Richard Wright

Honestly.  This is your very last chance to take a Short Trip.  On the first of January 2010, Big Finish lose the right not only to publish, but also to sell, their Short Trips range of hardback Doctor Who anthologies, featuring various original adventures of the first eight incarnations of Doctor Who.  Basically, the BBC have not renewed Big Finish’s licence to produce these collections based on the suddenly-successful-all-over-again science fiction character (they issued the licence back when there was no new Doctor Who being produced for television, before the current revival).  It’s pure speculation on my part, but I guess this is because they plan to do some of their own story collections through their own publishing wing.

This is important to you, potentially, because it’s the last chance you have of being able to read my short story ‘Lonely’, featuring the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann, on the tellybox and radiophone), an Internet chatroom, and the lost and lonely souls who wander in there.  The story was first published in the anthology Short Trips – Transmissions, and this year was reprinted in Big Finish’s final Short Trips book, which gathered the best tales in the range into one massive volume called Short Trips – Re:Collections.

Short Trips – Transmissions is probably the better of the two books.  Twenty-fifth in the Short Trips range, it’s among the best the series produced, thanks to the careful thought editor Richard Salter puts into the theme (communication) and the resultant selection of stories.  It hangs together really well, basically, and contains several stories which stand out as excellent bits of storytelling, in any genre.  At the moment, you can get it on sale direct from Big Finish, for a fiver.

Short Trips – Re:Collections collects the ‘best’ story from each of the previous twenty-eight volumes in the range (as chosen by the editor of each book) in a frankly massive volume.  The stories are individually excellent, as you’d hope, but the book perhaps hangs a little awkwardly together.  You do get a lot for your money though, and will enjoy what you find in there.  At the moment, this one is on sale too, for a tenner.

Last chance.  These books are about to become much harder to find, on the secondary market, where they’ll probably sell for increasingly silly amounts of money when you can find them at all.  Buy them now instead, while they’re cheap.  Get them for your Doctor Who loving loved one.  As I’ve said before, I won’t be able to resell my story ‘Lonely’, because the BBC owns the character, not me.

Last chance.  Buy it now.  Don’t decide you want it in eighteen months time, when you can’t find a copy for love nor sensible amounts of money, and then say I didn’t warn you.  That’s what I’m doing here, you see?

You know what you must do.

I’m recovering from another one of Eva’s epic Doctor Who marathons, which is how we spend our evenings when Kirsty is out (as she was last night, for her work leaving do).  They’re exhausting.  I thought I was a fan, but I’ve created a true monster.  The girl actually begs for another episode.  Eva doesn’t often beg, but rather demands.  Good fun though, and what that show is really about – adults and kids watching it together.

We’re playing a sort of waiting game with leaving the country at the moment.  Everything is sort of done, apart from the actual packing, which we don’t want to do too early.  Tomorrow will be a bit frantic, as our unaccompanied air freight (basically four massive suitcases that fly separately from us, and arrive a week or so after we land) is picked up on Monday, and that part of the packing needs to be properly thought out so we have enough of everything to get by.  At the same time, there’s also the luggage we’ll take on the day, which also needs to be thought through carefully.  Finally, on Tuesday, everything that’s left gets picked up and either put into storage (furniture, hundreds of books, etc) or shipped by sea.  We won’t see any of that until after Christmas.

This time next week, I’ll be in Delhi.  Strangeness abounds.

Tonight we are distracting ourselves with good company, a meal, and some pints.  Tomorrow, franticness abounds.  Probably the best time in the world to make a last ditch attempt to quit smoking before going to Delhi, yes?

Glad you agree.

While I’ll try to be mostly obtuse, the below probably contains spoilers.

Torchwood has always been a bit of a let down for me. A spin-off from Doctor Who, the show gave former supporting character Captain Jack Harkness a new team to lead, a base in Cardiff, and the task of protecting the Earth from aliens and technologies that fall through a rift in the space-time continuum there. It was pitched as a grown-up show, telling stories too dark and mature for Doctor Who, sci-fi for grown-ups, when the kids were in bed.

In the first series, it attempted to do this through the medium of largely substandard stories, peppered with sex and swearing. It had some good points, including a fine cast, excellent production values, and one or two good episodes. It was for the most part a bit like Men In Black, but not funny at all.

In the second series, it found a bit of consistency, was often pretty good, but for me only came close to being really excellent in the season closer, where it took itself seriously, and managed to kill off two of the regulars in the process.

I had no real expectations of season three, which ran last week in a new format, showing one story over five nights, an hour at a time. I watched the first episode on Monday, and thought it was pretty good, maybe the best hour of Torchwood I’d seen. I watched the second on Tuesday, and thought it might be dipping a little, unable to meet the potential of the opening. I didn’t bother with the rest, as they were being recorded for me, and forgot about them until this morning.

