Who Book-Quest #8: The Scarlet Empress by Paul Magrs

Paul Magrs provides a wonderful afterword to this, his first novel for the Doctor Who range, that's just as poignantly beautiful as the best parts of the story that preceded it. He talks about how, for him and his little brother, Doctor Who was always more about the books than the telly.

For me, coming to the series in the Wilderness Years (which must be capitalised), it was much the same. Doctor Who was, for me, books and videos. Big Finish were only just starting up, and it would be a couple of years before I would discover their audios. I didn't have a lot of spare cash, so, to begin with, I searched through the shelves of secondhand shops and libraries, looking out for tapes and battered paperbacks. Even though most of the serials had been released on VHS by that point, the long, slow publication rate meant that there rarely seemed to many about, and often it would be the same few stories that showed up, again and again. The books though, they were something else. Occasionally I'd strike lucky and find some New Adventures in a charity shop or an overflow cheapie store, but rarely, and they had a different quality, something between the Target novelisations which I was also discovering, and the new novels the BBC were publishing. The Virgin novels were, although only a few years old, evidently something of the past; the BBC books were still coming out, all the time.

My local library held a good dozen of them, and they were slowly rotated round the branches, bringing a few more in every so often. The first two I read were Lance Parkin's The Infinity Doctors, about which I rattle on elsewhere, and Chris Boucher's Last Man Running. Parkin's book was astonishingly good; Boucher's wasn't. Thankfully, I read the good one first, and cemented my burgeoning love of Doctor Who. Looking at the release schedule, Last Man Running and The Scarlet Empress must have been released together. They are each the fifteenth release of their respective ranges, Past Doctor Adventure and Eighth Doctor Adventure respectively. The EDAs definitely got the best deal that month. I returned to the library and picked up a handful more BBC novels, and Empress was among them. I opened it as soon as I got home, and within a few pages, I was captivated.

The Scarlet Empress was qualitatively different to the other Doctor Who novels I'd found. For a start, it wasn't science fiction. It was unabashedly, unashamedly fantasy. The usual Doctor Who trappings were there - he arrived on the world of Hyspero in his TARDIS, with his companion, Sam, and went on an adventure. There was talk of Time Lords, and regeneration, and Skaro and whatnot, all of which I lapped up, learning more about this peculiar universe I'd finally found my way into. Yet it was a wholly different sort of adventure to the likes of Bodysnatchers, or Vampire Science, or Legacy of the Daleks. Hyspero was a world of alligator men and bearded ladies, where cyborgs mingled with mages, where queens were pickled in jam jars and stored beneath their palace for all eternity. And most importantly, The Scarlet Empress, unlike those other books, featured Iris Wildthyme, a character as charming, adventurous and entertaining as the Doctor, only not half as serious.

Coming back to it now for my little book-a-thon must be the fifth time I've read this, I think, including the one immediately after the first, when I read it aloud to my sister. Altogether too old for bedtime stories, she still listened to me read to her, exploring my new love for Doctor Who. First I read her Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, making my voice as deep as possible for the fourth Doctor's lines (which is to say, not very deep). Then Legacy of the Daleks, which wasn't amazing, but was good fun and let me scream at her in a Dalek voice, and was, as far as I was aware at the time, the sequel to the Peter Cushing movie (oh, the naivety!) Then I went in with the dense, lyrical, wonderful Empress, renewing it over and over so we'd have time to reach the end.

The Scarlet Empress was published in 1998, the first Doctor Who novel to feature Iris Wildthyme, but not the first novel - that was Marked For Life, a work in the magic realist genre that introduced a distinctly Time Lordy character who would only later cross into Doctor Who. In fact, Iris made her Who debut in the short story 'Old Flames' not long before Empress was published. This, though, was when she crashed her time-travelling bus right into the Doctor's world. A chain-smoking, hard-drinking, barmy old mare who was more than a match for the freshly regenerated eighth Doctor. A woman who claimed to have had all of the Doctor's adventures herself, and what's more, had the write-ups to prove it. It was impossible not to love her.

