Radio Review: Imaginary Boys by Paul Magrs

Paul Magrs is one of those authors whose work is often misunderstood. He has no fear of silliness or camp, and so his work is all too often disregarded, by those many critics who see silliness as the same as disposable, or irrelevant. To view such material is to do it an injustice. Paul's work is often very silly, frequently camp, fantastic and impossible to categorise, but just because something is silly, doesn't mean it isn't also serious.

Paul writes with passion and honesty, and nowhere is this more evident than in his new radio play, Imaginary Boys, broadcast as Radio 4's Afternoon Drama on the 3rd of October. It's a strange, funny, wonderful piece, quietly subversive yet beautiful in its telling of the love between two young men. For a gay listener, it will of course have some extra poignancy, but anyone who was once young and has fallen, unexpectedly, in love - which is to say, everyone - will find something to recognise here.

James Baxter gives a strong, truthful performance as seventeen-year-old David, struggling with how his community perceives his developing sexuality. There is, from what I know of Paul's life, more than a little of the autobiographical in David's story, which makes it all the more affecting. All of the tiny cast are excellent, but it is Geoffrey Breton, as the painfully literal, inhumanly literate Lawrence who steals it. Lawrence is a Noveliser from Verbatim 6, a small planet about three hundred light years from Earth. Paul introduced the Novelisers in his Doctor Who plays Find and Replace and Ringpullworld, both part of the Companion Chronicles series, so there's a little bit of extra fun for Whoheads, knowing that this must take place in the universe of Iris Wildthyme and the Doctor.

But that's not important. It's not about science fiction, or magic realism, or any genre trappings. It's about love. About falling in love with someone you feel you shouldn't, but can't help loving. About falling in love with someone through their writing. About growing up and learning about love. It's really quite wonderful.

Imaginary Boys is still available to listen to for the next few days on BBC Radio 4.

Guillermo del Toro enters the Treehouse of Horror

Yes, released a couple of days ago was the much anticipated opening sequence for this year's Simpsons Hallowe'en special, Treehouse of Horror 24. Watch through and see how many references you can get to classic horror movies, horror novels, old Simpsons gags and del Toro's own work.

So what do you call someone from Jupiter?

Everyone knows that Martians come from Mars. That's straightforward enough. Beyond that, things get fiddly. Just what do you call someone from Jupiter, Venus or Pluto? What of the asteroid belt? Even in professional astronomy circles, people argue over the correct use of demonyms and adjectives for astronomical bodies. Much of the terminology used today originates from alchemical, astrological and classical works, and the growth of science fiction has only made it more confused. Of course, nowadays we know the likelihood of finding little green men on Mars or Mercury is slim to none, but the use of adjectival forms is necessary to describe features on the planets or their satellites. Plus, there's still fiction - everyone loves a good, old-fashioned Martian invasion.

Firstly, we need to look at where the names of the planets come from. The eight major planets, barring the Earth, take their names from Roman gods, with which they were identified by early astronomers. The Roman gods are mostly equivalent to the Greek pantheon, the Romans being dab hands at assimilating the traditions of other cultures, so each planet has an equivalent Greek name, which, unsurprisingly, is how they are known in Greece. In classical astronomy, the sun and moon were considered to be planets, since the exact definition of a planet was a long way off (and still hasn't really been settled on). The Romans knew of five actual planets beyond the Earth: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, all of which are, under the right conditions, visible to the naked eye. Uranus was identified as a planet in 1781 by astronomer Sir William Herschel, having previously been misidentified as a star. Neptune was discovered in 1846 by  Urbain le Verrier, although it may have been discovered independently by John Couch Adams three years earlier (in fact, Galileo had first seen the planet over two hundred years earlier, but again, had misidentified it as a star). Pluto, which is, of course, no longer considered a planet, wasn't discovered until 1930, by Clyde Tombaugh. Rather wonderfully, a portion of his ashes are currently en route to Pluto on the New Horizons spacecraft.

