Written by Ian Stuart Black,
Read by Anneke Wills,

First published by Target Books in 1987,
Released by BBC Audio - 4 August 2016.
Running time: 3 hours,  5 mins

In the 24th Century, a human colony enjoy a truly enviable lifestyle in their domain, which in many ways resembles a holiday camp from yester-century. Conformity and contentment go hand in hand, as everyone serves the interests of a society that runs like clockwork and never shows anything other than a positive demeanour.

But one of their own, a bearded and fidgety man called Medok suddenly insinuates that foul creatures are taking over control. No-one wants to believe his rather alarmist claims though, at least that is until a crew of four strangers arrive out of the blue...

This story has grown steadily in my affections over the years as a fan of Doctor Who, and also someone interested in social science and philosophy in general. I first encountered it when it came out at the same time as The Evil Of The Daleks on dual audio cassette in 1992. 

As a child back then I would devoutly replay these releases on my portable Sony 'Walkman' when travelling somewhere new, yet I would only fully engage with David Whitaker's epic.

Macra was just a curiosity. Not even a solitary episode existed, and having the Sixth Doctor / Colin Baker as the narrator somehow felt more opaque than the definitive (especially back then) Fourth Doctor/ Tom Baker.

But over time I have realised how the Season Four finale does suffer slightly from its seven episodes, and multiple locations, even if it remains great escapism. Macra is however concise, ascends in its suspense and feeling of high stakes, and makes the most of its overall premise.

As of today, only The Power Of The Daleks stands head and shoulders higher over this tale, as the marquee story of a season of Doctor Who, that said 'goodbye' to one talented actor in the lead, and 'hello' to an arguably more skilful thespian. Of course now we have the news that the debut Troughton story will make a comeback of sorts in the coming months, in the form of an exciting and newly envisioned animation.

For a great story to exist in the first place, it invariably needs a very strong and confident writer. Ian Stuart Black is one of the perhaps more under-rated scribes in Who lore and should be thanked for giving the show a vital shot in the arm when it began to falter in the latter half of Season Three. Today, we only have The War Machines (essentially intact), whilst Black's other two efforts - The Savages, and this story - are lost almost entirely. All three do however deserve to be remembered fondly.

I do think Macra is the cleverest and boldest of Black's three televisual serials. The novelization here accomplishes admirably efficient world building whilst maintaining the pace of the 'snappy' four parter structure.

The story has much to make the readership ponder themes and philosophy. One of the more overt is the need to be sceptical and questioning over what a person is told, and how they should invariably conform. If there is not enough of this independent thought, then the individual is in danger of losing their array of senses, and to be effectively brainwashed. Each chapter has something to say about the subliminal techniques used by the story's antagonists to wield power, and this manipulation is effective primarily due to the victim' sense of being euphoric and having the perfect life.

By making Ben Jackson the most susceptible of the TARDIS crew, when normally he is the most argumentative and dominant in nature, the original TV story managed to take viewers at the time on a journey where they questioned if what they thought they knew about the show's heroes was perhaps more superficial than first thought.

There is also a very strong amount of in-depth exploration on the nature of what is acceptable in society, and what is 'eccentric' or 'insane'. The various references to insanity and to hospitalisation/medication that controls said malady are as relevant to today's social confines, where the idea of normal is so strongly prioritised, they were in the 'swinging' Sixties, when this story was conceived (and had its regrettably one-off UK transmission).

The fate of one of the key guest characters of the story is also altered. Whereas in the transmitted story this person seemed to meet an abrupt end, in this version the author was allowed to present an alternative fate, as he held the full reins as the writer of the novelization. Consequently this key player in proceedings is allowed a fully formed arc and a sense of vindication.

And as an audio book, this stands up rather well too. Anneke Wills does a very respectable job in showing her range of skills, as the sole member of a one person cast. Many guest actors in the original show were strong, not least Peter Jeffrey (as the 'Pilot'), who later went on to have an even better role as the more villainous Count Grendel in the Tom Baker Era. But Wills uses the rich text of the book to narrate events and characters vividly, and switches personas for the various members of the colony distinctly and with full attention to detail.

