Short Trips edited by: Stephen Cole

 

Under Virgin Publishing, the series of Decalog short story collections were quite successful so when BBC Books took charge of the Doctor Who line of books, editor Nuala Buffini commissioned Traveller in Time, which would be an anthology featuring all eight Doctors in some historical setting.  Stephen Cole was commissioned to contribute a short story but before his writer’s block could be overcome he became the editor of the Doctor Who merchandise line of books, cassettes, and VHS tapes.  I’d say he never actually contributed a story to Short Trips, the collection that Traveller in Time became, but that isn’t strictly true.  He contributed three under the pseudonyms Tara Samms and Paul Grice (and possibly a fourth under the name Sam Lester) clearly to round out the collection.  Short Trips is a collection of stories of variable length from authors old and new, mainly authors who contributed to the Virgin Books and in a way is a time capsule of where Doctor Who was in 1998.  The Eighth Doctor Adventures had eight installments, same with the Past Doctor Adventures line, but adding a third line of short stories allowed again potential new writers and new styles of stories to be explored.  It would sadly be limited to three entries before being taken up by Big Finish Productions, but still.

 

The collection opens with “Model Train Set”, Jonathan Blum’s first solo Doctor Who story and one of the bookends with the Eighth Doctor.  It’s a solo character piece about the Doctor playing with his model train set, built over the course of several lifetimes.  Blum likes stories that end particularly hopefully and this is no exception, it’s all about who the Eighth Doctor is, but that’s really all there is.  It’s more of a study in who this Doctor is, separated from the general line of novels occurring at the same time.  In many ways it feels like the starting point for the Big Finish audio adventures.  6/10.

 

The first appearance of Iris Wildthyme is next in “Old Flames” which is also Paul Magrs’ first piece of Doctor Who fiction in general.  It’s certainly got more to it than “Model Train Set”, playing off what was considered the Doctor/companion dynamic with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.  What’s interesting is that Iris in creation is very much meant to be a one-off character, a foil and flirtatious force for the Doctor.  It’s the most different Iris has ever really been, because she won’t really crystallize into the character that her fans will entirely know until The Scarlet Empress, she’s almost treated like a joke.  Okay, she is still very much a comedic character today, but the one-off nature really does shine through.  The short story itself is this eighteenth century style affair complete with ball, romance, betrayals, and the Doctor being a true bohemian.  7/10.

 

“War Crimes” says trans rights, but sadly it is also a story by Simon Bucher-Jones so ultimately it is saying nothing.  There is the hint of an interesting idea, but like “Model Train Set” this is a short character portrait with the evolution of a creature being a parallel to the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe stuck right near the end of The War Games.  It’s fine, honestly kind of bland and has the usual Simon Bucher-Jones thinking he’s actually saying something with dense prose.  5/10.

 

Another author writing under a pseudonym comes next, but this isn’t Stephen Cole but Rebecca Levene writing as Evan Pritchard, Levene clearly tributing her love of the pure historical.  Set in Judea under the Roman occupation, instead of doing a comedy historical a la The Romans, it’s very much Levene’s attempt to reconcile The Aztecs for a second time.  Though, instead of Barabara being the one in the position not to change history, it is actually Ian which narratively is an interesting choice.  In construction Ian and Barbara as characters represent the future and the past, respectively.  They are a science and history teacher for a reason, so giving Ian this story is honestly a weird idea.  It actually works because Ian as a character cares about the people he finds himself with while the Doctor and Susan are oddly delighted at the weird conflict around the setting, Israel and Palestine as a conflict is outright mentioned as something for the future that is a little bit odd in places.  It’s a solid enough tribute really, but that’s all it is, a tribute act.  7/10.

 

Mike Tucker and Robert Perry are usually a really great writing partnership, there’s a reason they are responsible for many of the Seventh Doctor novels in the Past Doctor Adventures line, but “Stop the Pigeon” is a weird one.  It’s a short story that feels far more suited to an actual novel, and goes against the premise of these being all historical stories, being set in the far future of Earth while dealing with a space probe that is an intelligent pigeon.  Tucker and Perry present the story through the viewpoint of Joe Dakin who is a really uninteresting protagonist; attempting to be an everyman he is just kind of annoying and unsuited for the mess of a story that includes aliens, the Master for some reason.  It’s clear that Tucker is not done with the Master as a character after this, the ideas are good in the story.  The pigeon is an interesting idea and personality but there isn’t nearly enough time to really explore any of the ideas the short story proposes.  4/10.

 

And from one story with the Master, to a superior story with the Master.  “Freedom” is Steve Lyons attempt at examining the Third Doctor’s general relationship with his exile on Earth, set with the Master being in charge of a corporation just to taunt the Doctor’s general exile.  There are also time experiments and the entire thing is meant to be the tantalizing glimpse of freedom that the Doctor is clearly never going to get.  The climax hinges on the Doctor being tempted to fall down basically a path that would make him just as bad as the Master.  It certainly helps that there is a handle on the Master as a character and where they are at the point where this story is set, after The Daemons specifically, making it harsher that the Doctor has had glimpses of freedom although freedom on a very short leash.  7/10.

 

And now begins Stephen Cole’s first of multiple stories in the anthology, “Glass”, this rather short adventure examining a young woman terrified by seeing evil in glass.  Despite being a story with the Fourth Doctor and Romana, this is incredibly short and sweet and atypical.  Cole isn’t playing the story for comedy, he is doing an effective psychological examination of a young woman needing to be freed from a monster largely representing anxieties of sex.  It’s short, but oh so engaging.  8/10.

 

The second of Stephen Cole’s stories is another short and sweet character piece.  “Mondas Passing” is about Ben and Polly after the Doctor in 1986, when the events of The Tenth Planet are going on around them.  It excels at having the pair have moved on despite being integrally linked by their travels with the Doctor always laying heavy.  It’s also only 5 pages long so it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but Ben is especially well served in the end.  8/10.

