The First Five Decades

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is upon us, and it's a good one for anyone who likes numbers. Thousands of fans have scored every story from 1 to 10, and all these have been averaged and totted up to find people's favourite - favourite story ever, favourite Doctor, favourite season, you name it. And there's even the prospect of comparing the results to the last time the poll was done, five years ago! (with a whole load of new stories since)

You can find out more about the issue, with a wonderful fold out cover, here. But I thought, since I entered myself, a short summary of what I voted for as my favourites. I rarely sit down and work out my favourite Doctor or story (there's 241 of them) - and my tastes are no doubt only controversial for how average they are - but it's a good game of numbers. (And maybe I've boosted the Slitheen ones up the chart ever so slightly!)

10s went to: (deep breath) The Tomb of the Cybermen, Inferno, The Green Death, The Time Warrior, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, The Brain of Morbius, The Seeds of Doom, The Deadly Assassin, The Robots of Death, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, City of Death, Earthshock, The Caves of Androzani, Remembrance of the Daleks, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways, The Girl in the Fireplace, Army of Ghosts / Doomsday, Human Nature / The Family of Blood, Blink, Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead, Midnight, Turn Left, The Waters of Mars, The Eleventh Hour, The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone, Vincent and the Doctor, The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, The Doctor’s Wife, Asylum of the Daleks.

9s went to: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Time Meddler, The Mind Robber, The War Games, Spearhead From Space, Pyramids of Mars, The Curse of Fenric, Dalek,
Father’s Day, Tooth and Claw, School Reunion, The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, Smith and Jones,
Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords, The Unicorn and the Wasp, The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End, Amy’s Choice, The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon, A Good Man Goes to War, The Girl Who Waited,The God Complex, The Angels Take Manhattan, The Snowmen, The Name of the Doctor



There's a list of top 50 stories to watch right there.

(2s and 1s went to: Planet of Giants, The Space Museum, The Krotons, The Time Monster, Timelash, Time and the Rani; Underworld, Meglos, Time-Flight, Terminus, The Twin Dilemma.)


Per Doctor, it works out that Christopher Eccleston's stories work out the most favourable (my first Doctor, even though I put Matt Smith on the poll), followed by David Tennant and then Matt Smith. Out of the older stories - lower on average no doubt due to ropiness, but they're not that much lower - it goes, surprisingly, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Sylvester McCoy, Tom Baker (!), William Hartnell, Paul McGann (his one story), then Colin Baker.

That's stories, not the actors, of course. I tried to keep a wide distribution (or else I'd give them all 9s), and stories I haven't seen (seen, not just heard) are omitted. (This means in DWM, the lesser known 60s stories are voted for by less people... but then most are never going to be front runners, and 'less people' still equates to over a thousand!)

Don't ask me to pick a favourite out of that lot!

'Murder Must Advertise' by Dorothy L Sayers

A short review of this classic 30s mystery - and the first Sir Peter Wimsey book I've read. Dorothy L Sayers's books regularly show up on lists of the best detective fiction (the Crime Writers Association put her up with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, or Raymond Chandler). But like the rest, there's no clear consensus on her best novel. The Nine Tailors (on my reading list) and Gaudy Night and Strong Poison (two with Harriet Vane assisting Wimsey) are often cited, along with this one.

Set in an advertising agency, Peter Wimsey goes undercover in order to investigate a suspicious death and a drugs plot. Dorothy L Sayers has had considerable knowledge working as a copywriter - and it shows. The atmosphere in the opening chapters (and all the way through the book actually) conjures up a lively workplace of people - most of them thinking up the advertising slogans and campaigns in order to flog unnecessary stuff to the public. She captures the madness of the job with a satirical eye, and it gives the book an edge. The characters are reasonable, and there's lots and lots of them. A pleasing range in female characters, and of men too, but often the workers are interchangeable, and it's hard to pick out somebody in particular as a suspect - nor, do I suspect, does the author want to either.