The only niggling issue I have is that whilst her Second Doctor portrayal has much of the core mercurial spirit of Patrick Troughton, the actual voice - in terms of pitch - is more akin to William Hartnell. But I must admit, this is one area that is rather easy to criticise, much like Maureen O'Brien could only gamely attempt to portray her Doctor in The Space Museum, released earlier this year. Sometimes the sheer star quality of the main man in this sci-fi/fantasy phenomenon can be a double edged sword...

Sound effects and musical cues are well up to the usual standard for these BBC Audio releases. Such is the strength of the core text, and the dedicated, whole-hearted presence of Anneke Wills, these supporting elements act as a nice bit of icing on the cake, rather than something to break up a potential monologue. Whether you are clued-up on classic Who like myself, or someone who has only glimpsed the Macra in the Tenth Doctor belter Gridlock, this is a great addition to your audio collection. This late summer release lives up to the legacy of the sadly missing black and white BBC production.

Written by Ian Marter
Read by Jon Culshaw
Released by BBC Audio on 7 July 2016
First published by W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd in 1978
Running time: 3 hours approx.

The Sontaran Experiment was the first two-part story to be novelized. Ian Marter’s text provided a model for others to follow, selectively expanding scenes or reimagining situations and sections of the plot in such a way that the book didn’t seem to have stretched its source material too thin in order to fill the 128 page count standard for Target in 1978. Not all his examples were followed by others, but Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment remains one of the most readable Target books. It’s now one of the most listenable too.

The success of Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment as an audiobook owes much, of course, to its reader. Jon Culshaw is a versatile and sensitive performer and shows his familiarity with the television source material. His Styr (as Marter renames Styre, slightly Germanically) has a lot of Kevin Lindsay’s bored colonial officer about it, but with an added note of cruelty to the hoarse voice in keeping with Marter’s reinterpretation of the character. The Galsec crew members turn up with South African accents present and correct, all distinctive and all from Culshaw. Sarah Jane Smith is Culshaw talking slightly more lightly and gently, and Harry Sullivan not too different from Culshaw’s narrator’s voice, respecting the relationship between the authorial voice and Harry’s viewpoint in Marter’s first two novelizations.

A good number of listeners will be curious to know how far Jon Culshaw’s fourth Doctor reflects his Tom Baker impersonation from Dead Ringers. Culshaw’s Doctor is realized more sensitively and subtly here than it was in his comedy persona, though there are still more than flashes of it every time Culshaw has to talk in pseudoscientific jargon or reminisce about constellations visited. He enjoys the dialogue which Marter adds, creating a fourth Doctor a little closer to the Tom Baker whom Ian Marter knew, crossing over fiction and reality. The Doctor’s rugby ball metaphor might have appeared on television, but certainly not his carrying around a flask of Glenlivet. We are assured, though not in precisely these words, that Styr would not have survived a night in the Colony Room with Tom and his Soho friends.

One of the great strengths of Ian Marter’s writing, at least where his first two books were concerned, was that he took the sets and locations of the television stories and created something extraordinary from them while keeping faith with his source. The Dartmoor locations of The Sontaran Experiment on television become the foundation for a gnarled postapocalyptic landscape, full of monstrous ochre reeds and brittle, black ferns atop deep ravines and cavernous labyrinths. As mentioned above Styr is developed into a dedicated sadist by Marter, who writes of how Styr enjoys putting his subjects – particularly Sarah Jane Smith – through tortures far more horrible than anything realized on television. In contrast he Styre written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin is someone who can easily be read, in the words of one of my favourite reviews, as ‘a harassed Biology student trying to complete his practical on time.’ Marter’s Styr, though, is a complex creation, a cyborg entity whose flesh is likened to plastic, seaweed, rubber and steel wool, and viewed by different characters in different ways. To Sarah, he’s a noxious reptile and a bloated, snorting pig; to Harry he’s ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and the Golem of Jewish folklore, as if spontaneously generated from the devastated Earth, though Culshaw’s short vowels will make listeners think of Tolkien’s Gollum.

