Doctor Who’s Girl Problem

This is unabashedly not about books, but I feel I’ve written enough reviews about the lacklustre 50th Anniversary short stories to merit this non-sequitur.

I went into last week’s season finale with more optimism than I expected. Mostly because I genuinely like Clara, although I give the majority of credit for that to Jenna-Louise Coleman since writing-wise she might as well just be called Amy II. And don’t get me started on Amy. For all of the trumpeting about Amy’s importance, in the end she was little more than a sassy doll that Moffat got to dress up and objectify. Though Clara is little better in that respect, Coleman manages to carve a real character out of the scraps she’s thrown, while Gillan was content to tilt her head and widen her eyes for emphasis now and then.

So while the “Impossible Girl” plotline was a little infuriating, I was at least pleased with the character herself — even if I knew the unveiling of the mystery would be a disappointment.

And it was a disappointment.

Once again, the mystery isn’t about the character, since God forbid a woman in Moffat’s Who era be her own person, but of course is instead about saving the Doctor.

Let’s not forget such gems as Season 5′s finale, where Amy wishes the Doctor back into existence after he magically gets out of a prison that he couldn’t possibly have gotten out of and makes his supposed best friend and her boyfriend wait around for 2000 years to pull off an elaborate plan that doesn’t make any sense. Or Season 6 and… whatever the fuck happened there. Because naturally a young couple would be completely fine with losing their baby to a group who will bring her up as an assassin to kill their best friend because of reasons. No, no — let’s not go after her. Look how sassy and curly-headed she is right now! I’m sure she’ll be fine with her Stockholm Syndrome. Also she needs to marry the Doctor because of reasons.

Amy’s parents were wished back into existence and she barely bats an eye. Amy’s daughter is stolen from her and she barely bats an eye. But she’s willing to end her marriage because her torture at the hands of an assassin group means that she’s barren and her husband really wants kids. Oh, and she’s a model because God forbid Moffat pass up an opportunity to have Karen Gillan contort her body in slow-motion in front of a wind machine. At the end of the day, Amy’s life was not about Amy, just as River’s life is not about River.

And now, quite sadly, Clara’s life is not about Clara.

Let’s be clear: Moffat is aware of the opinion that his female characters are deeply problematic. He’s railed against it, chortled about it and dismissed it as nonsense. So why, then, does he end yet another season with a female character whose only mission in life is to save the Doctor? It’s one thing if he disagrees that such an ending is sexist, it’s quite another to write it again and again ad nauseam. It’s as though Moffat cannot conceive of a climactic end that doesn’t require his female characters to reveal themselves as empty plot shells.

Because that’s the difference — Clara is fated to be the Impossible Girl. River is fated to kill the Doctor. Amy is fated to lead the Doctor through the “crack in the wall” plot. Any action that they take isn’t choice — it’s necessary and it’s forced.

Compare that to Rose in the Season 1 finale who didn’t have to go back for the Doctor, who didn’t have to become the Bad Wolf and who fought tooth and nail to make it happen. Clara merely has to hop in a time stream. Amy merely has to “remember” The Doctor. Rose’s mission wasn’t handed to her conveniently. She had to pry that fucking Tardis open with a truck and consume the vortex, which nearly killed her. Martha spent a year travelling around the world in order to be the catalyst for the (admittedly somewhat goofy) finale of Season 3. Donna has to kill herself to bring back the Doctor and, prior to that, is shown again and again how incredibly important she is. The choices of Rose and Martha and Donna were choices. And, more importantly, they had genuine lives outside of the TARDIS. We knew their families, we knew their jobs, we knew their outside interests.

Amy and Clara talk about families and jobs and friends, but we have no real connection to them. Even when the children Clara nannies for come aboard on an adventure, we still don’t get to know them. There isn’t a moment where the story sits them down and helps us bond. If anything, they’re made to seem like a couple of brats.

Companions are absolutely vital to Doctor Who — they are its lifeblood. They provide new stories and new possibilities. But if you keep writing the same women again and again and again, you don’t get anything new. Each season of Russell T. Davies’s era got a shot in the arm from a brand new and completely different companion. And then there were all of the great side companions like Jack or Mickey or Wilf or Jackie. Moffat’s Who, by comparison, just feels empty. These girls are here to look pretty and serve as convenient, but empty, plot catalysts.

