Last month was a bonanza for us Who audio fans. Not only was there an extra Big Finish release, concluding the story of Charley Pollard, but Tom Baker returned to the role for the first time since 1981 (not counting The Thing We Don't Talk About).

( Hornets' Nest 1: The Stuff of Nightmares - The Fourth Doctor returns, with homicidal taxidermy )

( The Prisoner of Peladon - Ice Warrior refugees and the Third Doctor, as told by David Troughton )

( Paper Cuts: Six, Charley and dead Draconians. Or are they? )

( Blue Forgotten Planet: bye bye Charley )

( The Three Companions )

When I first rewatched The Three Doctors a couple of years ago, my assessment of it was pretty harsh, but I gave it another go this last week and saw more merit in it this time. Back in October 2006 it was only the fourth Pertwee story I had watched, and I had not got very far into the Troughton era either, so my basis of comparison was not very broad; taken in consideration of the surrounding stories (especially the immediately preceding, overrated Season 9), The Three Doctors is not bad at all. (Though Terrance Dicks' novelisation is still an improvement on the broadcast original, particularly because the monsters are not visibly ludicrous.)

I revised upwards my opinion of three of the performances. First, Troughton is not just good, he is excellent, and rather steals the show from Pertwee. He gets a lot of the best lines - there is one about confusing the anti-matter blob by letting it watch television which must surely have been an ad-lib. Second, Courtney's Brigadier, if considered as an admittedly comedic authority figure, is actually pretty decent and he also gets some good nostalgia moments - thinking that Pertwee has changed back into Troughton and framing the situation as best he can. It's not the Brigadier of The Invasion or Spearhead from Space, but we haven't really had him around for a while. And third, the music is not half as bad as I remembered; I think it has to work hard to cover for the awful monsters, but does the job.

This time round I was watching the DVD, which includes a 1993 convention interview with Jon Pertwee and a 1973 Pebble Mill interview with Patrick Troughton - who looks very nervous and ill-at-ease, either he hadn't yet developed the convention-attending skills he later displayed until the day he died, or perhaps he just wasn't feeling well. There is also the 1973 Who retrospective from Blue Peter, starting with Pertwee (as himself) driving the Whomobile into the studio and then continuing with a potted history of the show, including Peter Purves introducing himself as Steven by showing Katarina's death scene from The Daleks' Master Plan - rather OTT for Blue Peter, I thought, but presumably we have Purves' choice of clip to thank for its survival when the rest of the episode was trashed.

My copy of the DVD itself has a rather special provenance. A few months ago I noticed that several items of Who memorabilia which had been sent to Verity Lambert as courtesy copies by BBC Enterprises were being auctioned on eBay (to raise funds for cancer research), and I ended up buying this DVD and (slightly by accident) a videotape of An Unearthly Child. The latter had been watched, but Lambert (who died in late 2007) had not opened the DVD, which she must surely have received, probably unsolicited, shortly after its release in 2003. On a couple of the First Doctor DVD commentaries, she remarks that she felt very sorry about Hartnell's increasingly poor health when they were working together; watching The Three Doctors, Hartnell's last acting role before his death, would hardly have made her feel better on that score, so I am not surprised that the plastic wrapper was still sealed when I got it.

So, what was happening on Earth while the Doctor and Jo were on Peladon? Well, UNIT found itself dealing with peculiar doppelgangers of senior officials, and had to call on the resources of the Master, despite his imprisonment, and of some bloke called Chesterton, who brought his wife Barbara along as well. And up in Faslane, there was a naval medic called Sullivan who turned out to be rather useful...

One of my least favourite things about the Third Doctor era is the Third Doctor, so it was with some hope that I turned to this Past Doctor Adventure set in his absence. (I had also enjoyed McIntee's Second Doctor / future Master story, The Dark Path.) My hope was largely justified. The Brigadier and the Master spark rather well, and there are lots of gleeful continuity moments (including a surprise reference to Delta and the Bannermen). Ian and Barbara take a while to bed into the UNIT environment, though, and the treatment of Barbara in particular isn't terribly satisfactory; Ian as temporary Scientific Adviser is almost Liz Shaw to the Master as Doctor.

