The Macra Terror by: Ian Stuart Black

 

The Macra Terror was written by Ian Stuart Black, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 126^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The Macra Terror is a bit weird.  It’s one of the later Target novelizations, being published in late 1987 so right on the border between novelizations as simple adaptation and novelization as early pitches for original Doctor Who fiction.  It’s also a novelization of a completely missing serial, the soundtrack being one of the early releases in 1992, however like Marco Polo and The Massacre, it has its original author coming back to novelize it based on his scripts.  Ian Stuart Black would actually novelize all three of the stories he wrote for the series, The Macra Terror being the second of the three to be novelized.  Despite this, the novelization remains quite close to the soundtrack of the television story, the dialogue is especially similar throughout with a lot of the lines that would be best remembered in the animated version remaining intact.  Black actually works quite well as a novelist, making it surprising that he never actually pitched anything for Virgin Books because he’d have made something good out of it.  The Macra Terror is a novelization that while keeping everything intact outside of making the structurally weak decision to let Medok live thus making the Macra less deadly a threat, feels quite a bit deeper in the way it characterizes the regulars.

 

The character dynamics of Ben, Polly, and Jamie as a TARDIS team were always a bit rough, since Jamie was quite literally a last minute addition causing last minute rewrites to The Underwater Menace and The Moonbase.  The Macra Terror was the serial where they actually clicked the most as a team, Ben being the working class everyman who succumbs to the influence of the Macra.  The novelization takes it one further, Black really wanting to delve into how Polly and Jamie react differently to Ben’s betrayal.  Jamie in particular holds a grudge which while not explored too much, this is a shorter novelization after all, what is explored is fascinating.  The trust is broken and Polly is the one worrying that Ben will be hurt by Jamie because of it, it adds this tiny little layer of drama that elevates this from simple novelization.  There’s some slight reordering of the events of Episode 1 in particular that add to this, the business with Jamie carrying a big stick actually feels more comedic in the novelization which works pretty well.  The Doctor in general is also emphasized as the total mythic trickster figure that was what Patrick Troughton excelled at especially.

 

Overall, The Macra Terror despite being a later novelization is mostly a match in terms of quality and engaging storytelling when compared to what remains of the television counterpart.  Black’s prose is quite slick and emphasizes the size and cunning of the Macra which was difficult to really portray on television and to get some actual deeper characterization in a way only prose really can do.  8/10.

The Chase by: John Peel

 

The Chase was written by John Peel, based on the story of the same name by Terry Nation.  It was the 145^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Going back to read John Peel’s novelization of The Chase is honestly a weird one after having experienced his novelizations of The Daleks’ Master Plan and The Power of the Daleks, because this is the first book the man wrote.  It’s also the only novelization that Peel has a story to work with and in the forward to the book he apparently used Terry Nation’s original scripts which Nation’s wife Kate just had, before being script edited and tightened up for television by Dennis Spooner.  Structurally The Chase follows the same plot beats and episodes with minimal deviations, the proper deviations are more in terms of not following the script dialogue which in many ways is better and worse than what we got on television.  The biggest disadvantage to the novelization is the handling of Barbara Wright as a character.  Peel already just doesn’t have a handle on how Barbara works.  Now this possibly Nation’s original scripts, as a writer he did have a tendency to put female characters into one category but there are several points throughout the novel where Barbara is just reduced to a gibbering, screaming wreck.  This is especially apparent in the adaptation of “Journey Into Terror”, Peel using this as an attempt to really get the horror element down.  This is one of those things where it’s reduced to just Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster, still in their Universal film guises, but to make them scary Peel has Barbara become this nervous wreck.

 

Barbara does give more background on the Mary Celeste, that sequence actually being extended because Peel desperately wants to include the historical details and then a further discussion between Ian and Barbara about how they may or may not be responsible for the deaths on the Mary Celeste.  If I had to guess this wasn’t a Nation original, but a Peel, Nation as a writer never really thought about time travel mechanics even though he wrote (or co-wrote) three serials with major time travel implications that are almost certainly from other people, mainly Robert Holmes and Dennis Spooner.  It’s a discussion that is circular.  The only other thing that really feels like a misstep is again in the middle sections, this time in the Empire State Building sequence where Morton Dill is no longer just a comedy yokel, but is presented rather cruelly by Peel as a total idiot who is treated with heavy handed ableism by Peel.  He is committed to an asylum at the end of his sequence which is meant to be funny but just comes across terribly.

