WHO REVIEW CATCH-UP: Stranded vol 1

The latest of Big Finish's Eighth Doctor boxed sets, Stranded is set to be another four-box series comprising sixteen linked stories which will play out over the next couple of years. I've let these slip over the last few years; Dark Eyes started very promisingly but carried on too long and lost focus, although it was enjoyable throughout, while Doom Coalition never really engaged for me. I haven't even looked at buying Ravenous, although the write-ups suggest some intriguing ideas. 

Stranded, though, intrigued me from the start. Putting the Doctor in a new, self-imposed exile on contemporary Earth is irresistible. Indeed, I'm surprised the television series hasn't tried it for a year to mix things up while saving costs. Expense isn't such an issue for Big Finish - setting a story on Skaro costs the same as setting it in Croydon - but the dramatic potential is promising, and it certainly makes for a new direction for the series. And let's be fair, Doctor Who audios could do with some new and interesting ideas lately. The series features the Doctor living with Liv Chenka (Nicola Walker) and Helen Sinclair (Hattie Morahan), his now stalwart companions, in a converted house in London (amusingly converted to flats after his old companion Thomas Brewster sold it). The TARDIS, meanwhile, is just a police box, sitting on a street corner and turned into makeshift mini-library.

Of course, the Eighth Doctor's been here before, back in the BBC Books "Earth Arc." This is quite a different take on exile for him, though - the books had the Doctor living without his memories, spending over a century on Earth and very much alone. There are similarities, though - the Doctor searching for his old life (which he knew he was missing before, even if he couldn't remember it), feeling increasingly isolated, and occasionally almost crossing paths with other iterations of himself. This time there's no risk of him bumping into the Third Doctor during a previous exile, but the Twelfth Doctor's subsequent self-imposed exile is finishing around now. The Eighth Doctor's life was always marked by a complex timeline where past and future threatened to intercede.

Plus, it's 2020 now, and Big Finish are making a bold and deliberate move of support to the LGBT community by having a new companion who happens to be trans enter the scene, and engage in a same-sex relationship with an existing companion. This is good, important stuff, and I'm pleased we're seeing moves like this now, even though we're not quite there on TV (in spite of the attacks on "wokeness" the series is getting).

LOST PROPERTY

The big draw of this set, of course, was the inclusion of Tom Baker as the Curator. There's absolutely no ambiguity about his identity at all anymore - this is the Doctor, far in the future, although just how far is endlessly open to question. The Curator, it seems, spends much of his retirement tidying up after his earlier selves and keeping them out of trouble (shades of Merlin there).We meet Ron (David Shaw-Parker), who lives at the Doctor's house on Baker Street with his husband, and also happens to work at the local lost property office, run by an alien named Midge (Robert Portal). The Curator uses this as a sort of sorting office for the various bits of extraterrestrial bric-a-brac he and other travellers have left lying around. The Twelfth Doctor has given Midge a Pandora Bolt, a security device that instils fear and paranoia, which then comes into Ron's possession and affects those living in the house.

It's a slightly contrived set-up (like that's unusual in Doctor Who), but one that works very well as a way to introduce the various new characters that inhabit the Doctor's reduced world. In honesty, not much happens during the episode, but that's kind of the point. This is a mundane story - mundane as in worldly, rather than dull - concerned with the ordinary battles and relationships of everyday life. The Doctor, of course, is singularly inept in this area, so Liv and Helen are left to do much of the everyday work and engagement. There are a lot of characters introduced, just like it would be moving into a new flat in a busy house. Among the most notable is Robin (J.J. Davison), a teenaged boy who has just moved in with his dad and almost runs away. The Curator talks him out of it, and in time (over the course of the set) he develops a pleasant friendship with the Doctor. 

Some of the best moments are between Helen and the Curator - hilariously, Helen theorises that he's an incarnation of River Song - and naturally between Helen and Liv, who are both more suited at Earthly life than the Doctor and lost in time. (Helen being from the sixties and Liv from the far future.) The little oddities of early 21st century life are fun to view through their eyes, but there's the ongoing theme that people really aren't all that different whoever they are.

