The Magrs Method of Reviewing Doctor Who Novels: "Doctor Who: Engines of War" by George Mann

I noticed Paul Magrs adopted a different line of questioning in his reviews of "Doctor Who" episodes, so I thought it would be fun to apply the same approach to reviewing a batch of recent tie-in novels:

Can the best "Doctor Who" stories be summed up in the form of a question?

Will the War Doctor be able to finally end "The Last Great Time War" after discovering the dirty secrets of both the Daleks and the Time Lords without destroying another planet caught in the crossfire?

Best moment for 'old-school' Who?

A LOT of Time Lord mythology, with callbacks to "The Five Doctors", "The Deadly Assasin", "Genesis of The Daleks", "The Invasion of Time", "The End of Time" and "The Day of The Doctor", though those last two aren't old-school, but you get the idea.

Best new thing?

The Possibility Engine - Rassilon's magic 8-Ball, only more horrific.

They'd Never Have Got Away With That In The 20th Century...

Ditto...the Possibility Engine would likely have been the smoking gun/ace in the hole Mary Whitehouse would need to get old-school Doctor Who taken off the air...imagine a Time Lord crucifix...also, you've got the Daleks planning to turn the War Doctor into a Dalek by encasing him in an iron maiden-esque chamber/Dalek casing..ouch!  

Hooray For Jackie Tyler - Best Guest Moment?

Every scene with Rassilon. If you've seen "The End of Time" and  "The  Day of The Doctor" before reading this novel (and you should), then you get to enjoy imagining the sight of actors John Hurt and  Timothy Dalton chewing the scenery as the mayfly Doctor and the Nintendo Power Glove-wielding Time Lord President, whether debating about the  right to turn the Doctor's mentor/father-figure Borusa into a horoscope-dispensing pinball machine or Rassilon casually tapping his gloved hand to thwart the War Doctor's attempt at beating up one of his sniveling  sycophants, the material casually crosses the line into high camp and says, "What line?", but it becomes the main draw of the book.

The "I love me Nan'" Moment?

Cinder..this character is clearly meant to  be an analogue for the pilot the Eighth Doctor failed to save in the minisode "Night of The Doctor", but once she's  established...she's along for the ride, and her relationship as The War Doctor's  companion is payed off with his dialogue more than anything she has to say. A lot more emotional impact is in the scenes featuring Borusa - the old-school  DW character from past Gallifrey tales who gets a sympathetic role as the truth behind Rassilon's resurrection and resurgence as Time Lord President is revealed.

What?!

The War Doctor is seen at the beginning of the book leading a fleet of 'Battle Tardises' against Dalek battleships - yet his Tardis has no weapons! He's  supposed to be the anti-hero Doctor! Couldn't he have had some weapons?

Huh?!

We learn what the 'Skaro degradations' in the Time War are - alternate mutations of the Daleks caused by repeated attempts by both sides to eliminate or recreate the origins of the Dalek species...and we get scenes depicting space battles between Time Lord Battle Tardises and Dalek warships...but I can't help thinking  George Mann missed out on something..I  recall Russell T. Davies once suggesting that the Last Great Time War involved more than space battles between CG spaceships - it was a war through time, happening backward and forward and in-between, akin to a Cold War that ended in a catastrophe..or like a large-scale  version of  "The Chase", where the Daleks are horsing around with the history of the universe to tip it in their favor, playing cat-and-mouse games with the Time Lords...and while there are hints of that...we're reading about CG Tardises shaped like BeatsPillXL players.

As for the War Doctor - he's in fine form, behaving more Docterly than anti-hero, save for moments of rebellion against his past decision-making processes, but ultimately, the point is that this Doctor was still The Doctor, and this is one of his finest hours - he thwarts the plans of Rassilon and the Daleks, saves a planet from being destroyed and helps his disgraced mentor/father-figure Borusa redeem himself. Plus, we get some scenes with the War Doctor using that neat sonic screwdriver he kept in an ammo belt in "The Day of The Doctor".

Where Was I?

Seeing as how this is likely to be the only novel set during the Last Great Time War, I was hoping it would be available in the States in hardcover, with a reversible  dust jacket that would feature an alternate cover illustration that resembled the book Clara peaked at in "Journey To The Center of The Tardis". There is a hardcover  version, but it's in the "paper-hard" hardcover style of past DW novels, and that variant is not available here, since Broadway Books, the current publisher in the States, is only offering them in paperback. Pity.

