Doctor Who: a viewing guide for ‘the David Tennant years’.

14 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by in Films & trailers

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Doctor Who: a viewing guide for ‘the David Tennant years‘:

This text has been hanging around since Christmas, and I’ve only now had time to polish it up a bit. Not very Lovecraftian, but plenty of sci-fi monsters!

Following a completed and complete re-viewing, here is my suggested “watch-list” for the 47 episodes of Doctor Who in which David Tennant was the Doctor. Tennant is generally regarded as the finest in a long line of Doctors. I don’t dissent from that opinion, but he was certainly given a few clunkers — by which I mean occasional poor episodes. Also some very mediocre series-padders, and three really dire episodes.

In all I’d suggest that six episodes and one Christmas Special can be skipped with no loss, thus saving about a day or two evenings of viewing time.

So… for what it’s worth here’s my concise “skip or watch” guide to the Tennant years. Spoilers are avoided.

Viewers completely new to Doctor Who should be aware that at the end of each episode there’s usually a trailer for the next episode, shown before the credits run. These can often act as spoilers, and as such you may want to have the means to hand to speedily zap these trailers when they start to run. Doing this also serves as a time-saver, since along with the credits you’re cutting two minutes or so off each episode. Over three series that adds up to about an hour saved!

The Core:

If you’re new to Doctor Who, and just want a day of ‘taster’ episodes, then try the unified plot thread in the Tennant series that stretches across:

“The End of the World”.
“New Earth”.
“The Runaway Bride”.
“Gridlock”.

The first of these enables you to understand the backstory for the next three, all three of which are all outstanding. Together these four will get you up to speed to view the following two episodes in Series 4 – which are some of the finest science fiction ever put on TV:

“Silence in the Library” (Part one).
“Forest of the Dead” (Part two).

These possibly inspired by Lovecraft (“There were awed sessions in libraries amongst the massed lore of ten thousand worlds”).

The Full Watch/Skip List:

We’re still in the non-Tennant Series 1 here…

WATCH. Series 1: “The End of the World” (2005). An excellent early episode in the series. This introduces two characters who will later appear in Tennant’s first proper episode, and who will make a lot more sense then. Being episode two of Series One, this is a good general introduction to the basic idea of ‘who The Doctor is’, and also his companion Rose. You’ll also get a good look at the style of the Doctor which Tennant replaced, Christopher Eccleston.

WATCH. Series 1: “The Parting of the Ways” (2005). The final episode of the Eccleston series. This will introduce you to two continuing characters, and has the old Doctor Who (Eccleston) regenerating into the new (David Tennant). One of the continuing characters will only make sense much, much later in the Tennant run.

SKIP! Christmas Special – “The Christmas Invasion” (Xmas 2005). Dire. You should avoid this one entirely. Especially in terms of it being a potential starter for watching the Tennant years. I fear that those unfamiliar with Doctor Who would start by watching this first… but then just not bother watching the other three series — assuming that it would be more of the same cringe-inducing low-grade TV.

Series 2 (2006).

WATCH. 1. “New Earth”. Outstanding. A great sci-fi ‘opening episode’ for Tennant, and a marvellous recovery from the 2005 Christmas Special disaster. Best seen after a viewing of “The End of the World” (2005) (see above), as it has two continuing secondary characters from that episode.

WATCH (optional). 2. “Tooth and Claw”. A good historical/horror episode. It’s not vital, but there’s no reason to skip it. For newcomers to Doctor Who it’s as good an introduction as any to this episode type. Though the genre-shift may be a little jarring for some, coming straight after the space sci-fi of “The End of the World” + “New Earth”.

WATCH. 3. “School Reunion”. A modern-day Earth episode, and as such it’s again likely to be a startling genre-shift for newcomers to Doctor Who. It looks slightly cheaper then the previous episode, but is terrific fun throughout. Also introduces a key new (old) character to the series.

* SKIP. 4. “The Girl in the Fireplace”. An unwieldy mash-up between historical-drama and spaceship setting. Mildly watchable and it has two good jokes, but is not at all vital. It also pushes the Doctor slightly out-of-character.

WATCH. 5. “Rise of the Cybermen” (part 1). The first of a Cybermen two-parter, the Cybermen being one of the Doctor’s main ‘enemy’ races. Very mediocre, yet it is fairly brisk and effectively told. It also sets up the arc for two future characters, so you will need to see it.