The Scarlet Empress itself is a beauty of a book. Flitting with ease between first and third person, it has no one core protagonist, with the Doctor, Sam and Iris sharing the limelight with Gila the alligator man, Major Angela the bearded lady, and Cassandra, the Scarlet Empress herself.  Magrs cheerfully references as many adventures in the Doctor's life as he can muster, reinforcing that this is, indeed, a Doctor Who adventure, even if it is unlike any that you have read before. That is, of course, how it should be. Once, fifty years ago, the Doctor stumbled from one genre to another, the story changing every few weeks. Only later did Doctor Who  become its own genre. And by referencing Lungbarrow, or The Dying Days, or whichever story you spot, Magrs gleefully sends up the notion of canon, for all the while, Iris is laying her own claim to the Doctor's adventures and sneering at the very idea of consistency. The sequel, The Blue Angel, would take this approach even further, but wonderful though it is, it's The Scarlet Empress that is by far the better adventure. It's a long, leisurely, meandering journey across a world of marvels and horrors, where magic is more important than logic and story is more important than truth. And it contains one of my favourite ever regeneration scenes, and if that doesn't make it top Doctor Who, I don't know what does.


The Iris image above is by June Hudson.

SpaceX Falcon and Grasshopper

SpaceX continue to stride forward in their commercial spaceflight programme. Having made records three years ago when their Dragon-class spacecraft delivered its package to the International Space Station, SpaceX have continued to make progress with their launch vehicles. Previous flights by SpaceX have been launched using the Falcon family of launch vehicles, which use SpaceX's own designs of rocket engines to great effect. Both the original test flight of the Dragon and its eventual mission to the ISS were launched by the Falcon 9 vehicle (actually the second design built), version 1.0, which is being replaced by the version 1.1. Having already secured commercial cargo contracts from NASA, SpaceX anticipate a human transport sign-off in the near future.

Falcon 1, Falcon 9 v.1.0, Falcon 9 v1.1 and Falcon Heavy

The major problem with the Falcon family is its lack of true reusability. SpaceX aimed to create a reusable rocketship from the very beginning, but only certain stages and components have shown reuse to be viable. Work continues on a fully reusable version of the Falcon, although a successful test is not expected until at least well into next year. Meanwhile, a heavy duty variant, the Falcon Heavy, is in development, provisionally scheduled for launch next year. The Falcon Heavy is intended as a successor to the Saturn V rockets that launched NASA's Apollo missions; an expendable rocket system intended to launch human carriage spacecraft.

Essential in the development of a reusable launch system is the Grasshopper rocket. This is a supllementary system, designed primarily for low to high-to-high altitude, low-to-mid velocity tests that will go towards the development of a reusable variant of the Falcon and its potential successors. In August, SpaceX performed a test flight that demonstrated the Grasshopper's capabilities. As this video shows, it has the capability not only for vertical landing but also lateral maneuverability (it's also good for scaring cows).

After full testing, the Grasshopper's systems could potentially be used to create the next  version of the Falcon. Presumably, the next aim for SpaceX will be the realisation of the Red Dragon project: a modified Dragon spacecraft designed to carry instruments, and eventually, astronauts to and from Mars. The Falcon Heavy would be used to launch the Red Dragon, and some of the technologies used by the Grasshopper could be modified to allow it to maneuvre, land on and relaunch from the Martian surface.

Shameless promotion!

This is just one of posts dedicated to marketing stuff my friends and I have produced. There's some good stuff here, so please do take a gander.

Firstly, Myth Makers' new volume, Golden Years, is finally now available for order. All eleven Doctors make an appearance, and there's a host of material by fine authors like Kelly Hale, Cody Quijano-Schell, Blair Bidmead and Stuart Douglas. Also, my own contribution, 'The Sleeping Ones,' which features the seventh Doctor and Ace. The full description is here and you can order it here!