The Singlemost Fabulous Thing..

The War Doctor vs. Rassilon. Forget about the Daleks - they're kind of boring in this..the real villains in The Last Great Time War were the Time Lords leading the rotten core of Gallifrey, and that message is made abundantly clear..

The Terrific 10 of 2013

Here we are -  a list of ten neat "things"  I liked in 2013, all funnybook/pop culture related/available in better-than-average comic shops, with emphasis on "things"  because the #1 on this list was not a comic book, yet it was the most "comic book" of all. So, without further  ado...

10. Tales of A Sixth-Grade Muppet: When Pigs Fly -  coinciding with the release of The Muppets and subsequent revival of that franchise's film franchise was a series of novels written and illustrated by Kirk Scroggs  (in the style of the Diary of A Wimpy Kid  series) about the Muppets consoling a boy after he is suddenly transformed into a Muppet...and still has to go to school anyway. There were four books in all, but the final installment is the best, because it jettisoned the sitcom kiddie novel trappings in favor of high fantasy - most of it is set inside the USS Swinetrek ... the ship from the Pigs In Space sketches on The Muppet Show. Suddenly the series feels like a Roald Dahl book...and that's a good thing.

9. House of Fun #1 - Evan Dorkin gave his humor comic Dork!  a name change when he moved it to Dark Horse, naming it after his & wife Sarah Dyer's website, HouseofFun.com, and adding color! Perennial favorites Milk and Cheese are also present, along with a new Eltingville Club story and recurring sitcom-spoof The Murder Family, plus a lot of great stuff.

8. Superior Spider-Man #5: I'm happy to say that I've been enjoying the adventures of "Otter" (Doctor Octopus swapping minds with presumably dead Peter Parker and assuming the latter's life and superhero identity for the past year of Spider-Man comics,  hence the change-of-adjective in the book's title), largely because Marvel's stance on who Peter Parker/Spider-Man is  for the last decade has resulted in comics that didn't interest me, but this stuff, with Otto as Spider-Man...feels like the Spider-Man comics I read when I was a kid in the late-80s and 1990s...and in that sense, this is classic Spider-Man - not Steve Ditko or John Romita Sr., but David Micheline & Todd McFarlane, Howard Mackie & John Romita Jr., Todd Dezago & Mike Weiringo, Tom Defalco with Pat Olliffe & Ron Franz, and J.M. Dematteis with Sal Buscema or Luke Ross. YES...that was my Spider-Man: decadent,  domesticated, happily married  (Yes! He was happy!) not particularly accessible,  but the only time Spider-Man was accessible (in my humble opinion) was his origin story in Amazing Fantasy #15 .
Anyway, I chose issue #5 of Superior  for this list because it's an early standout issue - that cover alone lets you know the kid gloves are off fairly early in the game; writer Dan Slott's greatest accomplishment throughout this past year was to present "Otter" as a fully-realized character and not a placeholder.  I look forward to seeing how this storyline wraps up (as hinted) in the Goblin Nation storyline.

7. The All-New Ghostbusters #1: rumors of a new sequel to Ghostbusters have hinted at a lot of things, most prominent the rumor that a new team of GB's will appear alongside the old guard ( I heard Jonah Hill and Emma Stone have been cast ). Anyway, IDW had some fun with these rumors by relaunching their Ghostbusters comic with a new #1, featuring a new team made up of recurring characters that had been introduced in recent storylines, led by Janine the receptionist for a half-dozen issues before the "good ol' boys" came back. I'm sure Dan Ackroyd and Ivan Reitman have their own ideas, but this was fun.

6. Doctor Who vol. 2 #12 : this issue marked the conclusion to "Sky Jacks", a fun four part arc that brought Clara Oswald into IDW's Doctor Who comic book series. Those among you familiar with the concept of the Tardis - the Doctor's "bigger-on-the-inside" time machine, will REALLY love this one, since the show doesn't really have the budget to show a WW2 bomber flying inside it. :)

5. The House of Mystery: my blog, my list, my rules - the public library had all 8 volumes of the DC Vertigo revival of DC Comics' code-approved  Silver Age horror series, written mostly by Matthew Sturges (with Bill Willingham contributing material here & there) from a few years back. It starts off rocky, with the tone of contributions by Willingham clashing with Sturges' storylines before the latter takes over writing all the material,  allowing it to find its groove before the announcement of its cancellation forces a rushed conclusion. I noticed how (or maybe it's just me seeing things) Sturges scripts seemed to switch influences midstream from Joss Wheddon to Russell T. Davies and ending with Steven Moffat. Very timely. I loved it. I DO strongly recommend you skip Willingham's story in the premiere issue about the girl getting pregnant with the mosquito boyfriend...what was Bill smoking that night when he thought that up?