 

It's now weird that I’ve spent so much time discussing what went wrong with The Chase, but here’s the thing.  Peel does a lot right.  The bookends of the story, Aridius and Mechanus, are converted to be played completely straight.  The opening scenes in the TARDIS genuinely feel like this TARDIS team is a family, some of the dialogue is toned down so Ian and Barbara aren’t really annoyed at Vicki for being a bored teenager.  It creates his great sense of domesticity and family, meaning that the Daleks are actually more of a threat.  The comedy of the Daleks is really kept to the occasional wry line, they are a complete threat, immediately slaughtering the Aridians while they are collaborators.  Peel makes the collaboration utterly pathetic, and rightly so, it’s out of self-preservation and only needs one of them to actually stand up and fight.  On Mechanus they are also immediately ready to kill, the duplicate of the Doctor being somehow darker and the idea that if Vicki was found she wouldn’t even be captured, just exterminated.  Okay in the end there are some injected bits of continuity into Steven’s backstory, something that feels more like a reflection on the idea of the Earth Empire that mentions the Third Dalek War and the Draconians, but it’s genuinely these great bits.

 

Overall, The Chase is one of those novelizations that feels so completely different from the television production.  There are plenty of negative things that John Peel brings to the novelization, some of which might be Nation originals or might just be Peel’s general problematic tendencies.  Still, I find this novelization to be better than the original serial, it’s not a rambling comedy and somehow the exit of Ian and Barbara hits harder here because they have passed through fire with the Daleks being an actual threat.  7/10.

More Short Trips edited by: Stephen Cole

 

Short Trips as an anthology release was a success, something that shouldn’t have been a surprise as the three Decalog installments published by Virgin were quite the success, so almost immediately another volume was commissioned for release the following year.  Stephen Cole remained editor on the edition and brought together many of the same authors, plus a few surprises but decided to ditch Short Trips’ original theme of trips in history in favor of letting the authors explore whatever aspect of short fiction they desire.  This means the book was published under the name More Short Trips, being the only prose volume to not really have a central theme, the follow up would be Short Trips and Side Steps before the short fiction would be handed over to Big Finish Productions to publish through several themed Short Trips anthologies.  This is a double-edged sword, leading to stories of all sorts with no limitation outside of having the Doctor involved (though for one this actually includes an unspecified future Doctor unique to these anthologies).

 

Stephen Cole once again takes the opening of the collection on himself, writing “Totem” under the name Tara Samms and as an opening it’s the bad edge of the double-edged sword.  It’s one of the Eighth Doctor stories for the anthology and is quite weak as an opener.  It’s only about eight pages long and Cole doesn’t actually do much with those eight pages, it wants to largely be a character piece musing on loss and grief, but Cole’s prose is rather simplistic making it come across as unemotional, and there isn’t nearly enough to make things work.  There’s the germ of an interesting idea here but it really needed to be in the hands of a different author to really work.  4/10.

 

Cole then follows up with a story from a debut author, Ian Atkins, who would go on to write several Short Trips for Big Finish Productions, as well as serving as the range’s producer after the unfortunate passing of Paul Spragg.  “Scientific Adviser” fares far better as a story than “Totem”, mainly because it is a fun romp that explores some of the cover-ups put in place after various invasions that were handled by UNIT.  Unlike the novel Who Killed Kennedy? which serves far more as a deconstruction and examination of the era as well as integrating Doctor Who into history, “Scientific Adviser” feels like a writer having a lot of fun in terms of getting around the central premise, the cover up is that a film is being made of The Invasion and the Second Doctor, travelling alone likely post-The War Games, has been recruited as scientific adviser, reporting to the Brigadier in between takes and changing the script to make it ever so slightly inaccurate.  As a story it’s quite fun and is all building to the reveal that the Cybermen have been secretly behind the film, kidnapping the director’s daughter briefly and returning her to get a foot in the door on the filmmaking process.  The climax of the short story is clever enough, if a bit of an anti-climax and a lot of the ending feels like it’s meant to hint towards the Doctor eventually fulfilling his exile on Earth, though the setting of “Scientific Advisor” being the then-present of the 1990s just adds to the weirdness of the UNIT Dating Controversy.  Still a very fun time and Atkins as a writer shows quite a bit of promise, shame he’s really only done short stories.  7/10.

 

Next is another incredibly short story “Missing, Part One: Business as Usual” by: Gary Russell, the short premise being Mel gets back to Earth.  Russell, having written for Mel in Business Unusual characterizes her well and this is a fine little snippet, but that’s all it is a snippet.  6/10.  Mike Tucker and Robert Perry write “Missing, Part Two: Message in a Bottle” which is even shorter than “Missing, Part One: Business as Usual”, quite literally just being the message in a bottle thrown into space for the Doctor.  It’s just as fine a little snippet.  6/10.