There’s a lot to intrigue in the writing, particularly the hallucinating Harry’s successive threatening visions of Sarah. Perhaps Marter viewed Harry as jealous of Sarah’s relationship with the Doctor, depicted as intense and trusting with Harry too often a third wheel. However, one of the more spectacular expansions is Harry’s exploration of the Sontaran ship, a more complex vessel in the book than suggested on television, which not only allows Harry to be heroic but is read with a careful urgency by Culshaw.

Simon Power’s sound design is appropriate throughout, especially in the torture scenes which are given suitably visceral cues. At about 180 minutes this audiobook isn’t too long and writer and reader are good companions for a few hours. It’s a small but determined sidestep into a reimagined fourth Doctor era, of interest to old and new audiences and an early indication of the elasticity of Doctor Who.

Whoniverse
Written by Lance Parkin
Published by Aurum Press
Released on 29 October 2015

In an age when Doctor Who book licenses are almost entirely held within the behemoth of the publishing world that is Penguin Random House, it is a brave mainstream publisher that ventures into the Doctor Who world with an unlicensed title. The inconveniences are many and the rewards uncertain. Aurum, part of popular history to DIY to children's books to gardening (and much else) combine Quarto, have released this ambitious work written by Lance Parkin which seeks to present the storytelling and narrative philosophy he has expressed in more narrowly-targeted works such as the various editions of Ahistory to a wider audience, with the benefits of illustrations and infographics. The book is produced by design and photography publisher RotoVision who intriguingly retain the copyright.

Whoniverse’s title appeals to a pedigree beyond those shared by books official or otherwise which draw from recent memories of Doctor Who: I first came across the term ‘Whoniverse’ as the title of the second volume of Jean-Marc Lofficier’s The Doctor Who Programme Guide (1981) The written content and the concept are sound. Parkin takes the reader through the cosmology of Doctor Who – not just a universe but universes, through galaxies and across worlds. There are examinations of phenomena such as the migrations of the Cybermen or human colonies. As expected given his previous work, Parkin doesn’t confine himself to the Doctor’s televised adventures but pulls together evidence from across multiple sources: comic strips and text fiction from many (licensed) sources and of course audio stories. The result is an outlook on the imagined world of Doctor Who far removed from that presented by most accounts where in practice evidence from what is still sometimes dismissed as ‘spinoffery’ bends to that drawn from the television series, especially the current one.

The execution leaves something to be desired, however. The range of images drawn upon – research credited to the author himself – is impressive but not without reservations. Several alien designs are represented not by photographs of actors in make-up and costume but of reduced-scale models or dummies from exhibitions sometimes looking like unfortunate examples of taxidermy. The non-BBC agency photographs are a variable trove use to mixed effect. There is some very good artwork, some specially commissioned for the book from artists known and unknown, and others reprinted from earlier publications, often deployed in ways which demonstrate Parkin’s catholic attitude towards sources. However, much of it is printed at a resolution which doesn’t flatter the detail or where more care was needed with colour calibration. The standard vortex pattern which provides the base for the infographics which appear on many of the right-hand pages is similarly uninvolving. There are some factual errors in the picture captions and at least one persistent misspelling of the name of a real-life person.

These weaknesses are to be regretted as Parkin approaches the exercise with a deadpan tone with strong precedent in works which treat fictional shared worlds as if they are coherent unified creations. Anywhere which treats the planets of the Nimon (used both as singular and plural here) on the same basis as Kastria, Logopolis, Sontar or the Shadow Proclamation is entertaining; adding the Robotov Empire from the BBC Audio Serpent Crest series is audacious but carried off. The point is not the primacy of a particular canon, but whether a concept has gained enough weight to support a double-spread of text and image.

