Duchi di Milano

Sidenotes on The Pit

2008-10-10T16:58:00.003+11:00

In December (over nine months ago!) I read Time's Crucible and Damaged Goods. I've just finished reading The Pit. You can find some discussion of the latter over on my blog.

Meanwhile, Season 3 is long gone, and the Davies Era is drawing to a close too. Though one might say that, like the Lambert Era, or the Darvill-Evans Era, it will never really end. More to the point, one might say that I am nowhere near beginning the Duke's challenge to map the influence of Darvill-Evans on Davies.

Endnotes on Sky Pirates!

2007-11-13T23:03:00.000+11:00

Doctor Who theory: p37 - There are millions of signals like this, from millions upon millions of disasters, shot through the Implicate like spiderstrands. The difference is that, here and now, this is the one we've intercepted. This is the one we can't [ignore]. p299 - All I can ever really do is buy you and others like you a little extra time.

p66 - She's ripped. She was almost pulled apart. Our heroes are injected into the story via TARDIS trauma, a favourite trope of the New Adventures.

p124 - Hoothi, Solarians, Greki, Sea Devils, Yeti, Silurians, Nazis, corporate arcologies, bogiemen, vampires, bodysnatchers and Bogwoppets from Altair XIV have variously known what it means to be my enemy or my friend. Ironic reversal of the Doctor's fame, first seen in Love and War.

p22 - ...floating three feet off the floor, juggling four variecoloured balls of blinding plasma and singing to himself an insane little song about a grackle, in three voices, simultaneously. A synthesis of the Doc and Legion in Lucifer Rising, highlighting their alien alikeness.

p19/20 - To what extent did he actively control the perceptions of those around him? I mentioned this thread in my Lucifer Rising notes. This is also an enlargement of the Doctor's schizoid behaviour first highlighted in Love and War. The dark reading is here redirected as the manipulations of the Charon.

p251/2 - But the acquisition of a pet incurs responsibility. That was something of which the Doctor had to be continually reminded. Obviously both Cornell and Aaronovitch had some complex ideas about the Doctor/companion relationship, but, taken as two datapoints, Love and War and Transit (p256) line up to give a fairly cynical tone. This scene joints the dots so that it can add some more.

p129-132 - Sometimes, she thought, the Time Lord was like something out of a particularly manic Chuck Jones cartoon. A tour de force that illuminates both Looney Tunes and Doctor Who. It ends with Benny's wondering if she can only make this analysis, which harkens back to the Love and War/Transit characterisation above, because the Doctor's distracted. The localised idea, that the Doctor has manipulated Benny's thoughts, is an explanation for her "change" in characterisation in The Highest Science and subsequent novels.

The fact that no sheep died today is the sole justification for any moral superiority that the dog who guards them has. Contrast with the first two quotes of this post.

The dog the lackey of a larger order which by its very nature kills, and kills, and kills again on an industrial basis. This deconstruction makes me think of how it's all about Pertwee...

p267-9 - I can't allow myself to be like that. The Doctor chooses to be human, treating Leetha as a companion. No I'm not [God]. I'm just the only alternative you've got at this point. The context is the Cartmel/Clarke/Cornell masterplan.

p293 - If we any of us allow ourselves to be like that we're utterly and irretrievably damned. The Doctor chooses to be human.

p288 - You've been taking us into the pit.

p292 - The seed of this novel is the Time Lord's eradication of life forms inimicable to humanoid life. This is a personalisation of the anthropic principle, that the universe must be the way it is for us to be here. This in turn might be a metaphor for history (less hamfisted than Falls The Shadow). There are ironies in the concrete setting and then the resolution.

Despite the plaudits given to Timewyrm: Revelation, Love and War seems like a more central novel to the New Adventures. Here is Benny, here is Death, here are Daleks and Earth Reptiles. More importantly, I'm not sure anyone ever really came back to Revelation. How could they, when they held it so dear? Love and War is more open to criticism. It's the one everyone wants to (re-)write. As it happens, the books I've been reading all try to deal with it.

Sky Pirates! in particular keeps bringing the matter up, with it on Benny's mind even more than it was in No Future. There are plot similarities: ancient Time Lord enemy manipulating an environment to give it sustenance, while the Doctor dithers until his one opportunity to win. But the plot transmutes: Leetha isn't Chosen. In the end, the Doctor is what he is in Human Nature, but naked now. The alchemical magic that seems to be at work is a transformation of Cornell's formulation of the Doctor as tragically lonely, who needs someone to be brave for, into Stone's formulation that the Doctor needs someone to keep him human. (The new series has hybridised the Doctor as tragically lonely, who needs someone to keep him human.)

Apart from the crazed stylistics and the hard science fiction, there's also a lot of textual reworking going on in this novel.

(Speaking of textual reworkings, you'll see a lot of this novel in Lawrence Miles's Christmas on a Rational Planet, Down, and Dead Romance.)

Benny's hair

2007-09-30T23:27:00.000+10:00

Though her character notes or subsequent biographies don't hint at her interest in follicular fashion, Bernice Surprise Summerfield has probably had more haircuts than all of the Doctor's other companions put together. I'm in the middle of my fourth recent reading of a New Adventure, and her hair has been different from her default look:

in Human Nature she has hair extensions
in Set Piece she has grown her hair long and dyed it blonde
in Lucifer Rising she put it in dreadlocks
and in Sky Pirates! she has it cropped.

I'm sure I remember other novels with different do's, too. It's appropriate, given her status as first novelistic companion. Changing hair is uniquely possible in novels. In comics, looks must be iconic; in television, it's subject to actor cooperation and continuity; in radio, no one has hair.

