Gerry Davis (1930–1991)

When I first read this in the early '80s, I was a cynical undergrad with a taste for the absurd; "Mutant 59" struck me then as over-the-top and darkly funny. Nearly forty years later, I'm a bit more weathered and the world a more pandemic-scarred place. This book is still overwrought in places, leaning into territory often associated with Terry Gilliam films and morbid laughs are unavoidable where I think pathos was the aim, but this reading was more a grim experience than my first. The cautionary core of the story, though, is stronger now than in 1971, since lab researchers are actively trying to generate plastic-reducing bacteria and plastics are even more integral globally.

The pacing, characters, and slice-of-life vignettes all clearly demonstrate Pedler & Davis' experiences creating and writing for TV, particularly "Doctor Who" and "Doomwatch" (this book is an expansion of the first episode of the latter); the problem here is that this reads way too much like a TV story treatment than a true novel: it's difficult to develop a sense of Reader Comfort along the way. The minor plot with the jewel heist, for instance, is truly unnecessary and pedestrian. Also, the book is indeed dated, with the casual smoking, gender stereotypes, cheap gay jokes, and "Mad Men" corporate meetings, but the thick, cliched _arch-Britishness_ of it all is so.....well, it's exactly what Douglas Adams lampooned with the Vogons and Arthur Dent.

All this being said, this short, dark, fascinating, and weirdly funny novel would (in the right hands) make a brilliantly entertaining movie. As it stands, it's still a decent summer read, especially if you like "Quatermass and the Pit" or mucking about in a Tardis.… (meer)

With the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who happening this past weekend, what else was I going to read?

The Second Doctor is probably my favourite of the twelve incarnations we've seen (although Peter Capaldi's eyebrows were pretty jolly awesome in the 50th special). I say “probably” because Patrick Troughton's version of the character has suffered the most from the BBC's ruthless deletion policies in the 1960s. About two-thirds of his serials suffer from the infamous affliction missing-episode-itis, with some of them having no surviving footage whatsoever. I waxed wroth about this earlier in the year when reviewing another Second Doctor tale, and a few months later the BBC announced it had found an entire Second Doctor serial and most of a second one in a shed in Nigeria, so maybe I should complain about this more often.

This story, based upon Troughton's fourth serial The Moonbase, is fairly typical Second Doctor fare. His stint on the show was famous for introducing the monster-of-the-week and base-under-siege episodes, as well as being notably more dark and scary than during his predecessor's reign. This one definitely falls into the base-under-siege category, with fan favourites the Cybermen being the siegers. It's short (the TV story was four episodes, here it's about 170 pages), but has enough time to build tension not once but twice. Some aspects of the story haven't aged terribly well, particularly its attitude towards companion Polly, whose job for most of the story is screaming, making tea, and distracting people with her miniskirt. New companion Jamie is also somewhat overlooked; the scriptwriters weren't sure what to do with him, apparently, so he's left unconscious in a bed for half the novel.

Flawed it may be, but even without the Doctor Who trappings to support it, there's a nice little science fiction tale here. That whole sentence could of course apply to half the episodes out there, and as long as it keeps applying we may one day get to see that 100th anniversary special too.… (meer)