Now, if you're a geek and you like cool things, you should check out Papyrusaurus, the amazing craft company run by my good friend, Chief Executive Dinosaur, Ashley Croyle-Mankoski. She produces fantastic artwork, most of it riffing on geeky stuff like Doctor Who, Firefly and Harry Potter
And if you're looking for Christmas decorations with a different flavour, you should take a look at her pine cones.If you're more into jewellery and suchlike, you should check out her other company Sticks and Tomes. She does incredible things with natural materials, turning them into incredible, wearable works of art. And while I say 'company,' both Papyrusaurus and Sticks and Tomes are just Ashley. She's awesome talented and wears big glasses, and you should buy her stuff.

On the more business-y side of things, if you're looking for professional graphic design, you should try Ryan O'Hara of Rhinobites. He offers design work for businesses of all sizes, and as a display of his skills, he has created this absolutely amazing poster for the Cornetto Trilogy.

Finally, and though I've pushed it before, I urge you all to buy and read The Terminal by the supremely talented Rachael Spellman. It's a mere £1.54 for Amazon Kindle. This girl is going places, you mark my words. We'll be seeing her name on the bestseller lists, I am sure. And read her blog, for more fiction, articles and thoughts. She's really quite astonishing.

CAPTAIN'S BLOG: TNG 1.16-1.18

1.16) When the Bough Breaks
or
'Sterile Trek'

The Mission: Investigate the lost civilisation of Aldea.

Planets visited: Aldea, the fabled lost planet, located in star system Epsilon Minos. The entire planet is both shielded and cloaked, invisible to the rest of the universe.

Alien life forms: The Aldeans: another alien race that look exactly like humans. They've had an advanced technological society for thousands of years, and isolated themselves from the rest of the galaxy for a life of introspection. They are, however, too dense to realise that the technology shielding their planet is destroying their ozone layer, allowing UV radiation to flood the planet. The radiation has been damaging their chromosomes, rendering the entire race sterile. There's no mention of tumours, hair loss, or diarroeah, though, so it's quite specific radiation poisoning, although it does give the big chief headaches. To prevent the extinction of their culture, they've left a trail of breadcrumbs to lead a Federation ship to Aldea so that they can trade for, or failing that, abduct some children to raise as their own.

The Picard Maneouvre: It's an episode about kids, so we get lots of Picard looking generally uncomfortable. He does give the cute little girl a hug though.

Number One: Seems very overexcited to be visiting Aldea. Outright refuses to negotiate with the Aldeans when it comes to the children.

Boy Wonder: Not a Wesley-centric episode as such, but he does become the de facto leader of the abducted kids by dint of being the oldest (and the fact that he's a genius can't hurt either). He convinces the kids to go on hunger strike. He's canny enough to learn the controls of the Custodian computer and to surruptitiously scan one of the Aldeans.

Sexy Trek: Rashella, the last person to be born on Aldea and thus the only remotely young person on the planet, is played by the beautiful Brenda Strong.

Space Bilge: Naturally, the Enterprise crew finds a way to save the Aldeans from sterility within a few days, and even sorts out the planet's atmosphere in a few moments of off-screen jiggery-pokery. The Aldeans' actions are idiotic, as are the crew's. Did the Aldeans really think kidnapping kids was going to go down well with a bunch of aliens they'd just invited to their planet? And from the humans' point of view, why is it so appalling that they want children? OK, so they obviosuly can't have the crew's kids, but surely there are at least a few orphans in the Federation, who could go to some Aldean foster families? They only seem to want about eight of them, after all, which is not a good-sized gene pool to restart a species with.

Future Treknology: As well as a planetary cloaking device, the Aldeans have advanced teleporters, the power to fling the Enterprise through space, and a supercomputer called the Custodian which controls their society - but is at least terribly polite about it. There's a shot of the Custodian's power core, towering over the humans, which is pretty cool.

Future History: The Earth suffered its own  bout of radiation flooding in the 21st century when its ozone layer was depleted.