 

Sam Lester may also be a pseudonym for Stephen Cole, but there isn’t evidence either way.  “There Are Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden” is a short story about the First Doctor and Dodo that does absolutely nothing.  After a streak of solid character pieces, Lester clearly doesn’t really understand how to even characterize Dodo, something that only Daniel O’Mahony knew how to do  at this point in his controversial The Man in the Velvet Mask, and David Bishop in Who Killed Kennedy?.  This is a short story that seems to want to be a First Doctor/Dodo story in earnest but doesn’t actually have much of a story to tell.  Despite being short it also just drags with amateur prose and no real sense of anything going on.  5/10.

 

It's surprising to me that Matthew Jones came over to write an installment for Short Trips, but then “Mother’s Little Helper” is another little character piece from the perspective of an unnamed protagonist that has more interesting things to say than half of this book’s installments.  It’s a Second Doctor story set post-The War Games because the BBC Books were slowly going all in on the Season 6B idea, with the Doctor having to essentially make a choice to sacrifice a boy which has the ability to take away pain.  The obvious central idea is that we have to live with out pain, though will find ourselves surrounded with people who can dull the pain and make life worth living.  8/10.

 

“The Parliament of Rats” by Daniel O’Mahony is the short story that really blows the rest of the Short Trips collection right out of the water.  It’s the only Fifth Doctor story in the collection and it’s clear that O’Mahony understands really how to deconstruct who this version of the Doctor actually is.  He is travelling with Nyssa post Time-Flight and the weight of the universe weighs quite heavily on him.  This is through a story that is metafictionally aware that it is a short story so leads to a particularly surreal adventure.  The characterization is wonderfully done, really making the Fifth Doctor feel like an old man who is slowly becoming tired with the universe as he faces an Eldritch horror.  It hits exactly the right boxes for me.  9/10.

 

Stephen Cole decides that he needs to do a story about authoritarianism.  It’s uncomfortably bad because this is the third story he’s written to fill pages.  3/10.

 

“Wish You Were Here” is a story that wants to deconstruct the abusive and sexist aspects of the early Sixth Doctor’s characters, those being the reasons that in the fandom at large in 1998.  It’s from the perspective of an alien agent called Janis who the Doctor charms in a way that is basically the opposite of the brash nature of the Sixth Doctor.  Guy Clapperton is having a lot of fun in writing the Sixth Doctor who comes across as lively.  8/10.

 

Mike Tucker and Robert Perry had another shot at a Seventh Doctor short story and made it a charming little piece following up on the trauma Kathleen Dudman underwent in The Curse of Fenric, the use of the playing card is a bit silly though.  7/10.

 

Short Trips ends with Paul Leonard essentially writing a novelette.  It’s a 50 page Eighth Doctor and Sam story called “The People’s Temple”.  Like “The Last Day”, “The People’s Temple” is a short story tributing The Aztecs for Sam Jones.  Sam as a character at this point is in an especially messy place, she’s one that Leonard excelled at writing in Genocide and that level of detail is done here.  Leonard likes to play around with the mysticism surrounding Stonehenge and Sam attempts to cause a slave uprising.  Again Leonard is generally tributing The Aztecs in particular because that is seen as the don’t change history story in Doctor Who’s history.  It does struggle with the ending, something Leonard generally does, but the Eighth Doctor and Sam are great, the supporting characters feel like actual characters and it has room to breathe.  7/10.

 

Overall, Short Trips is honestly a mixed bag.  It excels the most when it is focusing on smaller character pieces, but it’s clear that at this point a lot of the BBC Books hadn’t quite worked out their in house style and you get writers excelling by doing things that worked in the Virgin Publishing line that the BBC Books would actively avoid.  6.6/10.

The Arsenal of Freedom by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler, from a story by: Maurice Hurley and Robert Lewin, and directed by: Les Landau

 “The Arsenal of Freedom” is written by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler, from a story by: Maurice Hurley and Robert Lewin, and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 121, was the 21^st episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on April 11, 1988.

 

“The Arsenal of Freedom” is an episode about how covert weapons dealing are bad, how weapons seem to just stay there and always present a danger, and how somebody saw the chemistry between Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden and decided to drop some hints that will only ever stay hints.  Also LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge gets to be in command of the Etnerprise, really giving Burton some meat to dig into even if it doesn’t quite work in terms of examining his character.  Geordi as a character hadn’t really been established as unsure in command, with the current chief Engineer played by Vyto Ruginis being a foil to question his command.  Ruginis’ performance is one of the big aspects of the episode that doesn’t work, it’s doing the original series Star Trek thing of introducing a character for a single episode to be a foil except instead of it being someone from Starfleet, it is just a different crew member who logically should trust Geordi’s general judgment.  Also “The Arsenal of Freedom” contrives a way to separate the saucer from the rest of the Enterprise which feels like a money saving measure to reuse footage from “Encounter at Farpoint” and pad the episode just a little bit.  There’s something to do there, especially since I know that Geordi eventually becomes the chief engineer, but really the episode doesn’t do anything with it.  It’s an episode with four people credited between story and teleplay, and you can tell that there are is this push and pull of ideas throughout.

 

The setup of the episode is a Douglas Adams scenario from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy played entirely straight, the Enterprise coming across a planet while searching for a missing ship that had an economy based on selling weapons.  There is a recording automatically broadcast to give them a sales pitch and eventually train the weapons on them, the away team eventually being confronted with a hologram of a friend of Riker’s to try and find the weapons to demonstrate.  Picard and Dr. Crusher get involved, Crusher is injured by a weapon so there can be simmering sexual tension and some further backstory for Crusher.  McFadden actually gets a chance to shine even when restricted to being heavily injured and having to guide Picard through healing her.  The plot also decides that the hologram program be destroyed by deciding to buy weapons because of reasons, in terms of logic despite clearly wanting to comment on America’s sale of weapons to the Middle East at the time but not actually making a coherent comment outside of it being generally bad.  The initial away team section of the plot is also dragged out with it taking so long for Riker to realize that the man they find is a generated construct of his friend, though it does lead to a hilarious line about the starship lollipop (it’s a good ship).