WATCH. 6. “The Age of Steel” (part 2). ”

* SKIP. 7. “The Idiot’s Lantern”. A minor filler episode. Quite well done, as a costume-historical episode set on Earth… but has a very conventional second half. Definitely skippable.

WATCH. 8. “The Impossible Planet” (part 1). An effective space-based two-parter, that also sets up a race who will appear many times.

WATCH. 9. “The Satan Pit” (part 2). ”

WATCH! 10. “Love and Monsters”. An unusual Earth-set episode of Doctor Who, but one of the most memorable.

WATCH! 11. “Fear Her”. Another Earth-set episode. Excellent, of its kind.

WATCH. 12. “Army of Ghosts” (Finale, part one). Enjoyable, but not a wholly satisfying finale because… it’s all ‘too easy’ at the end. It does however wrap up threads from earlier in the series.

WATCH. 13. “Doomsday” (Finale, part two). Briefly introduces a key new character.

Series 3 (2007).

WATCH!! Christmas Special – “The Runaway Bride” (Xmas 2006). After last Christmas’s dud episode, this one is a classic. 1,000% better than the previous Christmas. Also introduces a very key new character.

WATCH. 1. “Smith and Jones”. A mediocre enemy and setting, but the episode has to be watched since it introduces yet another key character.

* SKIP. 2. “The Shakespeare Code”. A rather straightforward historical costume-drama horror episode, with a creaky plot.

WATCH! 3. “Gridlock”. Outstanding far-future sci-fi, done well. One of the most memorable of the Tennant episodes. Continues to introduce a race and characters from the previous series.

* SKIP. 4. “Daleks in Manhattan” (part one). Another costume-historical episode set on Earth, which are always a bit hit-and-miss. In this case it’s very creaky, and also often blatantly padded out to add length. The histrionic dialogue doesn’t help at all, and there is some woefully over-acting in response to the bad writing. Even the fearsome Daleks are made to be ridiculous, and the budget was obviously low. A big fat waste of time.

* SKIP. 5. “Evolution of the Daleks” (part two). ”

WATCH. 6. “The Lazarus Experiment”. Quite well done, and it sets up a key plot thread for the end of the series.

* SKIP 7. “42”. Pure filler, except for a tiny cut-away bit at the end… which gets amply recapped in another episode.

WATCH! 8. “Human Nature” (part one). A costume-drama two-parter, but this time it’s an outstandingly good one. It also serves as a great lead-in to the concluding episodes of the series.

WATCH! 9. “Family of Blood” (part two). ”

WATCH! 10. “Blink”. A highly effective and memorable ‘horror’ episode, with lots of time-travel twisty-turny-bits. Sets up a new enemy race.

WATCH. 11. “Utopia.” (part one). The first of a grand finale three-parter. Excellent, and links with through from the earlier episodes 8 and 9. Pace yourself, to savour it all, rather than risk getting binge-fatigue at the end of the series.

WATCH. 12. “The Sound of Drums”. (part two).

WATCH. 13. “The Last of the Time Lords”. (part three).

Series 4 (2008).

WATCH. Christmas Special – “Voyage of the Damned” (Xmas 2007). Entertaining, yet not especially memorable. Worth seeing, but it could be skipped if you’re short of time.

WATCH. 1. “Partners in Crime”. A very mediocre central plot, but… with lots of interesting side-plots and some vital ongoing new characters packed around it.

WATCH 2. “The Fires of Pompeii”. The usual second-episode costume drama, but this one is well-paced and very good.

WATCH. 3. “Planet of the Ood”. A strong episode which develops a previously introduced race.

WATCH. 4. “The Sontaran Stratagem”. (Part one). Creaky and hackneyed to start off with, but by the time it enters the second part of the two-parter it’s suddenly much better. Introduces a continuing new race which becomes important for ‘the next Doctor’, but the episode could be skipped by those short on time.

WATCH. 5. “The Poison Sky”. (Part two). ”

* SKIP. 6. “The Doctor’s Daughter”. Production values are somewhat high, but it’s all very forgettable and in the end rather pointless. Seems to have only been made so the BBC could make a spin-off comic-book, but that failed too.

