Doctor Who: “A Death in the Family”

I listened to Big Finish’s A Death in the Family this past weekend. I’m not certain, but this may be my favorite Seventh Doctor story yet.

This is a complicated Doctor Who story. I’m never that person who ponders the PLOTS of Who, trying to figure out if they hang together or not. This frequently means that the more timey-wimey stories lose me at some point. This problem is exacerbated with Big Finish’s audioplays, as some scenes take me a moment to figure out where and when we are, and who is speaking to whom. But none of that interfered with my enjoyment of “A Death in the Family.” Nor did it interfere with my dread.

This story is a rollercoaster of inevitable, spliced with a funhouse of doublecross and time-space trickery. Yet the emotional beats come down like a freight train. It’s all here, the themes I most love in Who. The lies and manipulation and secrets of The Doctor. The faith of his Companions. How he abuses that faith. How the Companions are changed, inexorably and not always for the better. How lies start to run both ways, and love and faith are weak.

The Doctor I recognize, the one I see on screen or in the audioplays and say, “yes, that, that is my Doctor,” is this wry, dark, funny, sardonic old man. Sometimes bitter, sometimes exultant, but so very knowing. Playing a deep game that wears a coat of inadvertent contempt for other creatures. The Doctor treasures life, yes – but sometimes he forgets to respect it.

It’s not a spoiler to say that Evelyn is in this story — Maggie Stables is in the credits. And her scenes are fantastic. She embodies another of my favorite themes in fiction, the consequences of one’s past choices. Her conversation with The Doctor at the end of the story is one I devoutly hope the Eleventh Doctor remembers when he looks at Clara.

This Doctor is my Doctor. I don’t always like him, I don’t always trust him, but if the universe must have a semi-benevolent omnipotent creature interfering in its workings, I want it to be this one.

Unless …

Unless I can have whatever he’s turning Ace into, instead.

The Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors have not always seen their Companions clearly enough. That lack of attention keeps coming back in ways The Doctor doesn’t like. You’d think that, eventually, he’d learn.

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Lurkers at Sunlight’s Edge

Lurkers at Sunlight’s Edge is one of Big Finish’s Doctor Who audioplays. It’s Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Hex, and it is a very good story.

The Big Finish audioplays are, in general, an excellent investment of time and money if one is in need of a Classic Doctor Who story. (I have listened to almost all of the Seventh Doctor’s plays.) This one is particularly good. The plot is tight — it’s complicated, with the two intertwining threads of any good Doctor Who story — and it is largely character-based. There’s not a lot of weird forces swooping in at the last minute to reveal something that would have made a difference all along. The production is quite good — all strange voice effects are used in moderation. Moreover, I could tell all the minor characters apparent without any difficultly.

The acting, though — that is very, very good in this story. I mean, Aldred and McCoy and Olivier are always good. But not only are they on fire in this story, the supporting cast is excellent.

If you want to try out a Big Finish Seventh Doctor story, Lurkers at Sunlight’s Edge has joined the ranks of those I recommend.

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Catching up with Big Finish’s Seventh Doctor

I recently remembered that Big Finish Productions probably had more Seventh Doctor audioplays since the last time I’d checked. They did, and there were some I’d missed last time around as well. I bought six. I’ve listened to four.

Wow. So far? Really damn depressing.

SOME SLIGHT SPOILERS FOLLOW, NOT MANY.

Both “The Settling” and “Night Terrors” come early in Ace-and-Hex’s term as Companions. “Night Terrors” is Hex’s fourth adventure. (So far. Big Finish could always insert another story, I expect.) “The Settling” is his sixth. It’s not exactly clear how old Ace is when she and Hex meet in “The Harvest,” but the first sequence of adventures after Hex joins the TARDIS seem to happen fairly quickly.

I don’t have a, a coherent theory yet of the Doctor’s personality based on these. But they are dark, and Hex (a Companion introduced in the audioplays) is really quite angry about his helplessness, and Ace is a fair bit more cynical about “the Professor” than I’d gotten accustomed to.