The upshot of this is that the adjectival forms of planets have to follow classical rules, which sometimes throws up some oddities. Also, the traditions of astrology - which, for centuries, was part of astronomy - and alchemy, have granted supposed properties to the planets. In alchemy, each classical planet had a symbol, and each of the spheres was thought to be related to a human attribute. The result is that the adjectival forms of planet names have meanings in themselves in modern English.

Mercury

Mercury, the innermost and smallest planet of the solar system, is named for the fleet-footed messenger of the gods; the original, Roman version being Mercurius, which is sometimes used in astrology. His Greek equivalent is Hermes. The adjectival form of Mercury is mercurial, which can mean swift, quick-witted, volatile or changeable. Capitalised, Mercurial is used to describe objects and features related to the planet Mercury, although Mercurian is becoming more commonly used. An inhabitant of Mercury would be a Mercurian. An alternative demonym or adjective would be Hermean, from Hermes; a related term is hermetic, once used in alchemy, but now used to mean sealed away (as in 'hermetically sealed'). Mercury is, of course also the name of a metallic element; all the classical planets were alchemically linked to a particular metal, but only mercury has adopted the name of its planet (the traditional names being hydrargyrum or quicksilver). Mercurial can, therefore, also refer to compounds of the element mercury.

Venus

Venus is where things start to get problematic. Named for the goddess of love and sex, Venus is the only major planet named after a female figure (although many minor planets are too). The adjectival form of Venus is venereal, which does not have a pleasant connotation. The Greek equivalent, Aphrodite, is rather pretty, but again produces an adjective with unfortunate connotations: aphrodisial or aphrodisiac. The correct term for an inhabitant of Venus would, therefore, be a Venerean, but the connotations of venereal disease means that this has, unsurprisingly, fallen out of favour. The most common word used today is Venusian (occasionally Venutian), but this is linguistically problematic, kind of like using 'Marsian' for something from Mars. My preferred term is Cytherian/Cytherean, a word originally related to the Greek island of Kytheros, which had traditional links to the goddess Aphrodite. It's a very attractive word, in my view. Sci-fi stories featuring inhabitants of Venus sometimes use both Venusian and Cytherian as names for separate cultures or species on the planet.

Venus is both the Morning and Evening Star, and in Latin, had separate names for both phases. It was Hesperus, or Vesper, in the evening, and Phosphorus or Eosphorus in the morning. A such, other terms you might like to use for Venusians are Hesperian and Phosphorian.

Nobody likes being called a Venerean.

Earth

The Earth is, of course, named after that dusty stuff we stand on, rather than any mighty god or goddess. The Latin term for the earth was tellus. The goddess of the Earth was Tellus, or Terra, whose name lives on in romance languages as the term for the Earth (such as the Spanish Terra or French le terre). The Greek goddess was Gaia or Gaea, again, still in common use as an alternative name for the Earth, or its biosphere as an entity, in the so-called Gaia Hypothesis. 

The correct adjective to apply to the Earth is terrestrial, used for both things of the earth, as in the land, and the Earth, as in the planet. From this we get the term extraterrestrial, for things beyond the Earth. Science fiction has never been happy with this term. Too mundane, I guess (mundane also meaning 'of the world,' as it happens, from the alternative Latin term mundus). Why not Terrestrian for an inhabitant of the Earth? Old-fashioned sci-fi popularised the terms Earthling and Earthman, which today are considered old hat and are usually used humorously. Futurama suggested Earthican. The most common term for inhabitants of Earth in sci-fi is Terran, which is very occasionally used scientifically; indeed, Terra is commonly used as an alternative name for the Earth in English language sci-fi. Confusingly, terra is also used for landmasses on other worlds in astronomy. An alternative term that I favour is Tellurian, from Tellus, which was used by E.E. 'Doc' Smith in his Lensman series, and by Robert Holmes in his Doctor Who work. Tellurium is a semi-metallic element sometimes called sylvanium; tellurian can also refer to compounds and ores of this element. Arthur C. Clarke, in 3001: The Final Oddyssey and other works, stuck with terrestrials for Earth-born humans, often with 'Terries' as a mildly pejorative nickname used by offworlders.

