Best Of Times.

                                                     T'was the Night Before Christmas
                                                         And all through the house,
                                                         Was the sound of a Zygon
                                                             chewing a mouse.
                                                  (Oh Boy William Mcgonagall
                                                          would turn in his grave.)

Abominable Times.

Monkey Queen.

                        (From my sketchbook) Even The Planet Of The Apes had a medieval period.

A Lost Talisman.

Read this great double bill of books by Jonathan Aycliffe at the weekend. A Saturday night horror double bill if you will. Two books written in a style and using subject manner that strays very close to similar stories you may have read before but remain strong original tales in their own right. There is something almost seductive about the familiarity that feels like a familiar tune played on surprising and haunting instruments. Of the two I found The Talisman particularly affecting. (Possibly because I spent some of the best years of my life working in a store called The Talisman.) The Lost reminded me of some of the great horror novels of my youth that involved Satanic rumblings and Biblical prophecies whose time had come. Books such as The Omen, The Sentinel or The Apocalypse. big world ending stories that reek of sulphur. The Talisman charts the moral decay of a young Romanian immigrant and his dreadful heritage. There is some icy story telling here as a young man of the west strays into haunted regions. Damning himself and those he loves. It is also told in the same format as Bram Stoker's Dracula as a series of journal entries and letters. Yet it does not feel in the least tired.
           The book jacket designs are beautifully old school and the authors influences are literally worn on the sleeve of the volumes. They are old influences to be sure but the storytelling and dialogue are thoroughly modern.
             There are many dark areas of this world which remain unexplored and perhaps we are all the better for this. The many antiquarian explorers in the pages of MR James stories who dig too deep who go too far. Jonathan Aycliffe seems determined to follow in their footsteps.
              I for one will be cautiously watching where he goes.
              Leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind me.

If I Only Had A Brain.

                                                    The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

Let Me Be Brave.

                                                                 Clara, Clara, Clara.
               She faced the Raven last night and it extinguished her life. Blew it out in a black smoky cloud. What a dark moment. The darkest since the show returned in 2005. All the adventures this young woman shared with The Doctor. All the wonderful things they saw and did together and it ended on the rain slick cobbles of a dark street in London that exists slightly outside the world we know. Much like the fictional world The Doctor belongs to. I have never seen The Doctor so helpless so impotent in the face of an unrelenting gruesome fate. Some spark seemed to go out of him as his friends end drew near and I could not help but say "MY DOCTOR WOULD NEVER ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN."
                 And then I realised I said it to an empty room.

Maius Intra Qua Extra.

The bulk of the story being told in this remarkable book is set in Hulton College in Norfolk which is a boys school set during an age on the very cusp of a war which will change the world forever. Beginning with the assassination of The Archduke Ferdinand  by a Serbian terrorist which will set the ball rolling on a series of events which will culminate in the youth of Britain and Europe dying in their thousands in the most atrocious ways thought possible up to and beyond the ken of man.It is also the novel  upon which the highly regarded and much loved David Tennant era two part story is based. The novel is different from that stunning wee gem in the crown of that wonderful period but is also basically the same. The same intense and even emotional tale of a Timelord in search of humanity and a deeper understanding of the fragility of life and our may-fly hold on it. It is a great coming of age too. If you have ever had a Tom Boys School Days moment when you fell into the hands of a Flashman type school bully you will also have a lot to identify with in this novel. William Golding understood the nature of the wildness that exists just beneath the surface of us all and the kind of situations when we will answer that call of the wild. So does Paul Cornell.

The Doctor becomes  a human being using a device that is pure magic science. A Prospero charm that allows him to alter his entire DNA as well as rewriting his memories from an ancient cosmic being to that of a little Scottish school teacher raised by a stern minister father in Aberdeen. He becomes that which is most alien to him; a one hearted ordinary man. In the television version Daved Tenant dazzled as both The Doctor and John Smith, playing both differently if both wearing the same face. In Paul Cornell's words Sylevester Mc Coy excels delivering two career best performances, if you follow my line of thought. In Paul Cornell's hands and under the direction of his story telling Sylvester delivers two very strong characterizations though both of a different nature retain the same face in the theatre of the minds eye. To the point where I believe this very talented writer could pursue a career in the FPI as a profiler  such are the almost poetic observations with which he conjures up the ticks and winks that form a person. The lovely Benny is the companion here herself going through the traumatic aftermath of the loss of a loved one.It is Benny who originally bore the responsibility of care that Martha Jones inherited for the television adaption. Benny is a wonderful character in her own right with a history across different mediums that stretches back longer than most incarnations of The Doctor. This is another book in The Doctor Who History Collection and I had almost forgotten they are all reprints. Remembrances of a time when The Doctor was kept alive by virtue of the Virgin novels and the ever faithful ever excellent Doctor Who Monthly. In his forward to this novel Paul Cornell mentions how his proceeding book was the subject of scathing reviews and yet for the life of me I caqnnot remember which one it may have been. He is such a good writer it is hard to imagine any of his work being pooh-Pooed! Mind you some of the Doctor Who fans have exacting standards, impossibly Galifreyan standards. 

This is no rose tinted vision of a vanished England. This is a hard tale of innocence progressing towards manhood and to some degree the same process moving in a backwards direction. It mirrors the contrariness of human nature and almost succeeds in dazzling us with its reflected visions of a bygone age. It is about cowardice and bravery and it is about war and peace.

Mostly though it is about human nature.