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XXXIII: John Peel, Doctor Who: The Chase
Better dj than novelist...
There was a point when - in fact there were a number of points when - I had all the Doctor Who novelisations and I suspect going off to university was the point that stopped being true. Or perhaps my wrong-headed preference (cf. George Lazenby or Roger Moore?) for Colin Baker to Peter Davison and certainly to Sylvester McCoy (caused by seeing him in a play some years earlier) put me off the series altogether. I now have a couple of gaps caused by various moves (they may yet show up in an unexpected box) but more to the point caused by more being written. I suspect these are mostly Hartnell stories - as I'm pretty sure I had a complete run from something like "The War Games" to somewhere in Colin Baker's run (Pre "Trial of a Time Lord"). I've even picked up the odd one - although I have no up to date haves list to work on. Hence I found a pile in Oxfam in Deal, one of which I planned to read in the bath once I got home.
Either I'm a slower reader or take shorter baths than I used to.
I've never seen the original - but it was one I wanted to: third dalek story, appearance by the Beatles, the Doctor saying happy Christmas, mechanoids, Marie Celeste, Frankenstein and Dracula together at last, first appearance of Steven, goodbye to Ian and Barbara...
I suppose it's the style I'm disappointed by. A decade after publication, and forty years after first broadcast, several generations have grown up, and why would kids of today want to read it? Not the book's fault, but the rupture between OS and NS makes it seem like a different universe. With the spectacles of nostalgia I felt I was being written down to in a way that earlier novelisations didn't. The omniscient viewpoint annoys me. As does the number of times characters have to think other people were dead. A disappointment
XXXIV: Ian Rankin, Black and Blue (1997)
I started this on seeing it was to be a Radio 4 Saturday play (in two parts), but it took longer than played to read. Fortunately I have good ears so can still listen.
This is a kitchen sink plotter - I think the longest novel in the sequence so far - involving old case, cold case, new case, linking case. At the heart of the novel in the real Bible John case: Patricia Docker, Jemima McDonald and Helen Puttock were all strangled in Glasgow, by a man who came to be nicknamed Bible John but who escaped capture. Rebus wants to catch him, and links him to copycat crimes in contemporary Scotland. Meanwhile a case solved by his mentor in the 1970s is looking like a miscarriage of justice which he at least had approved of, and he is under investigation. Rebus has to solve the murders, keep out of the clutches of his superiors, avoid the media and stay ahead of the drug dealers as Bible John comes out of retirement.
Enjoyable, and interesting to see Rebus try to reform his own character. But perhaps more of Bible John was necessary - it felt a little tacked on.
Better dj than novelist...
There was a point when - in fact there were a number of points when - I had all the Doctor Who novelisations and I suspect going off to university was the point that stopped being true. Or perhaps my wrong-headed preference (cf. George Lazenby or Roger Moore?) for Colin Baker to Peter Davison and certainly to Sylvester McCoy (caused by seeing him in a play some years earlier) put me off the series altogether. I now have a couple of gaps caused by various moves (they may yet show up in an unexpected box) but more to the point caused by more being written. I suspect these are mostly Hartnell stories - as I'm pretty sure I had a complete run from something like "The War Games" to somewhere in Colin Baker's run (Pre "Trial of a Time Lord"). I've even picked up the odd one - although I have no up to date haves list to work on. Hence I found a pile in Oxfam in Deal, one of which I planned to read in the bath once I got home.
Either I'm a slower reader or take shorter baths than I used to.
I've never seen the original - but it was one I wanted to: third dalek story, appearance by the Beatles, the Doctor saying happy Christmas, mechanoids, Marie Celeste, Frankenstein and Dracula together at last, first appearance of Steven, goodbye to Ian and Barbara...
I suppose it's the style I'm disappointed by. A decade after publication, and forty years after first broadcast, several generations have grown up, and why would kids of today want to read it? Not the book's fault, but the rupture between OS and NS makes it seem like a different universe. With the spectacles of nostalgia I felt I was being written down to in a way that earlier novelisations didn't. The omniscient viewpoint annoys me. As does the number of times characters have to think other people were dead. A disappointment
XXXIV: Ian Rankin, Black and Blue (1997)
I started this on seeing it was to be a Radio 4 Saturday play (in two parts), but it took longer than played to read. Fortunately I have good ears so can still listen.
This is a kitchen sink plotter - I think the longest novel in the sequence so far - involving old case, cold case, new case, linking case. At the heart of the novel in the real Bible John case: Patricia Docker, Jemima McDonald and Helen Puttock were all strangled in Glasgow, by a man who came to be nicknamed Bible John but who escaped capture. Rebus wants to catch him, and links him to copycat crimes in contemporary Scotland. Meanwhile a case solved by his mentor in the 1970s is looking like a miscarriage of justice which he at least had approved of, and he is under investigation. Rebus has to solve the murders, keep out of the clutches of his superiors, avoid the media and stay ahead of the drug dealers as Bible John comes out of retirement.
Enjoyable, and interesting to see Rebus try to reform his own character. But perhaps more of Bible John was necessary - it felt a little tacked on.
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