Doctor by Doctor (Sidestep 3)

Cheer Up Goth

Richard E. Grant, 2003

In 2003, Doctor Who was celebrating an anniversary. A number of special audio productions, novels and non-fiction books were released to celebrate the series' fortieth year. When 2003 began, the Doctor had eight official incarnations. By the time the year was out, he had acquired a ninth – but not the one most fans are familiar with.

Once again, some historical background. In the absence of a TV series, BBCi (then the name for the BBC’s internet presence) had begun increasing Doctor Who's official internet presence, culminating in several webcasts, brand new Doctor Who for the twenty-first century. First there was Death Comes to Time, an abandoned 2000 radio pilot which was reworked for online streaming with some limited animation as an accompaniment. The first episode's success led to the production of a full, five-part serial, the animated illustrations becoming more vital to the following of the plot as it progressed. This peculiar story took an epic approach to Doctor Who, relaunching with Sylvester McCoy's seventh Doctor and eventually killing him all over again. Something of a curate's egg, it was popular enough to convince the BBC to try again with another webcast (and introduced the Minister of Chance, for which we should all be grateful).


Teaming up with Big Finish, the BBC created a second serial, this time starring Colin Baker as the sixth Doctor. 2002's Real Time pitted the Doctor against the Cybermen, and again utilised basic animations as a way of illustrating the audio scenes. With Doctor Who's online presence improved significantly by the dedicated 'BBC Cult' site, the way forward for the series seemed to clearly lie in online streaming. For the fortieth anniversary year, the BBC and BF once again teamed up, resurrecting the unfinished 1980 serial Shada as another enhanced radio production. When Tom Baker declined to return to finish his lost serial, Paul McGann was invited to take part, the story being rewritten for the eighth Doctor. With Shada another hit-rate success, the way forward seemed clear: relaunch Doctor Who properly, as an online series.

For the more ambitious fourth webcast, the Beeb moved from Big Finish to respected animation house Cosgrove Hall.They created Scream of the Shalka, a fully animated webcast written by celebrated author Paul Cornell, featuring a brand new incarnation of the Doctor. Voiced by, and physically based on, Richard E Grant, this new Doctor was described in press releases as the official ninth Doctor. Then the BBC announced the coming of the new TV series and by the time Shalka was broadcast, the new Doctor had been overwritten by the upcoming new ninth Doctor - played, in due course, by Christopher Eccleston. The ninth Doctor of Scream of the Shalka had been consigned to a strange, tangential version of Doctor Who before he even had a chance to make an impact.

Scream of the Shalka was formatted as six episodes of roughly fifteen minutes duration each, presented

with Flash animation and nice, long loading breaks between each scene. At the time, of course, it seemed terrible advanced. As well as Richard E. Grant, always a popular choice for fans' dream-casting, it starred acclaimed actor Sophie Okenedo (now known to Who fans as Liz 10, but around this time filming her Oscar-nominated appearance in Hotel Rwanda) as new companion Alison. Also on the bill were Diana Quick and Sir Derek Jacobi.

It was a strange false start for the revamp of the series, and it's fitting that in such an unusual situation we get a strange version of the Doctor. Physically, the new Doctor is cast much as an archetypal Doctor – tall, slim, dressed in Victorian, rather Sherlock Holmes style clothing. While he is physically based on Grant, for reasons known only to themselves, the animators decided to draw the handsome, rather swarthy actor as a pallid, gothic individual with bags under his eyes. The swept back hairstyle has a touch of the first Doctor about it, but otherwise the overall effect is Dracula-like.

Cornell seemed to have made an effort to make him different from the Time Lord we knew. So, while there are elements that are familiar, there are also several previously unseen quirks. He is snobby, aesthetic, eager to his show superiority to lesser mortals. Yet he is most comfortable talking to a homeless old woman on the streets. He immediately focuses on Alison, his soon-to-be companion, since she is capable and the only person not scared by the strange events in her home town, but refuses to allow himself to become too close to her. Once his work is done, or appears to be, he insists on trying to leave, calling in the military to take care of matters. He seems to have no problem with getting soldiers to do his dirty work, as long as he doesn’t have to socialise with them; he has a problem with the army on a personal, not ethical level.

