Doctor Who at Christmas: The Wintertime Paradox

Originally published: 2020
Acquired: December 2021
Read: January 2022

Doctor Who: The Wintertime Paradox
by Dave Rudden

 

As I did last year with Rudden's Twelve Angels Weeping, I started reading this book on Christmas, and read a story every day until I finished. It was a fun way to do it. Rudden has a strong, unique voice as a Doctor Who short fiction writer, and does a good job of capturing the series's tone while not feeling beholden to how things would be on screen; he also does a good job of tying each story into Christmas without making it feel repetitive.

Highlights for me included "Father of the Daleks," chronicling a series of Christmastime meetings between the eleventh Doctor... and Davros!? Good Christmas fun, but also a dark peek into the psyches of the Daleks and their creator. "For the Girl Who Has Everything" was a story of Osgood's first week at UNIT, before Kate Stewart was in charge and before Osgood was chief scientific advisor; she has to rely on her wits to defeat a Sontaran plot. Rudden perfectly captures Osgood's personality and voice. "Visiting Hours" does a great job of filling in the Rory/River father/daughter relationship that Steven Moffat kind of neglected; Rory comes to visit River at Christmas in Stormcage, only for them to have to fight their way through the facility unexpectedly. Genuinely touching stuff about parenting and family. "A Perfect Christmas" was a charming story about Madame Vastra trying to give her ersatz family a perfect holiday at all costs, and "A Day to Yourselves" was a great story about an immediate post–Time War ninth Doctor trying to find consolation by saving planets, only no one will let him do it.

The book only really had two misfires for me, "He's Behind You," which felt like it didn't lean into its panto premise enough, and "We Will Feed You to the Trees," which while well told, didn't seem entirely convincing in the way it explained everything. But really, Rudden has an excellent grasp of tone, theme, and character, and I must seek out his original fiction, but I also hope he keeps writing Doctor Who because he has a markedly interesting voice that goes beyond your average Justin Richardsesque fellow.

It was Christmas 2011 where I first made a point of reading a Doctor Who Christmas-themed book at Christmas; now ten years later, and I have finally exhausted them all! Doctor Who and Christmas go so well together, so I am disappointed to have to put this tradition to an end. Maybe next Christmas I will do some kind of roundup or ranking.

I read a Doctor Who Christmas book every year. Next up in sequence: nothing!!!???

Sweater Vest Week

I refer to my students in class by their last names. The reason for this goes back to what I like to be called. Though early in my days as a TA I went by my first name, it never quite worked for me: I felt that many students were reluctant to be so familiar, meaning they didn't call me anything at all, which I could empathize with, for I had been the same way as an undergraduate (though I did have a class where they would say things like, "Hey, TA Steve!" which I found amusing). I also felt it had a level of informality that didn't quite suit my teaching persona. So at a certain point as a graduate student, I switched to asking my students to call me "Mr. Mollmann." (These days, "Dr. Mollmann" or "Prof. Mollmann," though many, especially freshmen, still do use "Mr.") It was also around this time that I started wearing a tie to teach most days.

But when I made this change, I remembered something an undergraduate professor of mine, Rich Erlich, would say on the first day of class. Rich would have the class as a whole decide how to refer to each other: should it be first names for students and first name for professor? Last names for students and last name for professor? He did point out that it could be first names for students and last name for professor or even last names for students and first name for professor, but that both of those would carry an imbalance: familiarity would be allowed only one way. We ended up voting, as I recall, for first name both ways.

So following a similar logic (and, I guess, drawing on my experience of all-boy Catholic school, where last names were the norm for teachers to call us, and even for us to call each other; one of my best friends still calls me "Mollmann" more than "Steve"), I tell my students that if I request respect in being addressed by my last name and title, it is only fair for me to offer the same in return, and so I use their last names. This is something they are, it must be admitted, not terrible good at sticking to, but I enjoy it.

When I was at UConn, I would discuss all this on the first day of class, and I would usually make a joke like this: "You will have cool instructors who will ask you to use their first name. 'Hey, call me Joe.' They probably teach philosophy and wear jeans. However, as you can see, I am not very cool—I am wearing a sweater vest." This would get a good laugh.

I really like wearing sweaters and sweater vests. I couldn't tell you why, except that I guess they really fit my ethos. (I made sure to defend my dissertation in a sweater vest.) At UConn I definitely always wear a sweater vest to the first day of the spring semester, and often also to the first day of the fall semester depending on the weather.

But then I moved to Florida.

I still have most of my sweater vests, but sometimes whole semesters go by where there is no day suitable for wearing one, not even in December or January. So I have been delighted at the current January, where it has been pretty consistently cool—I actually had to break out the ice scraper one morning!—allowing me to wear a sweater vest on the first day of class and resurrect my patented joke.

This week, I wore one again on Monday, and when I got home, I changed into jeans but left my button-down shirt and sweater vest on; Son One noticed when I was putting him to bed. "Why does this shirt not have any sleeves?" he asked. Aghast that at age 3 he didn't know what a sweater vest was, I explained, and then pointed out that he actually had one in his drawer. He asked to wear it to bed, but we decided school the next day was the better option:

He looked pretty snappy in it!

After he was dressed, Hayley pointed out that we actually had a baby-sized one, but I had already dressed the baby, and it was time to go. So on the next day, I dressed the baby in his—and he too was pretty cute.

Alas, we don't have a photo of that. We didn't have time to take a photo of him in the morning, and his diaper leaked at daycare, necessitating a whole new outfit.

So sweater vest week has been good fun, but it seems like if we knew what we were doing, we would have all worn them on the same day, instead of sequentially! Maybe next time...