I think it’s fair to say that in the television run of Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, Ace is a teenager. Not naive, precisely, but lacking in a breadth of experience. This is swiftly rectified. In the audioplays, Ace and the Doctor travel together for quite some time. It’s never nailed down, that I remember, but from conversation and such it seems that Ace might be anywhere from twenty-two to as much as twenty-eight years old. A young adult, but one with years of her life spent with the Doctor.

In the audioplays set later in this career, Ace is much wiser. She isn’t cynical about her Professor, exactly, but she know that he will hide important truths from her, that he will bark orders that are only sometimes really important, that he plays games with absolutely everyone including her. Older Ace has accepted this. She also knows that he will always come for her. She has seen him lose, but has never seen him completely fail. Older Ace has learned to value the incremental successes as much — or more than — the big wins.

“Night Terrors” and “The Settling” fall between the show and the older Ace of, say, “The Shadow of the Scourge.” The naivete has worn off, but it’s not entirely replaced by trust.

I also listened to “Valhalla” and “The Death Collectors.” These both come much later in the Seventh Doctor’s life. In “Valhalla” the Doctor is specifically rejecting the whole idea of having Companions. Freeloaders, he calls them, always in need of rescue. This is long after he and Ace parted ways, after Bernice Summerfield, after Roz Forrester. I haven’t read all the Virgin New Adventure books so I don’t know what happens in them. Whatever it was, it seems to have left a bad taste in the Doctor’s mouth. He runs around Companionless for a while, and then picks up Elizabeth Klein.

We first met Klein ages ago, in “Colditz.” In that, the Doctor and Ace destroyed her entire possible future. The world and life she came from was erased because the Doctor deemed it an unacceptable abberation. Now, it was a world in which the Nazis under Adolf Hitler had won World War II. Many people would not consider its destruction a loss. But it was Klein’s home. And now she is stuck in our world. When the Doctor meets up with her again in “A Thousand Tiny Wings” she has been searching for a way to restore what was lost. And the Doctor kidnaps her, forces her to become his Companion so that he can keep her under house arrest.

This is dark, dark stuff.

I don’t know how much more Big Finish is planning to wedge in at this point in the Seventh Doctor’s career. As much as Sylvester McCoy is interested in producing, I expect. Similarly, I expect there will be more Ace adventures, and Ace and Hex, and Ace and Bernice. And the writing and plots and characterization will vary from one audioplay to the next, and nothing is going to be perfectly consistent given the nature of how these things are put in order. (I would NOT want to be the keeper of the Show Bible for Big Finish. That sounds painful.) But the arc of the Seventh Doctor seems … downward. A darkening.

Is this what happens, I wonder, when the Doctor isn’t killed and forced to regenerate every couple of years? Is this what happens to the Eighth, is this darker ending what we saw with the Ninth? We saw a handful of the Tenth Doctor specials in that last proto-season, and in them the Doctor got progressively more hubristic, darker, and out of control.

I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to make of it all.

Yet, as taken aback as I am sometimes at what the Seventh Doctor says and does, I quite like these audioplays. They don’t shy away from what I consider to be some of the most important things about the Doctor. He’s alien. He’s very, very old. He is not nice. He may be good — mostly, most of the time, at least as far as we can understand his actions it can look that way — but nice is different than good.

This, too, is The Doctor

Big Finish Productions recently put out three new Seventh Doctor audioplays. I hadn’t gotten them right away since they didn’t feature Ace or Hex. Instead, the companion on these adventure is Elizabeth Klein, the Nazi scientist featured in the previous audioplay Colditz. (Now infamous for having David Tennant in the cast, playing a Nazi.) I had liked Klein okay, but not enough to rush out for the new adventures.

My mistake.

What I had not realized is that in these plays, Klein is not a willing Companion. Has that happened, before, much? Has The Doctor kidnapped someone who travels with him in resentful false camaraderie, biding their time until escape? The Doctor is . . . extremely sure of himself, when he forces Klein to come along. he is so damn certain that he can make her see his view. What hubris, sir. What titanic hubris.

