wetworld

What I loved about “42”: “Burn With Me!” Oh, David, I would . . .--Emily Bridewell, letter to Doctor Who Magazine #384

Suddenly, he looked up at her and took his glasses off. ‘Martha,’ he said, his tone suddenly very different.
‘Yeah?’
‘You mentioned babies,’ he said.
Whoah! thought Martha, suddenly thrown. Where had this come from?
--Mark Michalowski, Wetworld

I’m not sure if it was the unfamiliarity with the author or the premise of the book, but I didn’t have very high expectations for Wetworld. I was pleasantly surprised and found it an enjoyable read with a fascinatingly creative premise, a kooky handle on the Tenth Doctor, and one of those plots you could easily imagine seeing on TV—yet works all the better for being a novel.

It seems to me that what I’m beginning to demand of a good Doctor Who book is a good plot, decent secondary characters, good pacing, strong understanding of Ten the bouncy-yet-serious sexy nutter, ideally humor, and good insight into the companion of the moment. I’d say Wetworld does all these things, particularly with the plot and the writing of Ten. As you know, I always prefer historicals because that’s just the way I’m hard-wired. But for a futuristic, off-world adventure I thought this was excellent. The planet where the Doctor and Martha land is actually called Sunday, which was chosen instead of the vetoed Wetworld. While the derivatives abound—as they seem to with every Doctor Who novel, such as The Sparrow, “42,” and the Enchanted Swamp in The 10th Kingdom—I loved the way both the Doctor and Martha landed on Sunday. Convinced that the Doctor was taking her to breakfast at Tiffany’s—which for some reason the editor decided to italicize; clearly they meant Breakfast at Tiffany’s but simple breakfast at Tiffany’s doesn’t make any sense—Martha dressed up Audrey Hepburn-style before, in true companion fashion, falling into the mud and being pursued by razor-clawed otters. The Doctor, meanwhile, loses the TARDIS is a Degobah-like swamp, a clear shout-out to “The Curse of Peladon,” which I absolutely loved.

The Doctor’s first contact with one of the planet’s human colonists is similarly smashing, as he answers her Morse code and then shows up, covered with muck and sporting a “manic” grin. What I love about this book is that I can see so much of it happening, as if it really were on TV. The Doctor’s ability to go from loopy to tender—his eyes suddenly looked incredibly gentle. Incredibly fragile—is perfectly captured. Simon Guerrier wrote that the way he found it easiest to capture each different Doctor in prose was focusing on certain details. I recall in The Pirate Loop that often meant lulling me into la-la land with descriptions of the Doctor’s high cheekbones and foofy hair—which Michalowski does, to a lesser extent. (Indeed, while it’s the otters who squee at him, at least someone takes the hint and squees. Should we start calling female Tennant fans otters?) One criticism I had of The Resurrection Casket was that Justin Richards—who wrote a damn fine Troughton and a good Eccleston—seemed to struggle with Ten. He used reams of paper describing mannerisms and rather clunky banter when there are swifter ways of getting to the character. Sometimes Mark Michalowski veers into that territory, but on the whole, his Ten is naturally zany and comic. In a very Fourth Doctor way he also keeps deliberately calling the human villain by the wrong name.

As for Martha, there are some moments of real genius like the Tiffany’s thing. Otherwise, though, she seems to revert to Polly-mode (even getting the Doctor tea at one point though he makes an ironic comment about it) by spending half the adventure tied down to a gurney in monster-savage-companion style. I guess it’s a side-effect of giving Tennant a chance to do his possessed-acting—any dedicated follower of the past few series (oh, any of the series really) will recall the Doctor’s propensity for getting into situations where he must writhe and scream and go savage and drool onto his shirt. I practically expected him to say “burn with me” (is Michalowski just messing with us, making possessed!Doctor so . . . er . . . attractive?). Also, I found Martha leaving the hospital abruptly after her experience difficult to believe, especially as she is a doctor (nearly). Cresting a wave of otters as they squeak encouragement to her is somehow prescient of “The Doctor’s Daughter.”

And the otters! Well! On one hand, you gotta wonder why Michalowski wasn’t allowed to bring this baby to the small screen, since the otter-bear things on the aquatic planet Sunday (the Doctor wants to name them jujubes) are cute, cuddly, and a little terrifying (see the Adipose) as well as intelligent and slick. Then you realize TV—especially CGI—could never do the otters—nor the squelchy nightmarish things, whose description Michalowski has genius for and clearly revels in, that cause all the havoc on Sunday—justice. This a good contrast to Wooden Heart, where I found many of the more cerebral concepts difficult to visualize.