 

Les Landau’s direction is also clearly an issue through the episode.  While not an incompetent director, Landau is clearly struggling with the general set layout of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The alien planet is represented by an attempt at a vast jungle set, though one not really disguising the studio setting with the same blue backdrop that many of the other alien planets have used.  The same can be said about Dennis McCarthy’s score, at points I’m sure it’s just quoting Holst’s Mars, Bringer of War instead of doing anything original near what the episode is attempting to make the climax of the episode.

 

Overall, “The Arsenal of Freedom” struggles because it clearly wants to say something but ends up becoming shallow because of a weaker script and an inability to really commit to any of its choices.  There is the potential there, Burton, Stewart, and McFadden are great, Jonathan Frakes gets that really funny one-liner, and Michael Dorn and Denise Crosby are there.  The guest cast is hit or miss a bit, but the episode just meanders from plot point to plot point before running out of time for a satisfying conclusion.  It’s a subpar episode as Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season limps towards its conclusion.  4/10

Heart of Glory by: Maurice Hurley, from a story by: Maurice Hurley, Herbert Wright, and D.C. Fontana, and directed by: Rob Bowman

 

“Heart of Glory” is written by: Maurice Hurley, from a story by: Maurice Hurley, Herbert Wright, and D.C. Fontana, and is directed by: Rob Bowman.  It was produced under production code 120, was the 20^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on March 21, 1988.

 

From a production standpoint, “Heart of Glory” should not work.  It’s an episode credited to three separate writers for the story idea, one of them being D.C. Fontana who by this point in the season had left Star Trek: The Next Generation due to the poor working conditions and chaos behind the production.  Fontana as a writer excelled during the original series, but rarely were her scripts allowed to shine when it came to Star Trek: The Next Generation.  It also is an episode that wraps its plot around a supporting character, Michael Dorn as Worf instead of giving any of the main cast members an episode dedicated to them.  Now, Dorn as Worf is a casting that would be elevated to main cast status and would go on to be a main character in the back half of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, there clearly is potential in exploring who the character is and developing the Klingons in general after the original series and the first four films kept them and the Romulans largely as stand-ins for the Soviet Union in the Cold War in space (depending on the episode/film).  One of the big shames about “Heart of Glory” is that while it is a fantastic showcase for Worf, it feels like the final nail in the coffin for Tasha Yar as a character: in giving Worf development and backstory Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar is reduced to being a superfluous character with a similar backstory of being an outsider, though an outsider through poorly handled trauma rooted in sexual violence.  Now, I know the character is written out at some point during the first season, but if her general lack of engagement wasn’t enough, it’s clear that at this point Crosby made the correct decision to leave the show.

 

The first act of “Heart of Glory” is, despite what comes after being quite good, a bit of an odd beast.  It’s mainly an exploration of a decrepit spaceship.  Director Rob Bowman takes the limited sets and imbues the sequences with this great sense of tension and dread, as if anything could be around any corner, but there is also this misdirect where you think the episode might actually be about Geordi La Forge, spending time with the development of a feed from his visor being sent to the Enterprise screens.  The episode actually acknowledges Geordi’s disability and the fact that it makes him see the world differently, Picard not being able to recognize Riker and Data through Geordi’s eyes, both appearing as more blob like outlines and Data having an inorganic aura round him as an android.  While the dialogue has a tendency towards clunky, Maurice Hurley writing the actual script clearly not really knowing how entirely to engage with the issue, is coming at it with a genuine sense of humanity.  It’s a precursor to exploring Worf when the big twist is the only survivors of this ship are Klingons who were there when the ship was attacked by Ferengi using Romulan technology, because yes Star Trek: The Next Generation still wants to prime the audience for Ferengi as the big bad villains of the series despite the messier nature of their only appearances this season.  The big twist is great at redirecting the plot to something interesting, the audience is going to have to properly reckon with the fact that Klingons have changed and their culture has been developed from the films and reruns the audience would be used to. 

 

The rest of the episode is an examination of culture, Worf as a Klingon is set up largely as an outsider.  His family died in a disaster and he was adopted by humans, losing a lot of the links to Klingon culture but still feeling that connection to who he is.  He was loved as a child as a human, but raised to the best of his human parents’ ability as a Klingon.  He understands the general culture, the rituals surrounding death as leaving an empty shell, the ritualistic screaming, and the honor of being a Klingon, but “Heart of Glory” asserts him as largely being somewhere in the middle.  The episode ends with Worf committed to the Enterprise because he actually likes the work he is doing, albeit that comes across as slightly flimsy due to the rocky nature of this season of Star Trek: The Next Generation of keeping the crew less as a crew and more a group of characters stuck together.  But Michael Dorn does so much to sell the ending that it actually works, it sells the idea that the Klingons have more depth than any Star Trek really had previously established.  Dorn is carrying the episode on his back, really playing off Vaughn Armstrong and Charles Hyman as Korris and Konmel.  The pair are eventually revealed to be outsiders of the current Klingon Empire so to speak, they want to conquer the galaxy and believe that any honor should come through conquest and not battle.  The episode posits the pair as temptation for what Worf can become, again through the occasionally awkwardly blocked scene where Tasha has to take a security force against Worf and declares a hostage situation.  Again it is these three actors really carrying the episode and making it work.  This is an episode that very much had the potential to be one of the best, even Ron Jones’ score is particularly memorable as it mixes percussion with horns to really make the idea work.