I've heard that, like this one, Sayers's books focus more on the background and characters than constructing a clever, potentially dry murder mystery. Actually, the crime is quite well thought out, but there's not enough of it to cover 100 thousand words. That's not to say it's boring or that it drags along: there's plenty of ingenious chapters and set-pieces (workplace arguments, some skulking around town, some slight but colourful party scenes, a lengthy cricket match near the end that might confuse people who didn't know the rules).

It might be the first book of hers I've read, but I'm not a stranger to Wimsey - there was a short section with him written by another author in an anthology (to which she also contributed), and I've listened to one of the (3 hour odd) radio adaptations, of her first book 'Whose Body?'. That one was mad - a rambling mystery with little twist in the murderer's identity. The blurb on my edition of Murder Must Advertise says that 'five people will die' - and bar the first murder before the book begins, all of these happen in the last third of the book, and most are forgettable. By the climax, the whole thing is downplayed, with most of Wimsey's conclusions explained beforehand. I was surprised by the 'drug plot' - it sounds a lazy enemy to be up against (police unable to catch them, members potentially everywhere), but it's handled with enough detail to be plausible.

I found the book a great read, with a great setting and plenty of interesting diversions too. So it surprised me to read that the author herself didn't think much of it, that it was apparently written in haste to satisfy her publishers, before she could work on her next book with her preferred setting, the chuch bell-ringing of The Nine Tailors. Will that book hold up against the hype?

Detection Club: The Floating Admiral / Ask a Policeman

A couple of years ago, in my quest reading all of Agatha Christie's work, I stumbled upon a recent reprint of an old collaborative book. Written in 1931, The Floating Admiral was devised by the members of The Detection Club, a 'fun' society whose members included the likes of Agatha, Dorothy L Sayers, GK Chesterton and many many others since. Presumably the reprint was a success as now a second Detection Club novel has been reprinted by HarperCollins, and I've just finished it.

The Floating Admiral was one of the first published collaborations between a group of professional, published authors, and even today it's quite star studded. There's fourteen writers involved, writing a chapter of a detective story each. Naturally, the story suffers - you can't compare it to a typical crime tale, even if the plot has all the hallmarks of one. A body is found murdered, floating on a boat on a river mouth between two towns! Not only is there suspects and alibis and tracing his movements, but also remarks about the tide and how to moor boats!
The style jumps around with each author, especially with the addition of more clues and twists, but it's kept from getting too contrived by an ingenious instruction: each writer, as well as acknowledging everything that came up before, had to come up with a solution to their chapter (printed at the end of the story), their own explanation of the evidence. Agatha Christie, whose short chapter thankfully has a lot of typically good dialogue between characters, came up with a famously great explanation, which I won't spoil here.

It's a very interesting book, and a fun experiment for the Club (they had worked together on a couple of short serialisations before this, but not a full length novel). Many of the writers have faded into obscurity (especially the most florid named such as Canon Victor Whitechurch and Edgar Jepson), so the introduction putting them into context is much needed. The book itself, though, is an odd read. What starts off as atmospheric and scene setting, quickly descends into a mess of overly complex evidence, deduction and counter deduction. The task of the final writer to tie everything up must have been enormous - but I'd prefer something less technical, playing on the fact each chapter has a different author by having a change in style, rather than juggling the plot all of the time. It's skilfully written though, definitely grabbing your attention, and definitely living up to the concept.

Ask a Policeman, the following collaboration, seems to tackle the inherent problems of the first book head on. For starters, it has only half the number of authors than the first book, making it a smoother, slightly more coherent affair. And secondly, this time they bring along their detectives!

