Died and Lived

Some quick thoughts on the "The Girl Who Died"/"The Woman Who LIved" Doctor Who diptych.

It’s unusual and intriguing to see what was effectively a two-part story with different writing credits for each part. Yet there was no real need for these two episodes to be shown back-to-back, and indeed I partly got the sense that they might have been stronger if they had been separated by a few other stories.

On the other hand I’m fairly sure that the second part had to happen now because they’re gearing up to something. Maisie Williams’s Ashildr or “Me” character is, I feel sure, fundamental to this season’s overall story, if it has one.

After the first part I had the idea that Ashildr was going to become “The Minister of War”, the mysterious figure that was referred to by O’Donnell in “Under the Lake” as being something that 1980 was before – along with the moon blowing up and Harold Saxon.

Such an ominous-sounding figure is surely going to be an enemy of The Doctor, and at the end of “The Girl Who Died” he had created a near immortal who might not be at all happy with him about the situation, and who might use her longevity to gain power.

As indeed was the case, as we saw in “The Woman Who Lived”. However by the end of the second part I was less sure that Ashildr’s future role will be that one. It seems fairly likely that she’s going to have one, though, with her promise to pick up the pieces after The Doctor runs away, the giant foreshadowing of Clara’s departure, and of course her appearance in the background of Clara’s pupil’s photo.

However I get the feeling that her intentions will be more benign.

All just wild speculation, of course.

This pair of episodes were probably the weakest of the series so far, but they were still very good. Effective lightening of the mood with the comedy elements, while still not shying away from the darkness.

One last thought: in the pub scene at the end there were two people at a table in the foreground. I haven’t checked yet, but I’m fairly sure that the shot was a visual allusion to the Sandman episode whose title escapes me,1 but in which Death agrees with her brother that she won’t take this one guy, and Morpheus meets him in taverns every hundred years. Which would tie in with the immortality theme, of course.

Oh, and: on Jason Snell’s Incomparable Flashcast about the second part (which episode Mr Snell wasn’t on, but never mind), the alien was likened to an “angry Cowardly Lion”. Now I’m sure there was also a mention by The Doctor of Ashildr’s heart “rusting” or “needing lubrication”, or some such – which was surely a reference to the Tin Woodsman. Which makes The Doctor The Scarecrow?

And Clara is Toto, of course, since Missy already likened her to a small dog.

I’m sure it’ll all make sense eventually.

  1. It’s in The Doll’s House, issue # 13, “Men of Good Fortune”. Hob Gadling; he’s got his own Wikipedia entry ↩︎

Lake and Flood

Well, I'm not quite sure that Toby Whithouse quite managed to make the second episode as good as the first, but I'm loving the new series of Doctor Who.

The Beethoven bit at the start was unnecessary: a rare example of the modern show not expecting the viewer to keep up, but assuming they’ll need an explanation – a pre-explanation in this case, but still. (Also breaking the fourth wall; most unusual.)

On the other hand, maybe some people would have been a bit lost at the end without it. Maybe all of us would have missed the point and weeks later we’d have gone “Wait, but he only did that because he –” Which has its own pleasure too, of course.

My main concern was that The Doctor let O’Donnell die, without any apparent remorse. I have a feeling that might come back to haunt him.

Also: loving the two-parters. Proper cliffhangers and all. How about a traditional four-parter next season?

Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale: the Final Chapter by Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook (Books 2014, 14)

I read the original version this a few years back, when my sister bought it for my son. It was good, very interesting and informative. And I wanted to read this expanded edition when it first came out. Although it’s called “The Final Chapter”, as if it were purely an additional piece, it contains both the original book and the new work — which is a lot more than just a “chapter”. But it was always just ferociously expensive.

Like, old-school hardback price for a large-format paperback. And it never seemed to come down, or come to in a smaller-size, mass-market paperback edition. So it always just felt too daunting.

Then eventually I saw it was on Kindle for what seemed like a more reasonable price, so I grabbed it.

It’s nothing more or less than an edited, long, email conversation between Davies and Cook. Sometimes several emails a day, in which Cook asks Davies questions about the latter’s writing process and other aspects of making Doctor Who (and to a lesser extent Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures).

And it’s absolutely fascinating read, especially if you’re at all interested in the creative process, in how writers write, and so on. It also feels a bit like you’re eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation at times, Somehow that’s not a problem, though. After all, it’s an interesting conversation, and we’ve been invited to listen in.