Brief notes on Lucifer Rising

2007-09-30T16:17:00.000+10:00

p58 - It was as if he and his friends had always been there. Had always been there. / p168 - Wherever we land, people accept us. I think Cat's Cradle: Warhead did this stuff first, but in a more literary way; this is the first novel to make a point of it. I mainly mention it because Sky Pirates! picks up the ball and runs with it.

p166/167 - It's like seeing a snowball start to roll down a mountain. You know at the bottom it's going to be avalanche time. It's just novels in the shadows of waves all the way, isn't it? Unlike Human Nature and Set Piece, this is fictional history... but, then again, is it?

p257 - Fuck you, mother. Fuck you to hell and back.

p262 - Don't go off to Margate with Julian when he asks, 'cos when you come back, your dad'll be in hospital with a stroke, and he'll never wake up, and you'll wish you'd been with him for those last precious moments after all those years apart. RIP Ace's dad.

p267 - It's the golden rule, isn't it? See also Transit and Sky Pirates! But, more to the point, see the confrontation with Zebulon Pryce in Original Sin. And all those Nietzsche references.

p327 - Family's where, when you come back, they've got to take you in.

p329 - Where the TARDIS crew's ego boundaries dissolve. Agonistic to Timewyrm: Revelation and Love and War.

p339 - Something moved upon the face of the dark. In 1993 I read this through the prism of The Pit, but now I see it's a happy ending. There is mystery in the universe.

Rough notes on Set Piece

2007-09-27T21:13:00.000+10:00

Are you sitting comfortably? What do you think is the moral of the story? Sun Tzu turns up again and again (p53, 130, 146, 171, 192, 232). Ace kind of gets it and I think I do too.

We get a lot of dead fathers: Benny's (p34, 182, 204), Ace's (p120, 151, 230), and Kadiatu's (p178). The latter two see the Doctor as a father figure. With all this going on, you could get the feminist message of the novel mixed up, but the concreteness of everything stops it getting needlessly symbolic.

(As near as I can work out, Ace was just a troubled teen who hated her mum until Love and War, when we suddenly discover she has an absent dad and her mum sees other men while she's away; in Lucifer Rising we discover her dad died shortly before she got whisked away by the time storm.)

Like Benny, I hate Jungian stuff, but I don't think that's where we are in this novel's four dreams (p88, 111, 132, 136). The key figure is Pain, who is an empathetic/experiential/existential god; nothing essential here. She gets created on p208 of Timewyrm: Revelation, incidentally - Ah well, pain it was.

I have always loved the idea of the TARDIS crew turning up in each other's dreams. The TARDIS links them: the promise of travel. (The TARDIS is drawn to Ace, in a reversal of Survival, p228).

Did he only exist because so many people dreamed about him? cf Transit.

Benny's dream is a tour de force of retroactive continuity/misprision, rewriting Battlefield, Timewyrm: Genesys, Nightshade, and (paired with Ace's p120 contemplation) Lucifer Rising.

Rereading this novel, I was surprised at how much I remembered. Scene after small scene is written extremely vividly. Too many authors try to paint pictures, but I'm not very good with remembering what characters or settings are supposed to look like. Orman deals with words. She knows how to pick the punchiest details to let you know what things smell and feel like. There's texture and scar tissue. There's what it's like to be there.

Two scenes stand out: p60 - She wondered if the little machines in her blood would let her get pregnant. A line that sent chills down my spine when I read it, and that I still find upsetting. This scene cuts right to the heart of feminism. p82 - For women there are only two boxes. Right? They're labelled WIFE and WHORE. And this startling scene helped me on a path I am still walking down.

In 1995 it wasn't surprising to have a feminist Doctor Who novel. The New Adventures were that great. (This one's also a meditation on history and a genuine deconstruction of chaos.) Though, back then, I thought there were aimless expanses where nothing happened, but I just didn't know how to pay attention.

I didn't like the structure, back in 1995, but now I think it's fine. I enjoy how the explosive opening breaks up and fades away like a dream. How, just when Ace takes consolation in the thought that Benny's probably having a worse time, we cut to find her having a great time. How, just when Ace accepts that the Doctor is dead, we cut to find he isn't. The pairing up of characters. How it all comes together.

In 1995 I was spoiled by my fannish knowing that Ace wasn't going to die. In 2007, I know Ace isn't going to die, but still the tension built as I got towards the end. I cried on p230. Orman's writing is an experience.

I still don't like the disoriented Doctor mistaking Kadiatu for Ruby Duvall (p65). I know it's one of those Doctor mistakes Ace for Sarah scenes (or as Dave Stone has Benny call them in Sky Pirates! - his Musical bloody Companion routine), but it leaves a definite bad taste. On the other hand, Kadiatu/Ruby confusion helps build the comparisons with Ace (p219 - Click your heels together). Other variations of Ace played by Kadiatu are the Doctor's apprentice and sci-fi killer. Interestingly, Kadiatu also plays a variation of the Doctor, turning up in France during a revolution on one of her early trips. This is her The Highest Science, the novel where she gets written by someone other than her creator, and, as with Benny, there's some violence, but I think there's also a lot of justice.

p197 - That's what faith is for. Faith in Time, faith that things will work out the way they're supposed to. Time's Champion. And the Darvill-Evans spin on p120 and 147. My favourite view of history is on p119/120 regarding The Farm and Nirvana. And the Doctor Who motto on p232 - I don't want to change it, I just want to be part of it. Which goes nicely with the Doctor's advice to Genevieve who doesn't think she earned the right to be free (p188/189) - Do something now.