The four detectives were probably well known to readers of detective fiction in 1934, but less so now. Whilst I'm familiar with the enthusiastic (and often infuriating) Lord Peter Wimsey from Dorothy L Sayers, and I've heard of Gladys Mitchell's Mrs Bradley (played by Diana Rigg later on TV, and I've got one on my reading pile), the other two I hadn't heard of before. The trouble is that these books are barely in print at the moment, especially Helen Simpson's stage manager Sir John Samaurez and Anthony Berkeley's Roger Sheringham, who, whilst having books adapted into films by Hitchcock (!), remain obscure. Not to mention the other two authors involved in this (and the previous book too), John Rhode and Milward Kennedy. This means it's sometimes hard to see the humour and parody involved when they appear, but they're good characters and very good writers.
In fact, the book itself is marketed under Agatha Christie - and unlike The Floating Admiral, she hasn't even contributed to this one! Rather, they've lumped in a Preface that was published elsewhere, an essay by her about other Detective Fiction writers. However it's a great piece - insightful and critical - and fits this book very well.

It's rather a shame that some of the writers aren't better known, because it's a good read! This book has an odd gimmick - one writer, Rhode, writes the set-up this time, putting in an impossible amount of clues into his relatively short opening. That it stands up to the later repeated scrutiny, and doesn't get too dull when it's explained again and again, shows his merits. (The plot itself is possibly stereotypical, and definitely contrived, with three important pillars of society being involved and suspected in a country house shooting!). Whilst it's all about alibis and timings, the initial chapter is so open, the following chapters are all quite different.
The next four writers each have detectives 'solve' the case - but in a gimmick designed to invoke parody, they swap detectives and are writing in somebody else's style. This doesn't entirely work without knowledge of the originals, but it's put to the background. More important are the deductions, and there's a lot of them. Whilst some of these are long winded or with overly flowery prose, they're different enough to keep holding your attention, especially in small doses. By the end of it though, you know the movements of everybody at Hursley Lodge like the back of your hand, it's been reiterated and debated so many times.
And then, tying up everything in a very fun and ingenious final chapter is Milward Kennedy. The clever conceit is that all of these detectives, whilst their chapters were written independently, worked around each other, and every clue they found was correct - even if they picked different suspects as the murderer. So who really did it? A fifth solution is found, that's meant to be the 'correct' one that fits almost all of the evidence. It sounds horrendous to write, making sense of every clue (and sneakily discounting a couple of murderer's confessions!) but thankfully it's painless to read.

Both of the books are less coherent and less readable than usual detective novels, but then they don't claim to be. Rather, through parody and wit, they enthusiastically push some of the conventions of the genre, in an era where detective fiction was all the rage. These books are better than the concept sounds, and well worth discovering now they've been reprinted once more (in very smart new editions!), and the talent involved means they shouldn't be overlooked in a hurry. Whether any more of the few Detection Club collaborations will be republished, without Agatha Christie's name attached, remains to be seen, but I hope so, if they match this standard.

My Best of 2013

I watch possibly too much TV, especially drama, these days. But 2013 was a great year for drama. I've seen a lot of roundups of best things to watch last year, though I haven't watched everything. (Breaking Bad? Not on the BBC, so...) Here's my thoughts on the best things I've personally seen. Starting with..

Best Crime Series

Was it just me, or is there more crime dramas - and detective dramas - than ever? Not that I'm complaining (most of the books I read too tend to be crime-ish now, or sci-fi, and I guess the telly I watch reflects that too.)

Broadchurch
No list on 2013 is complete without Broadchurch on it. Even from the start I loved it - the acting, the cast, the cinematography, even the writing (Chris Chibnall's far better at 'realistic' drama than spaceships and swords, it seems). Really lives up to the hype - even the electrifying ending (which I didn't guess - even if many other people did!). Blogged about it here. Curiously, my mum thought it was too slow and boring, but she's wrong.

Top of the Lake
Slightly too highbrow, too arty, with lots of intelligible New Zealand locals (almost needs subtitles!) and little exposition. This was yet another slightly grim crime series, but head and shoulders above the rest in terms of gorgeous scenery, dark crazy themes, and mysterious storytelling, and great twists. I really got into it by the end.




Endeavour
Very classy, very pretty and captivating mysteries. I've never seen the original Morse series (though I've started reading the books) - this came first, and it's a series of very good mysteries.


