We're All Stories In The End 4 - Autumn Mist

 It's with a heavy heart that I publish this review, as we have just lost it's author on 15th December 2024.

David A, McIntee wrote multiple Doctor Who novels across all the main ranges for both Virgin and the BBC. He also worked on tie-ins for Star Trek, Space: 1999, Final Destination and Stargate. But he only wrong one novel for the Eighth Doctor...

Autumn Mist by David A. McIntee

Eighth Doctor Adventures number: 24

Originally published: July 1999

Companions: Sam and Fitz

The Ardennes, December 1944: the Nazi forces are making their last offensive in Europe - a campaign which will come to be called the Battle of the Bulge. But there is a third side to this battle: an unknown and ancient force which seems to pay little heed to the laws of nature.

Where do the bodies of the dead disappear to? What is the true nature of the military experiments conducted by both sides?

The Doctor, Sam and Fitz must seek out the truth in a battlefield where no one and nothing is quite what it seems….

So for the podcast I left it to others to discuss the merits (or otherwise) of the plot. Instead I want to briefly talk about three things from the book that all resonated with some of my other interests. Interests that, much like Doctor Who, started when I was a younger man.

Firstly there's the World War II setting. When I was a teenager at school, history quickly became my favourite subject. In fact it’s the only one I got an A grade in when I came to my exams.

Partially this was because I had a *very* good teacher, who had personally lived through many of the major events, so was incredibly good at making the stories come alive. But the other part is because I just found everything so damn interesting. 

Although we covered the whole of World War II, it was the time leading up to - and following - D-Day in 1944 that we spent a lot of time on. So when at the start of the novel the Doctor and his companions are dropped into the middle of the Battle of the Bulge - a key conflict near the end of the war - I was on board straight away. 

In fact, the title of the book "Autumn Mist" refers to one of the plans for the German offensive in the Belgian region. There is no way of sugar-coating things - it was a dark and desperate time, with a horrific loss of life. The harshness of the battles, the freezing temperatures, the constant shelling, the blurring of German and Allied lines - and the toll it took on the troops on both sides - all these things are well represented in the novel. Much like my history teacher, McIntee manages to bring these events to life.

Secondly, there are the fairies. The Shee and their opposing monarchs Titantia and Oberon. I've talked in a previous review about my teenage love for all things weird and unexplained - and fairies definitely fit into that. But those years were also a period where I first learnt about Shakespeare and saw my first production of one his plays - an amateur performance of, you guessed it , "A Midsummer Night Dream".

I may not have understood half of what was going on, but the setting and the language entranced me. I sought out more and grew to love the bard's plays - something which has only deepened over the intervening decades. Now the fairies in "A Midsummers Night Dream" are not quite the same and may not have implicitly served the forces of Chaos and Order as they do in the book, but there are parallels - and I'm just glad to see these characters appear in Doctor Who.

A quick historical aside - James I's eldest son Prince Henry (who died young and never became king) once appeared in a Ben Johnson play as Oberon. He wanted to arrive on stage on horseback, but his father deemed it too dangerous. They settled on a chariot - pulled by…two baby polar bears! Truth really is stranger than fiction!

Lastly we come to science. Specifically the search for the theory of everything. Yep - I'm a science geek too. In the book it's explained that the Shee can perceive all eleven dimension - not just the four we humans experience.

In the real world, physicists have long been searching for a way to join general relativity (the science of the very large) with quantum mechanics (the science of the very small). One solution to this - known as "M-Theory" - postulates the existence of ten physical dimensions and one time dimension - matching the eleven of the book.

Is it impossible to prove? Probably. I only understand 10% of the theory and that's on a good day. But Supersymmetry, bosons, membranes, the black hole information paradox - this branch of theoretical physics fascinates me.

Though perhaps the thing that stands out the most - and tweaks the SF and Fantasy fan in me - is a quote that parallels a famous line from the legendary Arthur C Clarke. The fact that it also links to the title of the only Star Trek novel written by David A. McIntee makes me think he might have had the same idea. You see a  physicist once suggested that in the absence of an understanding of the true meaning and structure of M-theory, perhaps the M could stand for... "magic"...

We're All Stories In The End 3 - Anachrophobia

Tick-tock, tick-tock - it's time for...