 

Overall, “Heart of Glory” is generally a great time.  It works because of how much time it dedicates to really deconstruct the preconception of Star Trek fans towards Klingons.  Klingon culture even on paper could have come across as ridiculous, but the episode frames it completely straight.  It is treated as more than the planet of hats that would largely plague the original series, and much of science fiction in the intervening years.  Like the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation so far it is moving things forward into the 1980s.  Michael Dorn earns his place in the main cast even with the telltale signs of the awkward blocking and dialogue that Gene Roddenberry is just in love with.  “Heart of Glory” is the second best episode of the show thus far, only really behind “Datalore” both as character pieces.  8/10.

Coming of Age by: Sandy Fries and directed by: Mike Vejar

 

“Coming of Age” is written by: Sandy Fries and is directed by: Mike Vejar.  It was produced under production code 119, was the 19^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on March 14, 1988.

 

Star Trek didn’t really have a consistent continuity for its original series run.  Sure you’d get episodes that were sequels to one another: “Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd” are probably the biggest pair of episodes, but outside of that its episodes were generally avoided referencing one another.  Star Trek: The Next Generation as a series to be successful in the 1980s needed to reflect the general increase in internal continuity in American television that began in the late-1970s and would eventually arc into the completely serialized dramas we know today.  “Coming of Age” is the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that is both calling back to previous plot points and character arcs and attempting to setup future arcs, though as this is my first time watching Star Trek: The Next Generation I don’t actually know if any of the setup will be paid off.  Still, it’s actually quite nice to see an episode where things are set up, even if it’s still an episode of Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, therefore both oddly paced and acted.  The idea is that there is something within Starfleet that is a threat and Picard is being investigated to see if an old friend can trust him with a position running the Academy, thus being able to get to the bottom of whatever is threatening Starfleet.  This is oddly enough, the B-plot of the episode, both it and the A-plot being hastily setup in the pre-credits sequence, yet as a plot it’s essentially done at about the 2/3 mark of the episode, getting one final conclusion of Picard telling Quinn he won’t take the promotion, largely because it would take him away from the Enterprise being right at the end.  Writer Sandy Fries doesn’t seem to know exactly how to get to the reveal as well, seemingly trying to make the audience think Picard is going to show “imbalance” when a stressed, failed Starfleet cadet steals a shuttlecraft in an attempt to run away, but that’s what makes Picard pass the tests.  It’s nice to see some sort of setup for some sort of story arc, because that goes a long way to set Star Trek: The Next Generation up as distinct from the original series.

 

The actual A-plot of the episode is also one that works in theory, though less so in practice.  The main drama is Wesley Crusher taking the entrance exam for Starfleet Academy, something that has been key to understanding his character is his drive to enter the Academy and become part of Starfleet proper.  The exam itself has parameters that are at best silly and inefficient: they will only accept one new recruit into their ranks.  This is a general piece of storytelling trope that is already shaky, usually applied to military or other elite institutions which Starfleet is, but going down to have it literally just be one recruit as it is presented here just makes it fall apart.  Fries as a writer does have Wesley fail the exam eventually, after demonstrating quite a bit of competency and understanding that he has what it takes, which is a failure that can push the character forward, but the stipulation to doing it is weird.  There are several tests that Wesley has to undergo with the other examinees, some of whom are non-human looking aliens which genuinely makes Starfleet feel intergalactic.  The plot works on paper, but in practice it’s brought down not from bad direction, Mike Vejar despite only directing this episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, is actually a really effective director in terms of straining the examinee’s stress and the different types of tests.  The performances of the other examinees range from fine in the case of John Putch as the Benzite Mordock, to just outright bad with Estee Chandler as Oliana.  The dialogue between the examinees is also particularly rough, Wil Wheaton at points meaning to come across as accidentally condescending in the script, but Wheaton clearly realizes that would make Wesley look worse so he plays some things as sincere.  The actual meat of the episode is the final psychological test Starfleet puts Wesley through, it’s a brutal simulation of a dangerous scenario similar to the one that killed his father.  Wesley makes the right decisions to try and save the dying crew who have found themselves in a hopeless situation, but it’s still traumatizing to essentially make him live this type of scenario.  Fries as a writer doesn’t ever become quite specific as to how corrupt Starfleet is for this type of test, though there are some indicators that that may be the intention.

 

Overall, “Coming of Age” is an episode with so much potential that it never quite meets.  The big problem with the episode is a weak script and a supporting cast which oscillates wildly.  Ward Costello and Robert Schenkkan are the standouts and play characters that clearly are meant to be recurring, even if I have no way of knowing if they are without spoiling potential future episodes.  Wil Wheaton has to carry a plotline and the script isn’t quite enough for him to really carry, but the ideas are good enough that the episode isn’t actually terrible.  It’s kind of the definition of messy, but with a clear direction on where to improve so Star Trek: The Next Generation can move forward.  5/10.

Black Orchid by: Terence Dudley

 

Black Orchid was written by Terence Dudley, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 115^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The last time I looked at a novelization by Terence Dudley, I kept things intentionally short because Dudley stretched a two-episode serial into a five-hour audiobook.  Going into Black Orchid, I was hoping that Dudley had learned from those mistakes.  Black Orchid’s audiobook is 5 hours and 12 minutes.  Now, it isn’t as bad as The King’s Demons, but then again, Black Orchid on television is a stronger story anyway.  But it is far from a good story and once again has Terence Dudley largely misunderstand how to construct a narrative and adapt a script to a novel form.  Take for instance the extended play by play of Part One’s cricket match, something that takes up quite a lot of time without actually moving the plot forward, and barely establishing characterization.