On p237 there is talk of saving Manisha, as there was talk of saving Jan in No Future earlier, and Guy and Joan in Human Nature later.

Finally, on p238, the wave of history finally breaks, again.

life and death's textual highway

2007-07-29T22:25:00.000+10:00

Read: No Future, Human Nature, Return of the Living Dad. Reading Timewyrm: Revelation.

Actually I've fallen stuck in a particular chapter of Revelation, which is why I've come to write tonight. Cautionary context: sadly my recollection of my reading of the NAs is limited, I have to rely on my instinct fed by my unconscious to make generalised statements.

one: there are four eras of the NAs.

the first - the stories are Doctor Who episodes written large, they could very well be novelisations of the TV episodes, the standard set by Ben Aaronovitch's Remembrance of the Daleks. This runs up to and including Nightshade. The main highlight is Revelation which could be described as a proto-NA.

the second - from Love and War up until Human Nature is an era of experimentation of authors writing stories working with ideas about Doctor Who and Doctor Who as literature.

the third - from Human Nature to Happy Endings - solid New Adventures with an established method and concepts, telling fantastic accomplished stories. This became a solid foundation for the next era...

the fourth - the concepts of Doctor Who are expanded further. This includes novels such as Christmas on a Rational Planet, Return of the Living Dad, Damaged Goods.. probably So Vile a Sin and the Room with No Doors. The NAs start to approach Doctor Who in new ways, the result of which never got to be explored with the end of the NA series.

Reflecting on this last era, reading Return of the Living Dad I can't help think that this era may have served as a bible for the new series.

Dave's Project

2007-07-07T20:25:00.000+10:00

What to read next?

In Human Nature, the Doctor imagines an afterlife for Smith and the Aubertides, but is unable to love Joan. In The Also People (p284), the Doctor's imagination fails to make Roz offer love to feLixi. In the former, the Doctor states a desire to one day be "just a man", while in the latter, the Doctor takes time out as a street performer.

It's easy as a fan to be distracted by Future History and Psi Powers Cycles, but reading as a reader, I see better threads to follow. Human Nature, The Also People, and Sleepy form a Death Cycle.

Sleepy is also another kind of sequel to Human Nature, with a different take on a character being the sum of their memories.

These things popped into my head as I read Human Nature. But they are not what I'm going to pursue, right now. I already had a thread to search for, when I set out on my Western Australian trip:

I am thinking about the difference between "family" (in the New Adventures) and "home" (Buffy, new Doctor Who) and how this plays out in 'Love and Monsters'. I'm not sure if there is an exemplar novel for "family" (well, Happy Endings) because it is such an omnipresent theme (as "home" is in Buffy).

This "family" is not Ace's dad, Benny's mum, Chris's bastard, or Roz's niece. It's the "family" of Spaced, which is friends. I'll explain later.

This is what I'm thinking: Human Nature ends with two identical snowflakes. In Set Piece our heroes share dreams. In Lucifer Rising they share memory and understanding, after running through the first version of the friends-divided-coming-together of No Future. And maybe, Sky Pirates, with new friends joining the crew, in a novel of extended families?

This is an interesting set of authors too. Paul Cornell may have issued the call to New Adventures, but I've always felt that Kate Orman made the series her own like no one else. And though they are not as high profile as some authors, Jim Mortimore, Andy Lane and Dave Stone made some of the most vital contributions to the series.

I've also just finished rewatching Season 1 of the new television series, and am planning on rewatching some of Season 2. So far I've seen the first nine episodes of Season 3. Yes, I've seen 'Human Nature'/'The Family of Blood'.

Eternal Nature

2007-07-04T18:08:00.000+10:00

While I was on the road, Rich sent me an SMS:

Cornell likes his characters to think about death. No Future - Ace and Benny about Jan, Human Nature - Benny thinks about Guy, 'Father's Day'...

Death is a character in Cornell's Seasons quartet. Dead is dead, but is Death death? What does it mean for the Doctor to dance with Death, deal with Death, for the Monk to become Death's Champion? Don't make this symbol too concrete.

When does Death show up in Human Nature? After the Doctor chooses to be Smith (p13), after Tim chooses to accept the bullying (p94), after Smith chooses to be the Doctor (p234). In Love and War (p80) Death shows up when the Doctor chooses not to sacrifice Ace. The Monk in No Future tries to take away the Doctor's choices. You can see where I'm going with this. It's an idea less gracefully handled in Falls the Shadow.

What about Time? When the Doctor acts as Time's Champion it seems that the ends justify the means. The means are time travel, but what are the ends? Protecting the time lines, but what is that? The Doctor thinks he should believe in reincarnation (Love and War, p234). Smith gets down on his knees and prays (Human Nature, p203). Perhaps being Time's Champion is a recognition that the Doctor feels the need to ground his actions in something bigger than himself.

He was watching with his eyes closed, because he knew that if he opened them, he'd really be just standing in the dome. (Human Nature, p232)

My Human Nature Notes

2007-07-03T13:24:00.000+10:00

p1 - they seem, in places, to address me so directly it's almost uncomfortable. Quotation is a favourite of the New Adventure authors, used since Timewyrm: Apocalypse, but often it seems like pretension and ornamentation. Cornell innovates here, incorporating this quote and two others as free-standing text within the body of the novel, unattributed and stripped of punctuation. It's as if he's trying to grow the novel from this seed, expand and explain the quote, or perhaps use the novel to show where the quote comes from. It will recur twice more within the text on p13 and p103. Ace has the experience it describes on p146 of Timewyrm: Revelation.

they seem, in places, to address me so directly it's almost uncomfortable. The first time I read the novel in 1995, I skimmed it quickly, by basically only reading the dialogue, and the leading quote certainly described the novel for me. The second time, shortly after, I read the novel properly and didn't like it, thinking the ideas and characters just didn't seem to be nailed down by the writing. I've just re-read the novel twice, so what do I think is going on now? Cornell isn't a prose stylist in the way that Aaronovitch or Orman are, he follows in the footsteps of Terrance Dicks. But his text has a very different content to that of Dicks, and his plain style is used to build up a dense mosaic or hypertext of themes. If you read a paragraph or scene, it seems very unassuming, but the more you read, and re-read, the more you see the connections. Embedded within this are dialogue, diary entries (p34), stories, and dreams, which use a heightened, direct form of address. This isn't pretentious, however, but passionate - and playful too, often incorporating misunderstanding and word games.