Whoniverse isn’t the essential purchase its publisher hoped it would be. The concept deserved more investment, better deployment of its eclectic art resources and perhaps also more text or even better-deployed text; as it is the impression is given on some layouts of more white space than there actually is. Sometimes it's curiously old-fashioned, as if using illustrations from the World Distributors Doctor Who annuals had transferred some of their spirit. Nevertheless, it’s an entertaining experiment which might yet set both a precedent and a challenge for future commissions.

You and Who Else.
Edited by J.R. Southall
Published by Watching Books, 20 November 2015
Proceeds to the Terence Higgins Trust

This is the first time I’ve encountered one of the essay anthologies edited by J.R. Southall. After the Doctor Who-mulling of two You and Who volumes Southall and his contributors have now widened their horizons and assembled a (largely British) television canon over which to chew, from The Quatermass Experiment in 1953 to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell in 2015, with a bias towards telefantasy but also including examples from other genres. The works of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin or Gordon Murray rub film cans with A for Andromeda or obscure (at least, to me) pre-school programmes such as Bizzy Lizzy. Later, My Parents are Aliens is filed near The Mighty Boosh and Strange. With such eclectic tastes to be served, the tome is a heavy one, almost reaching eight hundred pages. The number of contributors and essays also runs into the hundreds. Writers include familiar names from professional commissions to prolific forum contributors, bloggers and podcasters as well as less well-known people. It’s difficult therefore to generalize about the book’s content.

Several strains of fandom rely on nostalgia and this is well represented here, but the lessons of the past and our emotional relations with it are not always learned. Tales of admiration for television series are too often told with regret for what might have been, or as assertions of identity and individuality which use similar language in each case and rely too much on reflections of the author’s present condition back into a reimagined history. It’s therefore a relief when one reaches an essay based on diary entries or other evidence where the writer makes a serious attempt to recover and assess their past self.

There is so much creativity and imagination in fandom and it’s a pity that too often in the earlier stages of the book a writer’s reaction to or memories of a particular programme is expressed through unconstructive self-criticism or even dismissive self-loathing which rejects or fails to understand the admirable qualities shown by their younger selves. It would be unfair to say that this tendency dominates the entire book. There are always examples of snappy journalistic writing and arguments with which one might disagree, but which are nevertheless built on individual experience. This is a book expressing the identity of two or three television-viewing generations, and identity can be tricksy and intensely felt. Perhaps that’s why among the most successful pieces is one which distills memoir into abstract short fiction.

Contributors come from many different careers. Several have professional experience in broadcasting, and while there are several witty and perhaps even indiscreet memoirs here there are also reminders that even people with what might appear to be a string of enviable production credits have their own moments of self-doubt. The most uplifting essays are often by those who come from outside Britain or from those who are assessing a programme they are too young to have viewed at the time; these might offer a more distinctive account of the author’s personal development, away from the familiar narrative of school and bullying, a foreign interpretation on the way a culture might present itself to itself, or even surprising parallels between a British 1960s play and the American workplace of the 1990s and 2000s.

You and Who Else never claims to be a reference work in any conventional sense. Even if it did, there are too many errors of fact or underappreciations of context for that. The essays which attempt to tell a history of a series at the expense of crowding out its personal impact disappoint, particularly when they tantalize with a couple of sentences of unfulfilled insight. However, it is work for pleasure with the intention of raising money for charity rather than an entry in the broad commercial marketplace; and as a broad-based assembly of the views of a worldwide community of literate commentators, all writing somewhere in a tradition of self-improvement and in celebration and defence of a populist creative form, You and Who Else is a worthy addition to the bookshelf even if a more readable book might have been achieved by removing some of the material and concentrating on the most imaginative responses to the brief. 

The Man Behind The Master - The biography of Anthony Ainley
Written by Karen Louise Hollis
Published by Fantom Publishing, September 2015

In many ways we probably know more about the mysterious figure from the Doctor's past than we do of the man who played him throughout the 1980s, Anthony Ainley. A man who fiercely protected his privacy, we knew little of him other than the persona he chose to play at conventions and the like. In her biography of the actor, Karen Hollis attempts to bring us a better perspective of "The Man behind the Master".