The joy is gone from the show because the humanity is gone. Even with Jenna-Louise Coleman trying her damndest to create a funny, sassy, relatable and interesting character, she’s not given the kind of backstory or peripheral characters that are dearly needed to sell her properly. One scene where Clara talks to the kids about how hard it is to lose your mother would’ve been great. One scene where Clara talks to her employer about watching her Dad struggle with the loss of her Mother would’ve been great. Speaking of which — where is Clara’s Father? We don’t know because Moffat doesn’t care.

Because these female characters aren’t real people, and the show is suffering as a result.

But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. The irony is that it’s so absurdly simple to get this show back on track. Just develop Clara. Enough people like her that if we are introduced to her father or if we start to see her change and grow or if we just get more information about her life — her real life, not her “I was born to save the Doctor” non-lives — this will naturally lead to a richer and more interesting plot. What Moffat seems to be forgetting is that Doctor Who isn’t really about the Doctor — it’s about his companions because the companions serve as the eyes and ears of the audience. By virtue of the fact that the Doctor is not human, is 900+ years old and flies around in time and space, we can’t relate to him. We can like him, but he’s the show’s greatest mystery of all, which makes him hard to cuddle up to from a storytelling perspective.

But the companions ought to be full, complete and interesting people. Otherwise, why do we want to travel with them, and what do they bring to scenes or plots or episodes or seasons if they just walk around asking the questions that propel the plot forward? Martha asking Chantho to try using a sentence that doesn’t begin with “Chan” and doesn’t end with “Tho” didn’t really do much for the main story. But when Chantho dies, we care so much more because she had these little humanizing moments. That’s how little you have to do as a writer to get your audience to invest in a character.

This rant comes on the heels of the announcement that Moffat and Smith will be back for Season 8. I don’t have high hopes that Moffat has learned any lessons, and I wish Smith had at least been given one season with a new showrunner because his time as the Doctor does feel spoiled by all of these missed opportunities and inconsistent writing. But perhaps with the re-introduction of two-parter episodes (Season 7 tried an experiment where every episode was a one-off and I certainly hope they learned their lesson there), we will have more downtime to explore the characters and actually come to know them and like them.

Is it likely? Perhaps not for Moffat, but with any luck guest writers will have more room to explore and develop within their own two parters. And we can always keep our fingers crossed for Season 9.

Scarlet: A Decent Sequel for a Better-than-Average YA Lit Series

It was with a slightly heavy heart that I confessed the fact that I kind of really enjoyed Cinder, Marissa Meyer’s first book in the Lunar Chronicles, a few months ago. I’m not quite sure what made Meyer’s book work, given that its premise was decidedly paint-by-the-numbers in today’s YA Lit market. Twisted fairy tale set in a dystopian future with fantasy elements and a generic love story? Cinder had it all in abundance.

Review: The Nameless City by Michael Scott

While the first of the Doctor Who short stories was somewhat disappointing, I can say that author Michael Scott’s outing was considerably more successful. Scott, author of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, was charged with coming up with a story for the second doctor, Patrick Toughton. As I’ve said before, I’m a rather unabashed NuWho viewer, so a quick search reveals that Troughton’s Doctor was designed to be less a grumpy Professor-type a la William Hartnell and more of a “cosmic hobo.”

Though I had no real frame of reference, several reviewers on Goodreads stated that Eoin Colfer hadn’t properly captured Hartnell’s Doctor, but I saw fewer of these complaints regarding Troughton. This may have a lot to do with Scott’s decision to focus on Troughton’s sidekick, the be-kilted Jamie McCrimmon, who apparently had the longest ever run as a companion (thanks, Wikipedia).

But what Scott really gets right is his attempt to make the short story more of a complete episode than Colfer, who appeared to give us half of an episode coupled with a lot of strange side-plot. While Scott didn’t manage to make me feel as though I really could have seen his story in a full 45 minutes, I appreciated the fact that there was a solid set-up, climax and ending.