As for the secondary characters, I hate to bring up the old chestnut of Dr. Flowers from The Monsters Inside, but she was kind of there again in Ty Benson, nurse-turned-zoologist, played perhaps by Queen Latifah were the story televised, and just a bit interested in old rat-boy. If they [Martha and the Doctor] were a couple, Ty thought wryly, Martha was one lucky woman. It always amuses me to what extent the authors pursue the “modern” Doctor’s sex appeal, especially considering most of the authors are heterosexual men—Michalowski somewhat alludes to Martha’s unrequited feelings, I mentioned the wryly humorous Ty’s take, and Candy the teenager decides to peck the Doctor on the cheek for no apparent reason. I can’t decide which is more amusing and more pleasing: the Doctor in a knife-fight with the badger pirate queen in The Pirate Loop, or the Doctor pursuing mutant otters in the mud using his jacket as a net and getting really annoyed when he rips it, here. I found the other characters mostly forgettable though Candice “Candy” Kane was decently interesting (until she walked into the forest for no apparent reason, just to spite the Doctor’s authority basically).

It was a bit of a slow-burner, and like several of the other books I found the climax and dénouement a bit harried and less-than-satisfying. It certainly had its moments of humor and horror in equal measure, which is really how Doctor Who should be. I hope to see more by this author.

films

So, as I've said, I've had occasion to see quite a few films in the last week so I'll do a quick write up for each one.

At the Dylan Thomas Centre last Monday I saw The Edge of Love, the Dylan Thomas movie that premiered at the DTC this summer. My friend Jo has kept tabs on the film since they were filming it in Swansea and the Gower—well, she’s kind of the PR-person, jill-of-all-trades at the DTC—so it’s no surprise she was there, promoting the film on its DVD release. Matthew Rhys’ parents were there as well. As historical fact the film deviates in some undeniable ways, and one remarkable deviation from fact in the court room scene makes Dylan into a villain, for no real purpose that I can find. However, Rhys does a great job as Dylan—the dynamic dualism of his silly, playful, boyish nature and the towering-voiced Welsh poet. I was rather impressed with Keira Knightley’s Welsh accent. She was Vera Phillips, a childhood sweetheart of Dylan’s who, back in his life in 1940 during the Blitz, complicates things with his wife Cat (Sienna Miller). Vera in fact marries William Killick who goes off to fight in Greece while Vera, Dylan, and Cat enjoy a rather bohemian existence in houses on the Gower (complete with all kinds of adultery and affairs, an abortion, drunkenness, etc, etc). Those who know me won’t be surprised that I thought Cillian Murphy was the stand-out as Killick, but I have to concede that all the actors were really good, even Sienna Miller who you know I’m not a fan of. War-time London and Wales were equally well-evoked. I thought it was quite enjoyable.

Adi had me over at his house on Thursday and we watched two films. I’ve been meaning to see Persepolis for ages, and I still have yet to get the graphic memoir upon which the film is based. I had heard that it was unmissable, and I’d be curious to see the original French-language version. The animation style is (mostly) black-and-white, and while it’s quite simplistic it’s very effective. The studio in France that animated it used the old-fashioned hand-drawn method, with outstanding results. The story is of Marjane Satrapi who grows up to see the fall of the Shah in Iran, fights the confining regime thereafter by wearing Michael Jackson badges and “punk” shoes, before leaving the country to study in Vienna. In Vienna she struggles with fitting in and remaining true to her identity. She has several heartbreaking encounters with men before she finds herself on the streets and collapses from pneumonia. Back in Iran she marries, divorces, and returns again to Europe, uncertain where she belongs. From that perspective I can identify. Despite the death, torture, imprisonment, loneliness, and despair inherent in such a memoir, it is incredibly funny in places due to Marjane’s frankness, guided by the example of her beloved grandmother. Everyone should see this film.

Then we watched Blue from the Colors Trilogy. Obviously being a Francophile I’d heard of these films but had never sat down to watch them. I have to admit to being a bit disappointed with Blue. Perhaps I’m just too dumb to get films like that, but I found it slow-moving, baffling, and rather pointless. In a featurette included on the DVD, Krzysztof Kieslowski explained how much work it took to set up a five-second shot of a sugar cube absorbing hot coffee, and more importantly, that we were supposed to understand that Juliette Binoche’s character Julie was so absorbed in her own world from the amount of concentration she put into this five-second activity. If there had been guidance for every moment in the film like this, perhaps I would have seen it in another way. I sympathized with Julie’s losing her husband and daughter in a car accident, the truth of their relationships painstakingly revealed as the film went on, but I couldn’t understand why she didn’t work, why the rats were included, why she went to the sex shop in Pigalle, etc, etc. The music, as the dead husband was a composer, was perhaps the most moving part of the film.