With such a private man, this was always going to be quite a daunting task - for fandom, his own date of birth hadn't been confirmed for quite some time - other than it being the same day as his Doctor Who co-stars Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred - until it was realised that he had been registered under his mother's name and it wasn't until later in life that he adopted his famous father's surname. However, Hollis took on the challenge: "Using exhaustive interviews with friends and colleagues from every aspect of Anthony's life, including his best friend from school, fellow children from the Actor's Orphanage, cricketing friends, colleagues, and those who remained close to him until his death in 2004, this book aims to uncover the real Anthony Ainley."

As one might expect, his life is presented in broadly chronological order, forming some three phases: his childhood as Anthony Holmes in the Actor's Ophanage, evacuation to America in the Second World War and his own military service; into drama, and of course Doctor Who; and then his 'other' passion of sport and in particular, cricket.

However, what quickly becomes apparent is that even those who were close to him and might be called friends didn't seem to be able to pinpoint exactly what was going on inside the enigmatic Anthony, even as a child - in fact you'd be forgiven in thinking that the early part of the book was more about the likes of Granville Bantock and Judy Staber! What we really get here is context, the observations of those who were his contemporaries in the Orphanage of the life there, and on how Anthony would have fitted into those routines (or not!). This was par for the course for much of the book, as with the man himself keeping himself to himself we can only read anecdotal evidence of his life and ambitions.

That's not to say there isn't a lot to be said about Ainley. The book certainly serves to bring all the aspects of his life together in one volume, and whilst it might not be as in depth on the actor as I personally would have liked, it's testament to the reseach by Hollis that there is a lot I didn't know about his life to still discover, such as his pre-acting career, him knowing Tom Baker for a long time through his half-brother Richard, his relationships with Sarah Badel and Kate O'Mara, and the far-reaching influence of Noel Coward.

His acting career is also well-documented, though as one might expect Doctor Who dominates the book, and was his main passion thereafter - well, that and cricket! The book examines each of Ainley's stories and his interaction within them, and his later convention appearances and later return to the Master in the game Destiny Of the Doctors. In this area we are, of course, on firmer ground and so the chapters are far 'meatier' than the earlier ones. It's a shame in many ways that Hollis didn't draw more on his fan correspondence within the book - the author told me that she instead wanted to focus on friends, colleagues, and family, though she does reflect in the book that he did engage with a number of fans in this way, including herself! Fandom is of course covered in the book, and it was a nice surprise to find an unattributed quote of mine lurking within the text too!

As well as the prime "character" of the biography, his family are also covered, with his mother Clarice featuring quite prominently (he lived with her for much of his later life), plus a chapter devoted to his father, Henry (of which perhaps more is known than Anthony!).

The only real criticism of the book I have is that in many cases it seems like several pieces have been "cut'n'pasted" together rather than presenting a continuous narrative, for example where people's names can flick between full-, fore- or surname in consecutive paragraphs; there was also a case where the story over the Master/Tremas pseudonym becomes deja-vu as it is refered to again in consecutive paragraphs, an effect of the way quotes were presented. Having had to constantly re-assess, re-edit and reposition text in my literary efforts over time (including this review!), I know it is easy for things like these to get overlooked when ensuring that everything ends up where you want it to be, and it doesn't actually impact the facts being presented, only that I found it interrupted my own concentration when reading!

Overall, I think the book does a very reasonable job of patching together Ainley's life, and bringing the various facts and figures together. However, it does also hang a lot on the 'gossip' about him, which is the unfortunate effect of documenting somebody who took great pains not to be documented!