They seem, in places, to address me so directly it's almost uncomfortable. This is the original quote, from a fanzine article by David Darlington on Cornell's first three novels and their use of pop music references. The New Adventures weren't just written by fans, but part of the ongoing fan dialogue. Rock and electronica fans will recognise this process as feedback. It's also an apt way for a Doctor Who story to start given the original opening titles were based on visual feedback.

p1 - Benny's diary, a kind of palimpsest, was introduced in Love and War. This is the only novel that uses excerpts for anything other than lazy pseudo-first person narration when the author got bored of focalised third person perspective. So the New Adventures basically ignored something Cornell introduced way-back-when and now he's ignoring them right back. This kind of thing goes on all the time in the series, and I used to think it was a weakness, a failure of editing and continuity. Now I see it as a vital part of each author's vision of what Doctor Who is all about, part of the process of misprision in developing the Doctor Who tradition, that in the TV show is more in the hands of producers and script editors.

p1 - These words are not my own they only come when I'm alone. From 'Golden Green' (1989) by The Wonderstuff. The sort of thing the leading quote was talking about.

p1 - I met someone called Guy, he took on overwhelming odds and then he happened to die. Of course, where Love and War ignored the preceding Nightshade, Human Nature engages very strongly with Sanctuary. Amusingly, one of the smallest connections is the reference to Blackpool (p2), which Sanctuary mentions in its closing paragraphs, which is a reference to a line cut from the end of Season 22 because it was intended to lead into a Season 23 that never got made.

p4 - The Doctor deliberately threw away the TARDIS manual so that he could learn more thoroughly about her. This is a) a continuity reference to the steerability of the TARDIS, b) a revisionist interpretation of said steerability, making it more acceptable, c) helping to position Cornell's own vision of Doctor Who, with the Doctor shown in this instance as a kind of meddler.

p5 - to paraphrase a recent acquaintance, about which I may write a short monograph one day. This is a reference to Sherlock Holmes, a real person who Benny met in All-Consuming Fire. Later in the novel (p102), Holmes will be mentioned as a fictional character written by Doyle, and this is the final book in the cycle of stories which began with Timewyrm: Revelation, in which the Doctor states that Holmes is fictional. This is a continuity reference that is also a contradiction. Cornell recognises that All-Consuming Fire, as well as his own books, are canonical because they are good, not because they all agree. In Revelation (p15), the Doctor also says, "Just because someone isn't real, it doesn't mean you can't meet them." That and this novel are full of fictions given life.

p7 - It's hard to believe, but this predates Bridget Jones's Diary.

p15 - Don't Forget To Catch Me. The chapter title is from 'Hobart Paving' (1993) by Saint Etienne. I don't know if it specifically matches up to anything in the chapter, but it's a very evocative beginning, the sort of thing Darlington was talking about.

p17 - I quickly realised that I couldn't note down every political point made about class, sex, sexuality, race, nationality, etc, in this thoroughly structured novel. I do want to record the references to Ireland: "home rule" (p17), "risky at the moment" (p47), "Ulstermen" (p75), "Irish dictionary" (p171). This is important because it builds the background that makes Benny's accusation of Joan being a racist explicable. It's also important because Britain was still being bombed by the IRA when this was written.

p18/19 - come out. I understand what Benny understands and have no idea what Constance is on about here.

p21 - Hutchison is another version of Boyle from Timewyrm: Revelation, a kind of stereotypical bully. Here the bully is a) older, b) supported by his environment... c) on "our" side... and, interestingly, in a novel that is very concerned with cycles and depth psychology, d) not given any explanation or excuse... also, e) he is not saved.

p22 - Smith's tie is a hint that Smith is the Doctor, something that might not have been apparent if you aren't a fan. If you recognise the Doctor on the cover, then the link is made on p38. Otherwise the central plot point isn't explained till p44-50. Note that the Monk was threatened with being made human in No Future (p204).

p23/24 - It will go the worse for you. I know this is meant to be a factual statement, but it doesn't make sense as such. It just sounds like the kind of verbal abuse dished out by victims of physical bullying. A bad taste to have in your mouth.

p28 - Smith is made of continuity references. For the fan, the fun game of cryptic continuity spotting begins.

p31 - 'Are you a mystic, then?' 'No. Well, not in the romantic sense.' What on earth do you mean?

p31 - Oh, that man. He's a complete caricature. Joan seems to think of Roscastle like a prefiguring of Blimp, however I think he turns out to be the second best character in the novel, and one of the best characters in the New Adventures, more Clive Candy in - see: p117, p145, p176. While musing if he was, in fact, the best character in the novel, I realise I'd been taken in by the cryptic continuity.