This is a Doctor who continually analyses himself. He seems obsessed with trying to justify his actions, to himself and his associates, and is acutely aware of the contradictions in his own nature. “I say I do not kill, but then I exterminate thousands”, he says. It's almost as if he's an imposter, playing the Doctor. “I'm just off to do something eccentric,” he says, rather than actually behaving in an eccentric way. He is clearly working for some greater power – presumably the Time Lords, although this is never made clear – and is answerable to them. How many other Doctors would leave a last message to the universe when facing their death, welcoming, however briefly, the promise of oblivion? As an aside, his use of a TARDIS mobile phone caused a good deal of interest at the time but now, since the television series was revived, it seems sensible and obvious, barely worth remarking on.

Most oddly, he now travels with the Master, or at least an android representation of him a sort of robotic footman. It seems that this Doctor needs someone to keep him in check. The Master has been programmed to look after the Doctor’s emotional well-being. Some terrible event has had a lasting effect of the Doctor. It may have had something to do with his regeneration; we don’t know how this came about, but it’s strongly hinted that it cost the life of his last companion. This, more than anything, has left him damaged.

There are similarities with the ‘real’ ninth Doctor. Both act aloof, alien, reluctant to associate with humans. Both hide a vulnerable, damaged soul behind a hard, toughened façade. Both have a streak of defeatism, and are brought out of their shell by a young woman who reinvigorates them. Yet this Doctor is even more of a contradiction, swinging from sullen alien objectivity to show tunes and screaming “Take me home, big boy!” to a giant alien monster. It's the sort of thing one can easily imagine of Matt Smith's eleventh Doctor, but seems bizarre and out-of-place when coming from this vampiric individual.

The presence of the Master is an odd element, but again, it is not entirely against the notions of the revived TV series. Some years later, the tenth Doctor offered to keep the Master in his TARDIS, as a sort of captive companion. Is this perhaps the same sort of deal? Perhaps what's left of the Master after his ignoble fate in the TV movie has been housed in this android body, on the understanding that this is the only chance he will get. He's even voiced by Derek Jacobi, who went on to appear as the Master in Utopia before explosively regenerating into John Simm.

Russell T. Davies later slammed Grant's performance as lazy. It's hard to disagree. Little of the actor's trademark manic charm is present. Grant had, after all, played the Doctor before, in Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, a comic skit for the 1999 Comic Relief telethon. After regenerating from the waspish Rowan Atkinson incarnation, the new Richard E. Grant version was vain, overconfident and sexy. This version of the Doctor, however, is withdrawn, barely sharing any chemistry with his costars. However you may feel about Grant’s performance in the role, it has to be said that the Shalka Doctor was a most unusual, intriguing version of the character.

We’ll never know just how he may have been developed had the webcasts continued, but it’s fascinating to speculate. We can imagine him softening over subsequent adventures, with a more human side becoming prominent, in the manner of the first or sixth Doctors. He may have followed the other ninth Doctor's trajectory, coming to terms with the tragic events in his recent past as his adventures played out. It's hard to imagine him remaining quite so aloof and distant for long if he was to have a future in what should be a fun and popular series. The mysterious tragedy to which Shalka alludes would surely have been further explored, and the Doctor’s character along with it. The only further adventure for this Doctor was the short story 'The Feast of the Stone,' still available on the archived 'Vampires' magazine on the BBC's 'Cult' site.

Nonetheless, this Doctor, known to fans as the Shalka Doctor or the REG Doctor, is not entirely forgotten. After a ten year delay, Scream of the Shalka has just been released on DVD, and interviews with its creators have revealed more information on both the proposed future for the webcasts, and the new Doctor's background. It seems that yes, it is the Time Lords who employ him as their agent, following a terrible disaster that had led to the death of his lover and the destruction of Gallifrey, leaving the entire race as echoes in the computer Matrix. The Doctor, it is implied, was at least partly responsible for this event, and serves the ghostly Time Lords as penance. Again, not so different from the background of the new TV series. The following adventure was planned to be Blood of the Robots by horror novelist Simon Clark, with such impressive names as Stephen Baxter and James Swallow lined up for further serials. This was not to be. Scream of the Shalka was the final BBCi webcast featuring the Doctor.