 

Dave Stone is a writer I’m always very mixed on and “Moon Graffiti” is just a Dave Stone story that doesn’t work for me.  Now, before I go into detail, this is one that may work well for someone who is a Dave Stone fan, it has all the hallmarks of his work.  The prose is incredibly dense and the ideas surrounding it are largely in the absurd, though the short story format feels incredibly limiting for an author who even in novel format feels limited.  It’s also very possible that this story works better when performed by Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as it was originally released about six months before the publication of More Short Trips in the audio anthology Out of the Darkness.  The concept is just as absurd as you’d expect from stone, the setting is a desolate Earth in the far future and the Sixth Doctor and Peri have to fight off the Pararachnid alien threat, with several supporting characters along the way while there is another group of aliens stranded on Earth called the Wibliwee, plus a third group called the Monitors.  Again this is too convoluted for a short story, even with Stone making the story one of the longer ones, but so much of it feels like it’s mean to be read by Baker and Bryant.  Reading it makes it quite difficult to take in everything that is being said, but I can easily imagine hearing it makes it feel more like you’re listening to an audio drama or being told an actual story, it just didn’t work for me in this format.  4/10.

 

“One Bad Apple” didn’t really come at a great time for me to actually read.  I ended up reading it not long after relistening to Simon A. Forward’s The Sandman and like The Sandman, this is a story that has a lot of the problems associated with his work.  “One Bad Apple” is an allegory for the Book of Genesis, specifically the creation, the fall of man, and the story of Cain and Abel.  This all sounds like an interesting setup for a Doctor Who story, but Forward doesn’t actually ever do anything interesting with it, just keeping the Biblical allusions and having them play out as you would expect.  That and Forward really likes to add in references to other pieces of Doctor Who to try and make things bigger than they are, specifically the Cybermen and the Cyber Wars are extensively referenced in the story.  The actual fruit is used as this almost infection, Leela opening the story by eating it yet for her it never actually feels like a problem for her though it is for the supporting characters.  The ending is suitably dramatic and that saves this from being a particularly bad story, but it’s also one I could see myself disliking more on reread which isn’t a good sign (it happened with The Sandman). 6/10.

 

Just as the worry was setting in that More Short Trips would be significantly weaker a collection than the original Short Trips, Gary Russell’s “64 Carlysle Street” comes to make a great little historical piece.  Russell clearly understands how to use the team of the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo, and that is to present them all as mischievous as they were in The Gunfighters, slowly integrating themselves in the title household: the Doctor by invitation, Dodo as a maid who can’t keep her mouth shut and really isn’t fit for being in service, and Steven as the eccentric chauffeur for the Doctor.  That takes up just enough time before the story shifts into one essentially about possession and exorcism which shouldn’t really work for the TARDIS team Russell is using, but it reads far closer to the hypnosis in The War Machines than say The Exorcist, leaving us with this great little story to shift the collection.  8/10.

 

This quality turns into a streak with Steve Lyons’ “The Eternity Contract”, the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa story for the volume, and like Short Trips, it’s one of the highlights.  This is a story exploring the concept of death through a surreal setting, this time a house eternally caught in a storm.  The story starts with someone dying in a car crash and the Doctor and Nyssa on a completely different planet being attacked by an alien wolf, and all ending up at this house where they are informed they are dead.  The rest of the story is Steve Lyons’ musing on the various ways people can find themselves dead, and the setting of a halfway house for the dead clearly has its roots in other pieces of fiction but he uses it very carefully.  The Doctor and Nyssa are the only two who both refuse to take their scenario at face value and have the potential know how to escape and uncover just what is actually happening here.  The eventual reveal is one that is far closer to something published by Virgin, the master of the house Nicholas Carnon made a deal with Death, yes that Death, to borrow six souls for his own purposes, those that he replaces every so often whenever he gets bored.  It’s quite a cruel scenario but it also allows Lyons to slowly dig into how the Doctor and Nyssa are after the death of Adric and make this story a celebration of life and death as part of the natural order of things.  9/10.

 

Mike Tucker and Robert Perry writing something not for the Seventh Doctor and Ace honestly feels kind of odd, made even weirder by the fact that they make “The Sow in Rut” a sequel to K9 and Company, with a dash of the vibes of The Daemons thrown in for good measure.  It’s Sarah Jane Smith’s story through and through and is honestly a fairly good time, complete with witches and demon pigs, but the ending feels like another anti-climax and tries to hint that some of the supernatural wasn’t supernatural at all which brings the story down slightly.  7/10.