The Nameless City opens with Jamie encountering an old man being attacked in the street. After scaring off his assailant, the man gives Jamie an old book as a reward. Jamie takes it back to the Doctor and, as you might imagine, all is not as it seems with the strange gift. The book sucks the Tardis, Jamie and the Doctor into a nameless city from the edge of space and time and they have to fight off an ancient race to get the Tardis back into the present.

Scott doesn’t bother trying to offer too many contemporary winks to his readers, apart from a quick line about how the police boxes are slowly disappearing from British streets, something the modern version of the show has repeatedly pointed out is something of a problem when it comes to disguising the Tardis. The majority of the story focuses on the plot itself, which is appreciated.

I can’t think of any particular issues I had with it, apart from the fact that it did also seem to zip by a little too fast, but in any event, the villains are compelling, the story is interesting I got a good ride out of it.

I still think an opportunity has been missed by not somehow asking the short stories to all come together into some larger whole (a unifying villain or problem), but otherwise I would definitely recommend this second story to anyone who’s interested in this ongoing project.

The third ebook, The Spear of Destiny, will be available on March 23rd and was penned by Marcus Sedgwick, author of a lot of books I haven’t heard of, including Floodland, My Sword Hand is Singing and White Crow.

Kate Atkinson’s New Novel Looks Great, Stephen Fry Calls Out Grammar Nazis

Not available on Kindle in North America until April 2nd, Kate Atkinson’s latest book — Life After Life — is already receiving rave reviews from The Guardian and the Citizens of Goodreads.

Sadly it’s not a continuation of the Jackson Brodie series, but is instead the stand-alone story of Ursula Todd, “a child born in affluent and comparatively happy circumstances on 11 February 1910,” according to the Guardian. I wouldn’t recommend reading too much of their review, as it seems they given away nearly the entire plot, but suffice to say, “Kate Atkinson’s new novel is a marvel.”

And to keep this news update from being too short, I’ll quickly add this video from QI quizmaster, sketch comedian and general smart person Stephen Fry circa 2002, on why Grammar Nazis are doing the English language a disservice:

Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

First, obviously the picture above isn’t the North American cover of Cinder, but since I thought it was so much more beautiful than the red shoe/bionic foot version you’ve probably seen everywhere at Chapters, that’s what I’m going with for the banner.

On to the review: Young Adult lit has been a topic on here for a while. Like most 20-somethings with an English degree, I always feel a bit guilty about reading books aimed at teenagers. They’re usually fun and creative, but at the same time I often feel shamed into reading “serious” books now that I’m an “adult.

There’s also the factor that many bloggers — particularly YouTube book bloggers or “Book Tubers” — will review YA Lit in a bid to attract more viewers, leading to (in my opinion) some soft-boiled reviews that don’t really tell you what they thought of the book. I imagine that this is probably because they hated it, but feel compelled to tell their viewers it was “nice” or “fun.”

Since I’m nestled in happy obscurity here on WordPress, I have free reign to be as grumpy as I like. So when I tell you that Cinder was pretty damn good, I hope you believe it.

The general premise is that Cinder is a teenage cyborg mechanic living during some point in Earth’s distant future in the city known as New Beijing. Obviously this is a futuristic/Sci-Fi take on Cinderella, and Cinder has the requisite evil stepmother but, taking a page from the terrible Drew Barrymore movie Ever After, only one of her step-sisters is evil, the other is nice — which you know means she won’t be around for long. Despite the fact that cyborgs benefit from the enormous advances made in medical science, they are traditionally scorned by “intact” humans and treated like lepers. The three conflicts are as follows: Cinder has a deep-dark secret, the twist being that she herself doesn’t even know; there’s a leutomosis virus, a global plague with no known cure; and the evil, mind-controlling inhabitants of the moon have begun to descend on Earth for the first time in years with the hope of marrying the soon-to-be-dead Emperor’s son, Prince Kai.

I will openly admit that all of that sounds incredibly goofy, and even in reading it, you often pause and think, “This is pretty fucking goofy.” But when you divorce your brain from the process (which is a requirement here), Meyer does tell a surprisingly addictive, engaging, funny and exciting story in-between all the hackneyed cliches. Updated fairytales have always been popular, but they’re usually not that great, as anyone who managed to make it through Tarsam Singh’s Mirror, Mirror can attest. Unlike Ella Enchanted, Meyer has given us a new and genuinely interesting spin on the classic story without too many heavy-handed winks at the audience.