I put on the third episode, and was hooked through the nose. It was brilliant. I watched the fourth episode, and wondered whether it was the best hour of television I’ve seen this year. I watched the last, and was sure if it. It was everything that first series had promised and failed to live up to. Mature, disturbing, distressing, and very powerful indeed. The regulars gave fine performances, the newcomers (particularly Peter Capaldi as the Permanent Secretary to the Home Office) excelled, and the writing was spot on. The decision to really play on the conspiracy at the heart of government was inspired, giving the story real depth and complexity. The horror was truly effective, both in theory and practise (images of the army kicking in doors and stealing children were particulary good), the alien nasty was clevery obscure and unknowable, and all the more disturbing for that. I cried at the death of one character, then again when Peter Capaldi’s character sought a very personal final solution to protect his family.

And the ending, Jack’s brutal and horrific sacrifice of his own grandson to save all the other children on the planet? Very brave storytelling. Heroes aren’t supposed to choose to do horrific things, and I bet this has the forums howling. There were storytelling options that could have taken this decision away from him, kept him the same man as at the start of the week, but they would have been cheating. This story, from day one, was about impossible choices, and how governments and individuals deal with them. Jack condemned the government for their decision to save the earth by sacrificing a proportion of the children. At the end, the writers could have made him refuse to kill his grandson, made the army take him down and do it for him (that boy had to die by that point – the only solution), but that would have been unfair. That he understood, and did the unthinkable, making himself a true monster for the greater good, was genuinely horrific to watch, and all the more profound for that.

All of which made for bleak and stunning television, and blew me away the more for my quite low expectations.

As for the future, there’s no sign of a fourth series being announced, and to be honest, I’m not sure how anything that follows could be anything but disappointing after the last week. The team is down to two members, neither of whom seem particularly available for further adventuring, and the closing minutes felt like an ending to the whole series. If it turns out that this is the case, it’s a stunning way to go. I’ll be picking up the DVD, and enjoying (if that’s the right word for something this bleak and harrowing) the whole thing again. I gather the five day run is being shown on BBC America in the next week or so. Keep an eye out for it, and let me know what you think.

My contributor copy of the (massive) Short Trips Re:Collections turned up the other day, and looks very smart indeed. It’s supposed to present some of the best Doctor Who short fiction published in the Short Trips range since 2002 (which must be a pool of three or four hundred tales, at least, and includes my own contribution ‘Lonely’. Lovely looking book, and I’m looking forward to reading the other twenty-seven stories while I’m stuck in hotels over the next few weeks. If you haven’t already done so, you can grab a copy from the publisher right now, and I’m sure it will turn up on Amazon and the usual outlets shortly.

I can also now look forward to wading through William Shatner’s memoir Up Till Now, presented to me by a proud daughter this morning for Father’s Day. I’m quite looking forward to it, although I feel strongly that a better title would simply have been SHAT! He’s a curious fellow, so I’m looking forward to being entertained.

But today, I’m on the move again, packing up for the first of three weeks of hotel living in the South. It’s quite a nice hotel, but as it’s day job stuff instead of a vacation, that’s the best I can say about what awaits. If I have wi-fi in my room, I may be in touch, but if you’re waiting for emails, that will be the reason for any delays.

News is piling up, all unannounced, so a quick blog is called for…

Firstly, issue five of Shroud magazine, the Hiram Grange special edition, is now shipping. It features a hefty and exclusive excerpt from my forthcoming novella Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow. If you pre-ordered a copy, you should be receiving it soon, but Shroud warn that orders are a little backed up, and there may be a small delay getting it to you (I’m waiting for mine… pesky Atlantic ocean). If you do have it, what do you think? If you’re tempted to dip into Hiram’s world ahead of the novella series, this is where you need to go.

Secondly, Short Trips – Re:Collections, the new Doctor Who anthology from Big Finish, licenced by the BBC, is also now shipping. It reprints some of the very best of the short stories featured in the previous twenty-eight volumes in the Short Trips range, including my tale ‘Lonely’ (dead chuffed to have made that cut). Since announcing that this will be the final such anthology, Big Finish seem to have been swamped with orders for the whole range, and so are also reporting shipping delays. Again, if you pre-ordered but haven’t seen the book yet, bear with them, it will be with you soon. I’m in the same boat, having not yet seen a contributor’s copy. No special privileges for authors, I’m afraid. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, go here and do so. It’s a bumper crop of great stories, all with the Doctor in them. Can’t say fairer than that.