Review: Big Bang Generation

Gary Russell's revenge is best served cold.

In 2001, he published the novel 'Instruments of Darkness', which brought Big Finish audio companion Evelyn Smythe into the BBC Books and established her, and by extension the Big Finish audios, as "canonical" (for those who take such things seriously). It received lackluster reviews, primarily from people who felt that it was an exercise in nostalgia, excessive continuity references, filling in plot holes from other Gary Russell novels, and hagiography for a companion that Russell had created and clearly loved, but couldn't show and had to therefore tell with several scenes where people just stood around explaining how great she was.

(Shortly afterward, Gary Russell declared his stated belief that the audios and the books were separate canons and that he didn't care about tying them together anyway. Not that I'm suggesting these things are related.)

It took fourteen long years for Russell's plan to come to its ultimate fruition. Fourteen years of patiently waiting for Doctor Who to once again become a global televised phenomenon, for the TV series to adapt Big Finish audios and Virgin New Adventures in a way that cast doubt on the canonicity of the books and the CDs from the Wilderness Years, for River Song (a clear and loving pastiche of Bernice Summerfield) to be taken into fans' hearts while the original Benny languished in spin-offs and the memories of a tiny subset of the new fandom, for the phenomenon known as "NAstalgia" (an unthinking adoration for the Virgin New Adventures based on rosy memories of their output) to develop. Fourteen years for Gary Russell's masterstroke.

'The Big Bang Generation' weaponizes NAstalgia. It's a wafer-thin run-around that only makes vague stabs at coherence, with dull and unconvincing villains and dozens of pointless digressions that only serve to hang continuity references on. It's utterly disposable, not awful but mainly the sort of thing that you'd maybe give to an eight-year-old in an effort to keep them quiet for a few hours. BUT IT'S GOT BERNICE SUMMERFIELD IN IT.

More specifically, it has Bernice Summerfield's first-ever appearance in the New Series canon in any form, her first meeting with the Capaldi Doctor, her first official meeting with the Doctor since 1997's 'The Dying Days', and the first canonical appearance of any characters created for her Big Finish spin-off series in official Doctor Who media. In short, this is a book pretty much designed to settle the argument, to the extent that it can reasonably be settled, of whether the Wilderness Years are canon. And it comes down hard on the triumphant, fist-pumping, it-even-mentions-Keri-the-Pakhar, "Yes!" side of the equation.

And so Gary Russell's revenge is complete. Because I have to admit, it was totally worth the aimless plot, the unconvincing villains, and even having to put up with lifeless Big Finish tagalongs Ruth and Jack in order to get Bernice Summerfield and the Doctor together once more. God help me, I enjoyed this book even as I cringed at how many scenes were really just one character or another reminiscing about how great Bernice Summerfield was, and how she was the Best Companion Ever, and how her touch could cure scrofula. Because I can't help it, I agree with that. 'Big Bang Generation' proved that the only difference between me and the target audience of 'Instruments of Darkness' was the choice of companion to get all misty-eyed over.

I actually liked 'Big Bang Generation'. From hell's heart, Gary Russell, I salute you.

Retrospective: Lawrence Miles

The thing that's most difficult, when reading through the work of Lawrence Miles (Christmas on a Rational Planet, Down, Alien Bodies, Dead Romance, Interference Books One and Two, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street and This Town Will Never Let Us Go) it determining whether he actually means anything he says. On the one hand, most of his works are highly polemical and charged with arguments guaranteed to infuriate his reading audience. On the other hand, his work is so densely packed with irony that it's hard to determine whether he's actually saying what he believes, or whether he's just enfolded his beliefs in yet another layer of deliberate controversy. When Sam Jones is swayed by the arguments of the Remote, is that because Miles legitimately believes that there's no underlying ethical structure to the universe and we all follow our cultural programming? Or is he just implying that Sam Jones has always been written as a straw woman by every other author, so why not take that to its logical conclusion and have her completely convinced by Compassion's eighth-grade debating tactics? How seriously can you take a man who suggests that pain and suffering is a necessary part of the universe when the story ends with Benny almost literally shoving the argument up the arguer's ass sideways? When dealing with someone who resolutely refuses to take anything entirely seriously, including himself, it's hard to say.

