We're All Stories In The End 7 - Birthright

Haven't I been here before?...

Birthright by Jim Mortimore

Seventh Doctor Adventures number: 17

Originally published: August 1993

Companions: Ace and Benny

"I feel like a pawn in a blasted chess game, Ace." "I know what you mean. Trouble is, they keep changing the chess-players."

The TARDIS has died. Stranded in early twentieth-century London, Bernice can only stand and watch as it slowly disintegrates.

In the East End a series of grisly murders has been committed. Is this the work of the ghostly Springheel Jack or, as Bernice suspects, something even more sinister?

In a tiny shop in Bloomsbury, the master of a grand order of sorcerers is nearing the end of a seven-hundred year quest for a fabled magic wand.

And on a barren world in the far-distant future the Queen of a dying race pleads for the help of an old hermit named Muldwych, while Ace leads a group of guerrillas in a desperate struggle against their alien oppressors.

These events are related. Perhaps the Doctor knows how. But the Doctor has gone away.

Now this is what we want.

A sordid London location. A string of unexplained murders. The terror of Spring Heeled Jack. 

Benny being sarcastic. Benny beating someone up in prison. Benny being the smartest person in the room. 

Can you tell I'm a fan of Ms. Summerfield ? 

This is all despite having never read a single book with her in it up until now.

I've listened to quite a few Bernice audios starring the lovely Lisa Bowerman though.

In fact, I may not have read the this New Adventure before, but as soon as I saw the name Ch'tizz I had a bout of déjà vu. 

That's because Big Finish adapted the story into an audio play back in 1999, lopping out the Doctor and Ace and adding in Jason Kane - with Colin Baker playing Russian detective Mikhail Popov.

I didn't come to it until a long time after release, but I remember rather enjoying it - and here I am now back with the Virgin novel - the original you might say….

But although I wish I could say that it's better than the copy, but... it's a bit of a jumbled book to be honest.

I can see what Nigel Robinson was going for  with the juxtaposed locations and splitting the TARDIS team up across time and space.

But The Seventh Doctor is hardly in it (I know that will be explained when we get to Iceberg, but even so....) and Ace's troubles on a future Earth fighting the insectoid Charrl were -  well, a bit dull and obvious. 

I kind of wish that Spring Heeled Jack had been more than confused monsters that act like grasshoppers - although there is another version of that mystery in the Doctor Who Magazine Eighth Doctor comics, which coincidently I've just been reading.

There are a few nice ideas in the mix - the TARDIS being split in two. Benny and Ace not entirely sure the Doctor is being straight with them. Aliens who just want to find a safe place to live, whatever the cost. Relatives of past companions popping up.

And then there's Benny's fantasy battle in the mindscape of the TARDIS. Spider's chewing on Adric's bones ? Now that’s nasty !

But maybe that's my other problem with the book too. Tonally it feels all over the place with some things not really going anywhere.

For example, there's a bloody battle between the humans and the Charrl in London. The description is "Streets awash with hot steaming blood and the anguished cries of the dismembered". A bit much, even for stories too broad and deep for the small screen ? 

And Bellingham is built up to be a really nasty piece of work until...he's suddenly killed off page. Sorry - what ?

When we get to the end, there's Muldwych (okay, clearly an alternate future version of the Doctor or something) and he waves his hands, locks the Charrl in an internal TARDIS dimension and magically removes the seeds from the infected women Including Benny). Hang on on is this a Series 2 RTD script ?

There are just a few too many easy solutions. In fact the Tardis seems to solve the rest of things itself really.

At least like the last book I reviewed, things end with a big bang - in this case the Tunguska explosion of 1908 (queue more fond memories of reading The Unexplained magazine in my youth).

I'm surprised it took Doctor Who this long to deal with the event, given that we've had an explanation for the destruction of Atlantis at least three times by now.

All in all, it's a case of nice audio, shame about the book.

Great cover though.

We're All Stories In The End 6 - Beltempest

A swift review for a very swiftly moving novel...

Beltempest by Jim Mortimore

Eighth Doctor Adventures number: 17

Originally published: November 1998

Companions: Sam

The people of Bellania II see their sun, Bel, shrouded in night for a month following an impossible triple eclipse. When Bel is returned to them a younger, brighter, hotter star, it is the beginning of the end for the entire solar system...

100,000 years later, the Doctor and Sam arrive on Bellania IV, where the population is under threat as disaster looms — immense gravitational and dimensional disturbances are surging through this area of space.

While the time travellers attempt to help the survivors and ease the devastation, a religious suicide-cult leader is determined to spread a new religion through Bel's system — and his word may prove even more dangerous than the terrible forces brought into being by the catastrophic changes in the sun....