The REG Doctor was overshadowed by the announcement of the new TV series, but not immediately forgotten. As well as a novelisation of Shalka, the REG Doctor had a chapter to himself in the BBC's official fortieth anniversary celebration book, Doctor Who: The Legend. (In the updated reprint, two years later, he had been reduced to a footnote.) The mysterious version of the Doctor that appears in the novella The Cabinet of Light holds a resemblance to Grant's Doctor in his description, apparently entirely by coincidence. And of course fan fiction featuring this Doctor abounds, revelling in the chance to fill in the blanks.

While the REG Doctor has been relegated to a sideline – made 'Unbound' in Big Finish parlance – there are, potentially, ways of reconciling him with the rest of the Whoniverse. He never states that he is the ninth incarnation, although he hints at it once or twice. Perhaps he is a future version of the Doctor, having rescued the Master from oblivion in the time-locked death of Gallifrey. Or perhaps he lies in a parallel universe, split from the main timestream by the catastrophic events of the war? Many fans wondered if he really was the ninth Doctor, existing between the McGann and Eccleston versions, forcibly forgotten for some terrible crime (a storyline that now seems to be in use for John Hurt's mysterious incarnation). The appearance of Richard E. Grant as Dr. Simeon/the Great Intelligence in the most recent TV series perhaps offers another answer. Perhaps the Intelligence's infiltration of the Doctor's timeline has led to is sprouting alternative incarnations that look like Simeon – a dark, warped ninth incarnation and a cocky, vain tenth – living in closed off, anomalous timelines?

Today, after eight years of hugely successful Doctor Who television productions, Scream of the Shalka is little more than a curio. Nonetheless, we can wonder where this most mysterious of Doctors may have taken us in the distant parallel world where the series never returned to TV; a world where we instead had an internet-based cartoon series led not by a Northern bloke in a leather jacket but by a prickly, sullen Victorian.

Stuff:

This is an expanded and updated version of an article that originally appeared in Panic Moon.

As well as being available on DVD, Scream of the Shalka is still viewable for free on the BBC Doctor Who website if you have an archaic enough version of Flash. The Feast of the Stone is still available on the 'Vampires' page. The artwork heading this piece is taken from that site and is by Daryl Joyce.

For fan fiction featuring further explorations of the Shalka Doctor, try reading my own A Spoonful Weighs a Ton.

New season double review

Marvel's Agents of Shield: Pilot
Atlantis: The Earth Bull

It's the new season on US TV, and even the BBC is getting in on the act with their latest Saturday night fantasy offering. So there were two new shows to catch over the weekend, thanks to both the Beeb's new production Atlantis and to Channel 4 managing to get the rights to show Marvel's Agents of SHIELD mere days after its American premiere.


Agents of SHIELD was by far the series I was looking forward to more. As a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the classic (which is to say, tinted by nostalgia) Marvel cartoons that used to pepper my Saturday mornings, he prospect of a new Marvel comics based TV series was exciting. With Joss Whedon as showrunner, and fan favourite Clark Gregg back as Agent Phil Coulson, surely this couldn't fail? (Unless you didn't like The Avengers, in which case you would surely run for the hills, or at least the remote.)


The series ties in tightly to the latest movies, particular The Avengers itself, with glimpses of footage and numerous references throughout this first episode. It's a fun game for fans, but not too overbearing for more casual viewers; references to the Extremis plot and the Chitauri are kept to a minimum, just enough to reassure us that this is the same universe, without bogging the story down in unnecessary minutiae. The close links to the movies is as much as a curse as a blessing, however; while it will undoubtedly bring in a sizeable audience, the series is inevitably going to seem small and cheap in comparison.


