Short trips
Sep. 23rd, 2005 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI've been writing up these reviews slowly, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
doyle_sb4 just reminded me to post them. They are for the Doctor Who short story anthologies, Short Trips published by Big Finish. Unlike the novels, they're unashamedly fanficcy, with all sorts of AU scenarios and clever ideas. Of course, some of them are awful, but some are brilliant.
I have three of them, the first of which is Short Trips and Side Steps and is currently lurking at the bottom of my "books to take to Oxford" box, so this isn't too detailed. It's a thick paperback, now out of print, and is mostly standard adventure stories. My favourite stories in it are Special Occasions, which features Four and Romana II landing on a planet made of sweets and whipped cream (very, very shippy) and Nothing At The End Of The Lane, which is scary. It's so cleverly written that there are two interpretations. Either it's a story about a reality where Susan Foreman was an ordinary girl who was being abused by her grandfather; Barbara was too late to save her and tried to deal with the trauma by imagining Susan and her grandfather were really travellers from the future; or, it's a story about the Doctor, Susan and Barbara (and Ian) in which Barbara is hurt by an alien plant and hallucinates a life where the Doctor wasn't real. No way of knowing.
Another one, Monsters, is also good - Seven and Ace attempt to save a girl called Kirsty from her mother, who (apparently) has Munchausen's by proxy. It's terribly dark and twisted, though, as so much about Seven seems to be.
All the rest are good, but none stand out.
The next one I acquired, the Christmas edition, is the best. All the stories are Christmas themed and they are all very good. I like a series of stories about UNIT Christmas parties - one of which is blatant Doctor/Master slash - that culminate in a hysterically surreal account of Four pulling the cheese and pineapple cubes off the sticks. "Harry assumed it was a Time Lord thing and left him to it."
There's also a couple featuring Four and Romana II, and are, as you would expect, well-timed comedies. One of them involves Four taking up autograph-collecting and then accidentally gatecrashing the recording of Do They Know It's Christmas?, and then there is, naturally, an alien invasion - all very good and very funny.
But the other one, while it starts off just as light and comic, actually makes me cry. I'm just going to give away the plot entirely here, because it's that kind of story. The plot revolves around Four explaining the broken chameleon circuit to Romana, and the two of them discovering that the last disguise the TARDIS used before getting stuck as a police box was a red post box. In which someone had posted a letter. Being Time Lords, they are of course horrified at the idea of changing history and steam it open.
It has a Christmas card inside it with a friendly letter that talks about the birth of a baby, with photograph attached, addressed to someone called Helen Thompson. Four immediately identifies her as a famous early twenty-first century biologist, who might not have gone into the correct career had she not received the letter. So they reproduce the card, letter and photograph and try to repost it, and annoy the staff at WHSmith and frighten innocent passers-by and bicker continuously while all the time doing their best to avoid being seen by the first Doctor and Susan. And I giggled madly, because they're so much fun.
And the Doctor gets it wrong! The famous biologist was Helen Thomson - without a "P".
So far so hoopy, and then the last four lines make me want to cry. The real Helen Thompson is an old lady, who has outlived her friends and been forgotten by her family, and she's living alone and desperately lonely. But because of Four and Romana, on her very last Christmas alive, she has one card and one photograph on her mantelpiece rather than nothing at all.
While most of the stories are good fun - another one has Five visiting Sarah Jane, and very intriguing, and Five and Turlough go Christmas shopping for Tegan with predictably hilarious results - and there's very few that I actively dislike, it's that one with Four and Romana II, and one other, that are worth the price of admission, so to speak. This second story is thoroughly chilling. As far as I can tell, it may not even feature the Doctor at all - there is one character who may be the Doctor in disguise, but it's all very ambiguous - and it haunted me.
Basically, it shows us a world very like our own, perhaps a hundred years in the future, where an editor of a magazine is running a competition. The magazine is about an unnamed television show, science fiction originally for children but wildly popular with adults for all it's been off air for years, and the readers are being asked a question: if they could go back in time and change one thing about the show, what would they change?
They get lots of entries, and the winner of the competition gets a particularly special prize - the editor and his companion go back in time and change that one thing, courtesy of the experimental Time Travel Bureau, who are treating this whole thing as a case study. They go back and change things and return to the present, where of course no-one believes them - the world has changed and their memories with it.
So the next year, they hold the competition again, and they do it once again. This time the aged actors remember mysterious strangers from the future whispering in their ears, and so their promises are proven, in a way. But the next year, when they do it again, the editor is beginning to doubt himself. He thinks the show is changing for the better, but he's afraid of what can be done with the technology on a grander scale, what governments and dictatorships can do with it, so he puts it to a stop. Just once more.
