Latest output from the prolific Sandifer's
blog, with a few extra essays and updates included. This is of course my favourite era of Old Who, the run from
Robot to
Talons of Weng-Chiang, and so I read the book with more than the usual degree of interest (also looking to see if my brother is quoted again - he is, in the essay on
Brain of Morbius but talking about
Terror of the Zygons).
As usual I found myself nodding in satisfied agreement 90% of the time and blinking in surprise 10% of the time. Sandifer's deconstruction of
The Android Invasion, for example, is brutal; his defence of
Planet of Evil a little surprising. Almost fifty pages out of 320 total are devoted to a single story - but
The Deadly Assassin was my favourite Old Who story anyweay, and Sandfer convinces that there is far more going on within those 100 minutes than I had realised (and also makes it seem pretty obvious in retrospect). I also very much liked the "Time Can Be Rewritten" entries on spinoff books (
Managra,
System Shock,
Asylum,
Corpse Marker and Eye of Heaven), all of which I had read and most of which I enjoyed. And the penultimate piece on
The Valley of Death, a Big Finish "lost adventure" by Hinchcliffe, points out some general problems with the era as a whole. Basically this series - in the definitive ebook / print version - joins
About Time as key material for the inquiring Whovian.
(Sandifer is currently offering
discounts on all his e-books, including the first four Tardis Eruditorum volumes, valid until 1 January.)