 

I’ve often said that Paul Leonard is a writer who does brilliant work until he has to get to an ending of a story, then the ball is dropped.  It’s always nice when he is able to prove me wrong as he did with “Special Weapons”.  Leonard placing the Seventh Doctor and Mel in the middle of World War II while the Nazi’s are working on several experiments on an alien being to isolate a small British town, holding the residents hostage and terrorizing them.  That’s just the surface level, for much of the story the Doctor and Mel are actually split up and Mel is paired with young Oliver, an adolescent who ends the story traumatized but determined to go off to war in the next year to kill Germans.  It’s difficult to describe just how tragic that ending feels, he is going off to kill Nazis after all, but even doing that means he will come back a changed man.  This is also a story that despite the reader knowing that the Doctor and Mel must make it out alright, the tension is some of the thickest I’ve ever seen in Doctor Who, making it a very nice companion piece to Lance Parkin’s Just War which was being adapted to audio around this time.  10/10.

 

“Honest Living” is another story from a first time writer and like Ian Atkins before him, Jason Loborik actually tells a fairly engaging little Third Doctor romp.  Loborik, clearly a fan of Day of the Daleks uses the story to play around in that space with the original pitch idea of changing around history.  This becomes a story where there are two timelines, one where a man is killed in a car accident and one where he survives.  It’s quite surprising that there are some plot similarities to “Father’s Day”, though as this is not as good considering it’s just a side character dealing with changing history and not the companion, in this story that would be either Jo or the Brigadier.  Still it’s quite fun and Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor is captured quite well especially for the early Season 9 setting of the story.  7/10.

 

Like “Moon Graffiti”, “Dead Time” had its initial release in an audio anthology, Earth and Beyond read by Paul McGann, though unlike “Moon Graffiti”, this isn’t one of those stories that suffers from being in prose and not read aloud.  It does suffer from having to use Sam Jones as a companion though, as the story while set in the TARDIS and in a void like setting so Andrew Miller really focuses in on the Doctor/companion dynamic.  Except the Doctor/companion dynamic between the Eighth Doctor and Sam is a particularly weak one.  “Dead Time” is a story that also focuses on the Doctor as a character, locking some cosmic entity in his own mind’s past that is straight out of Gallifrey’s past as well.  The story would work better had there not been a companion included in the proceedings and we could just focus on how the Eighth Doctor integrates with Gallifrey’s past, especially considering this collection came out post-Alien Bodies (and directly would be the first time using Gallifrey proper since Lungbarrow).  Still Miller writes a solid story.  7/10.

 

I’d like to say it’s odd that David A. McIntee’s contribution to More Short Trips is quite literally a smallish piece exploring what happens to the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki in between scenes of “The Slave Traders”, but seeing as “Romans Cutaway” is both a pure historical giving two little plot threads to the Doctor and Vicki and Ian and Barbara respectively while focusing on who these characters are at their core.  It’s a classic setup from McIntee with a TARDIS team he clearly adores to bits, giving so much insight into Vicki as a character immediately post-The Rescue.  On television while she was characterized well and particularly well performed by Maureen O’Brien, “Romans Cutaway” really wants to explore her emotions post-The Rescue with this understated fear of abandonment after the death of her father and her decision to travel in the TARDIS.  Ian also gets some particularly nice moments remembering people he knew on Earth who died tragically.  He also gets to fight a lion and McIntee keeps the tone of The Romans intact despite going down some darker paths.  8/10.

 

“Return of the Spiders” is Gareth Roberts’ love letter to Planet of the Spiders, doing a sequel set squarely within Season 17, the era of Doctor Who he is best at writing.  You’d think this makes for a brilliant story like the likes of The Romance of Crime, The English Way of Death, or The Well-Mannered War, but “Return of the Spiders” is fine.  Roberts is great at getting the Doctor and Romana’s characterization and banter down to an exact science which makes it bearable, but he is taking the piss out of the spiders too much meaning this feels like a reinvention that is disrespectful to the thematic end of the Third Doctor in a way bringing the story down.  It also takes way too long to reveal the spiders.  6/10.

 

Christopher Bulis writing for the Fifth Doctor and Peri already led to The Ultimate Treasure which is one of the early Past Doctor Adventures that is squarely a miss in terms of a story.  “Hot Ice” fares better, but doesn’t fare particularly well.  It’s a story that is just kind of there, the Doctor and Peri are actually quite well characterized but it’s also the second time Bulis has written a story that feels like the first time Peri is taking a trip in the TARDIS.  This is particularly messy of as tory and ends very much with a Warriors of the Deep style there should have been another way that feels somehow less earned.  5/10.