Anachrophobia by Jonathan Morris

Eighth Doctor Adventures number: 54

Originally published: March 2002

Companions: Fitz and Anji

Imagine a war. A war that has lasted centuries, a war which has transformed an entire planet into a desolate No Man's Land. A war where time itself is being used as a weapon.

You can create zones of decelerated time and bring the enemy troops to a standstill. You can create storms of accelerated time and reduce the opposition to dust in a matter of seconds.

But now the war has reached a stalemate. Neither the Plutocrats nor the Defaulters have made any gains for over a hundred years.

The Doctor, Fitz and Anji arrive at Isolation Station Forty, a military research establishment on the verge of a breakthrough. A breakthrough which will change the entire course of the war.

They have found a way to send soldiers back in time. But time travel is a primitive, unpredictable and dangerous business. And not without its own sinister side effects...

Okay...so I have to admit I struggled a bit with this one. Mainly because for various personal reasons, it took me a LONG time to read it. I had to keep going back over parts  - I couldn't remember where I was in the story -  I'd read a section and think "Hang on, did I miss a bit? Let me skip back a few pages". It's no fault of the story, but in some ways I could relate to the Doctor's explanation of going backwards in time - it is a bit like going uphill…

Even though this is an Eighth Doctor story, I really felt at times that it could easily have worked as a Third Doctor adventure. And like a Pertwee serial, the chapters were long, multi-scened and chopped back and forth - building the tension up and up and up. There's also a military base, people trapped and being picked off one by one and bystanders unfortunately transformed into hideous creatures. There's even an officious, bowler-hatted government dogsbody. All it needed was the Doctor to start rubbing his neck and calling the sergeant a ham fisted bun vendor!

All that and at one point I had a flashback to a local theatre circa 1989, when the mysterious Miseltoe uttered the phrase "business is business"  - and I wondered if he was going to accompany Madame Delilah in a verse or two from "The Ultimate Adventure" !

There were some excellent cliff-hangers too  - where you can just *hear* the theme music crashing in.

The end of chapter six where the Clock people intone "We have arrived" or chapter eleven where the Doctor appears to be overcome and is transformed  - both are particular favourites.

It's also not a book that holds back on the disturbing imagery either. When the clock people started to die from the mustard gas - skins covered in raw sores and blisters, clock faces oozing blood as they cracked open, gagging mouths frothing with foam as hands grasped at throats - it was all suitably gruesome. As it should be, for a terrible weapon used in a terrible war.

In terms of the enemy and their nefarious plans, well perhaps that was a little more vague. I'm still not entirely sure I know what they were trying to accomplish, apart from converting everyone to clock faced super-spreaders.

I did like they way they converted people though - forcing them into changing their own history and thereby creating a paradox. Even if the Doctor's solution to his own conversion was fairly obvious  - once it was revealed that he'd had a period of amnesia.  I could totally see what the author was trying for with the "time affected" though - those poor unfortunates experiencing back flashes of their past and the confusion in their minds building. It all added to the disorientation.

So it was a solid novel - but here’s the thing. Three novels in and I feel like I'm Sam Beckett and my brain has been swiss cheesed when I stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator.

I can't help but think I've definitely missed out on something by not having read the previous books - well not yet.

Fitz and Anji clearly have a long history with the Doctor, but I know nothing of it. Why has the Doctor only got one heart? Who removed the other one? Who did Miseltoe turn into ? Clearly he's an enemy they recognise. Who are his "business partners"? The Faction Paradox ?

There's a lot I don't know - and it could be some time before we go back in time to get the answers.

I hope I can still remember the events of Anachrophobia when we eventually get there.

Oh Boy !

We're All Stories In The End 2 - All-Consuming Fire

It's my first Virgin New Adventure  - a book that manages to combine my love for all things Doctor Who with another literary hero. 

Move over Batman - it's the word's greatest detective...

All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane

Seventh Doctor New Adventures number: 27

Originally published: June 1994

Companions: Ace and Benny

"I've been all over the universe with you, Doctor, and Earth in the nineteenth century is the most alien place I've ever seen."