So they go back one last time, with another winning competition entry. They change a couple of lines of dialogue in the first episode. Then they come back, and everything has changed. The magazine no longer exists. The editor and his companion are the only person who remember the show. Looking it up, it did start up, ran a couple of years, but never really had that certain magic. People thought it was dull. So the editor sets out to find the Time Travel Bureau, only to discover they don't exist either. As he explains it to his own unseen listener, the pioneers were childhood fans of the television show about the alien time-traveller and his granddaughter, and without it were never inspired to do their research, and the editor is left with a feeling that all he ever did was "destroy something beautiful."
See, it's fanfic, basically.
The third one, A Day In The Life, is one calendar day in the life of the Doctor. I can't write about these stories because they are all connected in a way that is only revealed in the last story. Suffice it to say, it features one story where Four runs into an ordinary family's living room and calmly steals their television in front of their eyes. Such fun.
In short, I recommend them. Really, such fun.
doyle_sb4 just reminded me to post them. They are for the Doctor Who short story anthologies, Short Trips published by Big Finish. Unlike the novels, they're unashamedly fanficcy, with all sorts of AU scenarios and clever ideas. Of course, some of them are awful, but some are brilliant. I have three of them, the first of which is Short Trips and Side Steps and is currently lurking at the bottom of my "books to take to Oxford" box, so this isn't too detailed. It's a thick paperback, now out of print, and is mostly standard adventure stories. My favourite stories in it are Special Occasions, which features Four and Romana II landing on a planet made of sweets and whipped cream (very, very shippy) and Nothing At The End Of The Lane, which is scary. It's so cleverly written that there are two interpretations. Either it's a story about a reality where Susan Foreman was an ordinary girl who was being abused by her grandfather; Barbara was too late to save her and tried to deal with the trauma by imagining Susan and her grandfather were really travellers from the future; or, it's a story about the Doctor, Susan and Barbara (and Ian) in which Barbara is hurt by an alien plant and hallucinates a life where the Doctor wasn't real. No way of knowing.
Another one, Monsters, is also good - Seven and Ace attempt to save a girl called Kirsty from her mother, who (apparently) has Munchausen's by proxy. It's terribly dark and twisted, though, as so much about Seven seems to be.
All the rest are good, but none stand out.
The next one I acquired, the Christmas edition, is the best. All the stories are Christmas themed and they are all very good. I like a series of stories about UNIT Christmas parties - one of which is blatant Doctor/Master slash - that culminate in a hysterically surreal account of Four pulling the cheese and pineapple cubes off the sticks. "Harry assumed it was a Time Lord thing and left him to it."
There's also a couple featuring Four and Romana II, and are, as you would expect, well-timed comedies. One of them involves Four taking up autograph-collecting and then accidentally gatecrashing the recording of Do They Know It's Christmas?, and then there is, naturally, an alien invasion - all very good and very funny.
But the other one, while it starts off just as light and comic, actually makes me cry. I'm just going to give away the plot entirely here, because it's that kind of story. The plot revolves around Four explaining the broken chameleon circuit to Romana, and the two of them discovering that the last disguise the TARDIS used before getting stuck as a police box was a red post box. In which someone had posted a letter. Being Time Lords, they are of course horrified at the idea of changing history and steam it open.
It has a Christmas card inside it with a friendly letter that talks about the birth of a baby, with photograph attached, addressed to someone called Helen Thompson. Four immediately identifies her as a famous early twenty-first century biologist, who might not have gone into the correct career had she not received the letter. So they reproduce the card, letter and photograph and try to repost it, and annoy the staff at WHSmith and frighten innocent passers-by and bicker continuously while all the time doing their best to avoid being seen by the first Doctor and Susan. And I giggled madly, because they're so much fun.
And the Doctor gets it wrong! The famous biologist was Helen Thomson - without a "P".
So far so hoopy, and then the last four lines make me want to cry. The real Helen Thompson is an old lady, who has outlived her friends and been forgotten by her family, and she's living alone and desperately lonely. But because of Four and Romana, on her very last Christmas alive, she has one card and one photograph on her mantelpiece rather than nothing at all.
While most of the stories are good fun - another one has Five visiting Sarah Jane, and very intriguing, and Five and Turlough go Christmas shopping for Tegan with predictably hilarious results - and there's very few that I actively dislike, it's that one with Four and Romana II, and one other, that are worth the price of admission, so to speak. This second story is thoroughly chilling. As far as I can tell, it may not even feature the Doctor at all - there is one character who may be the Doctor in disguise, but it's all very ambiguous - and it haunted me.
Basically, it shows us a world very like our own, perhaps a hundred years in the future, where an editor of a magazine is running a competition. The magazine is about an unnamed television show, science fiction originally for children but wildly popular with adults for all it's been off air for years, and the readers are being asked a question: if they could go back in time and change one thing about the show, what would they change?