                                                                                                     

So here we are with another 8th Doctor Adventure - and I'll be honest, I struggled with this one.

But you know what this book has ? Pace.

It moves like a racehorse,  barely pausing to draw breath. It's relentless. 

It's Doctor Who does a disaster move - but with six disasters one after another.

If it was a TV episode, you could imagine many of the scenes with Sam being one long continuous take, as she careers from one crisis to the next.

It's also poetic. Dreamlike. A symphony of metaphors. Phrases like "a church raised to the god blue" are glorious.

It's interested in a sense of place. It has an inner monologue which propels the thing along - even if you are not entirely sure what that thing is.

And that may be both its's blessing and its curse.

The positive is that this is a book grasping for a deeper meaning about religion and faith and trust  - and all that stuff - which is admirable in the confines of a Doctor Who novel

But it's also a story about Sam rather than the Doctor, which would be fine if it was an interesting story. It's one that  frustrates enormously and never really works. 

Sad to say, at times I found myself wanting Sam to just stop talking and GET ON WITH IT !

Is it all style over substance? Hmmmm - possibly….

While the sun may blow up with a bang, unfortunately the story ends with a whimper…

But hey - that scene with the clothes as the the hold is depressurising - and the Doctor sings Bernard Cribbins and moulds Devils's Tower ?

Those are moments of pure joy.

We're All Stories In The End 5 - Bad Therapy

 Strange how a novel based on a silly science fiction show can bring unexpected things to the surface...

Bad Therapy by Matthew Jones

Seventh Doctor Adventures number: 57

Originally published: December 1996

Companions: Chris and...Peri?!

"We're not like you - we can't be whole on our own."

Seeking respite after the traumatic events in the thirtieth century, the Doctor and Chris travel to 1950s London. But all is not well in bohemian Soho: racist attacks shatter the peace; gangs struggle for territory; and a bloodthirsty driverless cab stalks the night.

While Chris enjoys himself at the mysterious and exclusive Tropics club, the Doctor investigates a series of ritualistic murders with an uncommon link — the victims all have no past. Meanwhile, a West End gangster is planning to clean up the town, apparently with the help of the Devil himself. And, in the quiet corridors of an abandoned mental hospital, an enigmatic psychiatrist is conducting some very bad therapy indeed.

As the stakes are raised, healing turns to killing, old friends appear in the strangest places — and even toys can have a sinister purpose.

So this time around it was a series of firsts - 

The first novel I've read with Chris Cwej. The first with a former companion returning after they've spent many many years apart from the Doctor. Oh and according to the title page, the first novel by Matthew Jones.

Which, based on the high quality of this book, is mightily impressive.

There is so much that he gets right here.

The Seventh Doctor acts and sounds like he should - mysterious and mercurial - one moment speaking with a quiet intensity and the next seized by a loud fierce anger.

Supporting characters, both good and bad, come alive on the page - full of hopes and fears and understandable motivations.

Plus with Jack we have another of those characters you fall in love with and wish they'd gone into the TARDIS for further adventures.

Sure on the surface we have a "What if The Doctor met the Krays" conceit crossed with a story about the rights of lab-created sentient metamorphs. But really when you hone in on it, there a deep sense of melancholy at the core of this book. 

It's a story about loss. Loss of loved ones. Loss of friends. Loss of innocence.

And I'll be honest, it's been kind of hard reading this book. 

Not because I haven’t enjoyed it - I've loved it - but because of the feelings it's brought to the surface.

During the time I've been reading it, much of the UK has been going through a strange communal mourning - for a Queen that 99% had never met yet felt like they knew.

And whether you were moved by the death of our longest reigning monarch or not, I think a lot of people, myself included, have found themselves thinking about the people in *their* lives that are no longer around...

It's almost ten years since my mum died after a long, long illness.

I'll be the first to admit - I didn't get really get that upset at the time mum went. I was practical - things had to be organised - and it's not like I hadn’t come to terms with the fact that her death was inevitable, given the effects of the leukaemia.

But with the national mood being the way it was - and reading about Chris Cwej clearly struggling with his grief over the death of someone that meant so much to him  - it all resonated. A lot.

I found myself thinking about my mum more than usual - how I felt at the time - how I bottled things up and, like Chris, just tried to get on with life.

Until - suddenly - something like this reminds me that she's not here anymore.

It's an emotional reaction I wasn't expecting to have to a Doctor Who novel. But I'm glad I did.

I can say it now. I miss my mum. 

Thanks for reading.

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 !

...

...

...

"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"...

