Sean Jumps the Shark: 'Scream of the Shalka' for October

Hello loyal listeners! Apologies for the lateness of this episode and this post. Still, if you've not yet listened, our September episode on Marc Platt's Downtime is still available for your listening delectation and amusement.

Marc Platt is not the only writer who novelized his own work for the book ranges, of course. Barry Letts did the same when he adapted The Ghosts of N-Space, and for our October episode, we'll be reading Paul Cornell's adaptation of his own script for Scream of the Shalka, which was recently released on DVD. From the back cover:

When the Doctor lands his TARDIS in the Lancaster town of Lannet, in the present day, he finds that something is terribly wrong. The people are scared. They don't like going out onto the streets at night, they don't like making too much noise, and they certainly don't like strangers asking too many questions.

Scream of the Shalka is something of an oddity, of course, as it was originally intended to be, for lack of a better term, canonical. The Ninth Doctor portrayed in the story was meant to carry on directly from the Eighth as seen in the 1996 TV Movie. However, the new series was announced before Scream of the Shalka went live, meaning that the "Shalka Doctor" was quickly forgotten in favor of the new canonical Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston. But more to the point: is the book any good? We won't be watching the story itself beforehand, so, as with Downtime, we'll be judging the book as a book. We hope you'll read along and do the same.

For further reading (SPOILERS ahead, as always), you can check out:
Scream of the Shalka at the TARDIS Library
Friend of the show Robert Smith?'s review at The Cloister Library 
But it for your Kindle!

P.S.--In case you're confused as to why we're reading a Past Doctor Adventure when the rotor should have Sean selecting a Virgin New Adventure, well, it's mainly so we could do Shalka as soon as possible after it came out on DVD. For November, we'll do a NA, and December will see us reading an Eighth Doctor Adventure. However, it might be time to re-examine the rotor and see if it couldn't be tweaked...

Erik Cheats and Picks Downtime

As the headline makes clear, I (Erik here) have made a slight cheat in my selection for September. Oh, but before we get too far into that, here's where you can download our August episode on Trevor Baxendale's Fear of the Dark. Also, here's a complete list  of all the novels being reprinted as part of the 50th Anniversary Collection. Who knows? If they sell well enough, maybe more of these books will be brought back into print. Stranger things have happened, like that time I was in a completely black room and I thought I saw...

Where was I? Oh, yes--the cheat! Well, it's not really a cheat, I suppose, but we do tend to try to rotate through the various Doctors when we select our books for both the PDA and the VMA ranges. While we've done an equal number of books starring all of the previous classic Doctors (1-6), and I was technically free to pick a book featuring any of them, it's been a year since we've done a book featuring the Second Doctor, and I was leaning in that direction, until I got a mischievous twinkle in my eye and decided, instead, to pick Downtime. And I'm sure the silver control ball I found the other day in no way influenced my decision.

If you're unfamiliar with its history, Downtime was a direct-to-video, independently produced, Doctor Who spin-off made by some long-time fans that featured both actors from the series--Elizabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney, and Deborah Watling, among others--and behind-the-scenes people with experience of working on Who: director Christopher Barry and writer Marc Platt, plus Ian Levine, about whom, the less said, perhaps the better. It was not officially licensed by the BBC, however, and therefore couldn't feature the character of the Doctor or the TARDIS, which Platt worked around by focusing the story on other characters to which they could secure the rights. When the time came to novelize his script for the Virgin Missing Adventure range, Platt seemingly saw no reason to insert the Doctor, and so it is the only book in that range not to focus around any incarnation of the Doctor, though several apparently make cameo appearances.

From the back cover:

Across the room, in a high-backed leather chair, Victoria saw the old man from the reading room. His face was curiously young for someone so long dead.

In 1966 the Doctor defeated the Great Intelligence, but he knew it wasn’t a final victory. And his companion Victoria, whose mind had once hosted the evil entity, might still fall prey to its power.

Now it seems that his fears are justified. In a Tibetan monastery, the monks display unearthly powers - UNIT are investigating. A new university has opened in London with a secret agenda that may threaten the whole country. Victoria, abandoned in an age very different from her own, and haunted by visions of a father she refuses to believe is dead, is slipping into despair and madness. But are the visions which plague her really hallucinations? Or has the Great Intelligence once again made Earth its target for invasion?