The actual plot is basically decent but important details get drowned out by continuity squee (though of course most readers will be concentrating on the squee). McIntee has apparently said he would have liked the villainous Marianne to be played by Jacqueline Pearce, and I can see that. A fun experiment with the format.

We lucky subscribers to Doctor Who Monthly get to download this for free from Big Finish's website: a new Companion Chronicle, filling the gap I guess between the third and fourth seasons of the regular BF releases, starring Katy Manning as Jo Grant: The Mists of Time, by Jonathan Morris. It's quite a decent story - not up to Morris's impressive best, but exploits both the audio format, and Manning's ability to mimic both her own younger self and also Pertwee and the other characters, rather well.(And a second actor, Andrew Whipp, is an incidental future archaeologist whose importance to proceedings only gradually emerges.) The ending was signalled a little too far in advance for my taste, and I didn't quite buy the Awful Secret of the Time Lords, but I imagine Big Finish will get a few more subscriptions out of this one. (See also Morris's own notes on producing the play.)

Harry Towb, a Northern Irish actor who made it moderately big on the British stage and screen, died at the weekend (a few days before his 84th birthday), and I just wanted to acknowledge his two roles in Doctor Who - as Osgood, the lunar controller in episode 1 of The Seeds of Death and McDermott, the old-school plastics factory man in episode 2 of Terror of the Autons. In both cases he gets kiilled off pretty early on, but rather memorably so. Osgood has a fairly standard English accent, but McDermott is the only character ever to appear on Doctor Who sounding like he shares Towb's Norn Iron origins.

( The Seeds of Death )
( Terror of the Autons )

Towb also returned rather bizarrely to play the Brigadier's aged Italian Uncle in The Ghosts of N-Space, Jon Pertwee's last outing as the Doctor, in 1996. There are no pictures from The Ghosts of N-Space, but perhaps that is just as well.

A novel featuring the Third Doctor, Jo Grant, UNIT and Magrs' own invention, Iris Wildthyme, a renegade Time Lady whose Tardis is shaped like a double decker bus and who claims to be the Doctor's on-off girlfriend. Magrs recycled a lot of the jokes and some of the plot from this book for the Big Finish audio Excelis Dawn, with Iris (as per usual) played by Katy Manning. But Verdigris is an amusing sideways look at the Third Doctor era, with the bad guys in one scene trying to convince Jo that it is all a cruel hoax: "Think about every alen artifact or creature you have ever seen. Weren't they always surrounded by a nimbus of blue light? Didn't they sometimes look a little ... unconvincing?" And Mike Yates gets reduced to a two-dimensional cardboard cutout, so not much change there then. It's not terribly substantial, with some promising elements (eg Iris' companion, Tommy) left unexplored, but quite good fun.

(I've also been listening to The Magician's Oath from Big Finish, also set in this period; Verdigris is better.)

I read the first edition of this two years ago, since when it has been sitting on the shelf with the other volumes of this superb series of handbooks to Doctor Who, looking a bit thin in comparison with its fellows. This second edition is massively expanded from the first, with most of the new material simply being more of the same excellent analysis of the programme's context (in this case the early 1970s) plus a lot more analytical essays and 147 endnotes (which is 142 more than in the first edition; though I repeat my complaint about them being endnotes rather than footnotes). There is loads more information about what was going on behind the scenes, most of which is very interesting; my own recent back problems make me very sympathetic to Jon Pertwee. A welcome shift in Wood's attitude has him attempting to incorporate New Who continuity into Old Who analysis, rather than the invective he was previously lapsing into; this offers him room for writing such essays as "All Right, Then... Where Were Torchwood?" and additional evidence for "When are the Unit Stories Set?" There are a couple of other standout pieces, "Why Did We Countdown to TV Action?" on the early 1970s Doctor Who comics, and "Why Didn't Plaid Cymru Lynch Barry Letts?" which ostensibly attempts to explain Wales to Americans but actually has a lot of good points to make.

When I read the first edition of this I hadn't yet seen all the Pertwee stories, and tended to go and look them up in Wood and Miles after I had finished watching them. Now I want to watch several of them again to see the things I missed first time around. An excellent handbook, and I am very glad that Wood is planning a seventh volume to cover the first years of New Who.

