people who tried to suggest he might be the Meddling Monk or something, but that's for a later post.) And even though part of me will always twitch a little at "a future incarnation of the Doctor" as one of those fan-fiction concepts that everyone thinks of and almost nobody ever does well (like "the Doctor's parents", "the Doctor's time on Gallifrey with the Master", and "a second encounter with the Valeyard"...) I still have to admit that thematically, it makes perfect sense here. Everyone in this story is a pawn of larger players, higher powers; everyone has to perform the role assigned to them by fate. And by that light, it makes sense that the Doctor should also be enmeshed in the web of destiny...and who could manipulate the Doctor if not the Doctor?
Oh yes, and it's also got some great scenes and solid characterization of Benny (and Ace, I suppose, although this is an era during which Ace is at her least likable) and the plot hangs together well and it's just generally a huge improvement on 'Timewyrm: Apocalypse'. But the main thing is all the stuff about the Doctor. Which is pretty impressive, for a Doctor-free book.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Chat: Shadowmind
John: And we have now finished the first work of one Chris Bulis, a name that will loom larger over this blog than almost any other. By book count, at least. Surprisingly, given his reputation as a "filler" author, I think we both liked this one quite a bit. Fair to say?
Dee: I did, yes. It felt to me a bit like "Doctor Who" meets something of which Gene Roddenberry might have approved. Not necessarily Star Trek, mind, but it would not have been out of place in that universe. And yet it was fully a Who story. The thing which is most intriguing to me is how it feels like a nice book. That makes no sense, given the body count, but it's true.
John: Yes, this does feel like another one of those books where the body count was tacked onto a cheerful and charming little book by Editorial. But i think if I was Editorial, I'd have done the same thing. Ace kind of needs to be in a bad place for the next few books to work, and the next few books need to work for her to get into a place where she can be a really viable companion. They must have realized very quickly that 'Lucifer Rising' totally didn't get the job done there, I think. Um...but yes, a generally nice book. A nice world full of nice people being nice to each other with just one nasty villain to defeat. Two nice worlds full of nice people, if you count the Shenn. (Which I think one should definitely do.)
Dee: I enjoy the Shenn. Their eventual alliance with the humans rings true for me. It doesn't hurt that we get to see them learning how to understand the humans, or that we learn the fate of the duplicates' originals isn't so bad. Even Umbra is a "Q"-ian character, in his way. So I'm hard-pressed not to rank this among my favorites to date.
John: There are certainly a lot of things that stand out in the memory positively. Not so much the plot, oddly enough, but the little things. Bulis is one of the few writers I can think of that starts with the TARDIS crew having a really nice time together on an alien world, and I think that worked even better than he intended it to. Not only is it a sweet moment in and of itself, it shows Tairngire as a place worth protecting. That comes back to us at the end, when Umbra is playing out its final gambit.
Dee: I am having the hardest time not comparing this to "Shore Leave," reading that! Most of the issue is that I'm trying to avoid giving the impression that this isn't a wholly Who novel. But I do think there are places where the series does have some tone overlap, and this is one. "Squire of Gothos," "Shore Leave," and the characters would be perfectly at home in any colony world in any universe, so that works too. And yet it falls apart if the characters aren't the Doctor and Ace and Benny. You can't put Spock and Kirk and McCoy in those roles.
John: I agree on both counts...ish. I agree that it’s not written as a ‘Star Trek’ novel, but that the culture the Doctor and company interacts with is one that comes strongly out of the utopian tradition of the Trek future. This is a time and place where humanity has more or less Worked Things Out, at least when it comes to ourselves (as with Trek, there’s a ginormous military presence, but it’s clearly designed to deal with external threats. Tairngire is not a military dictatorship.) And I agree that the solution to the situation is a Whovian situation. There’s no stirring speech that convinces Umbra of the importance of the human condition, no technobabble or military solution, and gaining the understanding and trust of the Shenn is portrayed as vital. Those are all key differences, to some extent or other. But I think there’s a bit of a difference, in that I felt like the Doctor is frustratingly generic “wise mentor” at times. The scene where he recites his monster-fighting credentials feels almost like Bulis is making explicit in the text what he couldn’t quite convince us of in the characterization.
Dee: Ish. I feel like that’s kind of an issue with many of the books, so maybe I’m kind of getting used to it. But I think it’s also OK that there is tone overlap between two series I like. This came very close to hitting my sweet spot for both series, and while the book has its weaknesses I’m OK with having those positive buttons hit.