On the other hand, it's possible to be so sharp you can cut yourself. At this point, Miles is as famous for being "Mad Larry" as he is for any of his books; he's managed to alienate pretty much everyone in a position to get him more work, whether in 'Doctor Who' or anything else. His books are notorious for containing thinly-veiled cheap shots and insults towards his fellow authors, and his public statements are, if anything, even more controversial. Even if he is taking the piss, he's never managed to do so in a way that makes it clear to the people he's talking to or about. If your irony is so fine that the only person who knows it's ironic is you, you have probably failed at the task of communication, if nothing else. Even if Miles isn't sincere, he fakes it so well it hurts.

But then again, it's impressive to read someone who commits so fully to their narrative. Miles does an excellent job of getting inside the head of his characters, writing them with absolutely no efforts to impose his own views onto their narrative frame. The ending of 'Christmas on a Rational Planet' is absolutely brilliant in that both the Carnival Queen and the Doctor are fully committed to their respective worldviews, even though they're mutually incompatible and even though they're both entirely unreliable as narrators. The important thing isn't which one of them is "right", it's how they react to their beliefs. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of Sam and Compassion, of Christine and Chris, of Inangela and Valentine. Miles' books don't so much take a side as they throw the arguments up into the air and let you decide where they come down. As a result, you wind up thinking about his books long after you've finished them. (Even if one of the thoughts is, "Seriously, Sam? 'You don't care about people who die in car crashes'? You couldn't come up with an answer to that?")

Of course, all of these polemics and arguments and debates and philosophies would be boring if they weren't written in Miles' prose; for all that he's an infuriating and frustrating human being, he's at the top of the pack when it comes to writing style. 'Alien Bodies' is a fabulously well-written romp with some of the best jokes in the series, and a clear influence on the new 'Doctor Who' TV series. (In fact, I'd argue that it's the last truly influential Doctor Who novel.) 'Dead Romance' is one of the all-time best written novels in the entire range of 'Who' and its spin-offs. His prose drips wit, power, fury, sadness, and horror, sometimes all in the same sentence. Given that, it's no wonder that he was commissioned at least once even after he managed to piss off every single person he's ever worked with. (Although some of the blame for that should rest with the editors. Did Steve Cole never think about cutting the lines that were clearly aimed at other writers? Did Rebecca Levene never say, "No, we're taking out the cheap shot about 'Walking to Babylon'"? But I digress.)

Ultimately, reading Lawrence Miles is both an immensely frustrating and amazingly rich experience. It's difficult to read his books without getting upset, simply because so many of the points he's making are wrong-headed or insulting or insultingly wrong-headed (or wrong-headedly insulting). But at the same time, I've not read a 'Doctor Who' book that's done such a good job of making me re-examine my ideas; Miles has a way of getting under your skin, poking at you and asking if you've really thought about what you've been saying all this time. You wind up looking at the world a little bit differently after reading his books, and that's high praise for any writer. I may not agree with everything he says, I may not agree with anything he says, and I may not even be able to tell you if Miles agrees with anything he says...but it's well worth listening to him say it. It would be nice if, some day, he managed to focus and control his talent for irony and got back in the good graces of the BBC long enough to do another 'Doctor Who' book, because they are well worth reading.

Then again, maybe there isn't any irony at all and he means all the stupid things he's said. That's the problem with irony; there's always the danger that people will start seeing it even when it's not there.

Top Ten Things Lawrence Miles May Have a Right to Be Upset About

It's no great secret that Lawrence Miles has issues with the new series; his blog lets you know in no uncertain terms that he thinks that Steven Moffat is doing things he already did decades earlier, and doing them wrong to boot. (Combined, charmingly enough, with complaints that the production team isn't letting him write for Doctor Who anymore because they have some sort of grudge against him. At some point, you have to wonder if Miles even knows what "people skills" are.)