WILD ANIMALS

While she's introudced in the previous episode, Tania's main involvement in the story begins here. Played by Rebecca Root, she comes across as a very ordinary but perfectly charming woman, and there's the beginnings of something close between her and Liv almost straight away. While Liv and Helen integrate into the household, the Doctor continues to struggle with a mundane (in both senses) life, and his sanity is already suffering. When someone is violently attacked in a local park, the Doctor sets it upon himself to solve the crime and bring the assailant to justice, which does not put him in the good books of the police. The Doctor is depressed and desperate for some adventure in his life, but even when it comes to crime and "real" adventure, he is spectacularly unsuited to human life. It's a rare story where the Doctor has to face the limitations of his abilities. There's some real tragedy in this episode, not least when Liv is shot in an entirely pointless altercation. On the plus side, in hospital she and Tania finally ask each other out, and Liv - being from a more civilised century - is entirely unphased to learn that Tania is trans.

MUST-SEE TV

Respect to Big Finish for not thinking that merely making a character trans was enough to autmoatcially make her interesting. While Tania appears like quite an ordinary person, she has a secret life, as evident from the end of part one. Tania, it turns out, works for Torchwood, and has been placed at Baker Street to keep an eye on the Doctor. Torchwood are well-informed enough to realise that the Eighth Doctor is too early in his timeline to know about them, and equally that this means he must be protected or their own existence could be compromised. She's assisted by PC Andy (Tom Price) who fits perfectly into the set-up and adds a solid comedic element to the story. After two episodes mostly concerned with the everyday problems of life on Earth, the sci-fi side picks up here, with the mysterious Mr. Bird moving in and tinkering with their tellies to undertake shifty surveillance. It's solidly entertaining, but least effective of the set.

DIVINE INTERVENTION

This final episode starts off with the joyfully mundane, as the Doctor wins a ton of cash on a quiz show (and, wonderfully, thinks he'll be allowed to go back and do it again next week) while Liv and Tania plan a romantic dinner date, to which the Doctor then invites himself and the entire household in an attempt to build the community. It's fun sitcom stuff that sees the Doctor finally settling in, so naturally it can't last. His presence on Earth for so long has led a group of aliens from his own personal future to track him down, who intend to take him out before he can influence their timeline and cause their ruin. This is, of course, paradox on top of paradox, and that's just the sort of thing the TARDIS needs to provide a burst of temporal energy to kick start its regeneration. So, an end to the exile is in sight - in three boxed sets time, of course. The sudden intrusion of alien assassins during a major dinner is fun,  and after the strained attempts to keep life "normal" in "Must-See TV" is effective, but the first two episodes, which were largely concerned with more realistic concerns, were stronger. "Divine Intervention," and the set as a whole, work, but I fear the promise of the original concept is already being lost. We shall see - it's certainly enough of a success to make me want to pick up Stranded 2.

TREK REVIEW: DIS 3-7 - "Unification III"

This was the episode I was most excited about when the titles were announced. "Unification" and "Unification II" made up a major two-part episode of The Next Generation, bringing Spock into the series and beginning his (and by extension, Picard's) involvement in Romulan society and the beginnings of reunification between Vulcan and Romulus. It was almost inevitable that Vulcan and Romulus would be united in the far future, especially after Romulus itself was destroyed. I was also looking to the inevitable scene when Michael found out what her brother got up to after she left him, and the look of shock when she found out what a legend he was didn't disappoint. 

There's a few moments that take the biscuit when it comes to believability. With the knowledge that the Federation has lost most of its members, wouldn't Saru and Burnham have looked up the situation and seen who was still involved? Equally, I can't believe that no one thought to mention the SB-19 experiment and how Vulcan was convinced it was the cause of the Burn. I know that Starfleet have dismissed the idea, but surely it was worth pointing out to the woman who had made it her personal mission to solve the crisis? 

Still, accepting all this, I love some of the details. Of course, Saru and Burnham aren't aware that the Romulans and Vulcans are related, and still distrust the Romulans. I love that Burnham is convinced that the Romulans are the ones who forced the Vulcans to leave the Federation, when actually it was their idea. All of this ties back to TNG, where we first encountered not only the reunification movement but also Vulcan separatists. It's not all blatant stuff like a clip of Spock from "Reunification II" and Michael's mum turning up (more on that in a minute); all the elements of the episode act to tie disparate parts of the franchise together, in a remarkably fluid and non-fanwanky way.