On Saturday night I watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by myself since no one was interested in watching it with me. I picked it up at the library because I was looking for Nosferatu but they had this instead—and I’d just heard a radio adaptation of the film (more on that later) and was curious about the source material. I do tend to like silent horror films (Phantom of the Opera in 1925 is perhaps the best version), though I confess because I was sitting next to the radiator in the dark with jack-o-lanterns providing the only light, I did start to nod off! It seems to me the epitome of German Expressionist cinema—the sets were moody and nightmarish, like a Munch painting, designed by Walter Reimann, Hermann Warm, and Walter Roehrig. Though the whole thing seemed very stage-bound (like 1960s Doctor Who), it was rather a remarkably frightening achievement for 1919. Dr Caligari has terrifyingly demon-like face, and his somnambulist (Cesare who’s been asleep for 23 years!) is fascinatingly androgynous. The twist at the end is great, very Poe-like, though I have to wonder what kind of a draw a sleeping person is really going to have for a fair audience! The connection to the Dr. Caligari of 1703 reminded me of the Pied Piper as presented in the Sarah Jane Adventures episode about clowns.

And now for something entirely different . . . my friend Martha recommended the Australian film Candy to me, and since I’m sort of (and sheepishly) going through Heath Ledger’s back catalogue I picked it up when I saw it in the library. I’ve seen Leonardo DiCaprio’s character suffer from drug withdrawal in Basketball Diaries, but that certainly didn’t make me immune to Abbie Cornish and Ledger as junkies desperately trying to keep clean when she’s found to be pregnant (and the resulting miscarriage is grotesque and heartbreaking). On the one hand, I find the junkie lifestyle baffling. How can you let yourself get to the point where the only work you can do to make money is prostitute yourself (which they both end up doing) and still pretend everything is okay? Fortunately I’ve never been a position where I’ve had drug dependence so certainly a little empathy is in order—though the relationship of the two lovers is presented, too, like an addiction. I really loved Geoffrey Rush’s character (has anyone ever played as many diverse roles as Geoffrey Rush?) so between the three of them you basically have the luminaries of the Australian acting community (I guess you’d have to add Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, and Hugh Jackman to make it a real all-star act). Since all I really know about Australia comes from films, it’s another shading added to my perception of the place. You don’t know if the main characters are going to be all right by the time the film ends—having passed through heaven, earth, and hell—but you hope life isn’t going to get any worse for them.

what was lost

I really wasn’t sold on this when I started reading it. My friend Adi loaned it to me. But by the time I finished the first page I was absorbed, which is something every author yearns to hear said about his or her novel. This is Catherine O’Flynn’s first book. The key to it—and something I feel I should take away and emulate more in my own work—is the ability to tease out the facts of a story very, very slowly. I tend to rush and get exposition out of the way as soon as I can. In this book, you were left guessing about a number of things here through almost 200 pages. Also noteworthy were O’Flynn’s characters. Not all of them were drawn to the same degree of precision but they were genuinely unforgettable.

It really amused me that I started reading the book on a bus when it opens on a bus. However, I was on a bus to Caswell in 2008, Kate Meaney was on a bus to Green Oaks Shopping Centre outside of Birmingham in 1984 (when I was born, mind you). Kate immediately stole my heart, and I defy anyone to read the first section, set in 1984, and remain unmoved and unamused by this young girl’s pluck, creativity, and the weird sense of adulthood coupled with complete naiveté which she carried around her. A lonely child, there’s no one to really notice when she goes missing. Parts of the book are told as excerpts from her Falcon Investigations notebook, all of them amusingly earnest.

It says in the back of the book that the author’s father owned a sweet shop; she puts this firsthand knowledge into the backdrop of the story with Adrian, Kate’s much older friend, just as weird and wonderful, an enthusiast of music, a co-conspirator in Kate’s Falcon Investigations. . . . He would always put a scrawled sign on the counter: ‘Now Playing: Captain Beefheart, Lick My Decals Off, Baby. For more information, just ask a member of staff.’ Kate’s father doesn’t make much of an appearance, sadly, but in a few words he comes across as the greatest of dads, even if he is 61 when Kate is 10—a retired statistician, he and Kate make lists and spreadsheets, visit cemeteries, factories, forgotten parts of Birmingham. O’Flynn knows how important details are. We don’t have to be told Teresa Stanton’s being abused and that Kate is her only friend, the only one who recognizes her potential. Once O’Flynn has fleshed out the world of 1984 sufficiently, we’re dropped suddenly into 2004.

The protagonists of Green Oaks in 2004 are not quite as endearing as Kate and Adrian. I suppose it’s just part and parcel to their being so unhappy in their lives, they come off (amusingly) bereft of human spirit. Kurt is a night security guard with a lot of emotional baggage who thinks he sees the missing Kate on CCTV footage—though until the end there’s really no explanation for him to do so unless you want to claim she’s a ghost. However, with so much time to think (it’s against Kurt’s religion to read a book, apparently) he (or O’Flynn using him as a mouthpiece) comes up with profound stuff. Sometimes when he was at home in the afternoon, the sun would shine in a certain way through his bedroom window, the net curtain would move in the breeze, causing a rippling shadow on the wall, and he’d had a strong sense-memory of what it felt like to be loved, what it felt like to fall asleep and wake up with someone’s hand in yours. He’d try and hold onto this sensation of euphoria as long as he could but it was only ever momentary. Mainly, all he could dredge up of certain times were memories of memories.