Revealed here.

I was moderately impressed by the audio original version of this story, but I really liked the book. It is a real shame that Barry Letts has written so few Who novels; his Doctor Who and the Dæmons is one of the best Third Doctor novelisations. It's an enjoyable romp round the Brigadier's elderly relative's Italian castle, largely but not entirely told from Sarah Jane Smith's pov, with a little bit of coloration from Letts' own theological speculations. Definitely one of the Missing Adventures to look out for (and thanks, cassiphone, for sending it to me).

( reversing the polarity of my earlier views )
Whoblogging index: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten

Big Finish's series of Companion Chronicles, two-hander audio plays featuring companions of the first four Doctors, get better and better. Here we have Susan, Victoria, Jo and Leela brought back to life by Carole Ann Ford, Deborah Watling, Katy Manning and Louise Jameson, recounting adventures that we never saw on screen.

( Here There Be Monsters )
( The Great Space Elevator )
( The Doll of Death )
( Empathy Games )

All of these are recommended.

OK, now that I have read all 161 Doctor Who novelisations, and since I am jetlagged and awake, I am going to favour you with my personal top picks (and then a rough ranking of the others). You will find my reviews of each of the novelisations (plus also other spinoff literature and audio plays) here.

( The Best: Doctor Who and the Daleks )
( Doctor Who and the Romans )
( Doctor Who - The Rescue )
( Doctor Who and the Dæmons )
( Doctor Who - The Curse of Fenric )
( Doctor Who and the Green Death )

( Honorable mentions )

( Good Efforts )

( Average stuff )

( Less good  )

( Poor efforts )

( Dire: Doctor Who - Time Flight )

( The Worst: Doctor Who - The Twin Dilemma )

October Books 25) Interference Book One: Shock Tactic, by Lawrence Miles
November Books 1) Interference Book Two: The Hour of the Geek, by Lawrence Miles

( Sarah Jane Smith comes to the Eighth Doctor Adventures )

Brilliant.

Well, after posting and analysing the Best of Who and Worst of Who polls, the obvious next thing to do is combine them. So, a definitive final judgement by Livejournal: the best of the best, the worst of the worst, and deciding whether those stories that got two or more votes in each poll are Good or Bad.

( poll )

And yes, I will probably do one about the audios next.

There were some surprises here, most of all the surprise that more people voted than in the previous poll. Myself, I find it much easier to decide which story I like least than which I like most; perhaps I am unusual in that regard.

Anyway, as before, going in order of decreasing consensus by Doctor.

( Ninth Doctor: The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances )
( Fifth Doctor: The Caves of Androzani )
( First Doctor: The Dalek Invasion of Earth )
( Sixth Doctor: Revelation of the Daleks )
( Seventh Doctor: Remembrance of the Daleks )
( Fourth Doctor: Genesis of the Daleks )
( Second Doctor: The Mind Robber )
( Third Doctor: Inferno )
( Tenth Doctor: Blink )
( Eighth Doctor: Err, yes. )

So that's it. Thanks for playing, and I shall probably do the same this time next year or thereabouts.

For those who felt last week's poll was too negative:

( favourite Who stories )

Continuing my project, these are the novelisations of the Season 20 stories, plus one that got away from Season 19 and the anniversary special. A number of these confounded my expectations.

( 5) Doctor Who and the Visitation, by Eric Saward - better than expected )
( 6) Doctor Who - Arc of Infinity, by Terrance Dicks - standard stuff )
( 7) Doctor Who - Snakedance, by Terrance Dicks - standard stuff )
( 8) Doctor Who - Mawdryn Undead, by Peter Grimwade - better than I expected )
( 9) Doctor Who - Terminus, by John Lydecker - the best of this bunch )
( 10) Doctor Who - Enlightenment, by Barbara Clegg - starts well, ends with a whimper )
( 11) Doctor Who - The King's Demons, by Terence Dudley - the least impressive of this bunch )
( 12) Doctor Who - The Five Doctors, by Terrance Dicks - a guilty pleasure )

This brings me to the end of Nyssa's run on the show. As with a lot of the brainier companions, she doesn't transfer particularly memorably to the printed page. Although she does bring with her a tragic back-story, losing first her father and then her whole homeworld, this fades more and more into the background as time goes on. Having said that, there are a couple of stories - eg Black Orchid, Terminus - where she is pretty central to the action and this works well.