Golden Sunsets - 50 Years Of Memories - Part 32 - 1998

Another really important year for me now, as my second daughter Mollie was born in November, after my wife suffered a difficult pregnancy. She's an amazing young woman - very different to her sister, but just as talented in an artistic rather than literary sense. As I write this she is just starting year two of her degree in CGI/animation and I know she will do brilliantly.

This memory however, is about my first daughter...

1998:

The trivia:

• On 1st April 1998, Burger King took out a full-page advert in the USA Today newspaper touting the introduction  of a  new"Whopper" burger especially designed for left -handed people. The new bun would contain the same ingredients as the original sandwich, but rotated 180° to redistribute the weight and making in easier for lefties to hold without everything falling out. Thousands of customers swarmed BK restaurants requesting this new innovative burger - along with many others demanding their own "right-handed" version.

• As part of a marketing campaign for their new "Beats" watches, Swiss company Swatch tried to introduce a new decimal method of measuring time. Each day was split into 1,000 ".beats", equivalent to 86.4 seconds, with times noted as a three digit number. So the notation "@248" was 248 .beats after midnight or 5.57 am. At the same time Swatch announced that this new metric measurement had become the official time system for "Nation1", an online country apparently created and run by children.Strangely, it never caught on.

•  When the Galaxy 4 satellite malfunctioned, over 45 million pagers in the USA fell silent for more than 24 hours. In the days before widespread mobile phones, they were a not only a fashion accessory gizmo, but also a key way for medical and emergency staff to stay in touch, so this was seen as a major disruption. In addition some TV networks could not transmit programmes to affiliates, weather forecasters lost essential radar data and credit card readers in some petrol stations failed to function. This was over 20 years ago, so imagine what the impact would be in the world now if something similar happened....

The memory:

A Bug's Life

This second ever Pixar feature  has a special place in my heart. Not because of it's fun story, excellent Randy Newman soundtrack or ground-breaking CGI animation - although those are all great reasons for being on anyone's list. But more importantly this was the first film that I properly *shared* with my eldest daughter Hannah. I'm cheating with my timelines a little here, but it's a story that's too important to me not to tell...

"A Bug's Life" was very loosely inspired by Aesop's fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper", with elements of the classic Japanese epic "The Seven Samurai", plus that - back then brand new - special Pixar spin. The movie tells the story of an outcast inventor ant named Flik. When one of his faulty inventions results in the loss of the annual harvest that is always given to a bunch of bullying grasshoppers - and he then causes the tithe to be doubled after standing up to their leader - Flik suggests that he try to recruit some "warrior bugs" to fight the grasshoppers. The ant royal council agree, but really only to keep him out of the way...

Travelling to the insect "city" (in reality a huge pile of rubbish), Flik encounters a group of incompetent circus bugs, whose actions in trying to avoid paying a bill cause him to mistake them for the warriors he needs. He persuades them to return with him to the ant colony - mainly because they think he is a talent agent - but once there and greeted as saviour heroes, both Flik and the troupe realise their mistake. However, after they band together to save Princess Atta's baby sister Dot from a ravenous bird, they come up with an audacious plan...

Hannah was heading towards three years old when "A Bug's Life" came out at the tail end of 1998. I'm not sure my wife and I took her to the cinema to see it, as around about then was when Mollie was born (five weeks early). What I do know is that I bought the VHS tape when it was released a few months later, because by then Hannah had definitely been exposed to the large amounts of merchandise for sale through visits to the Disney Store and presents from relatives. She had a Princess Atta soft toy and her sister had a baby Dot, both of which went everywhere with them.

The thing is, early 1999 was also around the time when my wife and I finally split up after a difficult few years. It was a deeply upsetting time, but by then I wasn't living with the rest of the family full time anyway (due to other circumstances too complicated to go into here), so my weekend trips from London back to the family home 180 miles way just became more...formalised.  Hannah and I had always been close, so in those early months of the separation my two days visits became even more special.

Hannah was not a physically active child, due to the effects of the cerebral palsy she was born with, so she and I tended to gravitate towards more...stationary pursuits. We watched the video of  "A Bug's Life" together over and over and over again. Every scene became ingrained in my memory - it became our go-to film.

She particularly responded to the character of Dot. Perhaps she saw a little of herself in the tiny ant girl who wished she could do more. At the start, when Dot feels that she is never going to make a difference in the colony, Flik shows her a seed, using the analogy that even mighty oak trees come from small beginnings and Dot has to give it time - she is still just a seed. As the film progresses and the battle against the grasshoppers takes a darker turn, Flik is ashamed of all the troubles he has caused and does not want to go back to the colony. Dot then picks up a stone and shows it to Flik, reciting the exact words he told her at the start..."pretend this is a seed", gradually turning his depression into determination. Out of all the love my daughter had for the film, these two scenes seemed to stay with her.