England, 1887. The secret library of St John the Beheaded has been robbed. The thief has taken forbidden books which tell of mythical beasts and gateways to other worlds. Only one team can be trusted to solve the crime: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.

As their investigation leads them to the dark underside of Victorian London, Holmes and Watson soon realise that someone else is following the same trail. Someone who has the power to kill with a glance. And they sense a strange, inhuman shape observing them from the shadows. Then they meet the mysterious traveller known only as the Doctor -- the last person alive to read the stolen books.

While Bernice waits in nineteenth-century India, Ace is trapped on a bizarre alien world. And the Doctor finds himself unwillingly united with England's greatest consulting detective.

Okay, so my first time reading a New Adventures novel and thanks to the fact that our podcast overlord has chosen a different selection system, we are not reading them in publication order. This is going to be interesting !

Mainly because, while a lot of Doctor Who stories contain call backs to things that have not been televised or written,  here there are mentions of adventures that I just haven't read yet. This is especially true with a character like Bernice Summerfield. In this book she's been part of the TARDIS team for a while, but I've yet to find out how she meets the Doctor. My own personal River Song I guess.

Anyway, "All-Consuming Fire" is a great book to start with, as it combines two of my favourite things - Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes

Author Andy Lane clearly knows his Holmes history and peppers the book with references to past cases  - and a bit of Googling revealed that he has written a whole series of Young Sherlock novels, so clearly he's a fan.  I also liked the mentions of characters from the Sax Rohmer Fu-Manchu novels and Professor Challenger from Conan Doyle's Lost World.

And I especially enjoyed the use of long hidden brother Sherringford Holmes. The name really only appeared in Conan Doyle's notes as a possible alternative to Sherlock - and a fictional biography of Holmes in the 1960's -  but it's a name that’s been used by loads of authors since of course. Oddly I first came across it in the character of Sherringford Hovis in the novels of master of far fetched fiction Robert Rankin.

In fact the whole conceit that’s used here about Holmes and Watson being real people and the names being pseudonyms to protect their identities has been around for nearly 100 years - fans often refer to it as "The Great Game". It's a fun idea and many have played with it.

As an aside, as a youngster I personally always liked Author Philip Jose Farmers's "Wold Newton" universe, where everyone from Tarzan and Doc Savage to Holmes, Allan Quatermain, The Shadow and Philip Marlowe are all descended from the same handful of families that were affected by a falling meteorite.

The other bit of the plot I found *really* interesting was the use of spontaneous human combustion or "SHC". 

Now back in the '70s and '80s there was a huge interest in the paranormal - things like Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle,  ESP and of course UFOS. I guess all this  peaked in the UK in 1981 - with the TV show "Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World" and the publication of "The Unexplained" - one of those weekly part-work magazines, this time about all things spooky and weird. I'll admit - I  lapped this up and convinced my parents to let me buy every issue. I still have all thirteen volumes in binders more than 40 years later.

There were a number of pieces about spontaneous human combustion in the magazine and as a gruesomely fascinated 13 year old  I read these avidly, with their pictures of charred remains, stumps of legs and oddly untouched rooms - so much so that when we had to do a 3 minute piece on our favourite subject in front of the English class, where others talked about football teams or pets or TV shows - I chose SHC.

I diligently memorised my three minute speech and held up pictures from the magazine to illustrate my points - to looks of incredulity from my classmates - and my teacher. I'm not sure what they made of it. It definitely wouldn’t be allowed nowadays !

Anyway back in the Sherlockian world of Doctor Who...

Favourite scenes or lines? Well I did like the Doctor clearly getting his Third incarnation kicked out of the Diogenes Club for breaking the no talking rules - and Benny and the Doctor greeting each other by "performing tricks with bits of our anatomy". And who couldn’t like the Baron snarling to Watson "you will pay in coins of agony". 

I also notice Andy Lane gets Holmes to mimic the Groucho Marx line "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member". As a Marx Brothers fan  that made me smile a lot.

However,  I'm not entirely sure about Sherringford Holme's final words mirroring those of Colonel Kurtz from Heart of Darkness / Apocalypse Now. A bit out of place I felt.

Anyway all great stuff, and I really enjoyed the book -  on to the next one !