Changing the Face of Doctor Who
Designed by Colin Brockhurst
Additional illustrations by Steve Andrew
Published August 2015

Last year Colin Brockhurst’s portfolio The Day of Doctor Who was widely acclaimed for its presentation of a fifth anniversary special that might have been. There William Hartnell and Peter Cushing had joined Patrick Troughton in a story which – as the imagined Radio Times cover, listings and even telesnaps suggested – pseudo-anticipated The Day of the Doctor while tying in with 1960s stories from An Unearthly Child to The War Games as well as reconciling (for those who think it necessary) the cinematic and television versions of Doctor Who. The project looked less like something created than it did a series of artefacts which had somehow fallen through a wormhole from another universe, where Doctor Who had proceeded in a different but parallel direction to the one we know.

Colin has now returned with a second set, Changing the Face of Doctor Who, which explores an alternative past where a different succession of actors assumed the role of the Doctor. Again, this is an exercise in counterfactual history which draws on recognisable events, settings and products but shifts them slightly sideways so the audience is engaged with an alternate past just that little more out of reach than the one we know. Geoffrey Bayldon stares out of the Radio Times launch cover Doctor Who never had in 1963. We’d not have had discussions over what kind of hat the second Doctor wore in early photographs had he been wearing Brian Blessed’s bowler. Ron Moody appears on the cover of a Radio Times from the first week of January 1970 being menaced by a Yeti, recalling the photocall which revealed Jon Pertwee’s third Doctor; but opening the brown envelope printed ‘Radio Times listings’ discloses that in Colin’s projected universe the third Doctor’s era began with Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln’s Yeti tale The Laird of McCrimmon. How Ron Moody’s Doctor is exiled to twentieth-century Earth to take on Peter Cushing’s Master the following year in The Spray of Death must remain a subject for speculation. The Radio Times entries, inspired by unproduced tales which were abandoned in early stages of their development by the production office, are especially eerie because their phraseology and layout accurately recaptures the Radio Times of their pretended day. Colin is a master at sourcing and recreating typography from the days of hot metal composition and photogravure as he is at recapturing the house style of more recent periods, as shown by a glance at his material commemorating Rik Mayall’s eighth Doctor. Mayall’s screen life seems to have endured beyond one TV Movie, unlike his counterpart in our universe; I wonder if there is a range of Big Finish audios in Brockhurst-Earth’s mediasphere.

Frustratingly perhaps, this set only covers the first eight Doctors. There is no Radio Times cover featuring Hugh Grant and whichever recent graduate from Casualty or EastEnders was supposedly being considered to play Rose Tyler, no James Nesbitt and Robson Green staring out from opposite sides of a DVD box design, no Paterson Joseph and Aisling Loftus on the cover of Doctor Who Adventures… This decision might be regretted, but one (unhappy) consequence of the decision to end with the eighth Doctor (but not necessarily in 1996) is that most of the actors Colin has chosen as his alternative Doctors are dead, one very recently.  Both this and the set's otherwise very limited engagement with post-2005 Doctor Who (but it is recognised, subtly) means that the set doesn’t risk confusing ongoing careers with what could be misinterpreted as marketing materials.

The nature of this kind of work means that Colin has to manage faces which sometimes do not want to be changed and where the source material to effect the transformation has been difficult to obtain, but ultimately the signatures of his alternative Doctors always overwrite those of the ones we know. His collaborator on some items is Steve Andrew, well-known in many fan circles for his Target book pastiches, who provides the cover illustration for the novelisation of Doctor Who and the Robots and for the badge showing Ron Moody’s Doctor in the style of the 1971 Kellogg’s Sugar Smacks series. Again, one suddenly feels the weight of cereal eaten to acquire it, long ago but elsewhen.

The set is definitely of interest to those who like testing the elasticity of Doctor Who’s past as well as its present and future and who imagine how the story of the Doctor and his companions (there are some alternative casting ideas there too) could have been depicted had different choices been made. Excite the interest and comment of all your friends, as Target Books once had it of their badge, but with Richard O’Brien’s Doctor’s first Doctor Who Magazine cover on your wall. In the meantime, I’m off to watch Ken Campbell’s Doctor in Storm Over Avallion – I’m sure I left the disc somewhere…