As the year wore on, Hannah, her mum and new baby sister moved from the rented house we had all shared to a new-build house closer to my soon to be ex-mother-in-law. It made sense and it was a nice sized place close to other family members, amenities, etc. My wife and I still spent some time together for the kids sake, plus since I'd had to travel three hours each way to visit them, it was easier to be based at her house then have to be out all the time. But that proximity meant that we still fought over a lot of the same old things....

During one weekend visit, I think I was feeling particularly low - probably due to another protracted disagreement. I was just getting the kids out of the car as it was parked on the driveway of their new house. As was typical of new developments at the time, the driveway that led down the side to the garage was concrete with a centre section covered with small pale stones - probably a form of  limestone gravel known as Cotswold Chippings. As I lifted Hannah out of the car seat onto the driveway, she suddenly bent down and picked up one of the stones. She turned to me with a big smile on her young face - "Pretend it's a seed, Daddy" she said, handing it to me.

Immediately my mood lifted and blinking away some tears, I grinned and hugged her tightly. "I will" I promised, putting it carefully in my jeans. "I will". We carried on into the house and after a couple of hours I drove away for my long journey home. Later that night as I emptied my pockets, I found the stone again. Smiling to myself I put it on a bookshelf and went to bed...

Twenty years later, I still have that "seed".

I'm never going to part with it. It's moved house with me, been knocked off the shelf by cats and even once fell into a glass of Coke, but it's endured all these ups and downs -  just like me and just like my relationship with Hannah, which despite a few rocky patches (pardon the pun), is now better than it's ever been. That simple little stone is a lovely reminder of how wonderful my daughter can be and how we shared something special  - all from a film about tiny insects.


Honourable mentions:

• Age of Bronze by Eric Shanower - This brilliant artist / writer came to prominence through his series of "Oz" graphic novels, published by First Comics in the mid 1980's. His clean, almost glowing, artwork was just beautiful and his stories had a timeless quality, which took me back to a time when I read those original stories by L. Frank Baum as a kid. Shanower did a wide range of work for other publishers over the following years, but in 1998 he began what has become his most ambitious project. "Age of Bronze" intends to tell the entire story of the Trojan War in comic form in as much authentic historical detail as possible (omitting appearances from gods, centaurs, nymphs, etc.). It's a dense read, but Shanowers painstaking eye for period detail brings the characters and settings to life. I love it intensely, but it's not going to be for everyone. If you want an action packed condensed movie-style adaptation you are going to struggle. Frustratingly the story is still unfinished even after 20+ years. However a 2019 switch to full colour and digital single issues (with physical collections to follow) promises an increased release schedule at last. I can't wait to read the rest.

• Gods and Monsters - English film director James Whale is most famously known for his work on several all-time classic horror movies -  1931s "Frankenstein" (with Boris Karloff as the creature), 1933s "The Invisible Man (Claude Rains) and 1935s "Bride of Frankenstein". What is possibly less well known is that he was openly gay - something which was very unusual for the time period. I discovered this early film from Bill Condon by chance on TV, but its sensitive and warm (semi-fictionalised) account of Whale's last few days - and the possible bittersweet relationship he may have had with his gardener (Brendan Fraser) - has stayed with me during the years since. The always watchable Sir Ian McKellan excels as the filmmaker - his best years behind him, living alone, but still haunted by the voices of his past. Fraser equally holds his own as former Marine Clayton Boone - his gentle demeanor and flat-top haircut recalling the unmistakable images of Mary Shelley's most famous creation.There are several flashbacks -  to the making of Whales classic movies, the extravagant pool parties and his experiences during the First World War - all of which enhance a wonderful character piece. The gentle pace may not be for everyone, but I learnt a lot about a man that previously I knew in name only.

• City of Golden Shadow (Otherland Book 1) by Tad Williams -  Okay I'm cheating again slightly here, because 1998 was the year that this first book in the "Otherland" series came out in paperback in the UK, rather than it's original publication date. I was handed the book by a friend who really struggled with it, but he knew I loved Williams's "Memory, Sorrow & Thorn" series so thought I would appreciate it more - and he was dead right. Rather than high fantasy, the four huge novels are set in the near future where total immersion virtual reality has become the norm and anyone can access a vast array of imagined worlds. A diverse set of ordinary people from across the globe find themselves drawn into the "Otherland" network, assisted by a mysterious benefactor  - and not only have to contend with battling bizarre creatures controlled by the all-powerful Grail Brotherhood, but also realise they are unable to log off. They are trapped in the network and  - you guessed it -  if they die virtually, they also die in the real world. Williams manages to have his cake *and* eat it, as the virtual reality setting allows him to create myriad plot threads across every genre - from ancient Egypt to the Wizard of Oz - from the Battle of Troy to a gigantic house with no "outside". Twenty years on, and especially in the wake of successes like "Ready Player One", this may sound old hat, but at the time this was territory that that had not been explored before - and certainly not in such depth. I found myself eagerly awaiting each new instalment, desperate to discover the reason for the world-wide conspiracy and the core mystery of "The Other" at the it's heart. Still well worth a read.