The journey to Ni'Var, the planet formerly known as Vulcan, is an exciting prospect, so it's tremendously disappointing that we never set foot there and this is left as a bottle episode set on Discovery itself. We get to see different factions of Romulans, Vulcans, and Romulo-Vulcans (mixed race people, I guess) at the logical talk-off the t'kal-in-tet, but there's never a real sense of place. Bringing in the Qowat Milat, the truth-speaking ninja space nuns from Star Trek: Picard, is another nice touch. 

Again, it stretches belief when, not only are the Vulcans impressed that Burnham is there (how the hell do they even know who she is? I know she's the most important person in the galaxy but that was meant to be kept on the downlow), but her mum is now part of the Qowat Milat. It leads to a very nice scene where Mama Burnham uses her powers of absolute candour to put Michael on the spot and actually admit what's driving her these days, but it's still an absolutely ridiculous coincidence. Then again, adventure fiction is full of such contrivances.

The other major element of the episode is Tilly being made Acting First Officer, which is also absurd but works dramatically. Of course it has to be Tilly, who is the heart of the series and the crew. It's ridiculous in realistic terms, since she's the lowest ranking member of the crew, but then, we do know that Saru is a big fan of Captain Pike (he did promote Kirk to Acting First Officer in the other timeline, and that was straight from cadet). It's silly, but it works in terms of the series, although I would like it if Admiral Vance has a word or two with Saru. 

There has been some comment that, for all the talk of exploring a bold new future, there's been a lot of time spent on reworking the franchise's familiar elements. We've seen 32nd century Earth, Trill, the Andorians and Orions, and now the Vulcans and Romulans, so this is a fair criticism, but there's good reason to explore how the major elements of Star Trek's "present" have changed over the centuries. After this, we've only really got the Klingons to go as a major culture to explore (although there's mileage in the Ferengi, Cardassians, Borg and Dominion as well), but it's important to the overall story. Nonetheless, after 900 years, having a minor or completely unknown race in a major position of power would be more satisfying. 

Regardless, Vulcan's future is an essential part of the Star Trek story. As long as you can accept the absurd level of contrivance, this is a satisfying episode, even though very little actually happens in it. It fills in another vital element of the new future, with a powerful emotional story along the way.

Observations:

The name Ni'Var is an astonishingly deep cut bit of fanlore. News to me but a really clever callback. It had previously been used as a Vulcan ship name on Enterprise as well. 

With this episode, the Romulans join the Vulcans as one of only two alien races to appear in every Star Trek series (unless you count Short Treks as a series, in which case the Romulans and Klingons are joint with a series each to go).

No one mentions the Romulan supernova, nor that Spock tried to stop it (and is presumably recorded as having died in the nova). Even on Picard no one mentioned Spock's involvement in the supernova crisis; presumably there's a rights issue regarding the material from the reboot films.

Why were the Vulcans experimenting with a dilithium replacement when the Romulans have been using quantum singularity technology for centuries?

If the t'kal-in-tet has been used since the time of Surak, that puts it at around 2800 years old.

There's a moment when Tilly points out space is three-dimensional. Characters in Trek seem to need reminding of this surprisingly often.

It's impossible to use a microscopically small time variance to triangulate events when dealing with astronomical distances. Time isn't constant, and over light years the variance could be enormous. But then, if we think along those lines, warp travel causes all kinds of problems of causality.

After the USS Nog two episodes ago, this week we hear of the USS Yelchin, named for the late Anton Yelchin. My emotions can only take so much.

Other starships mentioned include the USS Giacconi, presumably named for Riccardo Giacconi the astrophysicist, and the Gav'nor, which sounds likes a Klingon ship (or possibly cockney). 

TREK REVIEW: DIS 3-6 - "Scavengers"

Season three approaches its halfway point and for the first time gives us an episode that doesn't really feel momentous, although it certainly has its significant moments. That's not to decry the episode; "Scavengers" is a solidly entertaining hour of space adventure and forwards the overall season story arc nicely. It's merely that after episodes where we 1) arrive in the far future; 2) reunite with the crew; 3) reach Earth; 4) visit Trill and explore brand new characters and 5) rejoin Starfleet, this is the first case of business-as-usual for the Discovery crew. However, business-as-usual for Burnham means disobedience, bordering on mutiny, so it's not uneventful.