It’s clear that Davies enjoys sharing his thoughts on his process in this way, and it sort of makes you wonder why he doesn’t blog. But then, if he had been writing these emails as blog posts at the time, he couldn’t possibly have shared as much as he did with Cook, and with us several years after the events.

Space bat angel dragons hatch in their own way

Sometimes you're thinking about writing a blog post and then you write a long comment on someone else's post that contains most of what you were planning on saying. So I wrote this as a comment on The Reinvigorated Programmer, and thought I should repeat it here.

The background: Mike, the Programmer and Doctor Who fan, if that’s not too tautologous, was complaining about the latest episode, “Kill the Moon”. Now, I didn’t think it was all that bad, as these things go, but I knew that other people, on Facebook and elsewhere, have both complained about it and praised it. Which seems to be par for the course this series (and maybe every series). Anyway, I had some thoughts on the matter, and put them like this.

I was disappointed that they didn’t put in at least a handwavy explanation of the extra mass (which they could have done: posit highly-effecient energy-to-mass conversion, and the sun). But as people have said in other places, you’re accepting a time-travelling, dimensionally-transcendental blue box, and a regenerating Time Lord, so…?

As to the biology of the creature… well, it’s alien. Possibly one of a kind. Why wouldn’t it lay an egg as soon as it hatched? Remembering that “egg” and “hatch” are only our Terracentrist words for something entirely other.

Indeed, that could be exactly why the creature’s mass spikes in the last few years or months of its dormant cycle: it’s forming the new “egg” so it itself will be ready to “hatch”.

And by default it would be in the same orbit, unless something displaced it.

But yes, while you can argue all that, the story would have been improved if it had included at least a nod to those points. And they should have got their sums right.

But I think there’s something bigger going on across this whole series. It’s the development of Clara’s character, and Danny’s secret, and everything. It’s more: I just have a feeling that there’s something else behind it all. Maybe I’ve just been trained to expect a season arc since the Bad Wolf, but… there’s definitely something going on.

And Missy and the promised land, of course.

Someone somewhere suggested that maybe the whole series is taking place in a miniscope, since the Doc mentioned them in episode 3. I hope it’s more than that.

Easter Time is Here Again

Easter rolls around on its mad-god-inspired schedule, and so too does Eastercon, the British National Science-Fiction Convention.

This year, as it was two years ago, it’s in the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, near Heathrow. Not the most pleasant or interesting of locations, but it does have the large advantage for me of being relatively close to home. An hour and forty minutes by bus and tube, if TFL is to be believed. And curiously, not much less time overall if you take the crazily-expensive Heathrow Express.

Anyway, the whole family are coming with me this time, which should be fun. We’re just staying for the Saturday and Sunday nights, though some of us may pop back on Monday.

I don’t have any particular plans to see anything on the programme, except the big ones: Iain Banks’s guest of honour speech, and Doctor Who. Looking forward to that one a lot. And it’s going to be interesting watching it with a few hundred other people.

Speaking of guests of honour, the other one is Alastair Reynolds, and i’ve never read any of his stuff (well, maybe a short story or two). So I thought I should do some homework. I’ve been meaning to check him out for a while anyway.

I’ve started Revelation Space, but I’m having a hard time getting into it. It’s just a bit slow to get going. I hope it’ll pick up soon.

A Deadline Crash, and a Reading

Over the last few weeks I've been trying to write a Doctor Who short story. It was for a competition that Big Finish, publisher of DW books and CDs, were running. Alas, the closing date was the 31st of January, which is now past, and I didn't finish it (does that make it a Small Finish?)

Still, I’m enjoying writing it, and intend to finish it anyway, just on general principles. It doesn’t do to go around having lots of unfinished pieces (and I speak as someone who has a great many unfinished things lying around, of one variety or another).

When I do finish it, I’ll probably put it online. Now my question is, does such a work now count as fanfic I suppose it does, on some level. Curious, because the winner of the competition gets professionally published, and that obviously isn’t fan fiction.

Still on a literary note, my friend Andrew was in town the other night, because he was one of the authors who was doing a reading that was organised by Farthing magazine. Until Andrew told me about the event, I didn’t even know that the publication existed.

It was a good night. I missed the first reading, by Anna Feruglio Dal Dan, but heard various drabbles, Andrew’s story, and two other fine stories.

During the interval I picked up the back issues of the magazine and took out a subscription. Then at the end we helped the Editor, Wendy Bradley, to carry some boxes back to her flat, and drank her whisky.

All in all, it was a fine night.