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We’re very sorry to learn of the passing of author Justin Richards, best known for his work on Doctor Who fiction, who had long helped shape the series path in books and more for many years
In Memoriam: Doctor Who Author and Editor Justin Richards
Sorry, I didn't realise.
Meanwhile, Jack's driving the SUV with three corpses as passengers. One's a Weevil he accidentally ran over.
Torchwood Three in a nutshell, really.
Look I'm just gonna say it, if you've written a werewolf novel where I'm having significantly more fun reading the academic articles on the subject of werewolves that I want to cite in my review than I am the novel itself, well, you've written a shitty werewolf novel.
(Everybody say thank you Robert McKay and John Miller for Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic. Saving me by actually giving me something to talk about with this absolute flatline of a novel.)
Okay, just finished "The Missy Chronicles" time for a review! Some spoilers ahead, so read at your own peril. This one will be long, so buckle up...
1/6 part: "dismemberment" by James Goss. Directly after Missy regenerates, and everything was just so perfectly done and in character I loved it to bits! I cackled, I completely understood where Missy was coming from, some graphic depictions of violence but not too graphic because it was about 40 pages long. Loved it!
I also loved how some things were left a bit ambiguous. What happened to Saffron and her kids after the story? And where did Missy get the blood for her blood rain from? Read this if you like dishing out vengeance to horrible people (: she truly gave them a taste of their own medicine. Also, good links to the TV series! Grab an ☂️, because I think it's about to start raining...
2/6 part: "Lords and Masters". This is a story where the Time Lords hijack Missy's TARDIS. I did not expect to like it as much as I did- Missy's clear yet successful manipulation of Yayani, who I loved and wanted more of, but also I liked that she was killed. It just fit. Very gripping story by Cavan Scott!
3/6 part: "Teddy Sparkles Must Die!" The first audio of the "Missy" big finish series was based on this! This one was by Paul Magrs, and I really loved the way Missy had to inadvertently save the world. Ominous ending... Wink!
4/6: "The Liar, the Glitch, and the War Zone" by Peter Anghelides. This was the first ever appearance of 13 (after 12's regeneration scene, that is), before even The Woman Who Fell To Earth!!! Such a great story, loved the Doctor swooping in and cleaning up the mess that Missy leaves behind (rescuing Antonia). Great name for the story, too, plus some interesting new aliens and concepts introduced.
5/6: "Girl Power!" By Jacqueline Rayner. Undoubtedly my favourite of all the stories! Set during the Vault arc, I loved the format most of all, done all through requests and over the internet! The character development, the women through history I was introduced to, plus the shipping company constantly messing up and 12/Nardole's dynamic??? The entire thing was just so perfect. 12/10 (:
6/6: "Alit in Underland" by Richard Dinnick. Felt the writing was slightly sparse, liked the visual imagery, and really liked the characterisation of Alit from her POV! Really liked the struggle with morality Vs feeling like the Doctor has sort of brainwashed Missy. The toxicity of the whole relationship really comes through here, and I loved that! Especially loved all the little glimpses into Missy's genius, and into their lives during this time. Wonderful.
Whole book: conclusion. Definitely worth the read! My top three were Girl Power, Dismemberment, and Lords and Masters. The whole Mary Poppins vibe, plus the moral struggle, just made it all so perfect. The characterisation of Missy was incredibly on point, and I actually learned a lot because I had to look some stuff up, and now I know more about famous women throughout history! Girl Power! Was just perfect especially, the ridiculousness of it all. The shipping company causing more chaos than Missy herself? Amazing.
Book of the Week
Another Life by Peter Anghelides
From Cardiff, Wales, the Torchwood team fights aliens. Captain Jack Harkness, from UK BBC Doctor Who TV series leads Gwen Cooper, and Toshiko Sato to a monster in a bathroom, a mystery at an army base, and stolen nuclear fuel rods. Meanwhile, Owen Harper vanishes from the hub, when a Second Reality game leads him to an ex-girlfriend.
Book One of the Torchwood Series
So I’m actually rereading The Ancestor Cell, and something I had completely forgotten about was a passage which actually explains (intentionally or not) the novel’s frankly bizarre take on Wartime Gallifrey.
I’ve warmed up to the novel recently (I still don’t love it, but it’s certainly not God’s Curse to Doctor Who), but my biggest issue is that the Gallifrey of TAC is, to be brutally honest, a parody of the snippets and flashes of Wartime Gallifrey we had gotten from Alien Bodies, Interference, and The Taking of Planet 5 (as well as the Homeworld of later Faction Paradox media). It’s rundown, falling apart, Romana is War Queen-You-Know-What-Supreme, the Capitol is full of beggars, the entire planet is a superstitious mess, the Time Lords are literally almost comedic with their mustache twirling and sadism. It’s literally taking Cavis and Gandar from Shadows of Avalon and superimposing them on the whole planet.
And it’s obvious what Cole and Anghelides are trying to do, it just comes across... I dunno, a little childish?
But, then there’s this:
Romana perched on a bench and watched the Doctor check through the display. ‘No. There are massive anomalies occurring in the timelines. Terrible temporal pulses washing over Gallifrey, causing no end of frightful effects. Civil disorder, superstition … And they are worsening exponentially as the Edifice grows larger. We’re still only ten per cent along the time asymptote, and look at the effect already.’
.... the parodic nature of this novel’s version of Gallifrey... is intentional??? A side effect of the Edifice is actually blasting Gallifrey into a twisted, ugly version of itself.
If not intentional, it at least provides enough material to work with to make it easier to work with my canon welding and understanding of the merging between the BBC EDAs and Faction Paradox.
Which makes you wonder, what was Romana III/The War Queen’s Gallifrey like beforehand? Shadows of Avalon paints a limited picture (and Cavis and Gandar are certainly not the most, aherm, dignified representatives), but the tiny taste we do get is still incredibly easy to work with the threatened future promised us by Big Finish’s Trey in Intervention Earth, Luna Romana, and Enemy Lines. Which, still all ties very easily into the idea that BF Trey’s Gallifrey (Intervention Earth/Luna Romana) becomes Romana III’s Gallifrey in Shadows and TAC by the time of Romana’s one hundred-fiftieth year, is destroyed at the War’s beginning along with its eight cryptoformed clones, and the War continues without Romana and the Doctor!
(Because remember, The Book of the War hints very strongly that “nine” is a misnomer, with each of the “nine” Homeworlds make at least eight, which each make at least eight, which each make... you get it.)
New “Blake's 7: Origins” limited edition book collection debuts from Big Finish
A splendid treat for Terry Nation's SF adventure series - new novelisations of the show's early stories from a top notch crew of writers
Big Finish has just published Blake’s 7: Origins, a collection of novelisations adapting early episodes of Terry Nation’s SF adventure series, as a collection of seven premium hardback novelisations, the stories adapted by Paul Cornell, Gary Russell, Una McCormack and others. The set includes James Goss’ adaptation of the first season cliffhanger, “Orac” first broadcast 45 years ago today, on…
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No but really what is it about Kursaal? It's just so aggressively mediocre and all its attempts at humour are so woefully forced, and the less said about the alleged "horror" of the werewolves, the better. It's genuinely like I'm back in the bad old days of the early New Adventures, and it's laughable that this is how they thought they should follow up the raw promise of Alien Bodies.
Embarrassing.