Doctor Who: Branches by Alex Paknadel, Rob Williams, I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, JB Bastos, and Luiz Campello

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling, Vol 3: Branches

 

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017-18
Read: September 2021

Writers: Alex Paknadel & Rob Williams
Artists: I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, JB Bastos & Luiz Campello
Colorists: Triona Farrell, Thiago Ribiero & Stefani Renne

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

The ninth and final volume of The Eleventh Doctor contains two linked stories. The first, by Alex Paknadel and I. N. J. Culbard, brings the Doctor, Alice, and the Sapling to a primitive planet where the Doctor was friends with its ruler—only the planet is highly industrialized and the Doctor doesn't remember the ruler. Paknadel's story is enjoyable, packed with great ideas, and Culbard's art is, as always, the best.

The second, by Paknadel, Rob Williams, and a host of artists, wraps up the ongoing Sapling storyline with the return of the forgotten silence. It has some great moments and good callbacks—I got chills at the return of an element from Alice's very first story way back in vol 1, and the way they defeat the villain was clever—but this title has set a very high bar for itself, and "Year Three" was not as strong as the first two years, and neither was its finale. The story didn't feel as personal to our protagonists, and the Sapling never really emerged as a character. Good stuff, and still the best of the Titan ongoings, but it seems best that it ended here.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Lost Dimension

Doctor Who: The Wolves of Winter by Richard Dinnick, Brian Williamson, Pasquale Qualano, et al.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor: Time Trials, Vol 2: The Wolves of Winter

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: September 2021

Writer: Richard Dinnick
Artists: Brian Williamson & Pasquale Qualano with Edu Menna & Marcelo Salaza
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This contains two stories, the first Titan adventures (other than the 2017 Free Comic Book Day Special) to include Bill after four volumes of one-off companions. The first is pretty over-egged, featuring Vikings, the Ice Warriors, the Flood (from "The Waters of Mars"), and the Haemovores (from The Curse of Fenric). None of the components gets the space it needs to be interesting. I couldn't keep track of the Vikings; the Ice Warriors were similarly dull; the inclusion of the Flood felt pointless; and the Haemovore idea came in so late it did a major disservice to one of my favorite classic series stories.

The second story, "The Great Shopping Bill," seems like it should have been fun, but Pasquale Qualano's art completely fails to communicate the setting. It's supposed to be a delightful intergalactic supermarket, but it looks like a couple of shelves.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling: Branches

Reading The Road to Oz Aloud to My Son

The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by John R. Neill

Like Marvelous Land of Oz, Road to Oz is one where my childhood copy was a Puffin Classic. The Puffin edition of Marvelous Land was sparsely illustrated... the Puffin of Road was not illustrated at all! Thus it is probably little wonder that Road was never one of my favorite Oz novels, with no pictures to fire the imagination. I eagerly picked up the Books of Wonder facsimile, then, as I knew that—like the original—it had colored paper for pages. Though this is (I think) the only one of Baum's original fourteen to have no color illustrations, the colors shift as the characters travel from land to land as they progress from Kansas to the Emerald City. I found the colors somewhat ill-chosen (why are the Winkie chapters not yellow!?), but they definitely worked as intended on my son, who was excited every time the pages changed color, and often demanded we skip ahead so they would change color. ("I want to read a green chapter!") The illustrations are great, too, and I'm sorry I didn't have them as a child.

Originally published: 1909
Acquired and read aloud: September 2021

Road is a pretty aimless Oz novel. Unlike in previous Oz journey narratives (Wonderful Wizard and Dorothy and the Wizard), there's little sense of impetus or threat. The characters have to get to Oz in time for a birthday party. Not exactly high stakes. On top of that, they get there about two-thirds of the way through, and the last third is just descriptions of people coming to the party and games they play and revisits with characters from previous books (we see the Tin Woodman's Tin Castle and Jack Pumpkinhead's giant pumpkinhead house; Billina updates us on how many progeny she has). So this is the other reason this one has never ranked highly.

But it turns out that if you're reading one or two chapters aloud a day, that something is episodic isn't a bug... it's a feature! The book becomes a succession of short stories. Maybe Baum knew what he was doing after all. I did particularly like the encounter with the Scoodlers (I love Button-Bright's "don't want to be soup!"), and Son One seemed to be into Johnny Dooit. Indeed, he was pretty into this one overall, telling me he had a dog head after we read about Button-Bright and the Shaggy Man getting fox and donkey heads, and repeating Button-Bright's trademark "don't know" a lot and even telling his mother about John Dough, the living gingerbread man (a crossover with Baum's John Dough and the Cherub, the only of Baum's Nonestic/Burzee fantasies I don't own). He was also quick to point out that my Shaggy Man voice is pretty much my Scarecrow voice. Hey, a guy can only make so many voices.

I did still think it dragged once they got to Oz, though. And everyone here seems to totally forget about Ozma and Dorothy's daily Magic Picture check-in from the previous book! Which, to be fair, would end this book before it started... but that's why it was such a bad idea to begin with.

The Coming of the Biocrat: H. G. Wells's Anticipations

Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought by H. G. Wells

[F]rom its very nature, and I am writing with the intimacy of one who has tried, fiction can never be satisfactory in this application [i.e., forecasting]. Fiction is necessarily concrete and definite; it permits of no open alternatives; its aim of illusion prevents a proper amplitude of demonstration, and modern prophecy should be, one submits, a branch of speculation, and should follow with all decorum the scientific method. The very form of fiction carries with it something of disavowal; indeed, very much of the Fiction of the Future pretty frankly abandons the prophetic altogether, and becomes polemical, cautionary, or idealistic, and a mere footnote and commentary to our present discontents. (1-2n)

Originally published: 1901
Read: September 2021

I read this after A Modern Utopia, even though Anticipations was published first—and even though Modern Utopia is clearly an intellectual sequel to it, if not an actual one. This is because it was much easier to get a hold of A Modern Utopia (in print as part of the very comprehensive set of H. G. Wells Penguin Classics) than it was Anticipations (last reprinted, in a decent edition anyway, way back in 1999). I was grumpy and indignant upon realizing this. We might remember Wells now for his scientific romances, but those were just the first, brief phase of his career. The thing that made Wells who he was in his day was Anticipations; it launched him on a career of being a social prophet and a widely read public intellectual. Yet Penguin Classics reprinted The New Machiavelli and not this!?

