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alexsarllInteresting how they decided to get all the Doctor Who fanservice out of the way over the course of one weekend. So the Comic Relief special not only had the promised dual Pond action, but two Doctors as well, and then on Saturday we got to see Matt Smith being Christopher Isherwood in gloriously gay detail. Neither broadcast had the least bit of substance, obviously, but both were reasonably charming. Interesting to see batrachian Toby wotsisface, formerly seen as the Dream Lord, once again playing Matt Smith's unappealing alter-ego, and Lindsay Duncan again playing an unhappy sort of mother to him. Anyway, because that's not quite enough Doctor for one weekend, I finished off The Holy Terror too. Which manages to move from gleefully silly satire on religion, through horror and metafictional Invisibles-style shenanigans, to a terribly sad meditation on time travel, without shortchanging any of the genres.
Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London is not, contrary to the way some places are marketing it, his debut novel. I read a couple of novels by him back in the 1990s but they're not talked about in polite society because they were Doctor Who New Adventures. Very good ones too, though being a callow youth I was mean about the first at the time. Cyberpunk had no place in Who, I piously declared. Silly oaf. Now he's one of the two classic writers I'd most like to get back on the series. Aaronovitch himself is of course far too sensible to disown his Who past, and Hell, would you distance yourself from Doctor Who if you'd written the best Dalek story ever? Of course not. Anyway, Rivers of London is the start of a new series which, in outline, looked dangerously close to China Mieville's Kraken: a strange little department of the Met investigates occult crime and its links to the hidden history of London. They feel very different, though; Aaronovitch's book is lighter and more straightforward, without feeling dumbed down. It just...had a more straightforward story to tell in the first place. It's in love with the city, and it's funny when it needs to be yet not afraid to get serious, and I romped through it in next to no time. My only real objection was that it took the characters half the book to work out whodunnit, something I'd picked up before the end of the first chapter - and these are people who should know the relevant material even better than I do.
(Speaking of the old New Adventures writers, Paul Cornell's just wrapped up his British Batman miniseries Knight and Squire, and as ever when Cornell does Britishness, it was lovely. An interesting take on the Joker, too. Too often, the Joker is simply a psycho. The best writers - Gaiman, Cornell, Moore - have generally been the ones who could make him at once comic and terrifying, simply because they were better writers than the usual hacks so they could make a tricky mix come off. But Cornell finds a new angle. Cornell's Joker is the guy who thinks he's funny, the loud bully who hates nothing more than a joke which is actually funny and which he's too dumb to get. I'm not sure how much mileage it would have in another story, but for a character used so often, and usually badly, it's amazing nobody else has hit on it before)
Things unrelated to Doctor Who: much the usual, really, albeit somewhat less of the boozing and somewhat more of the QNIs. There was the relaunch of Black Plastic, though, which was excellent. Since the Silver Bullet opened on Finsbury Park station, I had been there twice, both times for gigs I probably would have skipped if they hadn't been so local. But with Black Plastic, finally something I would have attended no matter what was stupidly convenient, and there was free whiskey for early arrivals. Win. It's a smaller venue, but not uncomfortably so by any means, and I think it suits the music. I'm looking forward to more.
Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London is not, contrary to the way some places are marketing it, his debut novel. I read a couple of novels by him back in the 1990s but they're not talked about in polite society because they were Doctor Who New Adventures. Very good ones too, though being a callow youth I was mean about the first at the time. Cyberpunk had no place in Who, I piously declared. Silly oaf. Now he's one of the two classic writers I'd most like to get back on the series. Aaronovitch himself is of course far too sensible to disown his Who past, and Hell, would you distance yourself from Doctor Who if you'd written the best Dalek story ever? Of course not. Anyway, Rivers of London is the start of a new series which, in outline, looked dangerously close to China Mieville's Kraken: a strange little department of the Met investigates occult crime and its links to the hidden history of London. They feel very different, though; Aaronovitch's book is lighter and more straightforward, without feeling dumbed down. It just...had a more straightforward story to tell in the first place. It's in love with the city, and it's funny when it needs to be yet not afraid to get serious, and I romped through it in next to no time. My only real objection was that it took the characters half the book to work out whodunnit, something I'd picked up before the end of the first chapter - and these are people who should know the relevant material even better than I do.
(Speaking of the old New Adventures writers, Paul Cornell's just wrapped up his British Batman miniseries Knight and Squire, and as ever when Cornell does Britishness, it was lovely. An interesting take on the Joker, too. Too often, the Joker is simply a psycho. The best writers - Gaiman, Cornell, Moore - have generally been the ones who could make him at once comic and terrifying, simply because they were better writers than the usual hacks so they could make a tricky mix come off. But Cornell finds a new angle. Cornell's Joker is the guy who thinks he's funny, the loud bully who hates nothing more than a joke which is actually funny and which he's too dumb to get. I'm not sure how much mileage it would have in another story, but for a character used so often, and usually badly, it's amazing nobody else has hit on it before)
Things unrelated to Doctor Who: much the usual, really, albeit somewhat less of the boozing and somewhat more of the QNIs. There was the relaunch of Black Plastic, though, which was excellent. Since the Silver Bullet opened on Finsbury Park station, I had been there twice, both times for gigs I probably would have skipped if they hadn't been so local. But with Black Plastic, finally something I would have attended no matter what was stupidly convenient, and there was free whiskey for early arrivals. Win. It's a smaller venue, but not uncomfortably so by any means, and I think it suits the music. I'm looking forward to more.