* SKIP. 7. “The Unicorn and the Wasp”. A mid-series period costume-drama, rather more well-made than usual – but very forgettable and also rather silly throughout.

WATCH!!! 8. “Silence in the Library”. (Part one). Now this is great. One of the best Doctor Who episodes ever filmed, the first of a two-parter. Must watch, and also some of the most excellent science-fiction shown on TV!

WATCH!!! 9. “Forest of the Dead”. (Part two). ” It helps the flow if you skip the trailer at the end of episode one, and the recap at the start of episode two.

SKIP. 10. “Midnight”. A strange departure from the usual formula. A claustrophobic shouting-match, which soon becomes very boring indeed. The episode is a big comedown after the sublime script of the last two episodes. Skip unless you like confined-space psychological drama, with lots of screaming matches.

WATCH. 11. “Turn Left”. (Part one). Series finale, with very high production values. Tries to tie up about 50 different plot threads. A good intro to the final episodes.

WATCH. 12. “The Stolen Earth”. (Part two). ”

WATCH. 13. “Journey’s End”. (Part three). ”

Series 4 ends here. There were then five Tennant “specials” that linked Series 4 and Series 5, and helped to fill the long 2008–2010 gap between full series, while a new Doctor was found.

SKIP. 14. “The Next Doctor”. A Christmas Special. A Victorian costume-drama for Christmas. Definitely skip this.

WATCH. 15. “Planet of the Dead”. An Easter Special.

WATCH. 16. “The Waters of Mars”. An award-winning episode.

WATCH. 17. “The End of Time”, Part One.

WATCH. 18. “The End of Time”, Part Two. Regeneration from Tennant to a new Doctor.

Series 5 (2010).

This opened with a new non-Tennant Doctor, Matt Smith. Smith was also an excellent Doctor, and it’s well worth considering a re-watch of his series too.

There’s more! The Big Finish full-cast audio adventures, known as The Tenth Doctor Adventures, now have two series in which Tennant reprises his role as the Doctor alongside Donna.

The Tenth Doctor Adventures 1 and The Tenth Doctor Adventures 2. These are audio-only, but are full-cast and have all the production polish of the TV series.

A third series, The Tenth Doctor Chronicles, is out in June 2019, though the cover art makes it look as though Tennant takes a back seat? Anyway, together these three audio series will effectively represent a whole new TV series in terms of length and quality.

New book: Post Oaks and Sand Roughs

14 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by in Historical context, New books, REH, Scholarly works

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The Robert E. Howard Foundation has a new book due to ship. Post Oaks and Sand Roughs collects the most autobiographical material from Howard’s work. Shipping in June 2019. It has a selection of Costigan tales, where relevant, and…

“also contains other items that reveal details about the people and places in Howard’s life, including the “Lost Plains” stories, items from The Junto, personal essays, and more, all restored to the original text, where available.”

There’s a full contents-list and it looks fascinating. Sadly it’s only 200 numbered copies, in print, and would thus cost me a whopping $100 to get to the UK. Hopefully there will be a $10 Kindle ebook, in due course, but that’s just my guess.

It could be interesting to do something similar for H.P. Lovecraft. A life-story collection of the most pertinent fiction and poetry that is also firmly autobiographical, with explications of exactly what aspect or event in his life each extract draws on or depicts.

The New England Mind

12 Sunday May 2019

Posted by in Historical context

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The books linked below are possibly useful for Lovecraft scholars interested in the ‘deep local’ intellectual background to Lovecraft, beyond the topography, architecture and places. They form a beautifully written intellectual history of early New England, and thus outline ideas Lovecraft would have been very familiar with — even if he rejected parts of such ideas…

The New England Mind: From Colony To Province.

The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century.

Apparently the two books were written in reverse order, but read together they tell the intellectual story from the founding of the colony onward. Despite the rather dry appearance of their contents pages, they are one of the most readable accounts of the thinking of the period, and the author was hailed by his fellows as an “artist” of history writing. The works endured. In 1982 American History remarked, noting that the books had stood the test of time and attempts to tear them down, that …

IT HAS BECOME COMMON TO SPEAK OF PERRY MILLER [author of the above books] AS AN ARTIST. BUT in the past few decades the idea that history is a literary art has dropped [away…]

They’re free on Archive.org.