4. Superheroes! Capes, Cowls and The Creation of Comic Book Culture : you may recall a post from last fall, in which I reviewed a documentary on PBS about comic book superheroes (DC & Marvel  Comics superheroes,  mostly) and I thought the thesis inferred from watching it was that you didn't need to read the comics to enjoy the characters, because they had become subsumed within mainstream pop culture, perhaps in a cynical way...and they left out stuff! :)  Laurence Maslon, who worked on that documentary and cowrote this  companion book, had read my review, and left his comments,  including a suggestion that I check out this book - I'm glad I did. The book presents a stronger case for the film's argument that the genre has become ingrained within our pop culture landscape...and I believe that's because the authors - Maslon with Michael Kantor - offer new voices. With the exception of Jim Steranko talking about his work on Nick Fury, and Neal Adams (taking a break from defending his work on Batman: Odyssey , for a change), I had heard a lot of those guys in the film on older interviews giving the same answers they always give in documentaries and books/magazines about comics, so the programme was likely a success among newer audiences. This book was well-written and deserves a place on your bookshelf.

3. The Joker: The Clown Prince of Crime: Miracles happen. Small miracles, at least. Who knew that DC Comics would actually release all 9 issues of The Joker's late-70s solo series in a handy, affordable (!) trade paperback - in color!!  This was the treat of the year.

2. Jim Henson: The Biography: Brian Jay Jones's excellent book about the man who created the Muppets is fantastic and heartbreaking at the same time; the last 1/3 of the book reads like a workaholic's fever dream, as Jones chronicles every single project that Henson was working on during the last few years of his life and how his multitasking had spread him too thin creatively, resulting in a string of flops (The Jim Henson Hour in particular,  which is sad, because I do remember watching that show and missing it when t was yanked). If there was never any doubt about how creative the man was, Jones does shed light on his faults, perhaps eerily foreshadowing his untimely demise due to a bacterial infection that may have been preventable,  because, as I insist that you should read and see, the man was always busy. He was a genius - he could never stay idle and content where he was; he had an entrepreneurial spirit and optimism that kept him going...even when his final days were spent as the eye of a tornado that he thought he was calming by adding another gust of wind.  Sad, brilliant,  joyous and heartbreaking - the epitome of "gone too soon".

1. Doctor Who: The Day of The Doctor: THIS ...was the best "thing" of 2013. I really didn't care about what Marvel was doing, or DC Comic's 3D "wiggle" covers or Zombo the Clown (Jeff Lester's favorite) or Dark Horse's Battlestar Galactica-esque interpretation of George Lucas's pre-1st draft scribbles of "The Star Wars"...and nobody could've anticipated just how fantastic Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special would be. I've already written about the special before...but I may have neglected to add that this was the best thing of 2013.

And now you know.  :)

The Other Three Doctors

Yesterday, I watched Doctor Who: The Day of The Doctor on BBCAmerica. This TV special just earned a Guinness World Record for being the largest live simulcast of a TV drama in history, airing in over 200 countries at the same time. It will also be shown in many movie theatres throughout the weekend in 3D and will premiere in American cinemas Monday, November 25th.  This special celebrates the 50th anniversary of the series premiere in 1963.

Was it good? It was excellent!  I loved it! I believe it's the best episode of the current series. I was impressed with how writer/producer Steven Moffat was able to integrate a lot of continuity, nods to the past, running gags and characters eloquently in a fairly short (it's about 75 minutes long) movie. The Last Great Time War - the apocalyptic battle on Gallifrey, the Doctor's home planet, was the source of all the angst that had underpinned the characterization of the titular hero for the last eight years; with The Day of The Doctor , the chip gets wiped off his shoulder in a big paradigm shift that actually makes more sense than what we were told; given what we know of him, the Doctor, even when bred for war, is not a killing machine - he wouldn't be the Doctor,  he would be a different character altogether,  and it wouldn't be Doctor Who anymore. Moffat figured out a way to finally resolve/reconcile this contradictory plotline by introducing John Hurt as The War Doctor.