And yet...I'm doing a re-read right now of Lawrence Miles' Doctor Who novels, and I have to say, if there's one person who could credibly get upset about the new series taking all of his old ideas and doing an extended "house mix" of them, it's probably Miles. To wit:

1) The Time War. It's Number One on the list because it's the most obvious, but it has to be said. In 'Alien Bodies', the Time Lords got into a big war with a mysterious enemy that was also time-active and capable of operating on their level, and they were taking it on the chin. In the new series, the Time Lords had gotten into a big war with a mysterious enemy that was also time-active and capable of operating on their level, and they took it on the chin. The only real difference was that Miles thought that it would be stupid if the enemy was just "the Daleks" at the end of it all. (Mind you, it's easy to act smug if you never had to admit that the Enemy was really the Voord or something.) It's worth pointing out, by the way, that the original plan for the TV show when they weren't sure if they could get the rights to the Daleks was to have the Toclafane act as the destroyers of the Time Lords...and that the revelation that they were the human race from the distant future would have been the big revelation to end Series Three. Worth remembering in light of Miles' comments that the Enemy "came from Earth".

2) The Time Lords. In 'The End of Time', you discover that the reason the Doctor killed the Time Lords along with the Daleks is that they'd become just as bad as the Daleks by the end--the War had twisted them into monsters. Between 'Alien Bodies', 'Dead Romance' and 'Interference', it'd be hard to claim that this wasn't something that worked its way into the popular conception of Gallifrey.

3) 'The Name of the Doctor'. Oh let's see...a story where the Doctor's eventual future death in some vast battle too terrible to be imagined became known to his present self, and in which his future remains turned out to be vitally important to the future of the universe because his biodata--the traces of his entire lifeline--was so special and unique. Huh. And we thought Moffat was dropping an 'Alien Bodies' reference in 'The Impossible Astronaut'.

4)River Song. There's a throwaway line in 'Christmas on a Rational Planet' about Benny's potential child being shaped by exposure to the environment within the TARDIS, and how she would wind up being a potential next step between the human race and the Time Lords. That was a full thirteen years before 'Silence in the Library'. Just sayin'.

5) 'The Runaway Bride'. And speaking of 'Christmas on a Rational Planet', the idea of the ancient Time Lords fundamentally altering the very structure of the universe to make it more fit for habitation by the Time Lords was echoed here, with the "huon particles" that hadn't existed since the beginning of time.

6) The Sycorax. Creepy bad guys who wear skull-masks and use blood control like "a cheap bit of voodoo". You could almost hear Miles' blood pressure racheting up when they showed up on screen.

7) 'School Reunion'. Sarah Jane comes back, but she's older and she's independently investigating a threat to Earth. She gets tangled up with the Doctor again, and winds up discovering that she has a lot in common with his latest companion, who's a fit young blonde woman. I'm not saying that Lawrence Miles was the only person to come up with that idea, but it was a pretty prominent "event" story right before the books lost their claim to being the Official Continuation of Who.

8) The Moffat openings. You know what I mean--'Bells of St. John's', 'The Pandorica Opens', 'The Wedding of River Song'...those really rapid-fire openings that start off with a spectacular set-piece moment that leads into the episode in a totally unexpected way. Now go back and re-read 'Alien Bodies', which opens with the Doctor playing chess with a UNISYC general who tries to have him killed because they found something in Borneo that proves he can die...only to have the Doctor escape by jumping into the TARDIS which is parked sideways halwfway up a building. Moffat was, I don't think there's anything wrong with admitting, influenced by the narrative style of 'Alien Bodies'.

9) River Song escapes by jumping into the TARDIS which is parked sideways halfway up a building. The only real difference is that the Doctor didn't land in the swimming pool.

10) 'The End of Time'. Rassilon's plan is pretty much exactly what the Celestis did. Word for freaking word.

There you go. Ten ways that Lawrence Miles was an incredibly influential figure in Doctor Who on a level all out of proportion to the current recognition he gets for it, and I didn't even mention TARDISes in human form. I think that's pretty restrained of me, to be honest.