p38-42 - Boudiccan destruction layer. One of the greatest scenes in the New Adventures. It is completely contradicted by Smith later (p118-119)

p49 - I was using the recollections of previous occupants to create Smith. In Revelation (p73) the Doctor equates Ace's memory with her soul, something Trelaw is wary of. Note that the metaphysical Doctor in this novel is not just memories in the biodatapod, but Verity as well, and probably Mr Woo the Owl too. In The Five Doctors, the Doctor says a man is the sum of his memories, something both Revelation and Human Nature are interrogating. In fact, both are radical revisions of that story, with Doctors in one, companions in the other. It's easy to forget, as the cast of this novel do at various points, that Smith isn't the Doctor. In fact, I've never heard this referred to as a Doctorless novel, even though he is absent for 85% of the page count (from p10 to p229, out of 255 pages), probably more so than Birthright or Eternity Weeps. The best New Adventures use Doctor Who not as a universe, but as myth, as literary history, that can be referenced and revised profitably, just the same as any novel might reference and revise Shakespeare or The Bible. Fans mislead themselves with the game of cryptic continuity and fail to see how the references are used to build an amazingly complex picture of the best character in the New Adventures.

p56 - Bit of a clumsy so and so. Which was odd, for a sailor. This could be taken by the sad fan as a jab at the character of Harry Sullivan, but the serious frock might consider the disparity between our image of the world and how it really is. Smith's mind is full of contradictions: this isn't a sign of his fictionality, but his reality. There's even a better-than-average Whitman invocation (p69) to go with this.

p66 - Carefully, he puckered his lips and touched them to the bark of the tree. This is so touchingly awkward. Followed closely by some of the sexiest writing in the New Adventures (p69-71).

p74 - Maybe I made it up? Going hand in hand with the theme of being able to meet fictions, is the theme of real things seeming made up. See also: p115/116, p156, p229, p236. This feels very important, but I can't articulate what it means any better than the novel.

p83 - I just want to be me and do that as well as I can. They seem, in places, to address me so directly it's almost uncomfortable. See also: p121, p177, p190, p232, and especially p243.

p86 - Unconscious? How can thoughts not be conscious? I just love this line from the time before Freud.

p94 - 'Does that mean I'm dead?' 'Don't ask that too loudly.' Could be paraphrased as "Does that mean you're Death?" "Don't make this symbol too concrete."

p104 - St Anthony's. Surely it's no coincidence, in this novel where Smith looks to God and even recites the Lord's Prayer (p203), that the town church bears the name of the saint used in the anti-religion New Adventure St Anthony's Fire.

p108 - How dare you allow me to know? Benny's accidental historical revelation to Alexander contrasts directly with Sanctuary (p264) where she crushes Guy's attacker with history. Both novels strongly sell the point that you can't change History with a capital Gun.

p129 - A cat pinned down on a table, its skull open to show its brain. Cornell rescues this image from the clumsy strand of Warlock and makes it the central connection between Smith and the Doctor. Also on: p165, p171. The Doctor is the "protector of cats" (p175).

p132 - This is for tribesmen... Let me just point out that these bullets are illegal under the Hague Convention of 1899.

p151 - Attractive, in a horsey sort of way. In Blood Harvest, Benny says that she "hates horsy women" (p46), meaning aristocrats with horses. I can't help wondering if Joan, who is never really described, looks like Lalla Ward.

p165 - Names that he didn't recognise. Smith reciting the names of the Doctor's companions, as the latter does in The Curse of Fenric. In some sense Smith is invoking his faith in himself - perhaps the Doctor is too.

p187 - After the last schoolboy had climbed the stairs, Mr Moffat, the bursar, staggered up out of the cellar behind him. The character named for Steven Moffat, patron saint of students, saves more more people than anyone else.

p210 - Smith thought about a dying flutterwing. He's thinking about Pain, as told in Set Piece.

p217/18 - Nobody else dies! As Guy's death scene from Sanctuary tries to play out again, this time with the villain in the central role, Benny breaks the cycle referred to by Smith (p209) and Serif (echoing Santayana, p213). This is the major theme of the novel: the point of having history as a subject is progress.

p247 - In June 1914, Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, was assassinated by Gavrilo Prinzip, a Serbian terrorist, while parading through Sarajevo. The entire novel has been riding the concave face of this wave and now the wave finally breaks. This follows the pattern of Sanctuary with the massacre of the Cathars. This feels like Book 15 of The Iliad, when Zeus lays out exactly how the rest of the action will unfold.

p253 - And when they took it off to be slaughtered with the other cows, it kicked and kicked and they had to force it to go in. In 1995, I think I missed this reference to Greeneye's attempted escape (see also p237: Morgaine's escape left her feeling sheepish). A vivid argument for vegetarianism. Also, a Fantastic Four reference.

p255 - And somewhere in the sky overhead, for an instant before they dissolved into mist, two snowflakes were the same. Taking us all the way back to the opening of Revelation. In 1995, I didn't like this ending, because I thought it referred to the Doctor and Benny, and I thought Cornell really wanted it for the Doctor and Ace. Benny even wishes Ace were there three times in the novel! Now I think it refers to the Doctor and Smith, the Doctor and Tim, the Doctor and Benny, the Doctor and the would-be Doctors, the Doctor and many of his companions including Ace... The cycle of novels are an interrogation of the Doctor and this one in particular is a manual on being the Doctor, how and why, with an executive summary on p228/229.

I always thought the "who" jokes in Doctor Who were simple self-reflexivity. This novel stacks up seven that I noticed (p82, 129, 155, 159, 201, 205, 255). I realise now that it's more than just a joke or a reference to a secret. It points to the title, which is a statement. Anyone could be the Doctor. Insert name there. Who is you.