Well, upon reading it, it quickly became obvious why they skipped over it. As my quotation above demonstrates, Wells did not consider this a work of fiction. Thus, it has dated quite badly in a way that most of his other work has not, not even fictionalized future histories like The Shape of Things to Come. Wells may have been following "the scientific method" in his prophecies, whatever that might mean, but though I think he was good at identifying what many of the key issues might be, he was pretty bad at identifying how they might actually play out. In the post-Trump era, his claim about demagogues looks pretty bad:

It is improbable that ever again will any flushed undignified man with a vast voice, a muscular face in incessant operation, collar crumpled, hair disordered, and arms in wild activity, talking, talking, talking, talking copiously out of the windows of railway carriages, talking on railway platforms, talking from hotel balconies, talking on tubs, barrels, scaffoldings, pulpits–tireless and undammable–rise to be the most powerful thing in any democratic state in the world. (89)

I mean, that one was pretty much disproved within a few decades by the rise of Hitler! (But even in 1934, Wells was insisting he'd got this one right.) The book is filled with stuff like that: Wells thinks all of England will be a suburb (27), and it will be filled with lovely houses, built to order (36); that a group of scientific men will detach themselves from society and run it on rational lines (81, 86, 98, 155); that the lower classes will no longer be recruited for the military (107); that French is most likely to become the international language (134-37); that all of Western Europe will become one state (136), and all of North America, plus Scandinavia, another (146). There are long, dull passages about what houses will look like.

I mean, he's thinking about stuff no one else is really thinking about... but in a sense, he's not coming up with the right answers any more often than those who haven't thought about, even if he is asking the right questions. If you prophesy in the form of fiction, it doesn't matter if you get everything wrong, because fiction speaks to the reader no matter when they read it. No, The Sleeper Awakes did not come to pass, but I still get something out of it. But if this doesn't come to pass, there's little to get out of it.

Except, if like me, you need to know about science and morality in the long nineteenth century, because as always, Wells touches on everything. I read this book because of its discussion of the future eugenic state. Sorry, but I have to quote at length to give you the full effect:

[T]he ethical system which will dominate the world state[ ] will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity–beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge–and to check the procreation of base and servile types, of fear-driven and cowardly souls, of all that is mean and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men. To do the latter is to do the former; the two things are inseparable. And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness, and cowardice and feebleness were saved from the accomplishment of their desires, the method that has only one alternative, the method that must in some cases still be called in to the help of man, is death. In the new vision death is no inexplicable horror, no pointless terminal terror to the miseries of life, it is the end of all the pain of life, the end of the bitterness of failure, the merciful obliteration of weak and silly and pointless things....
     The new ethics will hold life to be a privilege and a responsibility, not a sort of night refuge for base spirits out of the void; and the alternative in right conduct between living fully, beautifully, and efficiently will be to die. For a multitude of contemptible and silly creatures, fear-driven and helpless and useless, unhappy or hatefully happy in the midst of squalid dishonour, feeble, ugly, inefficient, born of unrestrained lusts, and increasing and multiplying through sheer incontinence and stupidity, the men of the New Republic will have little pity and less benevolence. (167-8)

Yikes.

The nicest thing you can say about all of this is that he was less racist than most people like this. He suggests that the New Republic won't exterminate nonwhites just because they are nonwhites, but that they'll just exterminate the worst of society, and thus let nonwhites prove themselves (177). And he does actually make fun of scientific racists at times (124). On the other hand, he makes the occasional anti-Semitic jab (41).

It reads more like a dystopia than a utopia, and it always stings to see Wells—surely one of the smartest men of his time—get caught up in the very biocractic thinking he skewered in The War of the Worlds. A warning that many of us do not get smarter as we get older, I suppose.

Doctor Who: Vortex Butterflies by Nick Abadzis, Giorgia Sposito, Iolanda Zanfardino, et al.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor: Facing Fate, Vol 2: Vortex Butterflies

 

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: September 2021

Writer: Nick Abadzis
Artists: Giorgia Sposito with Arianna Florean & Iolanda Zanfardino
Colorists: Arianna Florean with Nicola Righi
Letterers: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

The uphill climb of The Tenth Doctor continues—so help me, I actually enjoyed this! Every time the action flashed to what "Noob" was doing, my interest plummeted, but aside from that, this was a solid tenth Doctor comic. Unlike previous stories in this series, it keeps the focus on the characters and their emotions, following up on the emotional fall-out from the pretty intense things that the tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy have gone through; the appearance of Sarah Jane Smith could be gratuitous, but is a perfect grace note here, too. There's a strong sense of increasing desperation as events escalate (some Titan storylines are pretty badly paced but not this one), and the way the imagery of the Jon Pertwee title sequence is used is pretty damn clever. I am excited to see where this series wraps up in the next volume.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Twelfth Doctor: The Wolves of Winter

Reading Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz Aloud to My Son

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by John R. Neill

I recollect that this was one of my favorite Oz books as a kid. I don't think it's a coincidence that it was just one of two that I owned as a Dover edition. The Dover editions aren't facsimiles to the extent that the Books of Wonder ones are—they are trade paperbacks, they have no end papers, the color plates are in black and white. But the book is reproduced at its original size, with all of its interior illustrations intact, meaning that this was one of my best examples of the artistry of John R. Neill, and thus the book was brought to life in my imagination. (This meant I didn't use this reread as an excuse to upgrade my copy; the Dover is good enough for my purposes that I felt the expense was not justified... though that does mean that if I keep going, I will have the Books of Wonder facsimiles of all but two of Baum's original fourteen novels, which will niggle at me.)