I was curious to see what this new "black sheep" Doctor was going to be. There were a LOT of theories online regarding this mayfly incarnation - happily, they turned out to be wrong. Hurt's performance is fantastic and colorful; his grizzled Doctor is equal parts Gandalf/Obi-Wan Kenobi and 1890s Klondike Gold Rush prospector (think Walter Huston in The Treasure of  The Sierra Madre), he holds his own next to series star Matt Smith and fan-favorite Doctor David Tennant (whose performance is so flawless, it's like he never left!),  which is no easy feat. Costars Jenna Coleman and Billie Piper also get to shine (Moffat's script took care in giving everyone a real part to play and avoid turning the whole works into an overlong curtain call, which is why it bugs me when people compare his & Russell T. Davies efforts to Joss Wheddon, when I believe Joss should take notes - he only knows how to write teenagers, geeks or immature adults who won't grow up). Joanna Page as Queen Elizabeth the 1st was cute as a very catty & minx-like "virgin queen" Bess; at times, she resembles Judi Dench (!), who has played the Queen as well.

Then there were the cameos. There were two BIG surprise cameos, one not-so-big, and one BIG surprise cameo in a separate "minisode" that served as a prequel and premired the week before. That minisode, The Night of The Doctor, featured the first onscreen appearance of Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, an incarnation that was introduced in a Doctor Who TV movie that aired in 1996, but only made subsequent appearances in tie-in novels and audio plays thereafter. His appearance in this short film has revived interest in seeing him reprise his role again, and I wouldn't be surprised if he does appear in the next batch of episodes.

The not-so-big cameo was the reappearance of all the other actors who played the Doctor (living & dead) during the climatic battle sequence via footage from old episodes reedited to appear "new"...and amongst that was a quick blink-or-you'll-miss-it BIG cameo by Peter Capaldi (!), who will be replacing the departing Matt Smith. We only see his eyes and eyebrows, but they are very intense eyes and eyebrows! This Time Lord is a man on a mission - perhaps the mission implied in the final scenes...

The last BIG cameo featured Tom Baker (!). Even though the actor (arguably the most-famous, iconic & recognizeable incarnation of the Doctor - y'know, the one who looks like Harpo Marx, wears an impossibly long scarf and has been caricatured on The Simpsons & Futurama often) told the Huffington Post that he was appearing in it, nobody really believed it. The only clue that he was being truthful might be the Radio Times cover promoting the event, which offered a cover featuring Tom as the Doctor from a 1993 TV Special, "Dimensions in Time", in which he's noticeably older and not an older photo of him from the past, in his classic 70s look. He's spry for his age, even though he's lit up in this special as though he were were feeble/ghostly/spectral in appearance, although there may be something to that - Tom's final DW adventure, "Logopolis", featured the Doctor being haunted by a ghostly watcher as well...one who turned out to be an avatar of his future self!

There's a big debate online as to who Tom was playing in The Day of The Doctor. Was he merely playing the humble museum curator his character claimed to be (with an extensive knowledge of  the Doctor and Gallifrey, even proclaiming/hinting knowledge of what lies ahead?), a future incarnation of the Doctor - one who chose to resume the form of the 4th Doctor and "retire", or maybe he's the Doctor's brother,  Irving Braxiatel, a Time Lord known for his extensive art collection? Nobody knows, but it's a surprise appearance that was loved by many...maybe it was just Tom Baker as Tom Baker, the only man alive who could get away with knowing more about the Doctor than the Doctor!

So...after three years of wobbly storylines that seemed to mark a series that was coasting on good will earned by old feats of greatness (this was Moffat's best script since "Blink", an episode that's regarded as the most-popular episode of Doctor Who of all time in most online polls..an episode that the Doctor, ironically, has only a minor part to play in!), or just support from new audiences keen on feeling like they weren't late for the party, this TV special delivered. It had the meat, the sauce, the lettuce, the spice...anyone who disagrees should go watch Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D ...because they're too spoiled from having the good stuff and could use a dose of the opposite.

Here's a fun gallery of images related to the  whole works. Enjoy!