I love that this, too, is part of The Doctor. I love, treasure, seeing his terrible ideas. When he forgets his own rules — that creatures get to make their own path as long as they don’t commit genocide, damage the timestream, or any number of other exceptions that seemed important at the time … Oh, wait. That’s right. If there are rules, they largely exist at The Doctor’s whim. And most of the time, mostly, that works out to everyone’s advantage. But sometimes, The Doctor is a flaming idiot. He needs that. We, the audience, need that. We need to remember that the soul of the show is the relationship between The Doctor and his Companions, not The Doctor’s infallibility.

(Also, the first story in this trilogy, A Thousand Tiny Wings, is one of the best-written, best-acted, and best-produced Big Finish plays I’ve ever heard.)

Best Moments in Fandom, 2009

8. Paramore in concert (again)

This made my Best in Fandom last year. What can I say? I really like Paramore. This time they opened for No Doubt, and the concert was incredible. The last Big Name, Big Venue concert I’d seen was Depeche Mode in, erm, 1989? And I had lousy seats that time. So the video effects and such of No Doubt were really damn awesome. And Gwen Stefani is astonishing.

My opinion of this tour, though, was unavoidably shaped by Twitter. I’d been reading Hayley Williams’s tweets all summer. I’d read her fangirling of Stefani, and how much she and the band were learning from an experienced band like No Doubt. I’d read which shows were great, and which she felt she could have been more on for. I read what it was like to do interviews in the afternoon, perform at night, and get up in the late morning to work out. I had a sense of investment in this tour, in Hayley’s experience of it — despite that fact that she doesn’t know me from Adam. The Twitter Effect.

But, anyway, when the first opener left and, after a bit, Paramore came out onto their set — much bigger than the year before, much fancier, and still NOTHING like No Doubt’s set still to come — I was willing this to be a great show. I whooped, sang along, hopped up and down, yelled when my section was pointed too, all the antics of a Fan.

No Doubt was also incredibly great. But I was there to see Paramore.

7. Big Finish Productions’ Seventh Doctor audioplays

I spent most of the first few months of 2009 catching up on the Seventh Doctor audioplays of Doctor Who, by Big Finish Productions. And by this I mean I didn’t listen to much music, I didn’t keep up with the podcasts I listen to, I spent my drives to and from work listening to Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, and Phillip Oliver save worlds. Save worlds, and mete out justice.

It’s fascinating to me, as someone who has come to Doctor Who fandom via the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, to see the Seventh Doctor taking on his role as moral judge. I don’t know exactly when this started in the Doctor’s various incarnations. I just know he didn’t start this way, but is a judge by the time we meet the Tenth Doctor. There seems to be some fascinating differences, though — Seventh Doctor relishes the role of moral authority. Ninth Doctor, we know, had recently seen the horror of that path. Tenth Doctor prefers to give people more chances than Seventh, but is still willing to make the extremely hard choices.

Anyway. I’m loving the evolution of Hex and Ace, their acceptance of The Doctor’s foibles paired with wariness of his secrets and manipulations. I’m loving the way the Doctor’s know-it-all-ness works for both good and ill. I particularly liked “Angel of Scutari” — excellent supporting cast, great plot, excellent acting. More Seventh Doctor from Big Finish is one of the things I am really looking forward to in 2010.

6. Dollhouse

This is not the best show I watch. It is, however, a fannish delight. It is, in the words of my friend Caroline, Big, Sexy Hospital. It’s a show starring lots of my favorite actors from different fandoms, with guest stars from other fandoms, written by some of my favorite writers, talking about important themes of identity and autonomy using inappropriately overly-sexual moments of tension. Plus, funny dialog. The show has not quite lived up to what I hoped it could be — it is definitely flawed. But in exchange for that, I get weirdly inappropriately sexy half-naked scenes where characters HAVE to cut each other FOR THE PLOT.