Lisa works for Your Music. O’Flynn uses Lisa to an extent as an indictment of working in retail hell, which O’Flynn apparently did herself. Lisa has no life. She has a crap boyfriend, no interest in music anymore, and nothing beyond staring at the wall to interest her outside of work. She is soulless. Your Music has done this to her, to a point where she doesn’t even know how to fill out the “Interests and Hobbies” section of a job application. I found her character so deeply depressing I could barely even laugh at the grim humor surrounding the freaks in the stockroom, the sh*tter in the elevator, her insane boss Crawford, the immensely annoying Your Music customers (clearly drawn from life). The key to her character involves enduring pain and hardship because she didn’t say no at the very beginning, beautifully summed up in a childhood experience involving blanc mange, and I almost punched the air on the bus when she finally turned her life around. Even better was a scene in which, not only did she say no, she actually stopped a cycle of customer-employee-customer abuse mind-games. All with a blank tape and a copy of Mozart’s horn concertos.

When at last Lisa and Kurt meet, both of them sharing the burden of misery and more of a connection over Kate Meaney than they realize, the story picks up speed. Adrian comes back into the picture. Kurt’s still in thrall to his moral but emotionally tyrannical father. Both know more than is immediately visible about Kate. And what has happened to Kate? Is she dead? Who killed her? Adrian? Why did she never make it to Redspoon (read: vomit) Academy? All becomes clear, and I’m proud to say for once I figured out the bad guy a few steps ahead of the narrator. In the end, despite the hurt suffered by so many of the characters, you get a sense that things have happened for a reason and there is closure.

This is a funny book, but it’s also a grim book. I really like the narrative switch between 1984 and 2004. There are attempts to—what? Liven it up? Give a fuller character experience? –with short diversions in the forms of recorded thoughts of random people including bored people on Sundays who go to malls and the jerk-off Mystery Shopper. I wasn’t sure how much the book really benefited from these. I don’t quite know why parts of the prose were blocked off with chunks of dialogue—a postmodern technique, surely, but for what purpose? I really did enjoy this book and will be haunted, like Green Oaks, by Kate’s character, for some time.

boys in eyeliner

Dark Victory

It’s really strange to be reading Loeb/Sale work with Heroes on the tube, since they’re both collaborators in that series as well (and one of the best pieces of TV fiction ever, in my opinion). As usual I’m doing it all backward—this is supposed to follow the Loeb/Sale masterpiece The Long Halloween. (The library doesn’t have it, so I may have to actually put down some cold hard cash and buy it.) Catwoman: When in Rome was excellent, this was very good, so I’m hoping Long Halloween will be, in accordance with the hype that surrounds it, unparalleled.

As far as I understand it, Dark Victory continues on more or less where Long Halloween left off. This is different territory than any of the Frank Miller I’ve been reading ,which started at the very beginning of Batman’s and Gordon’s careers (Year One), or the very end (The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again). Here is a fairly young Batman, a fairly young Gordon, and it’s time for Robin to make an appearance. All modern writers seem to acknowledge including Robin is difficult—Miller compensated by making her a girl, Loeb and Sale try to reconcile the fact that Batman works alone with a need to prevent his childhood tragedy—with no one to talk to except Alfred—happening a second time. It works fairly well. That’s one thing this graphic novel seeks to do.

One must remember that being a detective is in Batman’s DNA. He made his first appearance in 1939 in the pages of Detective, Ras al Ghul calls him “detective,” and this is what sets him apart from Superman, Spiderman, all those with “superpowers.” Hence, this is a really good detective story. It’s long and complex, so it has room for many characters and conspiracies. The conceit is a follow up to (who I assume was) the villain of Long Halloween, a villain called Holiday who strikes only on holidays. A villain named Hangman is emulating Holiday’s style. I tried to do the “holidays universe” thing myself, albeit in Doctor Who fan fiction: I got as far as “Birthdays,” “Friday the 13th,” and am still slogging away on “St Valentine’s Day.” So I have a lot of affection for this conceit, artificial though it may be. Remember Calendar Man from Sale’s “Misfits”? He’s in here too. Albeit much more sinister.

Though Alfred is around minimally to make his usual dry quips, I find it’s actually Gordon who provides the much-needed comic relief in this story. He’s got a new D.A., Janice Porter, who went to law school with Harvey Dent. Who I guess must have just become Two-Face in the last story, as the wounds are still fresh within everyone—Batman/Bruce, Gordon, Selina/Catwoman, etc. Janice Porter is, as the notes say, based on Lana Turner and must have been fun to draw. She’s a fun character, and a lot more complex than you might think. Her arrival in the comic is: “I’ve just come back from Arkham.” Gordon’s response is, “Business or pleasure?” She won’t work with Batman, she finds it difficult to see eye-to-eye with Gordon (it’s sweetly pathetic when Gordon invites her to Thanksgiving, a bit à la the young Gordon in Year One), and she’s reopening the Alberto Falcone case (ie, Holiday). In court Gordon tells her she’ll regret it for the rest of her life. Well, she does. I may as well tell you that she’s secretly Harvey/Two-Face’s lover, which is reminiscent of Bruce Timm’s Two-Face story in Black and White—with the same tragic results.