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"The horror… the horror…"

We're All Stories In The End 1 - Alien Bodies

So this blog has been dormant for a very, very long time. 2019 was the last time I posted anything - and even then I only managed two entries before going on hiatus again. Before that it was 2017. I've not done anything regular for *eight* years. 

Now I could answer that with some long-winded explanation, which I'm sure could include the phrases "not enough time" and "other priorities". I could promise to do better. But I look back on those kind of posts now with acute embarrassment. Who was I trying to kid ? The honest answer is, I couldn't commit. So, forget it. I was gone. Now I'm back. If only in a very limited way.

I'm not going to be releasing loads of new "content" (god I hate that phrase). Maybe I'll eventually finish "Golden Sunsets" in time for my 60th birthday, after some hefty revisions. Maybe I won't. Who cares. In the scheme of the world right now it's meaningless. Instead this is going to be a place to record something that I've actually already completed. 

It all comes back to the one TV series that really defines my life. Let me explain....

As I think I've documented elsewhere, I'd wandered away from Doctor Who after the classic series was cancelled, only really coming back with a vengeance when Chis Eccleston was about to don his black leather jacket. 

During those "Wilderness Years" the flame was kept alive by hundreds of original novels featuring all the Doctors. Originally published by Virgin and then subsequently by BBC Books, these were a lifeline for fans who wanted more adventures featuring their favourite characters. Initially billed as "Stories too broad and deep for the small screen", these were tales that were unrestricted by meagre BBC budgets and which could stretch the format into new and (potentially) interesting shapes. But like I said, I had wandered away for pastures new and although aware of their existence, didn't buy or read a single one.

Fast forward to 2005, when I re-inserted myself back into the fandom with vigour. I convinced myself that I had a lot to catch up on. I fervently bought up huge swathes of the novels (at exorbitant prices), like a good little fan trying to redeem himself. The pleasure endorphins hit hard when I slotted the final paperback onto the shelf. There they all sat - every Virgin "New Adventure" (featuring the Seventh Doctor) and every BBC Eighth Doctor story. And they continued to sit like that for years because - of course - I never found the time or inclination to read the damn things and knowing me, probably never would. Sigh.

Until one day in 2022, along came long-time friend Iain Martin (host of multiple podcasts and life-long DW fan). He asked me if I'd like to be part of a podcast  aiming to read, review and analyse all of the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures *and* the BBC Books Eighth Doctor novels. It would be a kind of "book club" - a main longform conversation between Iain and a guest, followed by capsule reviews from multiple readers, each no more than a few minutes long.

This really appealed to me. Here was an opportunity to *make* me read the books, put my feelings about them into words and be part of an ongoing podcast - something which I'd tried a few times before with varying levels of success. I've never really felt comfortable with the thought of just free-wheeling a review conversation for 60 minutes. I'm too socially self-conscious and need time to gather my thoughts. But here was a way I could plan what I wanted to say and record for just a few minutes. It seemed ideal.

 Of course by 2022 this kind of review project was a furrow that had been ploughed many, many times before. Some of these books were getting on for thirty years old. Surely there was nothing new to say ?

Well Iain thought the conversations were still worth having. Plus there would be a twist. We would not reading the books in published order. Instead we would go alphabetically by title, jumping around like a demented kangaroo between series and timelines. It would be the world's oddest jigsaw puzzle - with the idea being that ignoring the fictional chronologies of the Seventh and Eighth Doctor would generate some new views and allow people to focus on the book at hand, rather than the series as a whole, or how it fitted into the overall arc (as had often been the case in the past).

It was madness. Especially for someone who has never read any of the books before. Would any of it make sense ? I would likely be reading the end of the story before the beginning. What was I thinking ? Well I was intrigued enough to find out, so with paperback and microphone at the ready, I set off on a most extraordinary journey...

And so that's what I have been doing for the last two and a half years. Reading, reviewing, recording. We tackle between ten and twelve books per series and I've just started recording the next batch for release in 2025. As time wore on, it became evident that the other "book club" members were not as interested as me and they dropped away, until now it's just Iain and his guest and then I'm let out of my box for five minutes at the end (or sometimes even in the middle). I'm 40 novels in, with a LOT more to go and it's going to be years before we finish - but it's genuinely been huge fun so far.