I feel like Dollhouse is trying to do two things, and the whipsaw between them weakens the show. On the one hand, I love the plot and the things the show is trying to say about autonomy and personal power. On the other hand, I also love the way the show is groping around in the dark of fandom’s collective subconscious, and serving up images from fanfic. River Tam vs. Faith. Wesley and Faith trusting each other knives. Helo and Faith sparring instead of screwing. I have always loved cross-over fanfic, and here it is, on Hulu, every week.

5. Jennifer’s Body

I reviewed the movie Jennifer’s Body here. I loved it. As I say in that review:

“Kusama, Cody, Fox, and Seyfried have put on the screen a movie about a kind of relationship between two women that I have rarely seen in film. That kind of relationship is called “complex”. So many times women’s relationships in film are two-dimensional, caricature, or merely serve as a prop in a movie about men. Not so here. The friendship between Jennifer and Needy is not perfect — they are occasionally thoughtless towards each other, or hurtful, and there’s a wealth of unseen history in the way Jennifer taunts Needy with their past sexual explorations together. But it is friendship.”

I still say this is the absolute best feminist horror film since Gingersnaps. After the no-buying-myself-things-near-Christmas ban passes, I am racing out to get this on dvd.

4. Batwoman, Greg Rucka, and J.H. Williams

In the pages of Detective Comics in the second half of this year, Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams have put out a comic unlike anything else out there. The story of Batwoman, of Kate Kane, is being told in art that is not groundbreaking, it’s genre-changing. Comic art should not be allowed to remain as it has been, now that Williams’s panel structure, narrative sequences, and color palettes have come to light.

But I’m always and forever a sucker for stories.

This story — the story of Kate Kane as Batwoman — is a story about family, and loss, and what a person finds in the world in order to make them get up in the morning. It’s a story about What Happened Next. Being Batwoman, it strikes me, is not Kate Kane’s goal in life. It’s the thing she does with her life after the worst things could happen to her. After she lost her mother and sister and career and relationships. It’s a story about the fact that one doesn’t conveniently die when one loses everything important, however much one might wish it. And, eventually, you get up and out of bed and have to do something. This appears to be Kate Kane’s story, told expertly by Greg Rucka, and it’s one of my favorite fandom things in 2009.

3. Plants vs. Zombies: Bedtime

This is all me, but I’m still damn pleased with what happened.

This summer I wrote a script for a four-page comic. My family was obsessed at the time with the PopCap Games’ “Plants vs. Zombies.” The idea hit me while I was sitting in the audience at the Como Park Bandshell, waiting for J’s dress rehearsal to get started. I wrote a little comic about a kid, about my son’s age, who lives in the house that is attacked by zombies in the game. The story was light and short and cute. The Best Moment in Fandom moments happened next.

What happened next is that PopCap Games agreed to let me produce this work. I emailed them, got reply, explained my project, and then — poof. They said go ahead. So what happened next is that Erika Moen agreed to draw it. Her art was fantastic — perfect for the tone of the story. And what happened next is that my contact at PopCap was so pleased with what he saw that PopCap included the comic in their Halloween promotional materials.

This was one of my personal best moments in fandom, albeit professional fandom.

2. Baltimore Comic-Con

I went to a few conventions this year — Microcon, Wiscon, CONvergence, Supercon. But the one I’d never been to, the one new to me, was Baltimore ComicCon. It was great. Not only did I get to meet all of the Fantastic Fangirls in person, I got to meet and see other friends from online.

But the thing that really, totally made the convention great for me was the generosity and friendliness of the creators. I’m not going to name them all here, for fear I might forget someone. But everyone had time to chat, however briefly. Even those with the biggest names/lines/crowds were extremely generous with their time.