Alberto Falcone is released on strict parole and starts hearing the voice of his “father,” encouraging him to commit Holiday-style murders again. He’s got a copycat in Hangman, who everyone thinks is Two-Face. When Two-Face is busted out of Arkham, along with Solomon Grundy, the Scarecrow, and the Joker, we begin to see one half of the coin (if you’ll pardon the pun). The “freaks” of Gotham are going to war against the five crime families (Falcones, Vitis, Maronis, Gazzos, and Zuccos) with the death of Carmine “The Roman” Falcone (in Long Halloween). His daughter Sofia Gigante (so-named for ample reason) is now the head of the crime family but confined to a wheelchair with a neck brace. Or is she? To quote the Fourth Doctor in Wolfsbane, “Women can be monsters, too, you know.” Hangman is going after Gotham City cops, corrupt and clean, killing one per holiday, per month. There is a method to this madness, but it only becomes clear in the stunning finale. I can tell Loeb and Sale are obsessed with this Gotham City mafia business, and make Selina Kyle a big part of it, so I’m content to let them steamroll along. I suppose it’s all leading back to that realism vein Batman Begins started in on. (“Lovely bunch of coconuts,” is Gordon’s assessment of the mob families.)

Speaking of Selina, she’s still dating Bruce Wayne in this, and from her perspective, he’s a really crap boyfriend. They spend Thanksgiving together at Alfred’s suggestion but he fails to show up on Valentine’s Day. From the Catwoman angle she isn’t getting any satisfaction either. Batman yells at Catwoman to get down, and when he falls on top of her, she’s prepared to take it with a smile and a wink. On Valentine’s Day she and Batman stand on the roof together. “I know there’s something about me you want. I can tell. You go all rigid when I’m around. Let’s do it. Right now. Take off the masks. No secrets.” BATMAN: “ . . . What is your relationship to the Falcone crime organization?” CATWOMAN: “Happy Valentine’s Day.” I still think Sale draws Catwoman like a man with helium balloons glued to his chest (as Renaissance artists used to make their women terribly muscular because they only had male models). But character-wise, she’s awesome. “Why is it so hard for you to understand—when you blame yourself for Harvey Dent—and you didn’t even throw the acid.” BATMAN: “Harvey Dent was . . . my friend. Who is Sofia Falcone to you?” Clearly the lack of trust has gotten in the way of something really great between them. Oh well.

I do like how Sale draws Bruce/Batman. Bruce is hairy but has a lovely facial structure, slightly presaging Christian Bale. Like all of Sale’s characters he seems to be wearing eyeliner—all of Sale’s men look like raccoons. Fortunately I am a woman who appreciates men in eyeliner. I don’t like Sale’s Poison Ivy, he’s got it all wrong there. His Scarecrow, however, is the epitome of creepy—really, really far out there and the complete reverse of anything BTAS or Batman Begins could offer. Loeb and Sale seem to understand Harvey/Two-Face, giving him motive and moments much like some of the best stories in Batman: Two-Face. The scarred part of his face (play some Phantom-style organ now) is perfectly hideous, but the handsome Harvey-side is not really that handsome. (Have to say I prefer BTAS’s version.) I love what Loeb and Sale manage to do with the Riddler. And as for the Joker . . . is it too facetious to use the Third Doctor’s words there—“all teeth and curls?” Can’t say it’s my favorite design—that probably belongs to Joe Chiodo, whose Love on the Lam actually has a scene reminiscent of the one here where the Joker and Two-Face level semi-automatics at each other’s heads—but he does have the tommy-gun. I have to say from what I’ve seen the Loeb Joker is not really that funny and perfectly loathsome. Nevertheless I was a bit tickled at the fact Porter got dragged off to see Two-Face by the Joker and the Scarecrow.

And what of Dick Grayson? There’s a really powerful panel of Bruce Wayne at the circus where Dick’s parents have been killed in their highwire act, and Loeb and Sale are careful to emphasize the link between the two men, in terms of unbridled rage and need for revenge, as well as the terrible loneliness thrust upon them at a young age. In a rare smile-inducing moment Dick insists on the yellow cape as part of his Robin costume, to Bruce’s puzzlement. Art-wise Dick looks like a small wiry monkey with mascara, a character design I could live without.