Originally published: 1908
Acquired: ???
Read aloud: August–September 2021

It's a dark story, something the Shanower & Young comic adaptation brought out to good success. Unlike other Oz books, where our hero makes friends as they travel, Dorothy never really does; the people who are with her from the beginning (Eureka the Kitten, her cousin's cousin Zeb, Jim the Cab-Horse, and later, the Wizard) are the only people who journey with her. The lands they travel through have little respite for them: vegetable people who cannot feel sympathy, a valley of invisible bears who can slaughter you at any moment, the wooden gargoyles who don't speak a word, the dragonettes who would eat you if only they could. The best our heroes can hope for is indifference, such as they receive from the Braided Man. My favorite part this time though was a small one; as the adventuring party climbs a subterranean mountain, they look out on a strange sea and strange sky... and it's utterly indifferent to them. Insignificance is the best they can hope for beneath the surface of the Earth.

I didn't find it disturbing as a kid, I don't think, and Son One didn't either as far as I could tell. Baum as always never dwells on this kind of stuff, and treats it all completely matter-of-factly. Our heroes are a little more callous than usual (the Wizard kills pretty easily), but they are in a callous world. Like in Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Ozma, one of the pleasures is the group of dynamic characters, all of whom contribute to saving the day in their own way at various times. I have seen commenters complain about Eureka and say Baum must not have like cats... but to me, Baum just captures what it is to be a cat, something he always excels at with his talking animal characters. Yes, she's selfish and annoying, but that's what makes her fun. The jokes at the trial of Eureka went over my son's head, but I enjoyed them. Indeed, this one was a pleasure to read throughout. It's dark, but it's also some of Baum's most imaginative work, with good tension despite the fact that it's a pretty linear journey. I like the handling of the Wizard here, and there's something moving about him being given a place in Oz at the book's end... even if does require Baum to ignore some of the basic facts he establishes in Marvelous Land about the Wizard, Mombi, Ozma, and Ozma's father! The backstory of Oz being divided between four wicked witches is a tantalizing one, though.

The main problem, of course, is the frankly stupid way Dorothy gets out of the subterranean world. At the end of Ozma, Ozma told Dorothy she'd look for her in the Magic Picture once a week, and magic her to Oz via the Magic Belt if she made a sign was in trouble. Here, we are told Ozma looks in the Magic Picture once per day.... but somehow Dorothy doesn't think to signal Ozma until two-thirds of the way into the book! It's a move that utterly destroys the tension, and makes Dorothy look like an idiot to boot. (Not that my son noticed.) But if you keep on reading, it's easy enough to ignore.

Doctor Who: "The Promise" by Alex Paknadel, Mariano Laclaustra, et al.

Doctor Who Free Comic Book Day 2017: "The Promise"

Published: 2017
Read: September 2021

Writer: Alex Paknadel
Artists: Mariano Laclaustra, Pier Brito, Nico Selma
Colorists: Carlos Cabrera, Brittany Peer

Letterers: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

The stories from Titan's first two Doctor Who Free Comic Book Day specials were included in their regular collections, but as far as I can tell, this one and the next were not, so I added them to my marathon of Titan stories I've been reading from Humble Bundle and Hoopla. This is a twelfth Doctor story—the first to include tv companion Bill Potts—that includes flashbacks to the ninth, tenth, and eleventh Doctors (i.e., everyone who starred in an ongoing, though the ninth's had been cancelled by this point). It's fine; I am not sure I entirely bought all the Doctor's actions, but whatever, it's sixteen pages and I didn't pay any money for it! My biggest complaint is that when the Doctor tells Bill something happened to the ninth Doctor "before Tara," that is clearly a comment aimed at the continuity-obsessed audience, and not anything he would ever actually say to Bill!

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Tenth Doctor: Vortex Butterflies

Evening's Empire (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 18)

Evening's Empire: Collected Comic Strips from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine
by Andrew Cartmel, Richard Piers Rayner, Dan Abnett, Marc Platt, John Ridgway, et al.

Collection published: 2016
Contents originally published: 1990-93
Acquired: December 2017
Read: September 2021

This set of stories take us into, ahem, "Virgin territory." I suspect I'll have more to say about this when I read the next volume, but here we get the first references to the New Adventures. In The Grief, Ace includes the Timewyrm among the most dangerous foes she's encountered; the internet tells me that Ravens take's place during Cat's Cradle: Warhead; and then in Cat Litter, we start getting footnotes that clarify placement (it opens with one saying recent adventures were seen "both last issue and in Nightshade" and ends with "Next: After Love and War, a new companion and... Sontarans!"). For the DWM strip—which for a long time barely even seemed to acknowledge that there was a tv programme—this is a huge change, and a weird one that I wish was explained more. John Freeman's notes, though, mostly focus on the issues surrounding Evening's Empire, and don't give any sense of why he might want to hitch DWM's narrative to a series of novels that were only just getting off the ground. On Down the Tubes, he off-handedly mentions that Ravens "was the first story where we tried to work with Doctor Who novel publisher Virgin, after meeting with the editor Peter Darvill-Evans and trying to cross promote what were then the only new Doctor Who adventures," but that's it. My impression is that this was a decision ultimately regretted by his successors at DWM, and part of the reason this entire era of DWM ultimately ended up kind of orphaned, but... why did they do it? Anyway, more on that when I get to Benny Summerfield's debut in Emperor of the Daleks.