The Great Train Robbery
Quite slow and meandering, but a fine reenactment of the robbery and the police side of things from 50 years ago. It's very classy (CSI 1963! super) but gripping and very nicely done.
Also worth mentioning: Ripper Street (most of it's two series aired this year - strong Victorian cop show), What Remains (very suspenseful mystery, unashamedly contrived, with loveably bonkers final scenes), The Fall (grim serial killer drama, classy as hell). ITV's Poirot/Marple serials (generally well done, EIGHT new ones this year! - and I've caught up on a few old ones. Curtain and Endless Night particularly were amazing). Swedish crime dramaseries Arne Dahl (good, overblown long thrillers with good character development), Luther (returning, looking pretty and well told - I caught up with series one too, the first ever episode is a masterpiece), Scott and Bailey, Father Brown (cosy short mysteries), Mayday.

Best Unrelentingly Bleak Series

An extra category - and I'm not counting Broadchurch in it, cos even that had some humour in it. These ones didn't.

The Village
Very bleak and depressing (I sense a theme here..), but very well told and shot. One of those lovely epic dramas, but set in a rural Northern village from a hundred years ago. At times, at it's best, it's very moving, and very special.

The Returned
A French series about zombies... wait, come back! This wasn't really about zombies at all (apart from the odd bit of cannibalism), more like ghosts - as four or five dead people return to a quiet village and unsettle their grieving loved ones. Why are they there? Your guess is as good as mine - but aside from getting very few answers this year, this show just oozed a classy, eerie atmosphere and suspense. (Alright - it was slow!)

Also worth mentioning: Top of the Lake and The Fall (see above), and The Mill (fine period drama from C4, in all its grubby authenticity). 

Best Series I Often Found Frustrating

But there's also some really good TV shows that I loved... well, after a while. At first they rather irritated me. There's a new trend for the confusing, filmic, muttery drama series, and here's some of them that - whilst being excellent - took me some time to warm to.

The White Queen
Lavish as ever - I loved the first episode's containedness, gorgeousness and great plot, but then it suffered under the following two or three episodes of rushed historical events, muttered exposition and a cast of thousands. For a while I hated it - but by the end of the series it calmed down into a smoother, much better watch. Don't read up on the history if you don't want to know what happens, even though it helps you to follow the plot, as it's pretty accurate actually, depicting the end bits of the War of the Roses, and the reign of Richard III. It's just a shame history wasn't a bit more... simple.
Peaky Blinders
BBC Two's lovely gangster drama set in 1919, up north, to the sound of the coolest rock songs and arty visuals. Another one of these shows without much exposition, and an unconventional plot, so I thought it a bit mystifying at first, but go along with it, if only for the ride. Or something.
  
Dancing on the Edge
Started off slow (a ninety minute opening episode, too), but a great cast, oozing class and quality like The Hour (much missed), and jazz songs you wouldn't realise weren't authentic. But I did find it odd - stuff happening, but not much depth or subtlety - or mystery, by the end of it. Frustrating to watch at times, with the plot too, but glossy and memorable. (There's also an extra, very odd 'documentary' episode!)

Also worth mentioning: Top of the Lake (there's a running theme to this), Burton and Taylor (muttery, but with really good casting... even if I've never seen them in real life much to compare them to!), The Great Gatsby (the film - although the book was quite hard 'to get'. I wrote about them here - but yes, an odd film to love)

Best New Sci-Fi/Fantasy Series

Orphan Black
A very intriguing import, about a woman who discovers there's other people who look like her. Sounds a bit crazy - it's a sci-fi (ish) thriller - but it plays differently to how you'd expect, in that it's actually very very fun. Tatiana Maslay as the clones deserves every award going, as I kept having to remind myself that these characters were all played by the same actor. Really really lovely.

Utopia
Again, only technically sci-fi. Super stylish, hyper realistic and very awesome... and very disturbing! This was gripping from the start - a conspiracy, comic-booky drama, with violent assassins and... well, I'm doing it a disservice. Like nothing else this year, highly recommended - and it's coming back.