• The Young Persons Guide to Becoming a Rockstar - Another of those odd little Channel 4  programmes which  promptly vanished into obscurity after it's six episode run. I'm sure I'm one of only a few people to even remember it. The series is a humorous take on the UK music industry, focusing on the improbably named Glaswegian band "Jocks Wa Hey". Led by the personable Jez MAcAllister (played by Ciarán McMenamin) along with a motley group of misfits and nutcases, the band stumble through life, somehow managing to get signed, make a ridiculously expensive album and get into the charts. Along the way there are a swathe of celebrity cameos (even a very young Gerard Butler) and gentle piss-takes of certain bands of the decade - such as "Bonk, Bonk, Bonk", who bear a more than passing resemblance to a certain Clydebank soul/pop group, complete with a spiky haired frontman who just won't stop singing. It's hardly savage biting satire, but the cast all appear to be having a great time and the mostly original music was melodic enough to make me buy the soundtrack album. 

• Pleasantville -  If there was any justice, this wonderful film would be lauded alongside "The Truman Show" as one of the best high-concept-with-emotional-depth movies of the decade. Instead it's seems to be under-appreciated. The basic idea of two modern day kids transported into the black and white world of a 1950s TV sitcom is a good one - allowing for all the fish out of water / culture clash motif's you would expect -  but it's the execution where it really shines. David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) find that their very presence is changing the town, stripping away the bland innocence. Not only that, but as both people and places start to burst into colour and characters step outside their defined roles, it allows for an examination of how some embrace change and the lengths others will go to preserve what's considered "normal". The colour effects are uniformly excellent and are used to great effect, such as a tree on fire, "Bud" covering his mother's colour face with B&W makeup and shop owner Bill Johnson paintings (with a lovely performance from Jeff Daniels). Yes some of the outrage about "coloureds" is a bit too on the nose, but it's forgivable when a film is as warm, inventive and enjoyable as this. 

• Wold's Wildest Police Videos - This reality clip show of car chases, smashes and arrests -  presented by the gravelly voiced John Bunnell  - might seem like an odd choice, and it's not here because I particularly *loved* the programme. It earns a place just due to it's sheer ubiquitousness, as it seemed to be on television all the damn time ! If I flicked through the growing number of satellite channels available to me, no matter the hour of day or night - there was ex-Sheriff Burnell with his over-dramatic commentary on yet another law enforcement pursuit. "World's Wildest" became such a guilty pleasure in my family that we played a game each night to try and find it. Was it an episode that we had seen before? Was John going to wax lyrically over the sound of car horns and screeching tyres on the perils of being a criminal and then make some awful pun at their eventual capture? You bet he was!

• Dark City - If it wan't for the emotional connection to "A Bug's Life",  I think this dark SF mystery from Alex Proyas would have made the top spot. Despite its obvious influences, it still offers a unique vision, asks some deep questions - and has a love for science fiction past and present running all the way through. As the film opens, our protagonist, played by Rufus Sewell, wakes up in a hotel bath tub, seemingly with no memory of who he is or his past life. When the phone rings, a mysterious voice urges our man to get out quickly - "The Strangers" are coming. This just as he discovers the body of a murdered woman and a bloody knife. Fleeing the scene through a city of perpetual night, he avoids encountering the sinister Strangers - pale, bald people in black coats and wide-brimmed hats. Tracking down his estranged wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) he discovers that his name is John Murdoch and he is wanted for a series of grisly murders - crimes which he cannot remember committing.... What follows is a desperate chase through a strange cityscape - one which keeps changing at midnight while the inhabitants sleep, as The Strangers use their powers to alter people's identities, twist the shapes of buildings and "tune" their unknowable experiment into new configurations. There is no way I am going to reveal all the twists and turns of this noir-tinged story, as unravelling the layers is one of the best parts of the experience - along with the fantastic production design. Suffice it to say that I found "Dark City" incredibly original and deeply satisfying, even on multiple viewings. There's a really good cast too, including Keifer Sutherland, Ian Richardson, David Wenham and William Hurt. It's especially good fun as "Mr. Hand" (one of The Strangers tasked with capturing John Murdoch) is played by the one-and-only Richard O'Brien of "Rocky Horror" and "Crystal Maze" fame. Never was a creepy bald man cast so well !