 

“uPVC” is an unknown writer, Paul Farnsworth, who writes a near perfect examination of who the Doctor is through both the Second and Seventh Doctors and a window salesman.  That’s all I’m going to say because this is a story that nearly brought me to tears.  9/10.

 

Peter Anghelides’ “Good Companions” is honestly a weird little story, it’s the one that features an unspecified future Doctor traveling with a companion called Anna, his housekeeper.  This is a story that also is told through the framing of an older Tegan Jovanka, married and widowed, having written up this encounter in Good Companions.  A lot of the appeal of this short story is the future Doctor, an incarnation entirely down to Anghelides who sadly feels a bit generic.  Unlike say The Infinity Doctors or the Merlin Doctor, this Doctor is more a composite of other Doctor’s traits up to that point, though there’s certainly room for development since Anghelides does use this Doctor in multiple Short Trips.  The big problem for me is actually the characterization of Tegan: she’s a bit too mellow in her old age that makes her feel more a generic companion, Anghelides not really reflecting on her exit in Resurrection of the Daleks or Adric’s death in Earthshock or the death of her Aunt Vanessa in Logopolis.  It honestly feels like she could have been any female companion who was left on Earth, leaving “Good Companions” more “Meh Companions”.  5/10.

 

After the success of “Old Flames” and The Scarlet Empress, Paul Magrs closes More Short Trips with “Femme Fatale”, an adventure for the Doctor, Sam, and Iris meeting Andy Warhol.  Oddly enough this is one of the ‘weaker’ Magrs stories, it lacks a lot of the depth that his novels do.  It is just as fun as “Old Flames”, if not slightly more so with the 1930s and 1960s period settings and the use of Andy Warhol as a character, though not by much as while Magrs is certainly one of the better writers when it comes to the use of Sam Jones, she is still Sam Jones.  This is also a story about the assassination attempt on Warhol by Valerie Solanis which has the typical Magrs twist, though I’m not entirely sure on how much I like the way it’s presented here, it reeks of an inexperienced writer not quite thinking through the implications.  “Femme Fatale” is still a great little story because Paul Magrs is almost incapable of doing a bad story.  7/10.

 

Overall, despite More Short Trips ditching the theme meaning that you lose an interconnectedness of the stories, even if it is just vaguely thematic, creating the risk of this being a meandering collection it’s actually a slightly stronger collection than Short Trips.  In terms of the stories it actually has more stories that are added to my new favorites than the first volume, and despite more misses, the misses were less severe.  6.8/10.

We'll Always Have Paris by: Deborah Dean Davis and Hannah Louise Shearer and directed by: Robert Becker

 

“We’ll Always Have Paris” is written by: Deborah Dean Davis and Hannah Louise Shearer and is directed by: Robert Becker.  It was produced under production code 124, was the 24^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on May 2, 1988.

 

Casablanca is one of the best films ever made: endlessly quotable, unrelentingly anti-fascist, and one of the best films ever made.  “We’ll Always Have Paris” is a late episode from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation that desperately wants to be a riff on Casablanca, but in space with Jean-Luc Picard in the role of Rick.  Star Trek does a riff of a classic film/story is honestly something I wasn’t particularly expecting because it feels more akin to what Doctor Who was doing from 1975-1977, and “We’ll Always Have Paris” is an episode that suffers greatly because it doesn’t seem to understand why Casablanca works and how to do a riff.  The central character conflict of the episode is Picard reuniting with Jenice Manheim, now wife to a pioneering doctor working on time experiments causing distortions.  The script adds in a bunch of quotes from Casablanca but really the only thing properly riffing on the film is the central love triangle.  Now the love triangle that is central to Casablanca is so compelling because it is in the backdrop of first Paris in the early days of Nazi occupation and then the rest of the film proper in Nazi occupied Casablanca, both legs of the triangle are explicit anti-fascists fighting the Nazis in their own way, and both sell the relationship to the central female character who actively makes the choice to be with one of them.  This choice is made twice, plus the tension is coming from the active threat of the Nazis and the fact that the film is being made during World War II.

 

“We’ll Always Have Paris” has absolutely none of that, Picard is actually put into the role of Ilsa Lund, he’s the one who left Jenice in Paris to go off and be captain of the Enterprise.  As a conflict it would actually be really well done, were this the original run of Star Trek because that was a series that very much setup the idea that people working on a starship couldn’t have a family.  Star Trek: The Next Generation has a mother and son in the main cast and has often focused on the fact that there are families living on the Enterprise full time.  There also isn’t a war or really any conflict that is pulling the pair apart.  Paul Manheim isn’t a freedom fighter and wasn’t even in the picture when Picard and Jenice were in Paris, so it doesn’t read like Casablanca’s a woman discovering the love of her life alive and rushing to be with him, just a basic relationship not really working out.  Manehim is a scientist, and writers Debroah Dean Davis and Hannah Louise Shearer clearly want to have this entire love triangle play out with passion and romance, but they don’t have a script to back it up.  Patrick Stewart is the one holding it together because he’s Patrick Stewart, he’s dealing with absolutely no direction or substantive material but he is the one selling the relationship, especially when paired with Michelle Phillips who lacks chemistry with Stewart.