Admiral Vance has accepted Discovery into the fold and Saru and co. have accepted the refit, although they're still somewhat distanced from the rest of the fleet. Three weeks doesn't seem long enough to refit the entire ship with 900 years worth of advancements, nor to train the crew up on everything they've missed. Still, it's all very swish. The USS Discovery NCC-1031-A, as it now stands, has been kitted out with everything from free-floating warp nacelles to programmable matter, and super-advanced badges which act as communicators, holographic tricorders and personal teleporters. It all screams "far future!" and I love it.

On the outer edge, though, life's still grim as hell, and Book is in irons on the planet Hunhau, part of the Emerald Chain. Burnham wants to go rescue him, especially as he was looking for a black box from one of the destroyed ships. The plan being that by collecting enough of these, they can triangulate the origin point of the Burn, which is a solid idea and it's hard to see why no one has thought of trying it at any point in the last 120 years.

Of course, Saru has other ideas. Discovery is now Starfleet's rapid response ship, thanks to the spore drive, and Vance has presented the crew with their own mission. So Burnham goes off against orders, because of course she does. I mean, she's not wrong (even Vance accepts that the intel was worth it, and chastises Saru for not coming to him) but she can't continually disobey direct orders and finally gets busted down because of it. Not that I imagine being science officer instead of First Officer will make much difference in the long run, but at least it's something. 

Out on Hunhau, Burnham and Georgiou (I don't know, she's probably bored) play as antique hunters looking for vintage tech (I laughed more than was sensible at the reference to self-sealing stem bolts, and still no one seems to know what they're for). Georgiou finally has some character beyond "EVIL" now, and she and Burnham make a solid double-act. Empress of the Galaxy is also having some serious flashbacks to traumatic events in the Mirror Universe (if that's not a tautology), which seemingly stem from whatever happened between her and Cronenberg. 

It's a packed actioner, with exploding heads, blaster fights against alien militiamen and death-defying escapes. It's hardly the deepest episode, but a good shoot-em-up goes a long way to keep things entertaining. Book remains one of the best things in this season - his presence was sorely missed during the last couple of episodes - and he has his own solid friendship with Ryn, an Andorian who's fallen out with the head of the Chain. I really enjoyed the poor, mutilated Andorian, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he made it through the episode. He could be an interesting addition to the ongoing cast, if he sticks around, and at the very least, I feel he's going to lead us towards a final confrontation with the Emerald Chain.

Of course, he chemistry between our two double-acts is nothing compared to that between Burnham and Book, who finally kiss... although it's actually not been all that long for us as viewers. It's a canny move; we get all the tension of a year-long "will-they/won't-they" without any of the boredom, as they go straight into "yes they will."

There's a charming subplot in which Stamets bonds with Adira, whose unique position is keeping her isolated from the rest of the Disconauts. It results in a fun three-way pseudo-conversation between the two of the them and the ghost of super-cutie Gray. It's refreshing to see Stamets just accept that Adira's dead boyfriend still talks to her, after all the weirdness he's experienced and his own boyfriend coming back from the dead. There's some fun chemistry between Rapp and del Bario too, and we could end up with an interesting friendship between the two geniuses.

A solid episode, if not a groundbreaking one, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Observations:

Some fans have a weird problem with the addition of the "A" to Discovery's registration, something we've only seen used for successor ships before. It makes perfect sense, though. The ship is listed as destroyed, and its presence is a violation of the Temporal Accords, so labelling it as a new ship is a logical subterfuge. Or maybe they've just changed the registry system over the course of nine centuries.

Noah Averbach-Katz, who plays Ryn the Andorian, is Mary "Tilly" Wiseman's husband. He also runs a D&D group with Anthony Rapp, Emily Coutts, Blu del Bario and Ian Alexander, which is very cute.

There's a fun running gag where Linus the Saurian continually materialises in the wrong place. In fairness, it's not clear how anyone's supposed to instruct their personal transporters, since they don't give them verbal commands and there's no visible interface.

Book was heading to the Bajoran Exchange, hinting at a link between Bajor and the Emerald Chain. Then again, there's a Bajoran among the slaves on Hunhau, so relations can't be peachy keen between the two groups.

The Very Best of Doctor Who

 It's November the 23rd, 2020. 57 years ago today, Doctor Who made it's first appearance on BBC1. You have to watch Doctor Who today, it’s the law. 