 

Dudley as a writer clearly knows that anyone picking this up would already like Doctor Who, so he doesn’t seem to think of a need to really give any of the characters an introduction or characterization.  Compound this with a writing style that substitutes synonyms without any sense of sentence structure, plus repeating plot points and the communication of plot points between characters, you have a recipe for an incredibly padded novel.  There is a specific moment in the novel where Dudley actively references The King’s Demons and opens the novel with Tegan happily traveling with the Doctor and company, even though this is right near the end of her tumultuous time on the show as combative towards not getting home.  The sense is that the TARDIS team in Black Orchid just kind of hates each other, Adric in particular is always referred to in terms of being almost unhygienic and always stuffing his face.  It’s very possible that this is where Gary Russell got his idea for characterization of Adric in Divided Loyalties.  Tegan is generally fed up with having to explain Earth concepts to Adric and especially Nyssa which the latter has no basis in how the characters were portrayed on television.  Yes, Nyssa has always been weakly characterized in her television appearances, but here Dudley makes her kind of helpless and unable to navigate any sort of situation without looking for an out.

 

The Doctor is also particularly out of character, coming across as almost pro-colonialist in places.  Black Orchid on television has always had this undercurrent of ableism and racism, the villain is someone who was disfigured and his mind has snapped, while there is an indigenous character generally made out to be in service to the white British aristocracy.  The novelization makes the Cranleigh’s have a higher aristocratic status, and Dudley’s prose rarely refers to George as George, he is almost exclusively described in terms of being grotesque and inhuman.  He is placed in the situation of monster and the Doctor in the novel just doesn’t question it, there is a poor lampshading of the Cranleighs thinking hiding him is better than sending him to an asylum, but that is one line in a full novel.  Latoni is also referred to rarely by name but as ‘the Indian’ and is given a deeper characterization of mysticism and the idea of worshipping vengeful gods because that is apparently all indigenous people are to Terence Dudley.  The Doctor barely acknowledges the humanity of either character, really leaving a bad taste in my mouth throughout.

 

Overall, Black Orchid is just another example of how Terence Dudley is not a good writer nor is he really a fit for writing Doctor Who.  The book is so stretched that it makes a novelization that is in prose less than 200 pages take over five hours for the audiobook to be read without adding any substance.  But hey, there’s cricket, and the aristocracy.  3/10.

Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang was written by Terrance Dicks, based on The Talons of Weng-Chiang by Robert Holmes.  It was the 37^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang is one of those novelizations that had been published many a time.  It was one of ten published in the United States complete with introduction by Harlan Ellison, was republished in the 1990s, and is adapting a story that is generally loved despite the racism.  The initial publication in 1977 is right on the cusp of when Terrance Dicks became the prime author of the range, and his workload was increasing meaning that Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang, compiled with the fact it is a novelization of a six part story, is a fairly briskly paced affair leaving little room for deviation from the televised story.  Dicks does attempt some additions: some of the unnamed characters are given either names or backstories, some characters are renamed only slightly, and the story actually opens with a magic trick to set the mood instead of the television serial’s opening right at the end of the performance.  It’s the only significant addition to the story itself, which just goes along at a fairly regular pace, Dicks performing his usual trick of converting the dialogue to prose and adding some descriptions and the occasional inner thought to make Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang a very readable novel.  The character of Chang is presented as slightly more intelligent here, he has been moving his act from theater to theater so not to arouse suspicion.

 

Now the racism baked into The Talons of Weng-Chiang is largely still present in Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang.  Yes, there is no John Bennett in yellowface, but a lot of Robert Holmes’ general tribute to orientalist Victorian literature remain unchanged.  Dicks even goes so far as to explicitly make Chang Chinese and not a white man in yellowface, acknowledging an aspect of Victorian society that did in fact happen and easily could have made the television serial less racist, but somehow Dicks doesn’t really do that.  There just really isn’t any attempt to engage with Holmes’ script, but then again that’s never been the purpose of Target novelizations, it’s to recreate the television serial so kids can experience them in a world without repeats.  It’s just that The Talons of Weng-Chiang is perhaps the Doctor Who story intrinsically linked with its racism that there’s a sense that even the novelization (not to mention later script release) would engage with it.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang is a perfectly decent Target novelization, but sadly even without the problematic elements at the center of the story, it loses a lot from not having the performances or David Maloney’s direction. 

Home Soil by: Robert Sabaroff, from a story by: Karl Geurs, Ralph Sanchez, and Robert Sabaroff, and directed by: Corey Allen

 

“Home Soil” is written by: Robert Sabaroff, from a story by: Karl Geurs, Ralph Sanchez, and Robert Sabaroff, and is directed by: Corey Allen.  It was produced under production code 117, was the 18^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on February 22, 1988.

 

When I reviewed “Encounter at Farpoint” I pointed out that Corey Allen as a director didn’t understand how to introduce a protagonist.  Now that I am seventeen episodes later and have come to Allen’s separate directorial effort, an effort in which all of the regulars have had plenty of time to be introduced and well established.  That is expecting Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation to have properly developed its cast which is at best hit or miss, Tasha Yar and Data being the characters given the most development while Picard, Riker, Wesley, Dr. Crusher, and Geordi have at least been established leaving Worf and Troi to be the least well established, though still established enough.   After watching “Home Soil”, I realize that my initial assessment of Allen’s direction was wrong, yes he doesn’t understand how to introduce a protagonist, he also doesn’t seem to know how to direct his actors.  This is an episode that has several sequences where the regulars, even the almost always reliable Brent Spiner, just cannot get their dialogue out with any sort of naturalism or real direction.  Patrick Stewart is the main cast member who comes out of it alright, though Picard’s dialogue is generally shorter and more to the point.  The guest cast fares just as poorly: Elizabeth Lindsey sounds like she’s been dubbed over completely and Gerard Prendergast and Mario Roccuzzo certainly deliver lines.  At least Walter Gotell is giving some sort of emotion in his lines, even if it is over-the-top emotion.  Basically, Corey Allen doesn’t actually do his job, including how he generally sets up shots.  There is a sense that this episode has to be made quickly with however many shots they can, quick cuts when the action clearly wasn’t shot correctly, and any attempts to save the budget without having the script become a ship only episode.