 

Now, this was made in 1988 and was written just before the beginning of the Writer’s Guild of America Strike, leaving the script unfinished and you can really tell on-screen.  The drama is not there, the script was apparently written in five days and finished during production, though it’s vague as to who finished it.  It’s very possible that the people finishing the script were scabs, non-union writers breaking the strike which is objectively wrong.  It does not bode well for essentially the next year of the show, this episode aired two months into the strike estimating a two-month lag time between production and broadcast (fairly standard for a television series).  The strike will affect the show until the end of the second season, a season shortened by four episodes and pushed back two months from the typical starting month of September.  I fully believe the strike is responsible for the rest of the episode’s conflict being time disturbances to be solved, a plot that is equally underbaked.  There’s an experiment that ran out of control and really the only scene of note is the resolution which has Data solve the problem but briefly becoming three Data’s which allows Brent Spiner a genuinely great scene.

 

Overall, “We’ll Always Have Paris” is one of those episodes that’s fine when you end up watching it but then you think about it and realize that there is absolutely little of substance.  This is an episode that Patrick Stewart is carrying on his back, the script just is incomplete but there’s an episode order, a strike going on, and there’s absolutely nothing that people can actually do.  Just as things felt as if Star Trek: The Next Generation was clicking into place here comes another hurdle to overcome.  4/10.

The World Shapers by: Grant Morrison with pencils by: John Ridgway, inks by: Tim Perkins, and letters by: Richard Starkings

 

“The World Shapers” is written by: Grant Morrison with pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, and lettering by Richard Starkings.  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 127-129 (July-September 1987) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: The World Shapers by Panini Books.

 

When I looked at the first of three Doctor Who Magazine comic stories by Grant Morrison, “Changes”, I had only read All-Star Superman.  Since then I have dived into their run on Batman (I’m about 1/3 of the way through that) and their run on Action Comics (2/3 of the way through that) and they have rapidly become one of my favorite writers.  At the core of their work is this complete sense of humanism and improvement of the human race, they’re perfect for writing both Superman and Batman as characters (and I’d adore to see what they’d do with Wonder Woman).  “The World Shapers” is Morrison executing a perfect Doctor Who story over 24 pages packed to the brim with ideas on how the universe works, how Time Lords work, what a noble sacrifice can actually look like, and almost unintentionally where the Doctor is going once he regenerates.  On the last point, Morrison obviously had no idea where the Doctor was going nor how Sylvester McCoy would play the role, they were likely writing this before McCoy was even cast and probably didn’t know that this was going to be the last Sixth Doctor strip when it was commissioned.  Yet, this is a strip that provides this perfect, almost melancholy ending for what the universe is doing.  The ending of the strip is not actually the fairly iconic death of Second Doctor companion Jamie McCrimmon, but actually the Doctor leaving in anger because the Time Lords refuse to stop the Cybermen as they wished to the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks.  The Cybermen are fated to become the universe’s salvation, ascending to beings of pure thought and benevolence.

 

This idea is transhumanism taken to its logical conclusion: taking humanity to a point where they can exist in their purest form.  It’s a philosophy at the center of all Morrison’s writing and is executed here fascinatingly with this rather dark idea that the Time Lords are wrong for sacrificing so many lives to see this play out.  The Cybermen are dangerous, The Invasion is directly referenced and the Time Lords’ continual interference with Jamie’s memories clearly put the framing as wrong even if the transhumanist idea at the center of the story is something that is an ultimate good.  The Time Lords are revealed to fit into this transhumanist idea, when a Time Lord reaches the end of their regeneration cycle their bodies decay, an idea that would eventually make it into the television story “The Name of the Doctor”.  It also serves the narrative purpose of seeding the idea of transhumanism into “The World Shapers” before the titular world shaper element even enters the picture.  The entire first issue is laying down exactly what this plot is going to be and how Morrison is reflecting on much of the mythic history that Steve Parkhouse had laid out in his entire run, specifically “The Tides of Time” and “Voyager”.