In the Flesh
After Being Human, BBC Three aired a zombie drama... wait, come back! This was completely different to your usual horror, actually being a self-confessed rural kitchen-sink drama exploring what it's like to be dead. The gradually unfolding main character and situation is what made it - the first episode's slow, but it improved into something really special.

Also worth mentioning: The Returned (see above), Neverwhere (not telly, but epic radio drama with one of the best casts ever, and best stories too. Basically, incredible - and I've never experienced the originals), Agents of Shield was alright superhero-ish action fluff.And of course returning stuff like Doctor Who - but more on that later.

Best (Other) New Series

The best of the rest (alright, I can't think of any more categories!).


Frankie
The complete opposite to most of these - a light, breezy antidote to the violence and misery on this list. But it's also a very well made series, about a district nurse played loveably by Eve Myles. It's not all sweetness and light though - there's a stalker, relationship problems, and obviously, death. The plot's good, and it's miles better than anything similar on ITV.
  
The Americans
An American show - a slow paced, tense spy series, about a pair of Russian spies posing undercover in 1981 as a typical all American family. It's a great, solid and rewarding watch - no huge explosive set-pieces or secret volcano lairs, but pure drama with a good cast. 

The Escape Artist
Another one of these BBC mini-series: this one, starring David Tennant as a lawyer, was an economical, solid, effortless thriller, with a great twist of a final episode. And just a cut above most dramas.






Privates
Odd title - it's a BBC daytime drama shown last January about 1960s conscripts to National Service. But it's a lovely series, with unfamiliar actors (well, except Alex Vlahos), and juggles the plots and themes superbly over the five episodes, to keep you watching.






Also worth mentioning: I discovered Borgen, easily the best Danish political soap I've seen this year. The Wrong Mans (fine thrilling drama, with laughs). CBBC's documentary 'I am Ethan' (top notch - and Who related). Lucy Worsley's A Very British Murder (very enjoyable, about the history of crime solving!). Irish gangster drama Love/Hate (shown on 5 - action packed, pretty darn good), The Wipers Times (an excellent period piece, despite being overly long, packed with humour and cynicism), The Whale, Gangsta Granny. And The Tractate Middoth and The Thirteenth Tale were two very good ghost stories shown at Christmas.

Best Returning Series

A second series (or even more) is often hard to do. But these shows kept the quality up this year in my opinion...

Call the Midwife/Last Tango in Halifax
A second series can be tough - more of the same, especially as the first series is often hailed as the best thing since sliced bread. But these two series - both real hits, both which I loved the first time around - came back with the same quality, the same cast too, and really stunning telly. Call the Midwife made me weep with the always painful abortion sequence, pre-watershed (no blood, but intercut with bright red nail polish...) Last Tango developed the characters realistically and showed the wedding of the year, as well as the best acting, writing, directing, etc...

Wolfblood
A great set of 13 new episodes gave us our old Wolfblood gang back, plus new characters and expanded the characters and the world they lived in. A very strong, realistic serial with heart and - wait for it - bite. I also watched back the whole of the first series from last year when it was repeated on BBC Three!

Wizards Vs Aliens
The first series was alright, if small and sometimes too silly - the second really knocked it out the park though with its risk-taking stories. The Thirteenth Floor in particular is a fantastic adventure with bold twists, and the finale is amazing. But all the stories were good, ranging from high comedy to tragedy - between this and Wolfblood, it's breaking the boundaries of traditionally 'children's telly' (And Young Dracula too, not on this year).

Also worth mentioning: The Sparticle Mystery (another great children's series - a fantasy drama with all child actors, trying to find the adults - great old-school, watchable fun, like playing in the woods). Final series of Being Human (great ending to the show, revitalised for the final stretch - especially with Phil Davis, and also Kate Bracken) and Misfits (much improved on last year's also). Black Mirror (executed perfectly, most of them), The Paradise (still lovely, with glorious design and over-acting). Doc Martin (consistently light and funny - don't be snobby). And Horrible Histories - very very amusing and brilliant as ever

Best Bit of Doctor Who

An odd year for Doctor Who - but a good one on the whole, with an eight episode series (also called, just, a series) and two specials. The one in November, The Day of the Doctor, was superb - as were highlights like The Crimson Horror and The Bells of St John. Let's not mention some of the episodes though, nor the Doctor or Clara's character development...