 

The blame for “Home Soil” cannot be squarely placed on Allen alone, however, it’s still an episode with a script and that script has three writers credited.  In terms of production, Allen apparently received script pages on the day of filming which is circumstances even the absolute best directors would be unable to make work.  Robert Sabaroff is credited with actually writing the teleplay (and one of three story credits) and if he was rewriting it basically as the episode was filming it explains how the episode doesn’t actually have a sense of pace.  The first act is almost glacially slow, expanding as much dialogue it can to actually explain what the concept of terraforming is.  Now this could be very nice worldbuilding, and almost becomes so, when it is explored exactly how long it takes and how the Federation regulates the processes.  The sequences are completely overwritten, explaining the concept multiple time.  While repeating the concept is nice, it decides to lay out what would make a planet not a candidate for terraforming only once, something the episode ends up hinging on the aspect of there must be no life on the planet of any kind for terraforming to start.

 

That may be the concept, but the plot is that on Velara III, terraforming is behind schedule.  That is the reason the Enterprise arrives, though it isn’t actually explained in any detail as to what they do and Troi is basically given exposition of everyone is hiding something.  This is trying to create some sort off tension for the first ten minutes before one of the scientists is killed, there is an action sequence where Data as an android destroys a drill that tries to kill him (and early on be a piece of interest for the colonists because he is an android), and somehow there is a crystal life form.  It gives off radiation and Crusher runs test that mean it is alive and it is what caused the drill to malfunction, the episode starting as if it wants to be a mystery with three suspects, all of whom have absolutely no motive.  The rest of the episode then becomes peace negotiations with absolutely no tension because the crystal is intelligent and can communicate, plus Federation is going to respect their autonomy as a life form.  There is a diversion to fill the runtime and attempt some sort of conflict, but that’s really all there is to the episode.

 

Overall, “Home Soil” is essentially par for the course for Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season, that is to say is bad with a grain of a good idea in the middle.  This time it’s down to a script that should never have made it to air without an actual script editor taking a look for it, not to leave a director shooting on the day.  The director is already not very good at his craft, leading to an episode that is borderline incoherent in terms of shot continuity while having a plot that just strings itself along.  Plus the performances because of an incomplete script and incompetent director have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing.  There's a reason the image I'm using for this review is basically a prop because there is no imagery on display here to tell a story.  2/10.

Doctor Who and the War Games by: Malcolm Hulke

 

Doctor Who and the War Games was written by Malcolm Hulke, based on his and Terrance Dicks’ story The War Games.  It was the 50^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

If anyone was going to novelize The War Games and make it work it’d be Malcolm Hulke, of the serial’s cowriters Hulke is the one with the more interesting style and understanding of how to get a long story down to the length of the Target novel.  Doctor Who and the War Games is a novelization that by design had to continually be moving from point to point less it be unable to reach the story’s end.  The compression in this circumstance is particularly necessary less the story not work, so Hulke tackles it from the perspective of the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe.  They are the main characters and they should be the ones that move the plot forward, but it does mean that there’s a lot of the smaller character moments and cutaway scenes necessary in a recorded as live television production from 1969 that get cut.  There are a handful of minor characters cut completely, or perhaps better say combined to actually keep the story flowing.  It does lessen what made The War Games as a story actually work because it is truly a massive ten part epic.  The compression does mean that the focus on the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe adds to their characterization, especially Jamie and Zoe’s general leadership in bringing the resistance together.  Zoe’s eidetic memory is put to particularly good use which while in the original television serial is emphasized here, same with how young she is making her eventual fate all the sadder (even sadder than Jamie’s despite having the same fate).

 

That isn’t to say Malcolm Hulke is cutting with abandon; he is picking what he keeps and to a lesser extent what he adds particularly carefully.  If The War Games was relatively subtle in how anti-war it is, Doctor Who and the War Games adds a paragraph of dialogue near the end to make it explicit that nobody actually wins in war.  The idea that the War Lords are kidnapping people for a galaxy spanning war is presented as a warped view of wanting galactic peace.  It’s an intentionally satirical idea that humanity actually wants to end war because they don’t.  Hulke does additions to the portrayal of the Time Lords in essentially the same way.  At the Doctor’s trial there is a Great Voice of the Time Lords, something implied to be bigger than all of them and a bit of cosmic horror, while being just as hypocritical as they would be completely known to be.  The fact that after being exiled to Earth there is this glib comment from one of the Time Lords secretly rooting for the Doctor is also telling for how the hypocrisy works.  Hulke knows exactly what he is doing here.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the War Games was never going to be nearly as good as the relevision serial with the constraints of a Target novel.  Malcolm Hulke still delivers on an actual novel in terms of storytelling meaning that it does manage to stand on its own and be a good novel.  The characters are there, there is extra worldbuilding, and an understanding of prose as a format.  8/10

The Highlanders by: Gerry Davis

 

The Highlanders was written by Gerry Davis, based on his and Elwyn Jones’ story of the same name.  It was the 90^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Sometimes there really isn’t much done with a Target novelization.  The Highlanders is one of those times.  Despite being a serial that is completely missing with a full set of telesnaps and one or two existing clips, it’s never been one that’s particularly difficult to understand or follow.  It’s just that Gerry Davis and Elwyn Jones’ script is one that just kind of meanders from situation to situation and falls into the trap of pure historical stories being motivated by getting the TARDIS team back to the ship so they can leave.  Were it not for the introduction of Jamie McCrimmon, it would be remembered as a fairly decent though highly flawed missing serial.  It was Patrick Troughton’s only pure historical and the last until 1982’s Black Orchid, but there are so many better options for exploring history.  This does have some great comedic bits of Patrick Troughton that informs his early performance as the Doctor.