1. Marvel’s consequences

I remember when Secret Wars II was playing out in the pages of Marvel comics. I never actually read the core books, the limited series in which all the heroes of the Marvel Universe tried to deal with The Beyonder come to Earth for a rematch. What I remember is that The Beyonder killed and resurrected the New Mutants. What I remember is that Rachel Summers was going to end the entire universe in order to kill The Beyonder, and that the love and compassion of her fellow X-Men stopped her — and then stopped The Beyonder from killing them all, right there, on the spot. What I remember, from that story and from all my most beloved X-stories from the late 80s and early 90s, is that the world of the Marvel Universe was a whole thing. It was all of a piece. When Kulan Gath (a Spider-Man villain) took over Manhattan Island for a couple weeks, the X-Men were trapped there, as were the Avengers. When two of the New Mutants got drugged by the same guy that attacked Cloak and Dagger, Tandy and Ty were there to help. I loved Mutant Massacre, I loved Fall of the Mutants, I even found Inferno fascinating — though frustrating. I loved the whole world of it all.

I later came to understand that the “world” events in Marvel tended to only apply within certain spheres. The mutant line, the heroes line, the spider-man line, the cosmic line. I grew, in the mid-90s, sick of crossovers that didn’t really affect anything except sales figures. I became disenchanted with the idea of a complete Marvel Universe. But I still remember how it felt, looking at Kitty Pryde in Uncanny X-Men as she mourns the death of her best friend, Illyana, who no-one remembers — wiped from the universe by the petulant thoughts of The Beyonder.

A new world lay in those panels. A complete world, rich and vibrant and alive and whole. And I could visit it any damn time I wanted to.

In recent years, Marvel has put forth a series of “world-changing events.” And I viewed these all with incredible skepticism, due to my feelings regarding the late 90s. But I read them. Avengers: Disassembled was good — I like it a lot. But I was profoundly and unexpectedly pleased when the Avengers stayed apart, the mansion was not rebuilt, and there were extended consequences. The Young Avengers formed. Isiah Bradley’s legacy as the black Captain America was retained and used. Character deaths — whether or not they stayed dead — had repercussions in the paths their friends and families took. And then, a bit later, we had House of M. In which the consequences of Disassembled unfolded to destroy a whole people. House of M was another world-changing crossover event — and we still haven’t seen it taken back. We still haven’t really seen Wanda, and there are still no more mutants. Civil War happened, and The Initiative came out of that. Not to mention Captain America’s death — long live Captain America. Events kept occurring, with consequence piling on consequence. The world of Marvel kept changing as a result of what had happened before. As Secret Invasion was about to launch, I was excited and pleased — this, this was the kind of Marvel storytelling I loved. A world at stake, really, with everybody’s fates on the line.

I wish Secret Invasion had been published as a single trade paperback — or released weekly until it was done. But that’s a quibble. I really liked the story. But more than I liked the actual plot contained in the issues, I liked how it changed the world. I loved Jessica Drew’s face being the face of the enemy, seen around the world. I loved all the “traitors” appearing on television to urge the world to embrace change. I loved the Skrull sleepers popping up in every title. I loved Marvel’s ad campaign – so reminiscent to me of the old “It’s 1984 – Do You Know What Your Children Are?” ads that appeared in the X-Men titles.

More than any of that, though, I loved What Happened Next.

The world changed. And I love Bendis and Marvel for it. The world of Marvel changed. And, sure, it’ll change back. That’s not my point — I don’t want Marvel to stay this way forever. But I want, I crave for the plots in these comics to have some sort of meaning. Repercussions. Consequences. If Norman Osborn saves the planet on international television, I want that to have an effect for more than one month. I want this, the Dark Reign. And then I want the Dark Reign to end as a result of Norman Osborn’s actions. I want his personal consequences to unfold as surely as Wanda’s did.

This current consequence-laden universe at Marvel fills me with joy in all sorts of ways. I love that Kieron Gillen’s S.W.O.R.D. is a result of Astonishing X-Men and Secret Invasion. I love that Jessica Jones shows up in Young Avengers and that the Young Avengers have been scattered into the other Avengers titles. I love that the Silent War of the Inhumans led into War of Kings. The interwoven, interconnectedness of it all makes me damn pleased.

I’m looking forward to The Siege, very much. I am not really invested in the “core Avengers,’ I don’t care much about Steve Rogers or Thor. But I am happily waiting to see what Marvel is going to do next to my beloved, much-abused, living Marvel universe.