They get lots of entries, and the winner of the competition gets a particularly special prize - the editor and his companion go back in time and change that one thing, courtesy of the experimental Time Travel Bureau, who are treating this whole thing as a case study. They go back and change things and return to the present, where of course no-one believes them - the world has changed and their memories with it.
So the next year, they hold the competition again, and they do it once again. This time the aged actors remember mysterious strangers from the future whispering in their ears, and so their promises are proven, in a way. But the next year, when they do it again, the editor is beginning to doubt himself. He thinks the show is changing for the better, but he's afraid of what can be done with the technology on a grander scale, what governments and dictatorships can do with it, so he puts it to a stop. Just once more.
So they go back one last time, with another winning competition entry. They change a couple of lines of dialogue in the first episode. Then they come back, and everything has changed. The magazine no longer exists. The editor and his companion are the only person who remember the show. Looking it up, it did start up, ran a couple of years, but never really had that certain magic. People thought it was dull. So the editor sets out to find the Time Travel Bureau, only to discover they don't exist either. As he explains it to his own unseen listener, the pioneers were childhood fans of the television show about the alien time-traveller and his granddaughter, and without it were never inspired to do their research, and the editor is left with a feeling that all he ever did was "destroy something beautiful."
See, it's fanfic, basically.
The third one, A Day In The Life, is one calendar day in the life of the Doctor. I can't write about these stories because they are all connected in a way that is only revealed in the last story. Suffice it to say, it features one story where Four runs into an ordinary family's living room and calmly steals their television in front of their eyes. Such fun.
In short, I recommend them. Really, such fun.
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no subject
on 2005-09-23 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-09-23 11:08 pm (UTC)(Also: not meaning to be an lj-stalker, but I read some other posts while I was here, and saw you're about to head off for your first Michaelmas. I came up to Oxford in 93, and haven't managed to leave yet. You're in for an awesome experience - enjoy!)
no subject
on 2005-09-23 11:14 pm (UTC)Ooh, details, woman!
And you've convinced me I need the Christmas one now. *heads to Amazon*
no subject
on 2005-09-23 11:52 pm (UTC)You must read it! There's another story that is - not implied, is - Eight/Four. In verse. It made my brain hurt.
no subject
on 2005-09-23 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-09-23 11:55 pm (UTC)Aww, thanks! I'm really looking forward to it. Which college were you at?
no subject
on 2005-09-24 12:44 am (UTC)::is agog::
Needless to say, I would welcome more details about the Four/Romana stories!
no subject
on 2005-09-24 12:45 am (UTC)::boggles::
no subject
on 2005-09-24 01:00 am (UTC)The second one, though, is called "Do You Love Anyone Enough?" and is sheer brilliance. The universe is ending. The galaxies are fading away. Standing somewhere safe, Four and Romana II are observing. He gives her a tiny, gift-wrapped package.
"It's the last Rolo in the universe."
"You old romantic," said Romana.
The third one is more bickering - they're delivering Christmas presents to the Brigadier, and it's very sweet - and the last one is creepy. Romana falls asleep, and the Doctor slips away and ends up trapped without her knowing.
no subject
on 2005-09-24 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-09-24 01:09 am (UTC)Heeeeee! It's like when the Doctor tries to steal the sonic screwdriver Romana made for herself...
"It's the last Rolo in the universe."
"You old romantic," said Romana.
Awwwwwww!
I'm curious about the full-length Four/Romana II novels - I know there's one called Death in Venice, and I'm wondering if it's actually set in Venice, which would be cool!
no subject
on 2005-09-24 05:13 am (UTC)And that time-travel meta one is rather scary.
no subject
on 2005-09-24 05:42 am (UTC)4th w/Romana 1 novels:
Tomb of Valdemar (BBC)
The Shadow of Weng-Chiang (Virgin MA)
Heart of TARDIS (BBC)
4th w/Romana 2 novels:
The Romance of Crime (Virgin MA)
The English Way of Death (Virgin MA)
The Well-Mannered War (Virgin MA, up as a free Ebook (http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/ebooks/index.shtml) at the BBC's Who site)
Festival of Death (BBC)
As a general rule, 4th w/Romana novels generally tend to be good.
no subject
on 2005-09-24 06:32 am (UTC)Here's the book cover I saw of Death in Venice (though I haven't been able to find any other references to it online, so who knows what the deal is with it?). Still, a cool cover!
no subject
on 2005-09-24 06:39 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-09-24 07:21 am (UTC)Shame. A Fourth/Romana 2 story in Venice sounds interesting...
no subject
on 2005-09-24 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-09-24 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-09-24 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-09-24 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-09-28 02:33 pm (UTC)