My Human Nature

2007-07-02T14:41:00.004+10:00

I remember what I thought in 1995: Paul's weakest book, though I'd heartily recommend it, but only after reading his prior books, and after reading Sanctuary (which I didn't like). I thought Revelation and Love and War and No Future were great stuff.

2007, I considered rereading No Future along with Richard, but just couldn't get into that car crash of a novel. So across South Australia I reread Human Nature before its imminent adaptation (which I am yet to see) and the only note I could make was:

p74 I'd forgotten. It was like a sleeping tiger, and it was suddenly awake and upon me again. And it was beautiful.

I reread and made 151 notes on this 255 page novel in Broome. And I guess that's just the stuff I took an interest in or felt I could deal with; I didn't want to make a record of every companion-in-memory spotted or note down every feminist point. This is a thoroughly structured novel, a fractal hypertext. The more I look, the more I find. But how would I sum it up? A sustained dialogue about progress, involvement, and identity (both positive and negative). A great novel, full stop.

Notes to follow. Don't worry, I haven't written up all 151.

Hi, I'm David Golding.

don't forget to catch me, notes on human nature I

2007-05-31T17:56:00.000+10:00

Prologue - a great example of Benny's diary and the post it notes that cover them. Note: Bernice Summerfield.

p4 - God I was being careful of his feelings. Note: Bernice Summerfield.

p19 - on the statue Old Meg Good to be remembered ... for something everyday and difficult. Note: Human Nature the details.

rights of women to vote

p30 I heard that you wrote... Note: NAs as novel. Note: The Doctor as author.

more to come...

notes expanded

2007-05-29T23:21:00.000+10:00

NAs and continuity
Continuity in the following sense: the main characters reflect on past adventures, often the reason behind their mood, attitude, behaviour and actions. There is a connection between novels and each character is contiguous having a life that develops and reflects over the course of the New Adventures.

NAs as novel
What does the literary form mean for all the regular Doctor Who questions? What is the nature of the character of the Doctor and companions? or with boring things like canon and continuity (traditional sense)? Even for those ideas that binds Doctor Who as legend and myth, within its own history or culture (if only extending into fandom)? Or that odd undefined thing which I can only name as Doctor Whoness?

This is not just about the space to do things - to go on Virgin's mantra of deeper and bolder, but more to do with the form allowing to do things like continuity (as above) and internal lives. Can we call this the novelness of Doctor Who?

So this could just mean the traditional ideas about the literary form, not just the stories are bigger but that just the idea of word and sentence having value. There is here a Modernist method of abstraction from visual forms on a television screen to a life of words.

A question to ask our authors: Did they write what they visualised?

NA writers as authors and fans
Fans who write or writers who are fans? Both.

This must be like the films of writers and directors who grew up with Star Wars making their stories. Though film has a long history of this. French New Wave directors came out from Cahiers du Cinema such as Godard and Truffaut. They developed their own language of cinema.

The Cahiers du Cinema critics had championed auteur theory and I assume that's how they made films, but they also made films with a vast knowledge and love of cinema. I can imagine they are not too different from the NA fan/writers. The biographies of the New Wave directors might be worth following up on for points of difference/similarity with the NA writers.

Knowledge, theory, love? Perhaps that is how the New Adventures developed its new language? Whereas the new series developed its language after a combination of time passing (16 years) and because contemporary times demands a new language. What is this new language thing, see this post.

Project

2007-05-27T22:18:00.000+10:00

I'm starting to form the the plan of novels I want to re-read and develop ideas from.

Damaged Goods - of course, but I'll leave this for last.

Two Cornell novels...
No Future - Read, and I'm interested in looking at the other alternate universe books... but perhaps a better track would be looking at the other Cornell novels.

Human Nature - Halfway through, some really great ideas from here, trying not to consider how this plays with the adaptation, not until much later. But i can't... Love and Pain!

If I have time, I would also go with Timewyrm: Revelation and Love and War. In light of Father Day's I keep seeing death/Death as a common thread in Paul's work. He has a yin for the big sleep. I think it would be worth exploring, and I've got Orpheus as a mythic frame to discuss this, I'd even think it would be a great opportunity to throw Buffy in.

Two Orman and two Aaronovich novels... I thought Return of the Living Dad - here would be able to explore ideas of family and home in comparison with the new series... perhaps a comparison with Father's Day.

Either The Left-Handed Hummingbird, The Room with No Doors or So Vile A Sin

This would be good to read in conjunction with two Aaronovitch Transit and The Also People. So Vile a Sin also looks at themes of family and as the battleground for modern politics - its an important theme to explore, one which the new series was very conscious of.

notes for the new adventures

2007-05-22T23:18:00.000+10:00

To recap the notes from no future.

Writing
NAs as novel
NA authors as writers and fans
NAs and continuity

Themes and imagery
The Ace question
NAs and sexual content/innuendo
NAs and the Doctor's view of humanity
NAs and Religion/mysticism

Cultural context
NAs and graphic novels
NAs and popular culture
NAs as a product of its time
America in the UK

Point of Difference
NAs and old TV series
NAs and Buffy

notes for no future

2007-05-15T23:36:00.000+10:00

p13 Doctor reflects on recent adventures, (alternate universe cycle) Note NAs and continuity (see also p191 below)

p13 He'd felt his handwriting stretching across the universe. Cornell refers to the Doctor's plotting as Time's Champion. As it is here and on p84 (see below) there's is a link of the defining characteristic of the seventh Doctor to Doctor Who in novel form.