I have a tendency to make detailed notes for each episode as I am reading - verging on a script for my recording session. So I decided that while the podcast episodes are out there and transcripts of those exist, I wanted to have a more permanent, personal place for my written thoughts. I also wanted to be able to expand on things if I felt the need, add some musings on the grand experiment as a whole, etc, etc. However, I didn't want to take away from the episodes themselves, so I decided to wait until there had been a sufficient period of time since release - hence the two year delay.

By the way - I'm only going to release these reviews once a month. Even I can stick to that !

So that's all the preamble out of the way. Below is my first review from episode one, originally released in July 2022. It's worth saying that my notes get a more detailed episode by episode, so for this one I've edited things slightly, but it's a good representation of what was on the podcast. It's a bit crude and short and doesn't have a lot to say -  it took me a while to find my rhythm with these. I think I was more conscious of the time constraints rather than necessarily coming up with something meaningful -  so bear with me. I personally think these things get a *lot* better ! 

Alphabetically, the first book is therefore - 

Alien Bodies by Lawrence Miles

Eighth Doctor Adventures number: 6

Originally published : November 1997

Companions: Sam

On an island in the East Indies, in a lost city buried deep in the heart of the rainforest, agents of the most formidable powers in the galaxy are gathering. They have been invited there to bid for what could turn out to be the deadliest weapon ever created.

When the Doctor and Sam arrive in the city, the Time Lord soon realises they've walked into the middle of the strangest auction in history — and what's on sale to the highest bidder is something more horrifying than even the Doctor could have imagined, something that could change his life forever.

And just when it seems things can't get any worse, the Doctor finds out who else is on the guest list...

It's my first ever Eighth Doctor Adventures novel and what a start - because it's one of *those* books.

You know, one of the novels everyone has heard about and raves about and apparently is regularly in the top ten of "best" Doctor Who stories. Lawrence Miles is *that* author - this is meant to be something special.

And without getting into a full blown review (because I'm not meant to do that), I can't help but make a few observations.

It's…well it's slow. And perhaps too long. And overwritten. And has a simple idea at it's heart. Yet, it's extremely complex and throws more new ideas at the page than the series had seen in years. 

And at time it's almost like the Doctor has wandered out of his own TV universe into someone else's. One that's darker and stranger, but is oddly familiar and yet makes even less sense.

 It *loves* the minutiae of the shows continuity. And it has Krotons that are menacing. 

And  - and  - and -  heck, back in 1997 this must have blown fans minds !

There's no doubt that it's well written and Miles clearly wants try and do something new. I think he wants to be a cross between Alan Moore and Douglas Adams - there are some lovely turns of phrase in the book and the backwards flashback structure works well - even if  Alan Moore kind of got there first with some of the time war ideas (because yes, I AM old enough to remember the back up strips in Doctor Who Weekly). 

The problem is, while I know this is only the sixth novel in the range  - and the Eighth Doctor only had one TV adventure to try and form his personality - the Doctor in this book just…sits there.

Miles seemed more interested in his world building and new characters than the star of the show. 

And thus we come to my main challenge. Because I can see is that I probably would have had a very different relationship and a very different reaction to this book if I had read it back when it was first published, rather than now 25 years later.

I've watched and read a lot of science fiction in my life - especially since 1997 -  and many of the concepts presented in "Alien Bodies" have been used elsewhere - even in the revived series of Doctor Who - so what was perhaps new and original back then is now...less so.

I just wasn’t as bowled over by this book as I expected to be, given the importance accorded to it by fandom. It's a shame. Maybe its me. It's not a great start to this series of reviews that's for sure.

Anyway, let's end with some positives and my favourite sections or lines.

Well good old Arthur C Clarke and his Mysterious World gets a mention - so that's a thumbs up from me. And Twin Peaks was clearly on Miles's mind, as we get "the chairs are not what they seem" and "but sometimes my arms bend back"

I also liked the mention of the alien Quirkafleeg - a shout out to Fat Freddy's Cat from the Fabulous Furry Freek Brothers or maybe even ZX Spectrum classic Jet Set Willy ?  I'll take either.

But my favourite comes when the Doctor is fighting against the conceptual entity The Shift and the chapter ends with  "Then he closed his eyes and switched himself off"...