I really only have two issues:

The first is that the book just sort of ends in the middle of the action and with no clear conclusion. I’m aware that it’s a series, and I don’t mean that it ends on a cliffhanger, I mean it ends in the “Wait, there aren’t more pages?” way. It’s a little disconcerting and sloppy.

The second is that the entire rest of the series (which will continue on for an unknown number of books) is all about different fairytale characters. The next book is Little Red Riding Hood and the two after that (which have yet to be released) are Rapunzel and Snow White, respectively. The trick is that Meyer has to balance all of them at once and if Scarlet‘s anything to go by, she’s finding it a touch difficult.

I’ve already read Scarlet, the sequel, already and I can say that the subtle nuances and overall story arc Meyer employed so well for Cinder starts falling apart when she adds a second updated fairytale character. More heavy-handed winks, less subtlety and playfulness.

In any event, I really enjoyed Cinder for what it was and will follow the rest of the series with a touch of cautious optimism.

Review: A Big Hand for the Doctor by Eoin Colfer

So if you recall, the BBC had commissioned 11 British children’s lit authors to write 11 short stories based on — you guessed it — the 11 incarnations of The Doctor for the show’s 50th Anniversary this year.

For those of you who, like me, started with Christopher Eccleston (also known as The Best Doctor), the project probably won’t pique your interest until about September or so. But given the low price range for the stories (about $3.00), I decided to pre-order them and have them auto-delivered each month onto my Kindle just to give them a go anyway. I say pre-order on the Kindle as though I have another choice, since many fans are up in arms that these stories are only available as e-books. If it helps, I have a feeling that when they’re all done they’ll be bundled into book form, so in the meantime those among you who don’t have a Kindle will just have to read on your computer screens like the luddites you are, I guess.

So how was the first story, written by Artemis Fowl‘s Eoin Colfer?

The Fault in Our Stars: Nicholas Sparks for Smart(er) Teens

Not to be that asshole, but I didn’t read that many young adult novels when I was an actual young adult. Now that I’m a regular adult, I feel a bit silly reading something like The Hunger Games, particularly since plenty of people love to loudly denounce adults who read young adult novels, wringing their hands about some kind of modern literacy crisis as though everyone who read The Hunger Games could’ve read Jude the Obscure instead, but it’s all ruined now. Either way, now that I’m older and less of a pretentious jerk, I do like to try more genres/categories that I might’ve missed the first time around.

I can’t remember why I picked up The Fault in Our Stars, except that it’s one of those novels that seems to pop up everywhere and buries itself in your subconscious until you finally give in and just read it – good work, cookies marketing – so I downloaded it and polished it off in a few days.

I’m stalling in terms of writing the actual review because I’m really torn on how to express what I thought of this novel as a whole. On the one hand, I probably would’ve loved it as a teenager; there’s all of that fantastic “smart teens who use big words and scoff at their average peers” stuff that douchebag teenagers feed off of. And there’s the trope of the ultimate boyfriend any girl could hope for – extremely handsome, smart, funny, considerate, generous but with a flaw that makes all of it attainable – who doesn’t actually exist, but works well in a fictional setting.

And, since this is a male young adult author, one (or both) of them is dying from a fatal illness.

Mean as it might sound, Nicholas Sparks for smart(er) teens is probably the best and most accurate way to describe The Fault in Our Stars. Our tragic leads don’t go on a boat ride surrounded by swans, but instead chat about books. And at least the cancer is on the table right from the get-go.

Essentially the plot is that Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 17-year-old girl with lung cancer, meets Augustus Waters, a 17-year-old one-legged boy who used to have osteosarcomais, at a cancer support group and they fall in love despite Hazel’s protests that a now-healthy boy shouldn’t waste his life with her. In a sub-plot that eventually joins up with the main story, Hazel is obsessed with a book written by an author who only ever wrote the one novel and then went into seclusion in the Netherlands. The book is also about cancer.

Going in, I had no idea what Fault was about (I didn’t even bother with a synopsis) so I was fairly irritated that this was another “teens with cancer” book, but I will say that the wittiness of the writing, coupled with the fun (if far-from-believable) plot and dialogue makes up for the initial gimmicky tragedy of it all.