 

The actual idea of a world shaper or worldshaper depending on how master letterer Richard Starkings is writing it out, it’s what has gone wrong and begun to shape the Voord of Marinus into the early Cybermen.  Marinus is explicitly Planet 14 which Morrison implies will become Mondas and eventually made its way to the Earth.  The idea “the Voord becoming Cybermen” sounds ridiculous, especially for 1987 when nobody would have seen The Keys of Marinus since original broadcast, though the novelization was released in 1980 and reprinted in 1986 (though wouldn’t release on VHS until 1999).  Jamie’s actual appearance is used as a natural extension of The Two Doctors, Morrison going full in on Jamie traveling with a Second Doctor working for the Time Lords, but left in Scotland for 40 years and thought of mad by having his memories of traveling with the Doctor returned to him.  Seeing the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher returns nobility to the man and it is genuinely tragic.  This entire story is a tragedy around the Time Lord’s attempt to allow something good in the long game.

 

Overall, “The World Shapers” is without a doubt the perfect parallel to “Voyager” and the perfect end to the Sixth Doctor’s time in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.  It is at its heart Grant Morrison, through and through, and that’s why the entire story works so damn well.  Whatever follows this is going to be tough to really judge, especially since it will be a year before the Doctor’s character meets the trajectory laid down here.  10/10.

Skin of Evil by: Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer, from a story by: Joseph Stefano, and directed by: Joseph L. Scanlan

 

“Skin of Evil” is written by: Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer, from a story by: Joseph Stefano, and is directed by: Joseph L. Scanlan.  It was produced under production code 122, was the 23^nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on April 25, 1988.

 

I knew this was coming.  When I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, I had mentioned to my father since he had watched the series on original broadcast growing up.  The first words out of his mouth were “Has Tasha Yar died yet?”.  The episode I had just watched was “Encounter at Farpoint”.  So, obviously, not.  Knowing this little fact essentially going into Star Trek: The Next Generation and the fact that it is something that is happening at some point during the first season made me feel that each episode could be her last.  “Skin of Evil” is when it happens, very early in the episode where she is killed, almost unceremoniously by an oil-like creature that had been holding hostage counselor Troi.  The death of Tasha Yar is particularly odd in this episode because it then becomes the most interesting aspect of the plot.  It becomes the distraction and stakes the crew have to fight against, the potential that other members of the crew are going to die.  The crowning achievement of the episode, however, is actually the memorial service held for Yar at the end of the episode.  It has some of the best material Star Trek: The Next Generation has had to offer, mainly because it is completely focused on character.  Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn, and Patrick Stewart are particularly effective in remembering the Enterprise security chief who has been defined by a traumatic past that the writers never really wished to earnestly explore.  Crosby somehow gets her best material in getting to say goodbye via prerecorded hologram, it isn’t entirely perfect because a lot of the relationships between Yar and the crew were generally ignored.

 

The characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation haven’t actually established their interpersonal relationships outside of the barest of bare bones, mainly hinting at relationships between Picard and Crusher and Riker and Troi.  There’s also a friendly mentor/mentee relationship between Wesley and Geordi.  “Skin of Evil” actually opens with a dialogue between Worf and Yar, clearly making an attempt for the audience to connect with her before her death but it’s also some of the deepest characterization Star Trek: The Next Generation has had to offer.  It actually is a major step in indicating these characters have lives outside of their jobs: Yar is participating in a martial arts tournament on the ship and Worf is betting that she is going to win.  It’s simple but effective at actually selling that these people are more than just reluctant coworkers.  The shame is that it’s her last episode, though again this isn’t to blame Crosby: her decision to leave was clearly leaving a very troubled production that clearly didn’t deserve her.

 

The rest of “Skin of Evil” is about an alien that is written as a petulant child, killing Yar to try feeling something for its actions.  The design of Armus is particularly effective despite being a rather cheap effect.  You can tell it’s a black plastic costume (one that behind the scenes clearly struggled with repairing through production), but the way that Joseph L. Scanlan shoots it in camera with actual oil really sells it.  There are camera tricks used to trick the audience to see Armus rising from the oil without actually using any optical effects.  Armus himself is also left alive at the end of the episode, the crew generally not taking revenge for the death of Yar.  Marina Sirtis as Troi who is stuck in the position of damsel gets the more interesting performance in the immediate aftermath of Yar’s death, she doesn’t see it happen but emotionally feels it, selling exactly who she is to the audience quite well.  “Skin of Evil” does struggle slightly, there actually isn’t a whole lot of plot and without Yar’s death there really wouldn’t be particularly interesting.  It doesn’t actually have a whole lot to say and just is a fairly standard episode elevated into something because of the killing of a main cast member.