A Thematic Chronology of the New Adventures

(Originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide on April 23, 2003)


I've been going on about this on Jade Pagoda for a while, so I do think it's time to set down my personal ideas of how the NAs wound up working in terms of their structure -- that is to say, even though it wasn't intended to have a unified, 61-book arc, it does seem that you can pin down various phases of characterization, theme, and so forth that exist in addition to and superseding the various different "story arcs" we see. There are, no doubt, a number of sub-phases this could be broken down into further, but I feel that simplicity is a virtue, so three it is.

Phase One: Birth Pangs
Timewyrm: Genesys-No Future

This first arc dealt with the baggage left behind by the TV series, with its new and radically different portrayal both of the Doctor (a more manipulative, "darker" Doctor who played bigger games with higher stakes) and of the relationship between the Doctor and his companion (trust and friendship, as with previous companions, but an undercurrent of manipulation and resentment that was entirely new.) Ace underwent significant change, turning from an angsty teenager to a violent and angsty adult, and we saw a new companion introduced in Bernice, who entered the series aware of the Doctor's manipulative nature, but very wary of it. As the series progressed through several "false resolutions" of the issue (Timewyrm: Revelation, Love and War, Lucifer Rising), tension levels rose among the TARDIS crew, finally culminating in the Alternate Universe Cycle, where an outside opponent used these tensions as a weapon against the Doctor. Defeating the enemy meant reconciling with his friends, and breaking the tension once and for all.

Phase Two: Smelling the Roses Tragedy Day-Happy Endings

After No Future, the Doctor and his companions finally and definitively reconciled with each other. The Doctor became somewhat less manipulative, but just as importantly, his companions grew to understand the pressures he was under, and come to accept their roles as occasional pawns. It even became something of a running joke (lines like "needs must when the Doctor drives" in SLEEPY, or the wonderful interchange between Chris and Roz in Death and Diplomacy). Every once in a while, hints of that tension rose up again (as in Head Games, where Melanie compares the Doctor she sees quite unfavorably with the Doctor she knew), but for the most part, the danger and tension came from outside of the TARDIS here, rather than inside. Even when Ace left, it was to take up the Doctor's role as protector of time, not because she hated him -- symbolically, at least, she'd become his daughter taking on the family profession. Her later appearances confirm and heighten this impression; witness Happy Endings, where she and the Doctor talk about the impending death of Danny Pain like two true professionals. Two new companions replace her, Chris and Roz, but they get assimilated into the TARDIS crew quickly, easily, and with the barest minimum of angst. All of this joy, happiness, and more straightforward adventures culminates in Happy Endings, Bernice's wedding and essentially a celebration and summation of the 49 previous New Adventures. It ends with the Doctor trying to leave his friends behind, only to be told, "Nobody should be alone."

Phase Three: Grave Reservations GodEngine-The Dying Days

By this point in real life, the television movie had already come out -- the Seventh Doctor, after gaining an extension to his life in print, suddenly found himself obsolete. From this point on, the New Adventures begin concentrating on connecting their stories to the FOX movie, and that meant preparing the Doctor for his own impending demise. Suitably for Time's Champion, the Doctor knew of his regeneration, and books like The Room With No Doors and Lungbarrow focused on his decision to face his future, and his own possible death, head-on. (It's important to note that the Doctor only knew of his future existence up through his seventh self -- as he puts it, he's the original Eighth Man Bound.) The Doctor wasn't the only person to face death, though; with So Vile A Sin, the series gave us the first companion death since Kamelion's in Planet of Fire, and the first meaningful companion death since Adric's in Earthshock. Like the Doctor, Roz knew that she faced death; her wonderful line, "This isn't history, it's family," could almost foreshadow the Doctor's trip to Lungbarrow. Ultimately, the books suggested that they were culminating this mortality trip the only way they could, as The Dying Days killed off the Eighth Doctor mid-way through the novel -- however, Lance Parkin saved the Doctor and ended the final phase of the New Adventures, an exploration of death, with a celebration of life. Regenerated and renewed, the Doctor continued on to a new series of adventures, if not to a series of New Adventures.