Golden Sunsets - 50 Years Of Memories - Part 31 - 1997

Memory-wise then, we're still in the difficult 1990s, but at least we've reached:

1997:

The trivia:

• Reverend Robert Shields from Dayton in the USA developed a kind of compulsion to document everything about his life. Between 1972 and 1997 he kept a diary of every five minutes, including recording his body temperature, blood pressure,  when he changed the light bulbs and even his bowel movements. By the time he stopped due to ill health, the diary amounted to 37.5 million words and filled 94 boxes.
• As part of his High School science class, 14-year old Nathan Zoner convinced 43 out of 50 classmates to vote to ban the chemical "Dihydrogen Monoxide", citing its many negative effects on the environment. He won first prize at the Greater Idaho Science Fair for his project which proved that the use of true facts can lead the public to a false conclusion, since "Dihydrogen monoxide" is actually...water.
• In April of 1997 the Hale-Bopp comet was at its brightest as it passed close to the Sun, and it continued to be visible in the night sky until December of that year. This lengthy visibility and the extensive coverage in the media and on the internet made it the most observed comet in human history. It also became infamous when 39 members of the religious cult "Heaven's Gate" committed mass suicide in order to reach what they believed was an extraterrestrial spacecraft hiding in it's trail

The memory:

The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton

 If the "Lensmen" sequence of novels by E.E. 'Doc' Smith had instilled in me a love of grandiose space opera as a youngster, then this massive series  (in both page count and scope) proved that the SF sub-genre was still alive and kicking and in *very* good hands.

It's worth admitting here that I'm breaking my own internal rules slightly, because the first volume in the trilogy - "The Reality Dysfunction" - came out in 1996, but I didn't discover Mr. Hamilton's work until book two - "The Neutronium Alchemist" was released in 1997. I really wanted the saga to have the top spot somewhere, but since 1996 and 1999 (when final volume "The Naked God" came out) were already allocated, it seemed to fit best here. Anyway, let's dive in...

In the 27th Century, mankind can travel to the stars and has colonised over 900 worlds plus numerous asteroids and space stations. However although humanity is united under the auspices of the 'Confederation' (which also includes two alien species - the Tyrathca and the Kiint) it has split into two distinct factions - the religious "Adamists", who use machine based nanotechnology and see themselves as "true humans", and the progressive, genetically modified "Edenists" who have embraced biotechnology (bitek) and can telepathically communicate with their living wormhole-creating vessels (known as Voidhawks) - not to mention avoid death by transferring their consciousness into their sentient giant habitats. Edenists also dominate the economy because they harvest 'Helium 3' from gas giant planets, which is the primary fuel source for all Adamist starships.

Against this backdrop we are introduced to a vast array of characters  including: the imprisoned terrorist scientist Dr. Alkad Mzu, designer of the outlawed antimatter super weapon "The Alchemist" - space trader Joshua Calvert, who made his fortune from the sudden discovery of artefacts from an extinct alien species - the fiery Edenist Syrinx who forms a telepathic bond with the bitek starship Oeone and now competes against Joshua in the lucrative shipping industry between worlds - and the charismatic but sadistic Satanist, Quinn Dexter, leader of a group of revolting convicts on the tropical settlement planet Lalonde.

It's on Lalonde where the main plot really kicks in. While Quinn Dexter is engaged in torturing a local law enforcer, an ancient alien known as the Ly-cilph which is observing the conflict, notices the dying mans energy signature leave his body and follows it to another dimension (later named "the beyond"), which contains billions of "souls" of human-kind's long dead. Unfortunately this contact ruptures the barrier between the beyond and our dimension, allowing the souls  - many driven insane after centuries of imprisonment, where they can sense the "real" world but not touch it -  to begin to escape and posses the bodies of the living. Dexter is just the first of millions to come.

These reincarnated dead find that they can allow more trapped souls through to posses others and harness energy based powers both as an offensive weapon and often as a way to reshape local reality  - although this prevents them from using use any form of advanced electronics. Although possession has to be with the consent of the host, this can be overcome by various torture methods. Consequently Lalonde is quickly over-run and many of the possessed (including Quinn, who has regained control of his body but kept the powers) leave in spaceships to spread to the wider Confederation.