 

Overall, “Skin of Evil” in many ways feels like a turning point for Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The way Yar dies is very quick and played partially for shock value, but the episode then dedicates plenty of time to actually show the aftermath of her death, subsequently giving the character more characterization than any other appearance.  The plot itself still has a lot of the problems other episodes of the show has: an underdeveloped plot and when not dealing with Yar’s death the characters don’t really work.  It’s actually one of the stronger episodes of the show and one I could easily see myself rewatching just for the actors clicking so well with the material.  7/10.

Symbiosis by: Robert Lewin, Richard Manning, and Hans Beimler, from a story by: Robert Lewin, and directed by: Win Phelps

 

“Symbiosis” is written by: Robert Lewin, Richard Manning, and Hans Beimler, from a story by: Robert Lewin, and is directed by: Win Phelps.  It was produced under production code 123, was the 22^nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on April 18, 1988.

 

The 1970s and 1980s public service announcement sits in this weird nostalgic bubble in the minds of the generations before mine.  Generally, they were large campaigns, the more classic campaigns being anti-drug campaigns, so much so that television series at the time would dedicate an episode to being public service announcements.  Usually they would be built up as ‘very special episodes’ and in the era of streaming services they have essentially died off.  The anti-drug PSAs were usually a regular cast member or special guest star becoming addicted to a drug and having to overcome addiction through the written lens of an older generation which doesn’t really understand how addiction actually works.  Star Trek: The Next Generation starting in 1987 is right in that sweet spot when every show was doing these types of episodes so it shouldn’t be a surprise that near the end of the first season there’s a great big say no to drugs PSA in the form of “Symbiosis”.

 

“Symbiosis” is an episode that attempts to hide the fact that it’s an anti-drug PSA behind the symbiotic relationship between the Brekkans and Ornarans as one of the Brekkans simply helping the Ornarans overcome a centuries long plague.  It’s presented as a mystery for Picard and Crusher to actually solve, the plague seems to lack a cause or solution.  That’s obvious because it is an addiction and the pre-credits sequence actually plays its hand by having the Ornarans appear high so the audience definitely knows what is going on from the very beginning.  When the drug plot is actually revealed there is a sequence where the plot is in fact stopped dead to have the big moment, nearly breaking the fourth wall, to explore why drugs are bad.  It’s essentially a speech between Tasha Yar and Wesley Crusher, inserted into the episode by Maurice Hurley and not writers Robert Lewin, Richard Manning, and Hans Beimler, and it doesn’t work.  Hurley clearly doesn’t understand why people take drugs, addiction is down to people just being at their lowest which is certainly one overly simplified explanation.  It’s also written as if teenager Wesley Crusher had never even heard of drugs as a concept, making me wonder exactly how young the writers think the character is supposed to be.

 

The first half unravelling the mystery, even if it’s a poor mystery is at the very least an interesting story to unravel.  The entire idea is to buildup to the reveal but Gates McFadden and Patrick Stewart are great while there’s a guest appearance from Merritt Butrick which is also particularly fun.  Really it’s the back half of the episode that excels at being more than a simple public service announcement.  The Prime Directive had been explored poorly in earlier episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, mainly the truly awful “Justice”, but in “Symbiosis” the conclusion being Picard’s inaction to leave the two species to their fate actually makes sense.  The Brekkans and the Ornarans have created this relationship and society where the Ornarans are hopelessly addicted and the Brekkans’ entire society is responsible for feeding that addiction, is something that when offered an out they won’t take.  The condition for Picard to actually help the pair with the Enterprise’s advanced technology is to stop the exploitation.  Now this does have the slight knock on effect of reading as if the Ornarans are morally responsible for their addiction which is a pure reflection on the cultural views on drug addicts in the 1980s.  This is tempered somewhat by the fact that the withdrawal symptoms are established as not something the Ornarans will die from, unlike actual withdrawal from addiction in reality.  Putting that aside, the ending is actually quite powerful for Picard to actively take a stand because sometimes it feels as if help is not meant to be given freely.  That help would just be the Enterprise contributing to the subjugation and control of a people through the sale of narcotics.  The ending is nearly played for as chilling as it is supposed to be, director Win Phelps doesn’t seem to be able to properly frame things and it’s clear as this is the only episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation he is put in charge of.

 

Overall, despite being the first real time Star Trek: The Next Generation is doing a ‘very special episode’ “Symbiosis” is actually one of the stronger installments in the season.  While its tactics are quite literally just say no to drugs, there is enough here in the performances and the ending in particular to at least make it a more memorable watch than much of this particular season.  It’s nothing special and there is still a fair bit of messy elements, Maurice Hurley’s influence is particularly unsubtle to the episode’s detriment, but it’s actually an enjoyable enough watch.  6/10.