John: Yes, I think that’s it exactly. It’s just so hard to really dislike this book. It feels like Bulis really loves the world and the characters he created, and that shows through in the prose. That makes up for a lot of the problems, because the passion and enthusiasm he displays is so genuine and joyful that it kind of carries you along. Probably why I still have fond memories of this one, while ‘The Ultimate Treasure’ (to pick a later one) doesn’t resonate so well. And speaking of fond memories, the next book is one I also remember pretty well too. Join us next time for a return engagement from long-time Target author Nigel Robinson!
Dee: I did, yes. It felt to me a bit like "Doctor Who" meets something of which Gene Roddenberry might have approved. Not necessarily Star Trek, mind, but it would not have been out of place in that universe. And yet it was fully a Who story. The thing which is most intriguing to me is how it feels like a nice book. That makes no sense, given the body count, but it's true.
John: Yes, this does feel like another one of those books where the body count was tacked onto a cheerful and charming little book by Editorial. But i think if I was Editorial, I'd have done the same thing. Ace kind of needs to be in a bad place for the next few books to work, and the next few books need to work for her to get into a place where she can be a really viable companion. They must have realized very quickly that 'Lucifer Rising' totally didn't get the job done there, I think. Um...but yes, a generally nice book. A nice world full of nice people being nice to each other with just one nasty villain to defeat. Two nice worlds full of nice people, if you count the Shenn. (Which I think one should definitely do.)
Dee: I enjoy the Shenn. Their eventual alliance with the humans rings true for me. It doesn't hurt that we get to see them learning how to understand the humans, or that we learn the fate of the duplicates' originals isn't so bad. Even Umbra is a "Q"-ian character, in his way. So I'm hard-pressed not to rank this among my favorites to date.
John: There are certainly a lot of things that stand out in the memory positively. Not so much the plot, oddly enough, but the little things. Bulis is one of the few writers I can think of that starts with the TARDIS crew having a really nice time together on an alien world, and I think that worked even better than he intended it to. Not only is it a sweet moment in and of itself, it shows Tairngire as a place worth protecting. That comes back to us at the end, when Umbra is playing out its final gambit.
Dee: I am having the hardest time not comparing this to "Shore Leave," reading that! Most of the issue is that I'm trying to avoid giving the impression that this isn't a wholly Who novel. But I do think there are places where the series does have some tone overlap, and this is one. "Squire of Gothos," "Shore Leave," and the characters would be perfectly at home in any colony world in any universe, so that works too. And yet it falls apart if the characters aren't the Doctor and Ace and Benny. You can't put Spock and Kirk and McCoy in those roles.
John: I agree on both counts...ish. I agree that it’s not written as a ‘Star Trek’ novel, but that the culture the Doctor and company interacts with is one that comes strongly out of the utopian tradition of the Trek future. This is a time and place where humanity has more or less Worked Things Out, at least when it comes to ourselves (as with Trek, there’s a ginormous military presence, but it’s clearly designed to deal with external threats. Tairngire is not a military dictatorship.) And I agree that the solution to the situation is a Whovian situation. There’s no stirring speech that convinces Umbra of the importance of the human condition, no technobabble or military solution, and gaining the understanding and trust of the Shenn is portrayed as vital. Those are all key differences, to some extent or other. But I think there’s a bit of a difference, in that I felt like the Doctor is frustratingly generic “wise mentor” at times. The scene where he recites his monster-fighting credentials feels almost like Bulis is making explicit in the text what he couldn’t quite convince us of in the characterization.
Dee: Ish. I feel like that’s kind of an issue with many of the books, so maybe I’m kind of getting used to it. But I think it’s also OK that there is tone overlap between two series I like. This came very close to hitting my sweet spot for both series, and while the book has its weaknesses I’m OK with having those positive buttons hit.
John: Yes, I think that’s it exactly. It’s just so hard to really dislike this book. It feels like Bulis really loves the world and the characters he created, and that shows through in the prose. That makes up for a lot of the problems, because the passion and enthusiasm he displays is so genuine and joyful that it kind of carries you along. Probably why I still have fond memories of this one, while ‘The Ultimate Treasure’ (to pick a later one) doesn’t resonate so well. And speaking of fond memories, the next book is one I also remember pretty well too. Join us next time for a return engagement from long-time Target author Nigel Robinson!
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