Lulu say “no”

11 Saturday May 2019

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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In my day, a book by H. P. Lovecraft was in the school’s official ‘book pick’ brochure for 12 year-olds with pocket money to spend. In fact that was how I first encountered him…

Today, on Lulu.com, the hand-wringing prudes say “no” to accessing any book tagged with ‘Lovecraft’, even scholarly works…

Entwined: Botany, Art and the Lost Cat Swamp Habitat

11 Saturday May 2019

Posted by in Historical context

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Entwined: Botany, Art and the Lost Cat Swamp Habitat in Providence. A major joint project of the Brown University Herbarium and the Rhode Island Historical Society. There’s the new online website for it, and there was a just-gone exhibition.

Here’s H.P. Lovecraft…

My home was not far from what was then the edge of the settled residence district, so that I was just as used to the rolling fields, stone walls, giant elms, squat farmhouses, and deep woods of rural New England as to the ancient urban scene. This brooding, primitive landscape seemed to me to hold some vast but unknown significance, and certain dark wooded hollows near the Seekonk River took on an aura of strangeness not unmixed with vague horror. They figured in my dreams — especially those nightmares containing the black, winged rubbery entities which I called “night-gaunts” — from “Some Notes on a Nonentity”.

Where were Lovecraft’s childhood “hollows”? I wrote a detailed extended essay which delved into the likely sites. It can be found in my book Lovecraft in Historical Context: fourth collection as “In the hollows of memory: H.P. Lovecraft’s Seekonk and Cat Swamp” (in Historical Context #4). Cat Swamp was one of the sites I investigated and considered.

It was one of the oldest named places in the area, named as such in a document of 1667. It would be delightful to imagine it being named because it was a haunt of escaped cats brought by the settlers, and thus to imagine the possibility that the boy Lovecraft was once followed homeward at sunset by an Ulthar-like army of kitties. But that vision of Cat Swamp must be left to the fancy of a future graphic-novelist, as it seems equally likely that the swamp was named for the supply of useful ‘cat-tail’ rushes that grew there.

Before extensive drainage Cat Swamp started about a third of a mile north of Angell Street, and ended about a mile north of Angell Street where it formed the ‘Great Swamp’. This whole area (if unbuilt on) appears to have been open to children in Lovecraft’s childhood, as was the way in the era of free-range childhoods. The undergraduates from Brown would also go there to skate on the ice during freezing weather. Much of it appears to have been drained between about 1903 and 1907, i.e. after Lovecraft reached age 12-13, part of it going under housing and part to Brown University for sports use such as playing fields and a new gym. Given the close proximity to his home, the swamp may well have featured in Lovecraft’s younger exploratory boyhood, but he and his fellows seem to have gravitated to the riverside and by the time of his maturing middle childhood his “hollows” seem more likely to have been around York Pond by the Seekonk river. Possibly on a northern flank later taken for sand and gravel. That he often returned to the surviving southern wooded rise above York Pond in later life, to write letters in the open air, seems confirmatory evidence of his attachment to the place.

Cumbrian Cthulhu: Complete Short Stories in hardback

10 Friday May 2019

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I normally just chuckle at new themed anthologies of new Lovecraft stories, as they reach for ever-more obscure and outre topic hooks on which to hang the anthology. But I’ll make an exception for a valiant effect to incorporate Cumbria, in northern England, into the Mythos.

Cumbrian Cthulhu Complete Short Stories Volumes 1-4 is a 650-page hardback whopper, newly listed in Lulu. Perhaps in a new edition, since Google Books has it at 2015 but perhaps that was a paperback. In the book…

“all the stories are set somewhere in the Cumbrian region and are based around the themes of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The stories are a tribute to both the mythos of H.P.Lovecraft and the awesome beauty and rich history of the Lake District.”

“All profits from the publishing of the Cumbrian Cthulhu book will be donated to LDSAMRA, the Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue Association.”

If you want to try some of the stories, several are free on the Cumbrian Cthulhu blog.

So far as I know, Lovecraft had no ancestral connection with Cumbria, as he did with its neighbouring Northumbria (Hexham and district). Although he does have the Curwens as hailing from there…

“the Curwens were of the most ancient armigerous [i.e.: a recognised Scots clan] Cumbrian lineage, probably descended from the early Kings of Scots”.