I wonder if there has been discussion or analysis of this... what meaningful ideas exist because Doctor Who is in the form of the New Adventures? As a fanzine Broadsword knew the political ones as far as fandom was concerned. Virgin always referred to bigger and broader Doctor Who? Note NAs as novel.

p27 Broadsword definition. "... and a Broadsword unit is doing ... what ever weird stuff those guys do."

p30 Big Ben V for Vendetta - Note NAs and graphic novels.

p34 Danny sees Black Star in line with the Situationist - sparks questions on terrorism - good to ask a UK bod about terrorism in the time of IRA compared to WTC, Bali, Madrid and London transport bombing. Note NAs - a product of its time?

p45 Broadsword definition.

p 48 V for Vendetta - Note NAs and graphic novels.

p35 fractals now a blink - Note NAs a product of its time.

p35 sparks the question about what Ace's character had become in the New Adventures becoming a soldier as a result of Love and War.

I used to ask How (authors, editors) could that have done that to her?
I think I understand now, because its the wrong question, How else could the Doctor have behaved? Note the Ace question

Note unaware of the human experience

Note america in the uk

p46 ladborke grove

p84 'This is just the start. Right now you're a person. Soon you'll be just one of his characters.' The 7th Doctor's plotting is like writing a novel - a story with characters doing the right thing at the right time. Note NAs as novel

p101 Broadsword definition.

p107 a Buddhist mapping of the Doctor. Note NAs and Religion/mysticism

p132 discipline - kinky. Note NAs and sexual content/innuendo

p140 Cornell's love of music. Note NAs and popular culture - a desire for contemporary Doctor Who?

p146 But we all want to be the hero

p155 meaningless violence of their own, that childish thrashing of each other. Note NAs and the Doctor's view of humanity

p156 Cornell's awareness of the Doctor's methods and making the Doctor aware of this. Note NA authors as writers and fans.

p187 Benny considers the Doctor's morality.

p188-9 Saving people from monsters./ People and rabbits. Broadsword definition, Note Point of difference - NAs and Buffy.

p191 Benny reflects on events in Love and War This is one of many recollections of Ace, Benny and the Doctor in this novel. Note Continuity with characters. Reflection of past experiences in previous NAs. esp Love and War. Note NAs and continuity.

p35 and p191 - Love and War... This is a crucible for Ace and Benny. This is Benny's birth into the NAs. This is Ace's death in the NAs. Note the Ace question.

p191 What a chronovore is - this is an appeal for the mystical. Note NAs and Religion/mysticism.

Chapter 16 - The Capture of Artemis - mysticism vs the mediasphere.

Is our history and our human consciousness the sum of our technology/television? Is it techonlogy - CDs and VCRs etc (anachronisms the monk introduced) or is it the TV shows? Note Point of Difference - NAs and old TV series

The Monk embraces both the mystical and technological as does the Doctor (though i don't think embrace is the right word for the Doctor).

Mysticism - Brigadier, Artemis, Stonehenge etc Though isn't the idea of the mystical in the Doctor Who universe an anathema? Note NAs and Religion/mysticism.

This is not particular to the NAs, but for a novel to use TV as a character - then that is something particular, especially in a novel that likens the central character more to literary concepts. Note NAs as novel.

p262 'It'll get worse,' the Doctor told Yates. 'But one day, perhaps, it'll get better.' Note NAs a product of its time.

p266 Ace goes through an Orpheus thing... No Future is where Ace comes to a point of rest about Jan.

Why Orpheus

2007-04-30T23:09:00.000+10:00

Credit is owed to the Greeks for our Western secular culture in philosophy, mathematics, politics and drama, and we acknowledge the Greeks as our ancestral storytellers. For whatever reason we have as to why we write, they have given us the beginnings of what we write.

I'm interested in framing the New Adventures and the new series in this mythology. I am also interested in unfolding Barry Kosky's production of The Lost Echo. This was Kosky and Tom Wright's exploration of Ovid's Metamorphosis. In this the themes of change and story resonate as the lost echo.

Physicality

2007-04-30T22:54:00.000+10:00

Another issue I have yet to resolve is with the equality of movement. This is the physical act that is present in both stories of Orpheus and Lot and I find the movement striking. It has a resonance with me and its a movement that even recently I experienced when watching 300 as Dilios (David Whenham) leaves for Sparta to become the narrator for the 300.

What I think it is I feel is a mimetic resonance. I can feel the physical sensation of twisting my torso, the muscles in my back tighten, I strain my neck to look over my shoulder, wondering how much more I have to twist to accommodate my vision. It is an effort but it also makes me vulnerable. I could fall, I could run into something or someone. The act runs opposite to all the different ways the body operates.

My Orpheus laundry

2007-04-23T23:40:00.000+10:00

I have some Orpheus issues, I've not finished wrestling with this myth.

From what I've read (scanned), most academic interpretation of Orpheus looking back, is understood as Orpheus' humanity as a noble act. This I find a difficult position to agree with, from the few primary sources I've looked in to.

Ovid describes this as an act performed out of anxiety, but that doesn't read to me as a noble human. Virgil, in The Georgics, does not give a word to describe Orpheus's action. These are our two leading Roman writers, but where are the Greeks?

Ainslie tells me that it is in The Odyssey, referred to; I have yet to locate it.

In the operas (such as in Monteverdi L'Orfeo- Ainslie) depicts the scene as Eurydice calling after Orpheus. Eurydice asks why does he not look back, and therefore why does he not love her. After her continuous calling, Orpheus looks back out of love. That works - but where are the Greek writers?

Or is it that I'm to praise Orpheus as the noble human in his failing? Then why is Ildith's act, in the Lot story, not interpreted as the noble human; surely temptation is a human act?