If  this all sound a bit like the beginnings of a zombie outbreak in space, well that's true in a very limited sense, but the trilogy is so much more than that. As possession spreads throughout the Confederation like a virus, the viewpoint continues to switch so that we see the unfolding chaos across the known galaxy. Individuals battle for survival, governments and even planets fall, there are massive space battles and exploding stars - and across it all Dexter Quinn prepares to unleash his final apocalypse on Earth. It's exhilarating stuff. Even something that might sound hoary - like bringing in Al Capone and Fletcher Christian as two of the possessing souls - works because Hamilton's characters have weight and history and depth. They act like real people, not movie cliche cut-outs and we care about their fates. Key plot reveals also feel earned because characters discover them by detective work and sheer bloody survival.

The horror elements (and the books don't shy away from graphic violence) blend seamlessly with the more serious military science fiction and space opera themes and events have real consequence. Plus Hamilton takes the time to examine the philosophical and metaphysical sides of the conflict. For example, how does the existence of "the beyond" change humanity's views on religion and the afterlife? Yes, there are a vast array of multi-layered subplots, which can be challenging to keep up with - this is certainly not a story that you can skim - but Hamilton is a master juggler and knows exactly how to keep all the planets in the air, when to ratchet up the suspense and when to pull back the curtain.

This huge trilogy is also where a lot of Hamilton's core ideas, which he returns to in slightly different forms in subsequent novels, are first brought into the light. Humans enhanced by integrated technology. Vast man-made habitats. Innovative ways of crossing huge galactic distances. Aliens that are truly nothing like us (no bumpy foreheaded bipedals here). The fact that no matter how far out into the universe we go, we just take our prejudices and limited ways of thinking with us.

If I have one criticism, it's that the ending of the whole saga slightly falls short of the immense build-up. It's innovative, there's a logic to it - and it all fits together in a massively complicated tapestry, but I was perhaps hoping for something just a little...more. But that's nit-picking when a story with this sheer scale, innovation and complexity is so rewarding.

To my mind, after reading this series, there's space opera, there's epic space opera, and then there's Peter F. Hamilton...

Honourable mentions:

• Contact - Starring the always excellent Jodie Foster, this is one of those rare things - an intelligent, thoughtful science fiction film that dares to ask the big questions about science, the universe and faith (in all senses of the word). When radio astronomer Ellie Arroway discovers radio transmissions comic from Vega, it leads to the building of a gigantic machine that may just take mankind to it's first extraterrestrial encounter. What will the occupant find at the other end of their journey? Is it real? Is it the biggest hoax ever perpetrated? The film doesn't give all the answers and it's all the better for it.  It should come as no surprise that I love the film so much when you learn that is was written by one of my personal heroes - the scientist Carl Sagan - and directed by Robert Zemeckis, who was responsible for the almost perfect "Back To The Future Trilogy". A seemingly forgotten classic, 

• Buffy The Vampire Slayer - It's difficult looking back now to really appreciate how much a ground-breaking impact "Buffy" had on genre television. The show's powerful female heroine, witty and intelligent scripts that combined fantastical elements will the real world trials of the average teenager (or twenty-something) and a cast of interesting and relatable characters (even the evil ones), played by a bunch of great actors really brought fantasy television to the attention of the masses. Although it wasn't the first show to use season long plot arcs, it certainly re-popularised the idea, and phrases such as "Big Bad" to refer to the ultimate season villain have become part of modern TV language. I first discovered it in the familiar BBC2 evening slot (where some episodes were cut) before diving in and buying the home video releases - which was where my fascination with the show really took off. It was also one of the first programmes you could buy in "box set" collections (albeit each season was split into two releases of three cassettes each). I bought them all, before upgrading to the DVD complete collection in 2005. It's a few years since I've watched an episode, but any show that can consistently produce excellent episodes week in week out for seven years and also deliver stories as emotionally rich and diverse as "The Body", "Hush" and "Once More With Feeling" will always get my vote. 

• Star Trek: New Frontier -  Now I do like "Star Trek" in all its various TV and film incarnations, but I've never really been one for diving into the novelised adventures of Kirk, Picard , Sisko et al. I can distantly remember seeing the numbered Bantam episode adaptations by James Blish in bookshops in the 1970s, along with the curious 'Fotonovels' which contained stills from the episode along with dialogue balloons in a curious mash-up of live action and comics - but they didn't appeal enough to me to actually buy them. Although Pocket Books started releasing new stories in the early 80s, they didn't make their way to UK shores until around 1987, when I started seeing them in places like Forbidden Planet (I guess to co-incide with the transmission of "The Next Generation") - but again they were nothing more than a curiosity. Then in 1997 along came comics writer Peter David, who began to develop his little corner of the "Trek" universe with its own continuity, using a combination of new characters, ones he had created for other novels and minor background players from the various TV series. "New Frontier" concerned the adventures of the reckless Captain Mackenzie Calhoun and the oddball crew of the Federation Starship Excalibur, as it explored Sector 221-G, home of the recently fallen Thallonian Empire.