Of course, in the original series... Kirk would have beamed down and impregnated Rashella, chromosomal damage be damned.

The Verdict: Another society run by a computer - very sixties Trek, which must have felt out of date by the late eighties, and cetainly feels archaic now. A boring, talky episode, enjoyment of which will depend on your tolerance for cute kids.

CAPTAIN'S BLOG: TNG 1.14-1.15

1.14) 11001001
or
'Holosex'

The Mission: Take back the Enterprise after it is stolen during computer maintenance at Starbase 74.

Planets visited: Starbase 74 orbits Tarsus III, in the Sol Sector (Earth's local sector).

Alien Life Forms: The Bynars, diminutive humanoids with big heads and purplish skin. Like the Talosians from 'The Cage,' they are played by women but with masculine voices (downshifted rather than dubbed) to make them seem androgynous. Their ears are asymmetrical, which is fun, and each Bynar's partner has the same ears, but reversed, so they're symmetrical only in pairs. It's the same with their cybernetic head implants, which channel information from a buffer on their waists.

The Bynars are all tied in to an enormous central computer on their home planet, Bynaus, in Beta Magellan. They live and work in pairs, linked together, finishing each other's sentences, and can communicate in a high-speed digital speech. Four Bynars called 1-0, 0-1, 1-1 and 0-0 are at Starbase 74 for repair and maintenance. However, they take over the Enterprise so that they can use its computer core. The computer on Bynaus is under threat from a supernova, which will knock it out with an electromagnetic pulse. Seeing everything as in yes/no terms, they didn't ask for help in case they were refused.

Sexy Trek: In order to keep Riker and Picard distracted, the Bynars reprogramme the holodeck to create Minuet, a sexy jazz siren. Riker tries out blonde and redhead variations before he settles on the sultry brunette, played by Carolyn McCormack. Minuet is at least partly self-aware, and knows that she is a computer programme intended to captivate Riker long enough for the Bynars to take over the ship. She is far more realistic than any hologram seen so far, and Riker falls for her. She even accesses the French database so she can chat up Picard.

The Picard Maneouvre: Surprisingly affected by Minuet as well - I mean, we expect these things from Riker, but not Jean-Luc. He convinces Riker to assist him in setting the ship's self-destruct systme, before they retake the bridge. He gets to pilot the ship - a rare treat for the captain.

Number One: He loves his jazz, but thinks that blondes and jazz don't go together. He has a go on the holo-band's trombone while he's wooing Minuet. He's pretty cut up to find, after the Bynars have returned control of the computer, that Minuet has reverted to a basic hologram. The Bynars keep him aboard so that they have a back-up if they can't restart the planetary computer.

Elementary, My Dear Data: He's learning how to paint. Riker finds the idea of Geordi, a blind man, teaching an android to paint funny, but thinks it'll be in the history books someday. Takes control of evacuating the Enterprise when the Bynars fake the warp core breach. He and Geordi get everyone off the ship before elaving themselves - unaware that Riker and Picard are still in the holodeck.

Future Fashion: We get the first mention of 24th century sport Parrise's Squares, and see Tasha, Worf and two random extras in some very unflattering navy blue lycra sportswear.

Funny Bits: The commander of Starbase 74, Orfil Quinteros (great name) looks like Picard's Mirror Universe twin.

Space Bilge: The Bynars are named for the fact that they live and communicate in binary. A bit of a linguistic coincidence, isn't it? Still, no more ridiculous than with the Borg or the Cybermen, I guess. If they've only got two-digit names, then there's going to be a lot of confusion on the home planet; the four names in use here are all the combinations possible.

If there's a supernova in their star system, they've got much bigger problems than an EM pulse knocking out their computers.

Verdict: "You might have said no." This is a pretty good little episode, with a nice central sci-fi conceit. We get to see two pairs of characters work together well, showing the effectiveness of the Picard-Riker and Data-Geordi teams. The Bynars are a great idea. However, the holodeck is already feeling overused.