Loeb and Sale know what they’re doing. They’ve plotted this thing to perfection, with twists and turns, and therefore have turned out a moving, fast-paced, beautifully drawn, inked, and colored piece of work. Sale has a real sense of design and space and how to use it, most evident in his large, page-sized spreads. It’s another graphic novel I’d certainly like to own one day.

batman: city of crime

You wouldn’t think so, but I’m beginning to see how Batman the franchise and Doctor Who the franchise are alike. They both have a revolving cast of assistants to help the central hero, a revolving cast of regular villains to frustrate them, and the format of both is so malleable, they are able to constantly reinvent themselves and stretch the boundaries of the universe in which they inhabit. It probably makes sense, then, why I am drawn to both.

I say this as a preface to this graphic novel collection, taken from issues 800-814 of the Detective range in 2005-6, because it represents the one extreme. Batman can go toward the humorous, cartoony side, a la BTAS. Nolan!verse Batman tries for the ultra-realistic. Push that a bit further, and you have David Lapham’s vision. City of Crime is so realistic, in fact, it’s disgusting. Paul Dini’s Death and the City was in that vein, but somewhat stylised, Gothic. Lapham’s packed narrative panels are somewhat reminiscent of the energy of Bill Sineciwicz, but Ramon Bachs’ pencilling, Nathan Massengill’s inks, and Jason Wright’s colors are a bit closer to Tim Sale.

Lapham is a good enough artist to provide the original comic covers, and his sense of space and suspense reflect this. City of Crime is sprawling and overarching and very frightening. It’s an unrelentingly grim, sordid story set half in Bruce Wayne’s exclusive penthouse parties and half in Crown Point, equivalent to Albuquerque’s downtown or Martineztown. (That was a bad joke. It’s worse than Albuquerque’s downtown, I assure you.) While the tangled web involves the Penguin, Mr. Freeze, and the Ventriloquist, the real villain here is a semi-supernatural force called The Body. (Not be confused with Steve Austin.)

There’s an omniscient narrative voice that at first I found annoying and intrusive, but its occasional flashes of dark humor make up for it. As Batman and Robin go into a burning apartment complex, Robin displays his recurring dry wit: “Did you wear the Nomex suit?” “Yeah, yeah, asbestos boxers and all.” The narrator adds, “Like a panther, he moves fast and low. In truth, more like a raccoon or a ferret. But don’t tell him that.” The Penguin, who I remember vaguely from the Batman movies, always seemed a bit absurd in the abstract. Of which the narrator is certain: “Oswald Chesterfield Copperpot. Known in certain circles as the Penguin. But don’t laugh. It could get you killed.”

The Penguin is presented here as loathsome as possible and is drawn that way, too--though he did make me laugh, when referring to Mr. Freeze, “This is what happens when you work with freaks.” I’m not quite sure what Mr. Feeze’s role in the story is--he kidnaps a pregnant teenager, puts her in a meat locker and forces a priest to perform a marriage ceremony, but what this has to do with the main “body” of the plot I’m not sure. In characteristically brutal style, however, the force of Freeze’s gun is illustrated with disturbing realism.

Bruce Wayne snubs a Paris Hilton-like spoiled little rich girl at a party, and then feels really guilty for the rest of the comic when she dies of a drug overdose. I still haven’t quite figured out how her death is connected to the exploding apartment complex full of pregnant teenagers and runaways, but that’s obviously because I’m slow. Taking the cue from Frank Miller, when Bruce infiltrates Crown Point, he dons his most Pimpernel-esque disguise yet. Intelligence gathered, he returns to the neighborhood as a union construction worker, Donnie Malloy. In his initiation fight with the foreman, Raffi “The Moose,” I’m reminded of “The Forgotten” from BTAS.

When Raffi befriends “Donnie,” we see a truly disgusting world of half-starved drug-peddling children, Raffi’s abused wife Siran, and about every other kind of perversion you can think of. Meanwhile Robin and ex-Commissioner Gordon are holed up in Gotham Mercy Hospital with slightly deranged cop Frank Ivers and Wekser the Ventriloquist (in a coma). And the Body is after them. It’s a good set-up. There’s wonderful interplay between nightmare and reality as we think Bruce and Siran kiss, with Raffi on the rampage killing both of them. The truth is both stranger and more prosaic.

Is it a coincidence that the City Waterfront Project, of which Raffi is foreman and which exudes a terrific force of paranoia and madness on whoever gets near it, looks exactly like Rassilon’s tower in the Death Zone? I think not! I wonder if the underground cathedral Batman finds is the one in Gothic? Batman defeats the Body’s Hydra heads and its many sources, before Robin and Gordon can kill each other (apparently, under the Body’s influence, the former thinks the latter is the murderous puppet, and the latter thinks the former is the Joker.)

As in The Dark Knight, City of Crime sees Batman nearly giving up his struggle against the weight of a city that is so virulent with pestilence and evil. In both cases he manages to remain true to his calling, but at a terrible cost.

rose has a thing for fit natives

Colin Brake has written many things, including a Second Doctor novel (with a Seventh Doctor cameo) called The Colony of Lies, which I read some time ago. I remember it was pleasant enough, and it’s difficult to write Troughton well, but I found it rather average as far as story went (it was set in a Wild West-type town on another planet, with dog-headed natives, and IMHO it didn’t really do the Wild West thing very well). I quite liked The Price of Paradise, his Ten/Rose novel, though upon reflection it has a very traditional Doctor Who structure and style. Not that this is a bad thing, just . . . average.