Overall, this is a dark set of stories. I don't know if I would want all my Doctor Who to be like this, but it works more than it doesn't, and I found it more to my taste than many other DWM runs (i.e., #44-57, #100-47).

from Doctor Who Magazine #162

Living in the Past, from Doctor Who Magazine #162 (July 1990)
story by Andy Lane, illustrations by Cam Smith

This text story clearly should have been in the previous volume, telling as it does the story of how Ace joined the Doctor between Train-Flight and Teenage Kicks! As a story, it's okay; I found it a bit dull but the climax is amazing (Ace leading a dinosaur army), and well drawn by Cam Smith. It kind of ties into the then-ongoing Mandragora storyline; the Doctor says "I'm being distracted by trivia there's something more important going on elsewhere," but it doesn't quite fit in that the Doctor thinks, "Considering the state of the TARDIS, he was lucky to have ended up on the same planet," when in Distractions he says he can't leave Earth if he wants to!

from Doctor Who Classic Comics Autumn Holiday Special

Evening's Empire, from Doctor Who Magazine #180 (Nov. 1991) and Doctor Who Classic Comics Autumn Holiday Special (Sept. 1993)
written by Andrew Cartmel, art by Richard Piers Rayner

More than any story of its era, this feels to me like Doctor Who does Vertigo. The DC Comics imprint wasn't actually launched until Mar. 1993, but of course it drew on preexisting DC comics lines, most notably The Sandman. This has the feeling on many of those stories: journeys into people's psyches, abuse both sexual and parental, mental trauma, criticism of religion, difficult page layouts and transitions. Delete the Doctor and Ace, and this could come straight out of Hellblazer or Animal Man or Black Orchid, anything trying to be Gaiman, Morrison, or Moore, but not actually written by them.

It's okay. For me, it's let down by two things. One is Richard Piers Rayners's artwork. His drawings seem reliant on photo reference in a way that often works to the detriment of the imagery. I can see the argument for why someone's mouth should be open when they are talking, but it never looks good to trace a photo of someone's open mouth. His Muriel Frost is unrecognizable as the same woman from The Mark of Mandragora, and looks like a series of an actress's glamour headshots rather than a moving, living, breathing human being. Individual images look good, but overall this doesn't flow. Though, to be honest, it is a lot like reading a mediocre Vertigo title.

I came to like it less after reading Cartmel's discussion of it in the notes, where he says he wanted to write a narrative countering adventure stories where the women are fantasies for the men. Given that, the way Frost is drawn rankles; and given that, it seems bizarre that Evening's victims are barely discernible as people, and that Ace even feels pretty peripheral; the character of Ives pretty clearly exists only to suffer a horrible fate later on. I am not sure you can write a story criticizing putting women at the margins if you yourself put women at the margins!

That said, there's stuff to like here. Cartmel, for obvious reasons, excels at portentous Sylvester McCoy dialogue; the twist about the scale of the crashed UFO is a good one; seeing Frost's home life is interesting even if it doesn't entirely come off.

from Doctor Who Magazine #183

Conflict of Interests, from Doctor Who Magazine #183 (Feb. 1992)
script by Dan Abnett, pencils by Richard Whitaker, inks by Cam Smith, letters by Caroline Steeden

Darkness, Falling was the first Doctor-less "main" strip in DWM's history, but that was a prelude to a Doctor-focused story; Conflict of Interests is a totally standalone Doctor-free tale. It follows a Foreign Hazard Duty team trying to secure some ruins for archeological study on an alien planet; they run into Sontarans. This was fine; the ending is nice, but I feel like even at seven pages it's a tad longer than it needs to be.

from Doctor Who Magazine #185

The Grief, from Doctor Who Magazine #185-87 (Apr.-June 1992)
story by Dan Abnett, pencils by Vincent Danks, inks by Adolfo Bullya and Robin Riggs, letters by Caroline Steeden

The Doctor and Ace find a group of Dan Abnett space marines—not the FHD, though—investigating a planet upon which was trapped an ancient evil. I hate it when new monsters are cheaply claimed to be in the big leagues, and I found the soldier characters hard to distinguish at first, but otherwise this is a solid piece. I particularly like how well Abnett captures the voices of both the Doctor and Ace.

from Doctor Who Magazine #189

Ravens, from Doctor Who Magazine #188-90 (July-Sept. 1992)
story by Andrew Cartmel; pencils by Brian Williamson; inks by Cam Smith and Steve Pini; letters by Caroline Steeden, Glib, and Janey

Again, there's a bit of a Doctor-Who-does-Vertigo vibe to this. But I don't have a problem with that—isn't that what Doctor Who always does, take pop culture and chews it up and spits it out in its own imitable fashion? If the show had been on screen still, you could imagine it going in this direction, and though I think that would run against its populist appeal, this was an era where there was no tv show, and the strip thus didn't have to appeal to a broad audience. I thought this was much better executed than Cartmel's similar attempt in Evening's Empire. Great dark inks by Smith and Pini really support his pretentious seventh-Doctor-as-God stuff. If there's a criticism I have, it's that if you told the whole thing in order, it'd be a bit thin for three parts; it's basically just one scene told incredibly complicatedly! But what a scene. It does very well the ordinary-people-plunged-into-horrifying-world vibe.

from Doctor Who Magazine #191

Memorial / Cat Litter, from Doctor Who Magazine #191-92 (Sept.-Oct. 1992)
scripts by Warwick Gray and Marc Platt, art by John Ridgway, letters by Kid Robson and Caroline Steeden

John Ridgway is back! I'm sure these are both solid stories on the basis of their writing, but getting Ridgway back for the first time in a while adds an inestimable something—and both of these are stories that play to his strengths. (He does a good Ace likeness, for one.) Memorial is a somber but uplifting tale; slight in terms of plot, but what it does, it does well, communicating the Doctor's horror at war. Ridgway is equally at home in horrifying space vistas and the English countryside in mourning. Cat Litter I didn't really get from a writing perspective, but if you say, "John Ridgway, Ace is trapped in the TARDIS and it's a gameboard," obviously it will look great. I didn't know I needed to see Ace running from a pair of giant D20s, but now I can't imagine why I didn't.