Review: Decalog 4

Decalog 4 was the kind of project that was almost indescribable to anyone
outside of the fan community of Doctor Who, and scarcely describable to anyone
inside it: "It's a short story collection about the ancestors of one of the
Seventh Doctor's companions." OK, not exactly indescribable, but the question
that follows was inevitably, "Why her?" and the answer, I suppose, must have
been, "Why not?" The collection that followed is good--several stories are
readable, but unspectacular, a few are quite clever, and one or two are very
good indeed. Given the uneveness of other Decalogs, that's quite an achievement.

Spoilers...













In general, I did think that the theme of the story--ancestors of Roz
Forrester--could have been a bit more developed. As it was, it kind of seemed
that the theme of the collection was "people with the last name Forrester",
instead of a coherent meta-narrative. (The previous Decalog, Consequences,
worked its meta-narrative quite well, with each story leading into the next in
subtle ways.) However, the stories themselves were good...although after reading
most of them, I had the urge to wonder how the Forrester family made it to the
30th century after most of them died horribly. :)

'Second Chances', by Alex Stewart, falls into the "readable" category--it's kind
of a cyberpunk "old standard", about a man who dies while jacked into the Net
and his computer self has to find his killer. However, it doesn't fall victim to
most of the cliches that attend that plot, and has kind of a sweet ending, so I
could deal with it. :)

"No One Goes To Halfway There", by Kate Orman, has one of the best titles of any
short stories I've read. The story itself is pretty good, too, although there's
a sort of a sense of...I dunno, been there done that. Woman sacrifices herself
heroically to save humankind, yes, seen it. :) Still quite good, though.

"Shopping For Eternity", by Gus Smith, is just strange. Really strange...it's
about a grifter who's being tapped to be a corporate messiah, and they're
following his every move, and everything he does to try to escape just leads him
back into their clutches, and...it's very strange. Not necessarily bad, but just
really, really odd.

"Heritage", by Ben Jeapes, is one of the few stories in the book that actually
ties in with one of the other stories--and hence, deserves credit for that
alone. It's about a woman on a cryogenic sleeper ship awoken by one of her own
descendants (and again, that's a pretty hoary old sci-fi plot), but again, it
does something interesting with it. Also again, it ends with the Forresters in
question biting the dust. Maybe Roz had a rare genetic disorder that compelled
self-sacrifice.

"Burning Bright", by Liz Holliday, is very good so long as you ignore the fact
that it makes absolutely no sense. :) It's about people being telepathically
stimulated to riot and destroy, which is a fine start to your plot...by an
insane telepathic weather control satellite that thinks it's a god, which as far
as I'm concerned needs a lot more explication before you can just drop it in as
a plot element. :) Really well-written, but I still want to know a bit more
about what caused the weather control satellite to go insane and think it was
God before I buy the plot.

"C9H13NO3", by Peter Anghelides (that's actually chemical notation, but I don't
have the font for it) is an interesting story that probably needs to be read
twice to understand it fully. It all involves synthetic people and downloaded
memories, and didn't really drive me wild, but again, I think if I re-read it
I'd find it a lot better.

"Approximate Time of Death", by Richard Salter, is a very clever murder mystery
with a fascinating twist that I won't reveal, even here. There's a bit of a
cheat involving the twist--things that you think are happening turn out to be
just a clever narrative trick, but I can't go into further detail--but I'm
willing to forgive it because it's a very clever murder mystery.

"Secrets of the Black Planet", by Lance Parkin, reminds me a lot of
'EarthWorld', and I mean that in a good way. It's all about the ways we rewrite
history, has some horrendously good puns, and a nice twist ending. Probably the
best of the collection.

"Rescue Mission", by Paul Leonard, is dark, twisted, and strangely poetic.
Again, another story that left me questioning the longevity of the Forrester
line, but still a very good story--albeit very depressing.

"Dependence Day", by Andy Lane and Justin Richards, asks more questions than it
answers, but does serve as a sequel of sorts to 'So Vile A Sin'. Still, though,
given the way it ends, it almost seems as though it's paving the way for a
sequel. An interesting choice of final stories, and although I liked it, I'm
still not sure if I liked it. :)