It occurred to me about halfway through the book that I’ve never actually read legitimate writing for Ten and Rose. (I didn’t actually read Curse of the Drowned or The Stone Rose; lovely Mr McDonald read them to me.) Since, as you know, season 2 leaves me a bit flat, I was curious to see how much I enjoyed the pairing in prose. I thought Brake pulled it off well, though perhaps because he used that tried-and-true method of separating Doctor and companion for most of the story! Brake wasn’t about to get all sappy about the Doctor and Rose (Jac Rayner isn’t so squeamish and I love her for it) so maybe the book benefited from the more straightforward approach. Having read it almost directly after Only Human, it struck me that all the writers seem to agree: Rose has a soft spot for fit natives when she lands on their primitive planets. At least they’re consistent. As in Wooden Heart, actually, I am reminded of The Village as far as the “monsters” are concerned.

Did Colin Brake know the Vast Toffee was going to name the ship the S.S. Pompadour? Because his ship name is almost as absurd: S.S. Humphrey Bogart. That’s okay—she’s sort of channelling Firefly, being a bucket of bolts rather than a sleek ship. The story concerns Laylora, the fabled “paradise planet,” and a human crew’s excursion there, which puts the planet’s eco-system in serious disarray (couldn’t be more topical, I suppose). Of course the Doctor and Rose are involved, having to avoid the seriously dangerous Witiku monsters and keep the Laylorans and the crew safe. Rose actually does a lot in this one, using her gymnastic skills, making a lucky guess in terms of weaponry against the Witiku, and there are a few sections where I think Brake does quite well in getting to the essence of Ten—specifically when he rants against a “dirty” generator that the intractable Professor (à la “42”) refuses to turn off. Rose meets Rez, an adopted human, and enjoys his company, but not to the point of Tillun in Only Human.

Inevitably, whenever I think I have something figured out, I don’t. Not even close. When grim-faced Professor Petra Shulough expressed an inkling of understanding for Rez, I took the “Silence in the Library” route. I was wrong, but in that case, why was she drawn in such an inhospitable style? One of her crewmen says in eight months, he never saw her smile. That seems like a remarkable hyperbole. Okay, she’s an orphan, but is that really justification for her frosty attitude? I wasn’t entirely convinced. Even the Doctor compares her to a Cyberwoman! (Though I suppose this may be Brake’s way of keeping us on our toes, never sure whether Petra has another, sinister agenda or not. For some reason in my mind’s eye I kept seeing the older archaeologist from “Stones of Blood.”) Fortunately, after a bit of compassion (in the form of saving her life) from Rose, Petra loosens up a bit.

Brake has a gift for cute little scenes or details; Rose goes through the Doctor’s coat pockets in order to find a weapon (and feels bad about it—I’m sure it would be the first thing I would do—especially if he was wearing the coat, heh). (Speaking of which, I’m sure Brake didn’t intend for the following exchange to have a subtext, but then again, maybe he did. ‘It’s not actually a cell, you see . . .’ Hespell started to explain. ‘It’s my cabin.’ ‘I’m being held prisoner in someone’s bedroom?’) Is there even a sly Candide reference when the sparkly trisilicate is found in the Laylorans’ fields, “ever so common”? When Rez and Rose meet, she offers him her hand. She tells him to shake, so he shakes—like a dog. If that’s not a funny enough image, it’s played up again later in this sweet and hilarious exchange: Rez looked a little hesitant. ‘Does he shake?’
She and Rez exchanged a knowing look and then both of them burst into hysterics.
‘I’ll take that as a no, shall I?’ The Doctor sounded a little hurt.
Rose managed to stop herself laughing and apologized. ‘Private joke,’ she explained.
If anything, this only made him look more upset. (This is the closest we get in the book to the Doctor and Rose as a couple.)

There’s a death at the end that, in my opinion, is included only because no one has died and this is Doctor Who so someone must die. While I found it entertaining and a quick read, it never seemed to kick up into its highest gear; even when I was only a few pages from the end and knew I was reading the denouement, I kept expecting the big finale on some level. So definitely a page-turner, I think I liked it more than Colony of Lies, and better than I expected for Rose/Ten.

the underwater menace

The only episode of this Patrick Troughton story that remains in its entirety is the third, and I was fortunate enough to watch it when Jamie got me Lost in Time. I was struck then by the sheer weirdness and creativity of the set design and costumes as it was set underwater (duh) in Atlantis. Despite this, the story has been regarded as a bunch of “old twaddle” (yes, I stole that phrase from Jamie though I don’t think he ever described this story quite that way). Perhaps then it is a superb candidate for the audio treatment as provided by Anneke Wills (Polly) who provides linking narration here much as Frazer Hines did for The Evil of the Daleks and Carole Ann Ford did for The Reign of Terror. At four episodes it’s positively sleek by 1967 standards, and despite it being a series of escapes and recaptures, I found it quite entertaining. Perhaps it helped that Anneke Wills voice was both soothing and a good one for narration; perhaps it helped that much more of the dialogue told the story than in Evil of the Daleks (was that the script writer’s fault?).

