The Tome Lord

[clocketpatch]

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8113603.stm

Not sure if this counts as fic... legitimized fic maybe? It's an interesting article nonetheless. I love the stock descriptions (and being well-read in the fandom, I recognize a lot of them... I wonder if fic writers came to these same conclusions independently, or if there was an unconscious chain of pass-me-downs?)

[primsong]

That was a fun read - thanks for the pointer. Mildly amused at the text of the article pointing out the 'casual bohemian elegance' tag being used for Four accompanied by a picture that attributes it to Three. No doubt it was the 'elegance' factor that threw them off, though he wasn't too 'casual' and only very slightly 'bohemian' (and then only when dressed as a washerwoman).

*admires Three's elegance*

I've only seen these novels recently, at a bookstore here. The one we picked up (a missing Two ep) was very badly written and a bit disappointing. Perhaps some were better? Or do they all read like poor fanfic?

[jjpor]

Ah, the old Target books. Takes me back that does... I'm not quite as old as Mark Gatiss, but they were still a fixture in my 80s childhood - I've still got a whole shelf of them, and read far more than I ever owned thanks to the fact that the kids section in our local library seemed to be full of them in those days.

Those stock descriptions amused me greatly, because they really were used in just about all of them - I know I use them in my own fic from time to time, as well. I'd like to pretend that it was me being clever and postmodern and stuff, but actually it's just that they got under my skin from reading so many of those books.

There are some from the NAs too - the thing about Seven having "hard grey eyes" or some variation thereof. I've used that one a lot, and I can't honestly say I've ever noticed what colour Sylvester McCoy's eyes actually are, hard or otherwise...

I don't think they all are badly written, actually; some of them are, to be sure (and I'm looking at you Terrance Dicks!), and some of them are really just straight adaptations of the original scripts with little extra detail or characterisation added (again, I'm looking at you, Uncle Terry!).

As the article says, though, some of them were a little bit more ambitious. The late Ian Marter (yep, Harry Sullivan himself!) wrote a couple that are generally well regarded - his ones were noteworthy for upping the violence (and indeed the language!) a little bit compared to the TV stories, which I'm sure was extremely popular with their target audience of 70s-80s era British schoolboys. And then when the Cartmel era dawned, a number of the Seven stories got adapted by their original screenwriters in a much more self-consciously literary style that, with hindsight, was a bit of a dress rehearsal for the NAs. My favourites of the ones I've got are:

The Two Doctors, by St. Bob Holmes himself; a really good read, full of black comedy. It makes you weep a little that Uncle Terry did the adaptation of Caves of Androzani, really.

Warrior's Gate, by John Lydecker (which is just a pseudonym for the original writer, and original SF novelist in his own right, Steven Gallagher), which is like, well, a proper literary science fiction novel, but at 1/4 the length; it blew my mind a little long before I ever saw the actual TV story. And the legendary lost first draft is, well...legendary, even though nobody ever actually saw it.

The Twin Dilemma by Eric Saward, which I've recced before on here, but it is really good, despite the story it's based on. It's kind of like Saward doing Douglas Adams, but darker. And not as good, obviously. ;D

And the aforementioned Seven-era triad of greatness that I mention every time Who books come up; Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch, Battlefield by Marc Platt and The Curse of Fenric by Ian Briggs. Remembrance in particular is often cited as the book that begat the NAs, and is easily in the worst condition of any of the Who novelisations I own - I read it that many times!

[magnusgreel]

I held out for original novels, but I know I liked some Target covers, like Face of Evil.