Ainslie challenges - Ildith and Lot is an obedience story - a morality tale. the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is not. Context is the thing. I think my comparison is a fair one, the exercise brings out the meaning out of the two stories. Where I have perhaps gone wrong is that I failed to recognise that one is to be read as a story of events that took place and that the other is a myth, that is a difference to be respected.

mothers and fathers

2007-04-14T22:18:00.000+10:00

list of stuff, can be safely ignored

Rose and Pete
Rose and Jackie
Nancy and James

Ace and her mum
Benny and her dad

Paternalism:
Rose and the Doctor (sometimes)
Ace and the Doctor (sometimes - but a different kind of "sometimes" to that of Rose and the Doctor)
Benny and the Doctor (sometimes)

Orpheus, Lot and Faith

2007-04-13T17:07:00.000+10:00

Could the Orpheus myth be a distillation of the story of Lot?

In chronological terms, this could be true. The story of Lot as featured in Genesis would have been part of the oral tradition, before any establishment of the greek tradition. There are certainley similarities with the general plot of both stories: the leaving of a place; of God's/the Gods' instruction not to look back; and the fateful action of looking back. However the differences are far more pronouced and a lot more siginificant in both action and meaning.

Lot is fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah at the command of God, where as in the greek myth Orpheus leading Eurydice out, follows from the choice Orpheus had made when he had entered the Underworld.

It is Lot's wife (Edith/Ildith (ref: wikipedia)) who looks back, whereas it is Orpheus, not Eurydice who looks back in the greek story. Though whilst one might find an equality of physical action it doesn't follow there is an equality of meaning. The common moral extracted from Lot's story is that of the temptation and failure of man. This is definitely not the meaning behind Orpheus' action - the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is not a morality tale.

The tension established in the Orpheus and Eurydice is one between the Gods and Man. In Ovid's Metamorphosis, the Gods are often shown to be deceitful and cruel, where the human heroes of greek and roman myth are celebrated for their humanity.

Orpheus and Eurydice is a story is about a man's humanity. Orpheus uses his humanity to travel to the Underword. through his art he expresses his humanity to win Eurydice from death. In this story it is the Gods who behave poorly, it is their trivility in placing the condition on Orpheus. In the face of this banality, in his humanity, Orpheus looks back with love for Eurydice.

The story also demonstrates man with choice, it is Orpheus' choice to enter the Underworld, and only because Orpheus was certain that he would succeed. Michael Cadnum, in his novel Nightsong interprets from the myth that Orpheus has complete faith in his skill and art with song and lyre that he knows that he can not fail to express his love of Eurydice before Hades and Persephone.

In Lot, man is his faith in his god, In Orpheus man is his faith in his humanity and his art.

Orpheus

2007-04-11T23:05:00.000+10:00

It is a story of change and loss.

But it is also a story of choice (Ainslie)

I've got no job, no A-levels, No Future

2007-04-10T12:16:00.000+10:00

In my mapping of the New Adventures, I've started with No Future (1994? Paul Cornell). I was asked why I decided to reread this NA first.

The starting point of the Broadsword tenth anniversary issue was with the question - did the New Adventure have any influence on the new series. As I was a passionate believer in the New Adventures I wondered whether that belief, ten years later amounted to anything? Had I wasted my time? Did the New Adventures have a future? So yes I chose No Future primarily as a pun.

I had imagined ('cause I can not recall), that this theme would have to have been addressed in this novel and that I have to ask even now whether the new series has a future - how long in current entertainment climate can this series last? Does the new series have a future?

A second focus for the tenth anniversary issue of Broadsword is a "where are they now?" let me answer that with a list of names - Russell T Davies, Mark Gatiss, Paul Cornell, Matt Jones, Gareth Roberts. There is no question that Paul Cornell was central defining figure in the NAs and for that I chose a Paul Cornell novel.

But then rewatching the new series episode Rose, Rose says at the the defining point of the new series - where she makes a stand - "I've got no job, no A-levels, no future" and I just can't let that one go.

Orpheus

2007-04-08T15:10:00.000+10:00

In the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus was told not to look back. What is the meaning of this instruction/action?

Everything has a time and everything has an end

2007-04-07T22:15:00.000+10:00

Working my way through the first season of the new series and one of the emerging themes is loss. That's a key theme in anything to do with change. There are obvious examples such as the Doctor's challenge to Cassandra, however what for me was so startling and powerful to watch is to see the loss both Rose and Jackie experience.

There is no future in England's Dreaming

2007-04-07T00:02:00.001+10:00

I have given myself the challenge to map two transitional eras of Doctor Who and ask whether the first, Virgin Publishing's New Adventures, has had an influence on the second, the new series of Doctor Who?

I think that a substantial aspect of the nature of both these eras of Doctor Who is that they are both posses qualities of transition, that there is behind both series a force of modernity.

There are many examples of both series that I can sight to suggest this, in an attempt to summarise these are -
+ reflection on the series' past and to make a change from that past;
+ both have attempted and succeeded to set up a new language;
+ engagement with its medium as a means to attempt something different;
+ meditation on the contemporary political and social eras in United Kingdom - though their subjects are very different, the NAs refelcted on a post Thatcher/Major past (and even further) and the RTD era is concerned about the future UK is creating.

The coming age and passing of the old

2007-04-05T21:37:00.000+10:00

I consider myself a big fan of Modernism. I was really taken by Barrie Kosky's The Lost Echo Act III , of Euripedes The Bacchae. I love the interpretation of The Tempest as Shakespeare's contemplation of the end of the Elizabethan Era. These are ideas aware of a coming age and the passing of the old order.

I am a big fan of civilisation. I love the idea of this machine of human creation creating secular society, science and psycology of the world. This is evolution due to the human hand.