Nyssa of course continues to feature on Fifth Doctor audios from time to time, including on several of the best Big Finish stories - The Mutant Phase (with Daleks), Primeval (a sort of prequel to The Keeper of Traken), The Game (which brings back William Russell rather gloriously) and two particular favourites, Creatures of Beauty (which has a very unusual format but none the less works) and most of all Spare Parts (the origin of the Cybermen). Any or all of these would be a decent jumping off point to get into Big Finish, if you haven't already done so.

This is what the poll reveals as the Worst Who stories (listed in order of decreasing consensus by Doctor).

( Fifth Doctor: Time Flight )
( Second Doctor: The Underwater Menace )
( Ninth Doctor: The Long Game )
( Sixth Doctor: Timelash )
( Seventh Doctor: Time and the Rani )
( Third Doctor: The Mutants )
( Tenth Doctor: tie between Love & Monsters and Fear Her )
( Eighth Doctor: what do you think? )
( First Doctor: tie between The Chase and The Gunfighters )
( Fourth Doctor: The Horns of Nimon )

Thus is revealed the accumulated weight of Livejournal. I am in line with the majority on only three of the nine where there is a serious contest; blue_condition, whose debate with me sparked this, does rather better. So basically, Pete wins the argument.

Sparked by a debate between blue_condition and myself, I must ask the following questions:

( which is the worst story of each Doctor? )

My apologies to those of you who are not all that interested in Who; I have three posts brewing on different aspects of the canon (of which this is the first) which I plan to write this weekend. There are a couple of non-Who posts brewing as well, and I'll try to leaven the mixture.

( 29) Doctor Who and the Time Warrior, by Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes )
( 30) Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion, by Malcolm Hulke )
( 31) Doctor Who - Death to the Daleks, by Terrance Dicks )
( 32) Doctor Who and the Monster of Peladon, by Terrance Dicks )

So, since I read Doctor Who and the Planet if the Spiders a while back, that is the end of the Third Doctor novels. The general level of quality is better than for the first two Doctors, with some excellent reads - Barry Letts' Doctor Who and the Dæmons and Malcolm Hulke's Doctor Who and the Green Death - and some of Terrance Dicks' best efforts - Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, Doctor Who - The Three Doctors and Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders. And even if Malcolm Hulke didn't always match his own ambitions, his books were always interesting, and Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters and Doctor Who and the Space War are pretty good.

A run of novels from what will probably turn out to be the peak period in terms of consistency of quality in this entire project. None of these is awful; all are decent efforts, though none of them is outstanding. Both the best and the worst (in my humble opinion) are by Malcolm Hulke.

( 19) Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, by Terrance Dicks )
( 20) Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon, by Brian Hayles )
( 21) Doctor Who and the Sea Devils, by Malcolm Hulke )
( 22) Doctor Who and the Mutants, by Terrance Dicks )
( 23) Doctor Who - The Time Monster, by Terrance Dicks )
( 24) Doctor Who - The Three Doctors, by Terrance Dicks )
( 25) Doctor Who and the Space War, by Malcolm Hulke )
( 26) Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks, by Terrance Dicks )
( 27) Doctor Who and the Green Death, by Malcolm Hulke )

I've said it before (though not all agree with me) but I'll say it again: Jo Grant comes across much better on the printed page, perhaps because of the affection the writers of these books have for this era of the show in general. She often becomes a sympathetic viewpoint character rather than the whiny blonde side-kick she so often was on screen.

The same is true, indeed, for Pertwee's Doctor, who comes across as more affectionate and humorous, and less arrogant, on the page when written by the people who designed the character rather than portrayed by the actor who had his own ideas.

