Not-Really a Who 50th Anniversary News Roundup...
I'll confess to have not fully kept up to speed on the Who News this past couple of weeks, with one thing and another, something I will remedy shortly, but in the meantime a couple of things I have seen around and meant to pass comment on...
First of all, a couple of things from the Grauniad:
An extract from the third in the series of 50th anniversary "e-shorts" being released by Puffin. The Spear of Destiny by Marcus Sedgwick features "the Third Doctor and Jo Grant as they try to track down the magical spear of Odin and find themselves caught up in a vicious battle between two Viking tribes". What's the betting it turns out to be some alien artefact of unspeakable power? Or indeed that the Master shows up pretending to be a Norseman called Mastar Mastarsson? Well, he should, anyway...
Meanwhile, there's this recurring blog which purports to be an examination of "The Best Doctor Who Episodes of all Time" (and apparently they really do mean episodes - singling out part six of The Dalek Invasion of Earth in the latest entry, although they then go on to confusingly talk about things spread across the whole story). Of course, you're not going to please everybody when you're claiming to be covering the best anything of all time - your mileage, as they say, may vary. But anyway, they've already done An Unearthly Child and The Dalek Invasion of Earth and next up (soon) is apparently going to be Tomb of the Cybermen. Slightly obvious sorts of choices maybe, but all solid ones.
And finally, not on the Grauniad, the 50th anniversary collection of reprints of classic Who novels (or at least the ones the BBC holds the rights to reprint, it would seem) is now available. I'm a week late with this news, but I mention it anyway because really I want to air one of my recurring obsessions when it comes to Who books. When I first mentioned the existence of this collection, I said that if you only buy one of them, make it the Four-and-Romana-II-featuring Past Doctor Adventures classic Festival of Death by Jonathan Morris. And indeed I recommend that book extremely highly to anybody who's interested. However, at that time (because I hadn't read the press release carefully enough, possibly) I wasn't aware that the Seventh Doctor book in the set was going to be Ben Aaronovitch's Target novelisation (more of an adaptation, to be fair, than a straight Uncle Terry-style transcription) of his own TV script Remembrance of the Daleks.
I love that book, in a somewhat strange and creepy sort of way. Seriously - the original, now-much-dog-eared Target edition which must be 20 years old now at least, is still one of my most prized worldly possessions. I could go into a long and involved story about how, when and where I first bought and read it and why I love it so much (and maybe I will, another time), but for now, all I will say is - good read. Good, good read. If you like Seven, if you like Ace, if you like Daleks (or like reading about them, anyway - they're hard to like, the genocidal little beggars), if you like good old fanwanky fanwank that wouldn't be out of place in one of the more involved fanfics you might see on the Teaspoon or elsewhere (big yes from me to all of those) - go and get it. Even if you've seen the TV story a few times, because it's got surprising additions and bits of embroidery that start to establish some of the lore that later fed into the Virgin New Adventures. The new printing's even got cool new cover art featuring Seven himself and some Dalek that's about to regret ever being gestated when he's finished with it. And it's about as fiftieth-anniversary-appropriate as Who stories come, even if the original TV story was not-really-written for the 25th. So yeah.
First of all, a couple of things from the Grauniad:
An extract from the third in the series of 50th anniversary "e-shorts" being released by Puffin. The Spear of Destiny by Marcus Sedgwick features "the Third Doctor and Jo Grant as they try to track down the magical spear of Odin and find themselves caught up in a vicious battle between two Viking tribes". What's the betting it turns out to be some alien artefact of unspeakable power? Or indeed that the Master shows up pretending to be a Norseman called Mastar Mastarsson? Well, he should, anyway...
Meanwhile, there's this recurring blog which purports to be an examination of "The Best Doctor Who Episodes of all Time" (and apparently they really do mean episodes - singling out part six of The Dalek Invasion of Earth in the latest entry, although they then go on to confusingly talk about things spread across the whole story). Of course, you're not going to please everybody when you're claiming to be covering the best anything of all time - your mileage, as they say, may vary. But anyway, they've already done An Unearthly Child and The Dalek Invasion of Earth and next up (soon) is apparently going to be Tomb of the Cybermen. Slightly obvious sorts of choices maybe, but all solid ones.
And finally, not on the Grauniad, the 50th anniversary collection of reprints of classic Who novels (or at least the ones the BBC holds the rights to reprint, it would seem) is now available. I'm a week late with this news, but I mention it anyway because really I want to air one of my recurring obsessions when it comes to Who books. When I first mentioned the existence of this collection, I said that if you only buy one of them, make it the Four-and-Romana-II-featuring Past Doctor Adventures classic Festival of Death by Jonathan Morris. And indeed I recommend that book extremely highly to anybody who's interested. However, at that time (because I hadn't read the press release carefully enough, possibly) I wasn't aware that the Seventh Doctor book in the set was going to be Ben Aaronovitch's Target novelisation (more of an adaptation, to be fair, than a straight Uncle Terry-style transcription) of his own TV script Remembrance of the Daleks.
I love that book, in a somewhat strange and creepy sort of way. Seriously - the original, now-much-dog-eared Target edition which must be 20 years old now at least, is still one of my most prized worldly possessions. I could go into a long and involved story about how, when and where I first bought and read it and why I love it so much (and maybe I will, another time), but for now, all I will say is - good read. Good, good read. If you like Seven, if you like Ace, if you like Daleks (or like reading about them, anyway - they're hard to like, the genocidal little beggars), if you like good old fanwanky fanwank that wouldn't be out of place in one of the more involved fanfics you might see on the Teaspoon or elsewhere (big yes from me to all of those) - go and get it. Even if you've seen the TV story a few times, because it's got surprising additions and bits of embroidery that start to establish some of the lore that later fed into the Virgin New Adventures. The new printing's even got cool new cover art featuring Seven himself and some Dalek that's about to regret ever being gestated when he's finished with it. And it's about as fiftieth-anniversary-appropriate as Who stories come, even if the original TV story was not-really-written for the 25th. So yeah.