• In a neat marketing strategy, Pocket Books released the first story in four slim volumes at a lower price. Intrigued by the concept, plus being aware of the quality of Peter David's comics work from his 12-year run on "The Incredible Hulk", plus "Dreadstar" and "The Atlantis Chronicles", I decided to take a chance and picked up the first couple of books - and that was it, I was hooked. Apart from the interactions of the unique crew and their adventures, my primary reason for enjoying the books so much was that you genuinely never knew what direction things could go in. Unlike Kirk and Picard, who (of course) would always survive, David might decide to kill off a prominent character, or jump forward in time or just throw in a real plot curve ball - it was that unpredictable. Between 1997 and 2006 David wrote sixteen full novels plus the New Frontier crew made appearances in a number of  other book mini-series, anthologies and even their own comics. Things then tailed off and there were only two new books in the next six years before a final trilogy of e-book novellas in 2015. I bought them all, and to my mind they (plus David's other "Trek" work) are some of the very best tie-in books to come out of the mega franchise. Well worth a read even if you are only a casual fan.

• The Fifth Element - It's wild, it's wacky. I'm sure certain parts don't make a whole lot of sense. but I just can't help love Luc Besson's 23rd century science fiction action extravaganza, if for nothing else than it's sheet imagination and ambition - even if it is clearly influenced by the French SF graphic novel series "Valerian & Laureline". Amongst all the special effects and a story of a once every 5,000 years cosmic alignment, Besson weaves an all-star cast - Bruce Willis is world weary and cynical cab driver, Korben Dallas, Ian Holm is a nervous priest who knows the truth behind the elements and Gary Oldman chews the scenery with gusto as Jean -Baptiste Emanuel Zorg - the villain of the piece, with his half shaved head, bizarre Southern accent and dog-faced henchmen. Plus of course Milla Jovovich as the strange, ethereal Leeloo. Less successful is Chris Tucker as the garish DJ Ruby Rhod - his high pitched fast-talking schtick wears thin very quickly, but it's the one small fly in the ointment of of an otherwise riot of a film. 

• Teletubbies - The brightly coloured forms of Tinky Winky, Laa-Laa, Dipsy and Po were *everywhere* in 1997, as what was conceived as a fun, kind-of-educational series for pre-school children caught the imagination of the general population of Great Britain and resulted in four characters who only communicated in gibberish having a number one single! For me as the father of a one-year old daughter who loved the show, I became very familiar with the repetitive surreal world and bizarre things like the Noo-noo and the Voice Trumpets. My wife even turned my daughters room into Teletubbyland, complete with rolling green hills, a grass carpet, paper sunflowers on the walls  and the rays of a Sun Baby shining out from the corner. Goodness knows what the people who lived there after us thought of it !

• Hanson - Mmmbop - Okay so this one is a real bit of a guilty / secret  pleasure. The three young Hanson brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma had been making music since the early 90s, but exploded on the popular music scene with the release of the single "Mmmbop", which reached number one in 27 countries and went on to sell over 700,000 copies in the UK alone, where it was constantly on the radio. Even those who said that they hated it couldn't help secretly singing along to the infectious albeit nonsensical chorus. Sure it's bubblegum pop aimed at a teenage market  - and I was certainly outside that demographic, but what can I say - I like good pop music no matter my age and even when it's not "cool" to do so. Subsequent single releases hit the top 10 too (even though people seem to remember Hanson as a one-hit wonder) and piqued my interest enough to shell out for the whole album, "Middle of Nowhere", when I saw it at a bargain price. Despite a few cheesy ballads, it's a selection of cheerful, supremely catchy melodies mixed with modern slick production values . People seem to remember 1997 as the year of Oasis, Radiohead and The Verve, but at a time when my personal life was going through a series of enormous highs and lows, I remember the music that just made me smile...

• The Game - This is probably the film directed by David Fincher that very few people have heard of, let alone seen, yet strangely for me it's one of the most rewarding. Michael Douglas is wealthy investment baker Nicholas Van Orton who is given an usual present for his birthday from his brother - a ticket for a "game" that he promises will change his life. I can't say too much more for fear of spoiling the enjoyment, as your work your way through the labyrinthine plot and its unexpected twists and turns, but hell is the payoff worth it. I love twisty-turny films like this and the first time I saw "The Game" I sat with my mouth open as Fincher slowly opened up his puzzle box. To be honest it's a trick that really only works on that initial viewing, but boy, is it worth it.

• Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone - Who? Never heard of him...