The other UNIT personnel don't fare so well. The Brigadier is on the whole a bit less cartoonish in the books than he became on screen; Yates and Benton don't get a lot to do in most stories (Yates has his moment in The Green Death, Benton in The Three Doctors).

Sarah Jane next!

Two nice extracts from Doctor Who and the Dæmons, for all you Doctor/Master shippers out there (the viewpoint character is the Master in both cases):

( Read more... )

Five more Who books, of which three are decidedly skippable and two rather good.

( Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons )
( Doctor Who - the Mind of Evil )
( Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos )
( Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon )
( Doctor Who and the Dæmons )

So, on to the Third Doctor books, starting with three Dicks efforts of varying quality, and a good one by Malcolm Hulke; all covering stories first broadcast in 1970.

( 6) Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks )
( 7) Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke )
( 8) Doctor Who - the Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks )
( 9) Doctor Who - Inferno, by Terrance Dicks )

( Northern Ireland and Doctor Who )

I've headlined this post by referring to Liz Shaw, but in fact she doesn't come across particularly well on the printed page and, given my childhood memories of the first two of these books, I was surprised by how much I liked Caroline John in the TV role when I watched. I am beginning to spot a pattern where the brainy companions (Zoe and Liz) don't transfer well to the novelisations, whereas the screamy ones (Victoria, Polly and I expect Jo) actually come over rather better.

Having mostly enjoyed the first set of these, I can say that the second set is of the same order of quality.

( Mother Russia: Steven tells a story of the First Doctor in Napoleonic times )

( Helicon Prime: Jamie and the Second Doctor on holiday, solve a mystery )

( Old Soldiers: Brigadier recounts a German adventure with the Third Doctor )

( The Catalyst: Leela and the Fourth Doctor in Edwardian times )

So, try the first of these, and if you like it, experiment with the rest; good performances from the key actors, not so sure about the story in some cases.

Are you a Doctor Who character? Are you concerned about whether you will live to the end of the story, or die a horrible death? Here's a useful indicator: are you played by Geoffrey Palmer?

I had originally planned to do an overall piece on the first two Doctor Whos, William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, shortly after I finished getting through all their stories in the summer. But that was a point when energy levels were generally a bit low, and anyway it actually makes more sense to consider them together with Jon Pertwee. Tom Baker's is the first Doctor I can remember watching consistently first time round, so my experience of all of the earlier three was formed first by the Target novelisations, then by Doctor Who magazine (and the Making of Doctor Who and the Jean-Marc Lofficier volumes), then by occasional viewing of surviving series, and only very lately, in the last year or so, by going through them systematically. And in fact the first three made similar numbers of stories (29, 21, 24) and episodes (134, 119, 128), all well behind T Baker but unmatched by any other subsequent Doctor (Davison ties with Troughton for number of stories but is way behind on episodes), so we are comparing like with like to a greater extent than is possible with any other grouping of three Doctors.

( William Hartnell: First Doctor, 1963-1966 )

( Patrick Troughton: Second Doctor, 1966-1969 )

( Jon Pertwee: Third Doctor, 1970-1974 )

I think it will be a while before I do another post like this!

Well, that's it; I have now completed the Jon Pertwee era, as I did the Hartnell era in June and the Troughton era in July. (It will take me a bit longer to get through T Baker and Davison, though I've already seen half of McCoy and almost half of C Baker.) I promised a long post on the first two, but now might do a longer one on the first three. Before I get there, though, the last two Third Doctor stories on my list.

( Day of the Daleks )

( The Mind of Evil )

So there we have it; all 24 of the Third Doctor stories now watched. The Green Death was actually the first Doctor Who story I reviewed here; I started on a relatively high note, and did not finish too badly, considering I had tended to watch the good ones first. A reminder for those of you who care that I have archived all my TV reviews here, and all my other DW reviews here.

Three Classic Who stories to write up, with The Talons of Weng-Chiang decidedly superior, The Monster of Peladon decidedly average, and The Ambassadors of Death decidedly different. (Only two Third Doctor stories left to go now.)

( The Monster of Peladon )

( The Talons of Weng-Chiang )

( The Ambassadors of Death )

So, in summary, one total classic, one interesting (if you can bear to take in all seven episodes) and one for completists only.