 

The novelization suffers from being almost entirely too faithful to the television script.  Gerry Davis adapts it, as he was really the only one actually writing The Highlanders for television.  It was his fourth novelization but his first, Doctor Who and the Cybermen, remains his best for how it played with pacing.  Davis’ sense of novelization really hadn’t developed from the previous stories he has novelized: Doctor Who and the Cybermen and Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen both work off the original scripts and take out any ad-libs, The Highlanders follows suit.  The book doesn’t quite drag despite the meandering pace, Davis at least spends some time in the heads of the characters especially Ben and Polly (even if Polly is slightly mischaracterized as more of a damsel in distress).  The best bits of comedy are at least retained.

 

Overall, despite not having the same problems as Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, The Highlanders suffers from Gerry Davis not making many choices when deciding how to adapt it to the page.  The ones he does make sadly weaken Polly into quite the damsel, only too relieved when the Doctor is rescued so he can make decisions for her and then terrified when he pushes to back into thinking.  It takes a story that was at best decent and just kind of brings it down to meh.  5/10.

The Gunfighters by: Donald Cotton

The Gunfighters was written by Donald Cotton, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 101^st story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Donald Cotton managed to pull the same trick twice, and considering he also contributed the novelization of Dennis Spooner’s The Romans, it’s possible he did it a third time.  When looking at Target novelizations, especially those 1984 and later, you realize less and less that they were being published to relive the story as the BBC had begun the VHS range at that point, but really to complete the range.  The exceptions to this are of those serials that were missing and several of the Seventh Doctor serials, the former attempting to recapture the missing episodes in some way while the latter would often be expanded as tests to see if proper Doctor Who novels would work.  It makes The Gunfighters a weird beast of a novelization.  Published in 1986, the VHS range had started but was still limited to a handful of Baker stories, The Five Doctors, and The Seeds of Death, and there was a copy of The Gunfighters in the archive as well to draw from, yet it seems Cotton didn’t have access to draw from.

 

Cotton clearly was interested in adding characterization to much of his supporting cast.  In television there certainly was characterization and larger than life performances, but Cotton seems to understand he can’t really replicate some of those performances in prose.  Instead, he decides while sticking to a lot of the original script (or perhaps an earlier version with some differences lacking some improv), Cotton keeps a lot of the humor to more wry dialogue.  Johnny Ringo is the character perhaps most expanded by this, much time is spent going into how he’s motivated by wanting enough money to buy a particularly expensive set of Latin classics.  He and the Doctor speak to each other in Latin, and is generally calmer and more collected.  His shooting of Charlie the barman is changed from a sudden act to this genuine buildup of suspense.  Cotton writes it as if Charlie is dead as soon as Ringo enters the bar.

 

The same can be said for Dodo, a character already served well by the comedic stylings of the serial, Cotton makes the decision to make her completely competent.  There seems to be an injection of the original, more working class less BBC English version of the character here.  Dodo plays poker and actually puts Holliday out of money in a very brief description that nevertheless says a lot more for the character than nearly anything on television ever did.  It helps inform her actions when she threatens Holliday at gunpoint to get back to Tombstone.  There is time given to both Dodo and Steven’s pasts, though Cotton seems to think Steven is actually an American which kind of reflects the 1980s view of where space travel was going which is an interesting addition, even if his dialogue is still very much Peter Purves’ Steven.  The one character hurt by the change in style of comedy is Kate, while she’s still proactive and there is some added characterization to specify she is Big Nose Kate Elder, the dialogue being reserved means she isn’t nearly as fun or flirty as Sheena Marshe’s television portrayal.

 

Overall, The Gunfighters is just a plain different interpretation of essentially the same serial from the same author.  It’s just about as enjoyable in almost every different way, and perhaps if you’re one of those Doctor Who fans stuck in the ways that the television serial is bad, you may actually enjoy the more reserved take, even though the comedy is where it excels.  8/10.

 

When the Bough Breaks by: Hannah Louise Shearer and is directed by: Kim Manners

 

“When the Bough Breaks” is written by: Hannah Louise Shearer and is directed by: Kim Manners.  It was produced under production code 118, was the 17^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on February 15, 1988.

 

Last week saw an episode going back to “The Deadly Years” for its inspiration, this week there is yet another inspiration from Star Trek to inform a plot of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Star Trek had several episodes that made children central to their plot.  “Miri” and “And the Children Shall Lead” are the prime examples of this, and with how Star Trek: The Next Generation likes to either remake or just go to the well of original series Star Trek ideas it is surprising that it took until over halfway through the first season to go to this particular well.  “When the Bough Breaks” like so many original series titles is a quote, this time from a lullaby, and is the first script from Hannah Louise Shearer who had the idea for the script based on the fact that the Enterprise also had several families living on board.  It’s not an inherently bad idea for an episode, and based on the premise alone could easily be set apart from Star Trek in terms of inspiration.  Star Trek: The Next Generation has the added bonus of having two main cast members playing a mother and son.  The premise is that a technologically advanced planet is suffering from planet wide infertility, so they decide to purchase the children on the Enterprise so their civilization can continue.  Aldea is a paradise ruled by a computer and the people of the planet have lost their drive to continue growing, meaning they have overlooked the obvious problem at their society.  Mainly they are actually all suffering from a form of radiation sickness that has left them infertile and eventually the crew just help them heal from it.  This is a particularly bad plot development in an otherwise fine episode, it means that there’s actually very little conflict in the episode and the reveal is treated like a grand twist.  The resolution just kind of happens really quickly, Shearer seems not to understand how to fill the episode in general as neither the plot with the kids on Aldea nor the Enterprise trying to get back after being catapulted away actually have any developments.