Stray Observations:

• Normally I don't say much about the cover art of these things, because it ranges from perfectly fine to excellent, but David Roach did not do a good job with Colonel Frost here.
• Also, I am again grumpy that the new format collections omit creator credits. You wouldn't know Vincent Danks inked some of Evening's Empire without the notes at the end; several stories thus give no credit to letterers.
• Again, the idea of a coherent DWM universe continues to build. Other than the cameos in Party Animals, I think Muriel Frost is the first time a non-companion character created (for the main strip) by one writer is brought back by another.
• Due to a number of problem, part one of Evening's Empire ran in DWM #180, but there never was a part two. The complete story eventually appeared two years later in a Doctor Who Classic Comics special. Cartmel took advantage of the story being complete in one volume to shuffle the narrative around; the original part one actually begins on page five of the complete version (spanning pp. 9-15 of this collection), if I am correct. This did confuse me a bit; by the time I got to where the opening was set, I forgot all about it, and thus wondered why Cartmel had skipped over the UNIT assault on Evening's empire.
• Because the original art was lost for a few pages, Rayner chose to redraw them for this collection, working in his 2016 style rather than his early 1990s one. The replacement art pages are a bit off (see above), but the story is surreal enough it gets away with it. If any DWM strip would randomly switch styles, it would be this one! I appreciate the inclusion of scans of the originals in the back.
• Pretty unsurprisingly, Richard Piers Rayner did no further DWM work. It turns out I have read some other stuff drawn by him: he illustrated the 1989 Swamp Thing Annual by Neil Gaiman (about Brother Power the Geek), a single 1991 issue of L.E.G.I.O.N. (written by former DWM contributor Alan Grant), and some of Tony Lee's mediocre IDW Doctor Who comics in 2011. He basically left comics after this, though, and became the official artist-in-residence for the Middlesbrough Football Club!
  
• Conflict of Interests was the last appearance of Foreign Hazard Duty. Apparently an FHD comic book was once proposed but it never came to pass; it's hard to imagine it, because the FHD never had much to offer beyond "like them out of Aliens." I think it works fine as a consistent space organization for us to see, but it's hard to envision it fronting its own book. Maybe it would have worked better with recurring characters, but each of the four FHD teams we've seen are different. Would UNIT have taken off if it was different guys each time? Also, why aren't the ones in The Grief just FHD?
• This was Robin Riggs's only DWM work. I know him best as a prolific inker at DC in the 2000s, working on titles such as Green Lantern / Green Arrow, Birds of Prey, Manhunter, and Legion of Super-Heroes. This is the fourth DWM seventh Doctor collection with art by Cam Smith; it's also the last. He would go on to do a lot of superhero work for DC Comics, including Birds of Prey in the late 1990s and most notably (to me) Action Comics in the early 2000s, being the primary inker during the time Joe Kelly was writing it. Even before I knew them as DWM contributors, both Riggs and Smith are the kind of inker where I was glad to see their name on an issue, because it meant that I was in good hands.
• Adolfo Buylla's only other DWM contribution was way back in 1981. Unusually, he had an American comics career before working on DWM, illustrating The House of Secrets and The House of Mystery back in the 1970s. This is Brian Williamson's only DWM work (though he did do the 2007 Doctor Who Storybook), but he's illustrated a number of Titan's Doctor Who titles, including The Fourth Doctor: Gaze of the Medusa.
• Warwick Gray is the man we now know as Scott Gray, who continues to work on the DWM strip up to the present. I think he's contributed at least one story to every subsequent Doctor's run, and been the primary writer on many, including the eighth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth. Imagine handing in your first ever Doctor Who comic and being told it was going to be illustrated by John Ridgway!
  
• As I alluded to above, here we begin weaving in and out of the continuity of the NAs. Eventually the official stance would be that everything since Fellow Travellers has followed on from Timewyrm; I disagree, as it contradicts the actual textual evidence. That article was published Nov. 1993, though, and doesn't seem to reflect intentions at time of publication; for example, the console room that debuted in The Good Soldier collection was used in the DWM preview for the first Timewyrm novel. Based on the references we get, it seems to be something like:
  • Evening's Empire
  • Timewyrm
  • The Grief
  • Cat's Cradle
    • Ravens
  • Memorial
  • Nightshade
  • Cat Litter
  • Love and War
• Yes, Ravens supposedly happens during Cartmel's Cat's Cradle novel, Warhead. I haven't read Warhead, though, so I don't know how that is supposed to work.
  

This post is the eighteenth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Daleks. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
12. A Cold Day in Hell!
13. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 1)
14. Nemesis of the Daleks
15. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 2)
16. The Good Soldier
17. The Incomplete Death's Head 
    

The 2021 Hugo Awards: "No Award" Statistics

Last year, I did a post analyzing various statistics in the Hugo Awards voting data, mostly relating to the use of "No Award."* I want to do that again this year, especially as this year's Hugo team provided us with more data than is usual about the use of No Award.

But first, here's all the categories ranked in terms of how many ballots were received: (Note that this does not include ballots where "No Award" was the first preference.)

As is, I believe, almost always the case (it would be interesting to go back and verify), the prose fiction categories typically do the best, and the fan endeavor categories the worst. Interestingly, Best Novel (won by Network Effect) and Best Series (won by The Muderbot Diaries) were the top two, even though those are the two categories that require the most work for a conscientious voter. This year's special category, Best Video Game (won by Hades), come in a little bit below average. I have no sense if the Business Meeting will make this one permanent going forward. (I have no interest in it myself, but I am not philosophically opposed to as I am some other categories.)

Last year, the bottom category was a third of the top one, but this year it is only a quarter. One should note that as per the World Science Fiction Society Constitution, "'No Award' shall be given whenever the total number of valid ballots cast for a specific category (excluding those cast for 'No Award' in first place) is less than twenty-five percent (25%) of the total number of final Award ballots received" (3.2.12). Best Fancast came very close this year, with just 26.8%.