Certainly, this opening installment seems rather safe and low-key (not Loki). The plot is well-worn, and a trifle cliched, but cliches are cliches because they work. The tried and tested method of bringing a newbie into the fold in order to explain the set-up is given another outing here, as is the downtrodden man who goes off the rails but is decent beneath it all. Those coming to the series with a less-than-encyclopaedic knowledge of the comics (which includes myself) will notice more similarities with other franchises; the whole thing has the vibe of a low budget Men in Black, or a restrained version of Torchwood with added Heroes. That's the problem with using a well-established comics continuity as source material; it's already been mined for all it's worth.


Clark Gregg is as likeable as ever as Coulson, and the ongoing mystery of his reappearance following his apparent death in The Avengers is nicely alluded to, without distracting from the main storyline. He is by far the most engaging member of the cast – although Cobie Smulders remains magnetic as Agent Hill – but whether he has the charisma to carry a whole series remains to be seen. There are appearances by some of Whedon's stalwarts, of course, with more, no doubt to come; Angel's J. August Richards is excellent as Mike Peterson, and there's a pleasing cameo from Firefly's Ron Glass as a SHIELD doctor. As for the rest of the cast, though it's early days yet, it's hard to imagine that we'll come to really give a damn about any of them. It's a roll call of cliched pretties with little else to recommend them, from the chiselled, stoic agent to the dotty British pair. Only newbie Skye stands much chance of becoming a decent character in her own right, but for now she's mostly a Buffy-speak spouting cipher. Still, at least Chloe Bennett is very likeable, and she really is quite gorgeous (although nobody living in a van looks that good).

The BBC's replacement for Merlin takes its place in the Saturday night schedules, set to fill the ever-widening gaps when Doctor Who is off the air. Atlantis, much in the same vain as Merlin, takes a popular set of myths and gives them a modern, family-friendly spin. Unsurprisingly, it has Merlin's creative team involved, but this shouldn't be sniffed at; while I was no big fan of Merlin, Johnny Capps and Julian Murphy's previous collaboration was the incisive Sugar Rush, and with Misfits creator Howard Overman involved too, this is a showrunning team to be excited by.


Again, though, this is pretty safe stuff, exactly the sort of thing we'd expect the BBC to replace Merlin with. While there's a nice twist in that our hero Jason is first introduced in the modern day, before being whisked to Atlantis through some kind of time warp, beyond that events proceed with comfortable predictability. Jack Donnelly is likeable enough as Jason, and yes, there are enough shots of his naked torso to keep me happy. Whether he can sustain the viewership's interest in the quest to find his father over the next twelve episodes remains to be seen. Jason seems altogether too quick to accept his sudden materialisation in Atlantis; it's a difficult balancing act, of course, and it's a risk to get too bogged down in the introductions, but he really does take to Atlantis like a merman to water.


Not that this is really Atlantis; rather, it's a hotch-potch of Greek mythology and history. Robert Emms as Pythagoras lives with Mark Addy's overweight, past-his-prime Hercules (probably the best thing about this show). Alexander Siddig plays King Minos, mysteriously emigrating here from Crete; Siddig is just about the most obvious actor to cast in a series like this, and my, he looks bored. The extremely beautiful Aiysha Hart plays his daughter Ariadne, aiding Jason in defeating the ravenous Minotaur, so at least that much matches the traditional account, but there's little chemistry between the clearly signposted love interests. I do enjoy a good monster though, and while the Minotaur was pretty well realised, next week we have Jemima Rooper as Medusa the Gorgon, and I wonder how long they can string out a Greek-monster-of-the-week structure.


Both Atlantis and Agents of SHIELD are a lot of fun, but are cautiously taking things easy with their first episodes. They both have potential, and either might well develop into something car interesting. So far, I'd say that SHIELD shows the more promise, although, on the other hand, Coulson has a flying and talked down Gunn from Angel; Jason fought the Minotaur. I know which of those I find more appealling (better crack my Monster in My Pocket toys out).