Friday Picture Postals from Lovecraft: the lost railway worlds

10 Friday May 2019

Posted by in Historical context, Picture postals

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An especially nice view of the main railway station in Providence, showing its relation to the trolley (tram) interchange and park. The design of the cars date it to Lovecraft’s time, perhaps the mid 1930s. In style and mood it evokes Lovecraft’s eventual and joyous return to his home city from his 1920s sojourn in New York, but in its perspective view and sweep it also evokes something of his boyish love of his own home-made miniature railways. And of surveying their layouts and terrains, from just this sort of vantage point.

“The trains fascinated me [as a small boy], & to this day I have a love for everything pertaining to railways.”

He appears to have read vast numbers of early Munsey proto-pulp story magazines that dealt with railroads, including the entire run of Railroad man’s Magazine. This mixed rip-roaring adventure, ‘tall tales of the rails’ from old-timers, true-life accounts and short non-fiction.

One of his own early ‘household and friends’ publications was The Railroad Review. In middle-childhood he made his own systems, seemingly (though not mentioned by him below) in the large coach-house / stable which had previously housed the family carriage and horse…

[Alongside my early love of the 18th century … ] “my parallel fascination with railways & street-cars led me to construct large numbers of contemporary landscapes with intricate systems of tin trackage. I had a magnificent repertoire of cars & railway accessories — signals, tunnels, stations, &c — though this system was admittedly too large in scale for my villages. My mode of play was to construct some scene as fancy — incited by some story or picture — dictated, & then to act out its life for long periods — sometimes a fortnight—making up events of a highly melodramatic cast as I went. These events would sometimes cover only a brief span — a war or plague or merely a spirited pageant of travel & commerce & incident leading nowhere — but would sometimes involve long aeons, with visible changes in the landscape & buildings. Cities would fall & be forgotten, & new cities would spring up. Forests would fall or be cut down, & rivers (I had some fine bridges) would change their beds. […] Horror-plots were frequent, though (oddly enough) I never attempted to construct fantastic or extra-terrestrial scenes. […] There was a kind of intoxication in being lord of a visible world (albeit a miniature one) & determining the flow of its events.”

Such activities are common to many intelligent and craft-minded boys in middle-childhood, but the difference here is the sustained storytelling and development of such over several weeks per miniature layout.

A railroad track in decay famously features in his later work, as the line out of Innsmouth. In this he might be seen as nodding to other writers who had earlier used a ‘follow the railway lines’ plot point in post-apocalyptic settings, but it was more likely just the obvious route of escape required by the story.

Underground tram-ways also feature elsewhere in his work, in either real-world form (“Nyarlathotep”, in which only the subway entrances appear) or in disguised horror-fantasy forms (“The Festival”, in which the descent echoes the manner of going down into a subway in company with a shuffling crowd, whereupon the celebrants then mount a line of indeterminate ‘creature-vehicles’ which arrive, and are carried away into the darkness — much like entering and being carried away by subway cars).

Lovecraft Collectors Library, Volume VI: Commentaries

08 Wednesday May 2019

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New on Archive.org, from 1955, The Lovecraft Collectors Library, Volume V: The Amateur Journalist and The Lovecraft Collectors Library, Volume VII: Bibliographies, both now superseded but possibly of interest for those without Joshi’s Bibliography and the Collected Essays.

But The Lovecraft Collectors Library, Volume VI: Commentaries places online short works previously been available in the now expensive print volume Lovecraft Remembered…

Idiosyncrasies Of H.P.L., by E. A. Edkins.
A Few Memories, by James F. Morton.
Ave Atque Vale!, by Edward H. Cole.
The Cthulhu Mythos: A Study, by George T. Wetzel.
The Lord Of R’lyeh, by Matthew H. Onderdonk.

Added to Open Lovecraft

08 Wednesday May 2019

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Added to Open Lovecraft, my page of public open access scholarly works. I don’t add all undergraduate dissertations I find, as some are obviously rather basic or flawed. But these two seem worthy and will be useful to others writing in the Game Studies field…

* V. Gergo, Representing the “Unnameable” in Lovecraftian Video Games (2018 undergraduate dissertation for SZTE in Hungary. In English).

* M. Simicevic, Lovecraftian Horrors: Space and Literature in Silent Hill (2018 undergraduate dissertation for Sveuciliste u Zadru in Hungary. In English).