Next, here are all the categories ranked by how many ballots placed No Award as first preference:

You'll note that here, it's mostly the inverse of the other graph. Best Editor (Long Form) (won by Diana M. Pho) is the highest. As I said last year, this could mean two things: "First, it could mean that you find the concept of the category invalid. Every year, I vote No Award for Best Series, Best Editor, and a couple other categories, for example, and leave the rest of my ballot blank. I have some fundamental disagreements with the premises of those categories, and do not think they should be awarded. (Very few Hugo voters agree with me, though, clearly.) It could also mean that you just found everything in that category subpar [in which case you might rank finalists below that point anyway]." The other thing to note, I think, is that Best Video Game is a little higher than we might expect by its placement on the first graph.

One interesting piece of information given on the results is how many ballots ranked No Award above the eventual winner. This could mean 1) the ballot just No Awarded the entire category, or it could mean that 2) on that voter's ballot, No Award was placed higher than the winner. (This is reported because if more ballots place No Award above the winner than placed the winner above No Award, No Award wins, even if it doesn't on the normal counting method. I don't think this has ever actually come to pass, and I think it would require an incredibly polarizing winner for it to do so. This is called the "run-off.")

So here are all the categories ranked in terms of how many ballots had No Award ranked above the eventual winner:

This lets us identify particularly controversial winners.This year, though, it's not too different from the other above graphs.

We can highlight controversial winners even more by subtracting the number of people who ranked No Award first from the number of people who ranked it above the winner. So this shows how many ballots had No Award in 2nd place or lower, but above the winner:

What this reveals, I would argue, is how many voters believed a category had some basic level of validity (so they didn't put No Award first for whatever reason), but didn't like what actually ended up winning. There's nothing as standout as last year's Best Related Work win, but Best Fanzine (won by Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together) comes out on top, and this year's Best Related Work (won by Beowulf: A New Translation) comes in next. On the other hand, there were just two people who placed No Award above Sara Felix in Best Fan Artist!

Last year I posited the existence of what I've come to think of as the "No Award Curve," an inverse relationship from the total number of ballots cast in a category and the number of first-preference No Award votes. I asked, "Does it indicate that the bigger categories are bigger for a reason, i.e., people view them as more legitimate?" It seems to hold up this year:

As I did last year, what I find most interesting about it are the categories that are off the curve, where more people voted No Award than you would expect given the size of the category. In the past, Best Series has been an outlier, but this year it's right where it should be. Everyone sure does love Murderbot, I guess! The most noticeable outlier is Best Video Game: there is a sizeable contingent of Hugo voters who do not believe this category should exist. Not as big of outliers are Best Related Work and Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form). It's nice to have validated my belief that The Old Guard did not deserve a Hugo.

Last year, this is where I wrapped up, but this year's Hugo team provided us with extra data: they ran the run-off test when determining every place, not just first. So we know not only how many people placed No Award above the first place winner of each category, but the second, and the third, and so on. So this year, we can identify not just particularly controversial winners, but controversial finalists.

I experimented with a number of ways of showing this, but ultimately settled on plotting the number of ballots ranking a finalist above No Award against the number of ballots ranking No Award above a finalist:

You'll see that in 95.0% of cases, no more than 150 ballots ranked No Award above a finalist. Indeed, 92.4% were within one standard deviation of the mean. The outliers were:

Category	Finalist	Ballots with No Award above Finalist
Video Game	Last of Us pt. 2	136
Semiprozine	Strange Horizons	139
Novelette	"Helicopter Story"	148
Dramatic (Long)	Tenet	166
Dramatic (Long)	Eurovision Song Contest	200
Related Work	Last Bronycon	211
Related Work	FIYAHCON	257
Related Work	CoNZealand Fringe	265
Related Work	"GRRM Can Fuck Off into the Sun"	358

So these are this year's controversial finalists. I can't comment to all, but in most, the reasoning seems pretty obvious. "Helicopter Story," as I have said, was pretty controversial; one notes that it got the most first-place preferences in Best Novelette and the most placing No Award above it. I guess people really did not care for Tenet or Eurovision Song Contest; the latter does not surprise me but the former kind of does.

What is particularly notable is how high all the Best Related Work finalist land... and indeed, all of these except The Last Bronycon I placed below No Award myself. A significant contingent of Hugo voters were clearly displeased with what Hugo nominators got onto the ballot in this category, even though "George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off into the Sun" came in fourth, a full 24.2% of voters in this category ranked No Award above it.

I think, though, there are more variables here than I can account for as an amateur with a spreadsheet! I'd be curious to see things like, "what finalist got more No Award votes than we would expect based on its rank and number of ballots cast?" But that is pretty far beyond me!

* In the process of making this post, I realized I made an error in last year's: what is listed on the official Hugo voting statistics as "Cast Ballots" for each category excludes ballots cast that listed No Award in first place. This year I added those back in when calculating percentages.

Doctor Who: Roots by George Mann, James Peaty, I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, Wellington Diaz, Klebs Junior, Leandro Casco, et al.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling, Vol 2: Roots

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: September 2021

Writers: George Mann & James Peaty with Vince Pavey
Artists: I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, Wellington Diaz, Klebs Junior & Leandro Casco with Pasquale Qualano
Colorists: Triona Farrell, Stefani Renne & Thiago Ribiero

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

Longtime readers of my reviews of Titan's Doctor Who comics will know that The Eleventh Doctor has consistently been my favorite of their three-then-four-then-three ongoings. For its first seven volumes, it was always written by Rob Williams and one other writer (Al Ewing for "Year One," Si Spurrier for "Year Two," Alex Paknadel for vol 1 of "Year Three"); they would typically cowrite the opening and closing story, and then alternate the stories in between, most of which were just one issue. I don't know how much collaboration there was, but they certainly seemed like a seamless whole, and the succession of done-in-ones allowed for a lot of variety. More than any other Titan ongoings, The Eleventh Doctor has felt like comics first and foremost, not a tv show on the comic page, much like the early years of Doctor Who Magazine's strip.