So it’s appropriate that today I have a new piece on Television Heaven, about that greatest of Doctor Who serial, City of Death. 

“Exquisite. Absolutely exquisite.”

WHO REVIEW: Time Lord Victorious comics

The massive, multimedia crossover event Time Lord Victorious is already a bit of an overstretch for most of us fans. I'm torn between the excitement and intrigue of such an expansive storyline, and the money-grabbing enormity of it all. I never like the huge crossover events that Marvel an DC periodically do, where you have to buy three dozen comics to understand what's going on and it costs you a fortune. On the other hand, this is new ground for Doctor Who and it is my number one fandom, so the excitement is there. So I'm going to pick and choose and and where I can.

Some people are questioning why they're focusing on the Tenth Doctor and an event from his era of the series, and apart from the obvious popularity of the incarnation, there's the fact that the BBC can't make it appear, intentionally or otherwise, that any purchase is necessary to follow one of their broadcasts. So tying into the current series with the Thirteenth Doctor is a no-go. Even then, she's not entirely absent from the proceedings.

 DEFENDER OF THE DALEKS (Titan Comics: Time Lord Victorious)

The first of two comic strips opening the event is this, Titan's latest miniseries, released as two monthly issues. In it, the Tenth Doctor is pulled into a divergent timestream whereupon he is forced to aid the Daleks in their fight against a terrible power from the dawn of time. 

This is Jody Houser's story, following on from her work on the Thirteenth Doctor comics, where last we saw the Tenth Doctor involved in his own future (but I've not read that one yet). It's well-written enough, but for all the shouting about it, it's not all that much of an event. The Doctor reluctantly teaming up with the Daleks has been done before, and better, although at least the Dalek Prime Strategist, a new character, adds an air of sophistication. The Golden Emperor appears as well, harking back to the early "Dalek Chronicles" days of the tie-in comics. He's had a bit of an updated design but he's still iconic, and this sets up the Daleks! animated series nicely.

My main problem is the villains, the Hond. Although there's an interesting concept behind them - the sort of metaphysical idea that used to show up in the New Adventures days - design-wise they're just mud monsters, and that's really not all that interesting. Also, while I understand this crossover is designed to be expansive, we're already expecting another terrible threat from the Dark Times, the Kotturuh to threaten the universe. Do we need to introduce another? Still, there is a similarity with the Ancestor Cell, from the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel lie, which suggests the Hond as another potential identity of the Enemy. With Faction Paradox suddenly being mentioned in other prose stories lately, this might not be entirely trivial. 

Altogether, the adventure is fine, but underwhelming. Nice artwork by Roberta Ingranata.

MONSTROUS BEAUTY (DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE #556-558)

Doctor Who Magazine jumps in on Time Lord Victorious with a three-part comic story featuring the Ninth Doctor. DWM has skipped the comic strip for a few months to save money - the impact of COVID on sales - and makes an event out of bringing it back. We haven't had a past Doctor comic in DWM since the nineties, I believe, and while it's back to business with the Thirteenth Doctor next month, this does make it rather stand out. Like Defender of the Daleks, this features a threat from the Dark Times, but this is something we know and expect. Nine and Rose find themselves back at the dawn of time in the middle of the Eternal Wars, when the Time Lords fought the Vampires. 

It's a clever way of having the Ninth Doctor meet the Time Lords - although according to this, it's so early in their history that it's before they were time travellers. They're the Space Lords of Gallifrey, led by an angry female general who we learn is an early incarnation of Rassilon. It seems that every Time Lord must have a new regeneration with a different ethnicity or gender these days - and I'm all for it. Better than all those endless old white blokes in big hats.

I'd had an idea to write about a Vampire ship years, ago, and never used it, but in my mind it was something organic and far more like a perverted form of TARDIS. I love what Scott Gray and John Ross have done though - flying castles and crypts! The vampires themselves are disappointingly traditional, with only a brief appearance of a Great Vampire storming through the black, but it works pretty well. I particularly like the use of Cucurbites - blood-drinking space weapons - that first appeared back in the Eighth Doctor comic "Tooth and Claw." (The story also reference the episode "Tooth and Claw," just to mix things up.)

It's a pretty solid adventure with some vampire tropes being exercised, but it's the glimpse of the ancient Gallifreyans that's the most interesting.