 

This is an episode that puts a lot on the several children making up the supporting cast, a mix of outside actors and children/siblings of the crew.  Kim Manners is the director, her only credit for Star Trek in general and while she shoots the episode perfectly fine (the final scene on the planet actually does some brilliant and foreboding lighting), she doesn’t do the best at directing the kids.  She also doesn’t do nearly enough to direct the adult supporting cast, this is an episode that knows it has to show the families who have had their children taken but they feel like day players who don’t know how to get their lines out properly.  “When the Bough Breaks” is incredibly stiff with Patrick Stewart being surprisingly the only loose actor, attempting to guide some of the kids through their performances while maintaining Picard’s stoicism and general distaste for children.  Shearer does place Wesley Crusher as the oldest child taken and therefore the leader of the kids, and Wil Wheaton also does the best with the material he has been given.  There are several moments where Wheaton has to read incredibly awkwardly written lines of exposition, but as a rallying point for the rest of the young cast Wheaton performs his task admirably.  Certainly, more than Gates McFadden who as Dr. Crusher doesn’t actually get too much to do in the episode outside of also give some particularly bad exposition.

 

Overall, “When the Bough Breaks” is an episode that honestly should have more interpersonal conflict to bring out the better performances in the cast.  The premise is something that could be a highlight of the season, but it’s an episode from a writer who gets so close to actually having something interesting happen before just kind of forgetting it (one of the Aldeans actually demands a kid of her own assigned toa different unit and that doesn’t ever actually become a conflict), and that means this ends up being a weak episode.  Shearer has a nearly competent script that desperately needs an actual angle for what it wants to say and to give actual life to the child characters, focusing on the Wesley/Beverly relationship would have made it work infinitely better.  It’s yet another below average, bland outing for Star Trek: The Next Generation as things seem to limp towards the end of the first season.  4/10.

The Crooked World by: Steve Lyons

 

In Act 2 of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods, as the narrator is discussing the problem of the giant, the fairy tale characters break out of the story, drag the narrator in, and sacrifice him to the giant.  This breaks the narrative and means the characters must now actually choose what actions to take without the guiding hand of the author, they are now in control of the narrative and that leads to more death and tragedy before eventually resolving in a hopeful enough ending, though always changing and trying to be better.  It is an essential piece of metatext that is both accessible and easy to understand.  It is important to bring this up because Doctor Who novelist Steve Lyons owns quite a lot to Into the Woods for his trilogy of metafictional novels Conundrum, Head Games, and The Crooked World, the latter being the most explicitly metatextual on speculative fiction in general and the very nature of Doctor Who as an idea.  Conundrum and Head Games are a pair of directly linked New Adventures set in the Land of Fiction, while The Crooked World is a spiritual successor to the other two in a similarly fictionally linked setting though one revealed to be a physical place and single planet.  The idea behind The Crooked World is that the Doctor is a force of nature responsible for changing the narrative flow of stories.  He comes in and fundamentally changes the rules of the universe every time he leaves the TARDIS.

The Crooked World uses this through the lens of cartoons, specifically cartoons pre-1970 including expies of the characters of Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, deconstructing in the first 100 pages or so what makes each of these cartoons work and the formula they have to follow before ripping it to shreds.  The inciting incident is our Elmer Fudd/Porky Pig/Wile E. Coyote expy, Streaky Bacon shooting the Doctor with his blunderbuss which nearly kills him.  The Doctor, Fitz, and Anji do not work by cartoon logic, while the rest of the world does.  Lyons specifically draws on Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, though not visually as this is a novel and there is no way to translate that technical wonder that film is, but the ideas are there.  The Crooked World as a planet is bound by cartoon morality: those shot will have an overreaction, fall over, maybe be carted off in an ambulance, but be back to normal almost immediately.  The Doctor brings injury, pain, and death in his wake to Looney Toons characters, Fitz brings meaningful relationships (through ironically the introduction of sex) to serial parodies, and Anji brings a sense of cold hard logic to the Scooby-Doo gang.  The world begins to almost immediately unravel and descend to chaos, every action the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji take ends up changing the world intrinsically and makes things worse.  Every thought they have ends up bringing the notions of war, corruption, capitalism, and death in their wake.

 

The novel eventually becomes a meditation on bringing the central idea of adult, fully formed morality, onto these cartoon characters.  What exactly are their purposes when there are consequences to their actions and the universe doesn’t essentially reset at the end of an episode?  Our Tom the Cat expy is put on trial at one point because he has genuinely attempted to kill the expy of Jerry the Mouse, and there is even at least some attempt to at least acknowledge much of the racial stereotyping of certain old cartoons.  Now this is where Lyons perhaps cannot go as far as he wishes to, the BBC was never going to get the rights to use any of the established characters, but it is clear exactly who they are so the commentary still works and is added to with the idea that these cartoon characters are already corruptions in who they are.  The big twist of the novel is that the Crooked World being this cartoon logic laden place is because of the mind of a dead child, taken and insulated at the center of the world who’s escape pod dying.  The Crooked World actually goes as far as it can go in making it explicit that changing the narrative as the Doctor and company are the ones to do is not an inherently good thing to happen.  The situation only gets worse and the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji do their best, but there’s a moment where they accidentally create an atomic bomb because they are thinking about it.  Lyons keeps reality pliable and even when the main trio try to make the world bend to their advantage, the influence of their morality eventually gives the inhabitants their own free will to override things.  It means that The Crooked World ends as a tragedy; like Into the Woods the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji are the ones to leave and the world just has to get on and make its own decisions.

 

Overall, The Crooked World is Steve Lyons’ masterpiece, it’s the crowning achievement of metatext, knowing exactly what cues to take.  One minute it has you laughing at the cartoon antics, and how weird things are going, the next it has you questioning exactly how long it will take for the idea to get old, and then finally it begins to have the shift of redirecting, and eventually losing the narrative.  10/10.