So, join is for that discussion in September! Happy reading!

In the meantime, you can email us at dwbcpodcast@gmail.com & follow us on Twitter: the podcast--@DWBCpodcast, Erik--@sjcAustenite, and Sean--@tardistavern.

Independence Day (No, Not the Movie!)

Our review of Paul Magrs' The Scarlet Empress can be downloaded here.  We were tickled pink to hear that Mr. Magrs actually listened to our podcast and described us as "camp".  That's an in-joke that you may or may not get, but we'll just leave it at that.

For April of 2013 we go back to a traditional Seventh Doctor and Ace story (as opposed to the grumpy manipulative Doctor and the angst-ridden Ace we know from the Virgin New Adventures).  It's the BBC Past Doctor Adventure Independence Day by Peter Darvill-Evans.  From the back cover:

'Danger is my middle name,' Ace said, 'or it would be if I had more than one.  I can look after myself these days, you know.'

Freedom.  Liberty.  Free will.  Independence.  Choice.  Everyone wants to be free.  But at what point does freedom become irresponsibility?  What happens when one person's choice causes another's oppression?

The Doctor's on a simple mission to return a communications device he borrowed years previously.  Being a Time Lord, he can return it before anyone misses it.

But events in the Mendeb system have moved more quickly than the Doctor estimated, and he lands in the ruins of a civilisation devastated by mysterious invaders.

Darvill-Evans is arguably the single most important person in the history of Doctor Who novels.  In 1989, he oversaw the Target novelizations of the televised stories, and then went on to work for Virgin, where he created launched the New Adventures (he even wrote one himself, Deceit).  Aside from that book and Independence Day, he also wrote the BBC Past Doctors Adventure Asylum, featuring the Fourth Doctor and Nyssa.

Asylum, published in 2001, was the last thing Darvill-Evans published.  However, you can catch him on the DVD extra, "Doctor Forever! -- Love and War" on the recently-released special edition of "The Ark of Space".

Fun links:

"Independence Day" on the Doctor Who Ratings Guide

Peter Darvill-Evans' Wikipedia Entry

"Independence Day" on Amazon  (Hey, it's affordable!)

"Independence Day" at the Doctor Who Reference Guide  (Spoilers, sweetie)

Email us and tell us how much you love Erik's laugh at dwbcpodcast@gmail.com, look for us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter via @dwbcpodcast.  You can also follow Erik via @sjcaustenite and Sean via @tardistavern.

The War Games, Part 2?

You can listen to our discussion of John Peel's War of the Daleks by downloading it here.  If your looking for the tasty-goodness of a BBC Past Adventure, then you needn't wait much longer, as our next selection is World Game, a Second Doctor adventure by Terrance Dicks.  From the back cover:

The Doctor has been captured and put on trial by his own people -- accused of their greatest crime: interfering with the affairs of other peoples and planets.  He is sentenced to exile on Earth.  That much is history.  But now the truth can be told -- the Doctor did not go straight into exile.  First the Time Lords have a task for him.

From the trenches of the Great War to the terrors of the French Revolution, the Doctor finds himself on a mission he does not want with a companion he does not like, his life threatened at every turn.  Will the Doctor survive to serve his sentence?  Or will this adventure prove to be his Waterloo?

Regardless of what you think of Terrance Dicks' talent as a writer (listen to our review of his The Eight Doctors here), you have to admit that this one sounds pretty compelling.  World Game is slotted nicely between "The War Games" and "Spearhead from Space", a moment in Doctor Who history some fans refer to as "Season 6B", a period created from the fallout over debates about exactly when "The Two Doctors" took place.  (Jamie never travels alone with the Doctor, yet they do in "The Two Doctors"...so when in the name of canon did that story take place?)

Grab a copy of World Game and join us near the end of August!

Fun links:

"World Game" on the Doctor Who Ratings Guide

"World Game" on the Doctor Who Reference Guide  (Spoilers, sweetie!)

Purchase it on Amazon.com 

Terrance Dicks' Wikipedia Entry 

Business Unusual in April

Our sparkling review of Steve Lyons' The Crooked World can now be found here.  Thank you to James of The Doctor Who Podcast for providing a wonderful reading of the opening passage.