This is Jamie (McCrimmon’s) first proper story, having just been recruited from The Highlanders. It’s hilarious to see (hear?) him coming to grips with time travel (and everything else!) in this story, which he manages in irrepressible Frazer Hines style meanwhile maintaining a “desperate Scottish” accent. As I say, I admire the unusual setting that Gregory Orme gives us, and for once I find out the story behind that rather strange third episode I saw. The Doctor, Jamie, Polly, and Ben land the TARDIS in what Polly surmises is the Cornish coast, but in fact, as the Doctor determines, they’re nearer the Mediterranean. They “scramble up the volcano,” which indeed must be arduous for Polly if she’s in bloody heels like I expect she is!

Anneke Wills notes later in her interview that when she left, Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines’ natural tendency was to comedy, which is certainly already showing here. “You’ll find out!” the Doctor says when Jamie wants to know what’s going on. “I don’t think I want to know,” replies Jamie. Ben snipes that in his kilt, “someone might mistake [Jamie] for a bird!” Since apparently the crew have landed in 1970 (?!), Polly notes this is later than her own time. “Later?!” cries a baffled Jamie. “I wish I understood.” I was impressed that Polly speaks at least three European languages, and Jamie speaks Gaelic—between them and the Doctor, they’d do pretty well on communication (that is, if the TARDIS didn’t translate things already—maybe it was malfunctioning at first?).

The team almost get eaten by sharks, then sacrificed to the Atlanteans’ goddess Amdo before the scientist Zaroff comes to the rescue. The Doctor cleverly facilitates this with some reverse psychology and pretending to be a little more familiar with Professor Zaroff than he is. Zaroff is the egomaniac of which we seem to encounter only in James Bond and Doctor Who. He utters the immortal line, “I could feed you to my pet octopus, yes?” To which the Doctor replies, “Yes.” Zaroff is a food expert (perhaps he and Yana should have teamed up) who has come to Atlantis to do studies. When the Doctor asks him how the Atlanteans ever accepted him, Zaroff says he gave them a big sugar-coated pill by telling them he’d raise Atlantis to the surface of the Earth. The Doctor is horrified at the plan. In order for the audience to understand the full extent of his horror, the Doctor cries, “Do you know what you’re doing?” “You tell me, Doctor.” Apparently the nutty Zaroff’s going to explode or fry or both, the Earth. “Just one small question—why do you want to blow up the Earth?!” Because he can, muhahahahaha!

The primitive Atlanteans want to sacrifice the travellers to Amdo, turn Polly into a fish (before Peri was about to be turned into a bird), and Zaroff will stop the Doctor and his Atlantean allies from interfering at any cost! All this involves the Doctor donning a ridiculous disguise, Polly wearing shells, Jamie and Ben making friends with some guys named Sean and Jacko (where they came from, I’m not quite sure), the Fish People getting agitated and going on strike, culminating in Zaroff killing people, dragging Polly around, and shouting, “Nothing in the world can stop me now!!”

The Doctor manages to foil Zaroff, of course, but says, “I can’t leave Zaroff to drown there!” Zaroff perishes due to his own hubris, and Polly cries of the Doctor, “he must have died saving us!” Of course the Doctor did not die. Polly gets dragged roughly to her feet by Jamie in what could have ended in really bad fan fiction but doesn’t, fortunately. The surviving, displaced Atlanteans escape from their submerged city declaring “there will be no more temples” as they, like the world at large, reject religion for science. When Jamie alleges the Doctor can’t control the TARDIS, the Time Lord sputters, “I know: let’s go to Mars!” They end up on one of the most boring serials ever, “The Moonbase,” but that’s another story.

I read an interview with Anneke Wills in Shooty Dog Thing as she promoted the first volume of her autobiography. To be honest, I’d never heard of her before Doctor Who so I haven’t picked up the autobiography yet. But she seems a delightful interviewee, very lucid and also full of fun and pluck. I loved what she said about narrating the story in audio form: “I get to work again with Pat.” She notes that just hearing his voice is such pleasure, and I agree. You can accept almost anything if it comes from Troughton, or at least I can. He is a most consummate actor in audio or on screen, and listening to him play the Doctor constitutes almost half the fun of this audio adventure.

Again, as I said, the clipped nature of this story makes it much easier to listen to and follow than the ordinary stories of the period, and the over-the-top nature of the incidental characters as well as the humor of the principals increased its pleasure factor.