However there was also two star highlights of the year elsewhere:

An Adventure in Space and Time
A one off drama, completely different to Doctor Who, about its origins. I'd heard a lot about the drama and the history behind it already throughout the year - it's beautiful, absolutely magical. David Bradley is (was?) William Hartnell, and Mark Gatiss skilfully compressed an awful lot into 90 minutes. It's almost perfect. 

The Five(ish) Doctors
Pretty much as good as the Doctor Who anniversary special, but a comedy, and with a tenth of the budget (probably). Star studded, bloody hysterical, one of the best things ever.

Best Show I Watched from Years Ago

State of Play
One of the best TV series ever, quite possibly? A perfect storm of conspiracies, politics, journalism and mystery - if a little too long (six hours). It's also got a now A-list cast, including John Simm, David Morrissey and Bill Nighy.

Casanova
This reminded me how much I love Russell T Davies - it screams 2005 Doctor Who with David Tennant and the music and the fun, fast cutting. And it does that trick of making you laugh and cry at the same time.

Also: Finally saw Ashes to Ashes after only seeing the final one-and-a-half series (just as good as Life on Mars, perhaps better). Danger UXB (a very thrilling old wartime series). The original Pride and Prejudice (I read the book first, too, the BBC series is marvellous), Margaret (the Thatcher drama that is all about politics, with a fine cast), Land Girls (a strong series from a few years back, soap style), Eric and Ernie (accomplished and infectious - no wonder it won a Bafta). And as a family we've been watching Bergerac (the crime drama set - mostly - on Jersey. we've seen all of it now, it's mostly really good).

I didn't watch that many films this year, certainly not at the cinema - but I did see Alien, Avengers Assemble, Scott Pilgrim VS the World, Brideshead Revisited, Attack the Block, Young Sherlock Holmes, A Field in England, Indiana Jones, Starter for 10, The History Boys and Source Code, so that made up for it. And not telly, but Big Finish's last Eighth Doctor series on the radio was excellent, a real high point (as is discovering Round the Horne and Cabin Pressure, two of the solidest, funniest radio comedies). And I finally got round to reading all of Sandman, if in a fairly jumbled order. And I read lots of books, too many to mention. And, of course, I got on the radio myself, as part of Chain Gang, which was very lucky (and it wasn't half bad either).

Disappointments

 

BBC's Atlantis - a sub-par Merlin (no pun intended), which started off terrible, and ended up as, well, a sub-par Merlin (and that had problems of its own too). I watched the first episode of Mr Selfridge, to my horror - utterly lifeless. Doctor Who - well, there was The Rings of Akhaten, but I watched Death to the Daleks for the first time, unfortunately.
Southcliffe was very naturalistic, arty, but without a plot and so grim it's almost unwatchable. Death Comes to Pemberley was lavish, if sombre, but I didn't like the lacklustre ending. Masterchef's format this year was very repetitive.
Catching up, the film version of The Time Traveller's Wife doesn't quite work, and doesn't feel like how I imagined it when I read the lovely lovely book - well, I was warned. Mars Attacks is far, far worse than I remembered back when I was younger. And after getting round to read them for the first time, I found some of the short stories of HP Lovecraft to be a bit heavy and a struggle to read, sadly.

Maybe I shouldn't have ended on such a downbeat paragraph... but 2013 was a good year for telly, and 2014 (even thus far) looks to be great too. It's striving for better things, it's more filmic, more nuanced, more varied than before.(And with all the dramas I watch I should probably go into the industry myself... let's call all this "research", eh?)

Flickr Highlights: 2013 in Photos

Some highlights from my Flickr page. I did a post like this in 2012 - and here's some of the best things I've taken this year: (DVD stuff omitting)