Within days (yes, this posting is going up rather late, and I apologize to those of you sitting on the edge of your seats) we will be posting the review of April's selection, which is Business Unusual by Gary Russell.  From the back cover:

A security force with no official identity... a managing director with no name... a sinister creature on guard patrol resembling some kind of hellhound... SeneNet is no ordinary multinational company...

 

The Doctor arrives in Brighton, 1989, traveling alone. He soon discovers his old friend, the Brigadier, has gone missing investigating SeneNet, whose new interactive games console is soon to be released at an absurdly reasonable price. He was last seen at their headquarters — based in the picturesque Ashdown Forest...

Investigating further, the Doctor becomes more and more entangled in a deadly web of intrigue. Together with Mel, a plucky computer programmer from Pease Pottage, the Doctor must overcome the conspiracy of silence, rescue the Brigadier and save the world once again — something that would be a lot easier if he just know where to start...

This novel is of note for a couple of reasons.  First, as you can likely tell from the back cover, it is the first appearance of Mel Bush, whose first meeting with the Doctor was (cleverly) overlooked in the television series.

Second, this is a sequel to the Virgin Missing Adventure The Scales of Injustice, also by Gary Russell.  We talked about Scales way back in Episode 5, so you might like to take a gander at that before you listen to our review of Business Unusual.

Third, this novel, like its prequel, features the return of one of Doctor Who's recurring monsters.  We won't tell you which, but if you go back and read the back cover very, very carefully you'll likely figure it out.

So quick!  Grab Business Unusual and watch this spot for its release within a week or so.  My crystal ball tells me this might be another polarizing episode, but I've been proven wrong in the past.

Fun links:

The Doctor Who Reference Guide (Spoilers abound!)

Our review of The Scales of Injustice

Gary Russell's Wikipedia page 

The Doctor Who Reprint Society 

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For December: Atom Bomb Blues

If you still haven't listened to Erik & Sean's rousing discussion of Alien Bodies, you can download the episode here.

Before Sean switched on his randomizer to pick this month's selection from the proverbial hat, he had to think back about whether or not the BBC provided any past Doctor novels involving Christmas.  Answer: They didn't.  So, for December we present Atom Bomb Blues by Andrew Cartmel.  From the back cover:

Los Alamos, New Mexico, 1945.  The Second World War is coming to its bloody conclusion, and in the American desert the race is on to build an atomic bomb.

The fate of the world is at stake -- in more ways than one.  Someone, or something, is trying to alter the course of history at this most delicate point.  And destroy the human race.  Posing as a nuclear scientist with Ace as his research assistant, the Doctor plays detective among the Manhattan Project scientists, while desperately trying to avoid falling under suspicion himself.

As the minutes tick away to the world's first atom bomb blast, the Doctor and Ace find themselves up to their necks in spies, aliens of the flying-saucer variety, and some very nasty saboteurs from another dimension...

Published in November, 2005, this novel is the final installment of the BBC's Past Doctor Adventures.  They had already begun releasing the New Series Adventures featuring the Ninth Doctor and Rose months earlier, something of a death toll for the Past Doctor and Eighth Doctor series.

Author Andrew Cartmel is best known as the shows script editor from seasons 24 through 26 and for spearheading the "Cartmel Master Plan," which would have come to fruition in season 27, had the show not been cancelled.  This would have involved peeling away much of the Doctor's mysterious persona and revealing much of his back story.  They had barely touched the tip of the iceberg in "Silver Nemesis" by dropping hints that the Doctor harbored some deep, dark secret.  This was continued in the Virgin New Series Adventures, particularly in the final Seventh Doctor installment, Marc Platt's Lungbarrow.

The BBC Past Doctor Adventures which feature the Seventh Doctor and Ace differ quite a lot from the Virgin New Adventures not just in the way they exclude characters like Roz and Chris (if one were to be a continuity hound, all of the Past Doctor Adventures would take place before all of the Virgin New Adventures), but they feature a Doctor and Ace who are less riddled with angst than we saw in a novel like Conundrum.

Fun links:

The Doctor Who Reference Guide BEWARE: SPOILERS!
Andrew Cartmel's Wikipedia Page

Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter via @dwbcpodcast, or email us at dwbcpodcast@gmail.com.  You can also follow Erik on Twitter via @sjcaustenite and Sean via @tardistavern.