Year Three, alas, breaks the pattern. For the first time in the run of The Eleventh Doctor, we have a collected edition with no Rob Williams content, and this volume doesn't bring back Alex Paknadel from vol 1 of The Sapling, either. And to add insult to injury, the writer primarily used instead is George Mann. Now, Mann has gotten better than he was, even if he's not great, but I didn't find him very suited to the style of The Eleventh Doctor; neither is James Peaty, who handles the other of the four issues collected here. (There's also a four-page backup story by Vince Pavey.) Neither writer can get the short story down; in all of the examples collected here, the Doctor discovers a problem, and then defeats it right way, much too easily. Too long is spent on the build-up, keeping there from being an effective twist or turn at the climax; in Mann's "Fooled," for example, the Doctor just takes the villain's device and breaks it, and that's it; in Peaty's "Time of the Ood," things go similarly easy. Even when Mann has two issues, as in "The Memory Feast," we still have one-and-a-half issues of running around before we get to a quick resolution. (Overload the thingy, that good old Doctor Who standby.)

I also didn't find the engagement with the ongoing Sapling arc very satisfying. The Sapling himself is a blank slate of a character, the supposed memory crisis that the Doctor and Alice are experiencing doesn't really seem to make much of a practical difference, and though two of the three stories are about memory, they thematically are not up to much.

What does work is the art of I. N. J. Culbard. He's worked on two previous volumes of The Eleventh Doctor, but this is the first where he's made an impression on me, and it's a strong one; he draws three of the four issues here, and he has a somewhat Mike Mignolaesque style, even if it's all his own. Very atmospheric, pairs well with the coloring, and as The Eleventh Doctor does at its best, it feels like comics, not comics-as-tv (or tv-as-comics). I see that for the final volume he'll be back, and paired with Alex Paknadel, which should hopefully be an excellent combination.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: Free Comic Book Day 2017

Reading Roundup Wrapup: December 2021

Pick of the month: Kindred / Fledgling / Collected Stories by Octavia E. Butler. This volume collects all of Butler's non-series work; Kindred and a couple of the stories I had read before, while Fledgling and the rest were new. This was my third time reading Kindred, and it was as strong as ever. The rest was variable, but well worth reading, as always with Butler. I try to not pick rereads for this "honor," but this one deserved it anyway.

All books read:

1. Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor: A New Beginning by Jody Houser, Rachael Stott, et al.
2. Kindred / Fledgling / Collected Stories by Octavia E. Butler
3. The Sleeze Brothers File by John Carnell, Andy Lanning, et al.
4. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
5. The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by John R. Neill
6. Little Wizard Stories of Oz by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by John R. Neill
7. Leviathan Falls: Book Nine of The Expanse by James S.A. Corey
8. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum
9. Burning Brightly: 50 Years of Novacon edited by Ian Whates 

Not my greatest month. The first few I got through pretty quickly, but the final Expanse novel coincided with seven days of child illness and finals week, so I had very little time or focus left for pleasure reading. Thank goodness Son One suddenly became interested in the Oz books again, giving me three books I wouldn't have had otherwise! I actually did also finish The Man in the High Castle before the month's end, but because I read it in an omnibus, I don't count it as a complete book until I read the other three!

All books acquired:

1. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Armageddon's Arrow by Dayton Ward
2. Star Trek: Coda, Book III: Oblivion's Gate by David Mack
3. Leviathan Falls: Book Nine of The Expanse by James S.A. Corey
4. The Age of Chaos: Collected comic strips from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine by Colin Baker, John M Burns, Barrie Mitchell, Paul Cornell, Gareth Roberts, Lee Sullivan, et al.
5. Transformers: Space Pirates by Simon Furman, Dougie Braithwaite, Bryan Hitch, Dan Reed, Lee Sullivan, et al.
6. Doctor Who: The Wintertime Paradox by Dave Rudden
7. Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
8. A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker
9. Hearts of Oak by Eddie Robson
10. Maxwell's Demon by Steven Hall
11. Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens
12. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

As always, December was a month of many acquisitions. Surprisingly, less than half were Christmas presents: #7-10 and 12.

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 678 (up 5)

Doctor Who: The Terror Beneath by George Mann, James Peaty, Mariano Laclaustra, Warren Pleece, et al.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor: Time Trials, Vol 1: The Terror Beneath

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: September 2021

Writers: George Mann & James Peaty
Artists: Mariano Laclaustra & Warren Pleece with Fer Centurion
Colorists: Carlos Cabrera & Hernán Cabrera
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

"Year Three" of Titan's Twelfth Doctor ongoing has the umbrella title "Time Trials," but no kind of ongoing storyline is introduced in its first volume. Indeed, my guess is that the umbrella title is so vague because there won't be one, that kind of thing being much harder to weave into an ongoing that's beholden to what's happening on screen. (The twelfth Doctor was still on screen when these comics came out; "Year One" did have a minor ongoing plot, but "Year Two" didn't.) Like the last couple volumes of Year Two, the Doctor is still companionless here, but he does pick up one-off companion Hattie from The Twist for a perfectly okay outing about spooky underwater things in a seaside village. Mann has settled in as a serviceable writer of twelfth Doctor comics: rarely wretched, but in no way does the twelfth Doctor looking at the "camera" and saying, "I always thought the Jon Pertwee era was the best one" capture what the twelfth Doctor era was like on screen, which often pushed at the boundaries of screen Doctor Who to such an extent as to irritate me. Just try to be interesting, Mann! I do think Mariano Laclaustra is good at atmosphere, and he's probably this comic's best artist who wasn't Rachael Stott.

There's also a one-issue story by James Peaty where the Doctor lands in a town terrified by a floating smile. Warren Pleece turns in some excellent, disconcerting art, but the story itself is entirely predictable and obvious.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling: Roots