Maybe I held something back, but I didn’t find that the book hit me on the emotional level it was aiming for. That said, if you do want to at least check this out because of the hype surrounding it, I will say it’s better than the mass majority of young adult novels on the shelf right now.

I’m still a bit stuck in terms of the final point I want to make with the review, since ultimately this book just didn’t leave a huge impression on me. It felt like something I’d read a dozen times before, that I didn’t connect with enormously and didn’t leave me with anything new. In some ways, this feels like one of the harshest reviews I’ve written, since at least I hated a lot of the other ones I read last year with a passion, but I can’t muster up enough emotion or thought about this to rate it any higher or lower than a shoulder shrug.

As you can imagine, Green’s tragic cancer kids novel is currently being developed into a movie.

Thoughts? Have you read it? Do you have any genuinely passionate feelings about it either way?

Are the New Scholastic Harry Potter Covers Worse than the Originals?

About two or three years ago, Bloomsbury re-released the entire Harry Potter series with beautiful minimalist covers. What made the new illustrations a welcome change was the fact that they better encompassed the progression of the series from kid’s books to teen novels. The original covers of the UK editions always made the books look a bit too silly, particularly as the series got darker and bloodier. I loved them so much that I bought all 7 while I was studying in Italy and had to cart them home in a duffel bag. I regret nothing.

And yet I still preferred even the original Bloomsbury covers to the over-the-top versions (both on the cover and on the individual chapter headings) drawn by Mary GrandPre, Scholastic’s Potter illustrator. To be fair, I think the worst of the lot were the “adult” versions that both Bloomsbury and Scholastic released, because when you’re reading the most famous series of the decade, it’s not like people are going to be fooled by a sepia-toned car in the clouds (“Ooh, is that Infinite Jest you’re reading?” no one would ask).

Regardless, Scholastic will not be outdone, so they announced their plans to re-release the entire series with their own brand-new covers for the 15th anniversary of the first book’s release.

What beautiful artwork have they commissioned for the event? Surely they’re pandering more to the now 20- and 30-somethings who grew up with the books, rather than a new generation of children just getting into the series. Moreover, imagine the number of brilliant young graphic artists who grew up with the series themselves and could offer a true fan’s insight into the books with their work.

I mean, given the perspective we now have of the series as a whole, surely they’ve taken the time to truly re-imagine the covers for a post-Deathly Hallows world.

Let’s take a look.

Update: First Doctor Who Short Story Writer Revealed

SFX.co.uk broke the news that Artemis Fowl author, Eoin Colfer, will be tackling the first short story for the 50^th Anniversary collection. Each of the 11 British children’s authors (the other 10 still remain a secret) will be doing one short story based on each actor who has played the Doctor during the iconic Sci-Fi show’s 50-year run.

Colfer’s story, A Big Hand for the Doctor, centering around William Hartnell’s Doctor, will be released on January 23^rd for £1.99 online. No word yet on North American availability or pricing.

It does appear that they will only be offering this collection in ebook form for now, but I imagine if demand is high enough, they’ll probably release a nice big analog box set for you quaint luddites out there.

Is JK Rowling Participating in Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary Special?

The quick answer is that no one really knows for sure.

But given that the BBC announced they were working with 11 British children’s authors to come up with 11 short stories — one for each regeneration of the Doctor — as part of the show’s giant 50th anniversary celebration, nearly everyone has assumed that Rowling is on the list.

Other likely participants, according to Hypable (via i09), are Michelle Paver, Susan Price, Kate Thompson, Anthony Horowitz, Geraldine McCaughrean, Philip Pullman and Alan Garner.  Neil Gaiman isn’t on Hypable’s list, but seems like another likely candidate. Gaiman already wrote one well-received episode for the show’s sixth season, The Doctor’s Wife, and has reportedly penned another episode for the upcoming season featuring the yet-to-be-compelling cybermen.

It would be cute if Rowling’s entry (if she’s doing one at all) is for the 10th Doctor, given that David Tennant had a quick part in the fourth Potter movie as Barty Crouch Jr, seen in the above image trying to eat his own face.

As much fun as a series of short stories is, I’m a little more interested to see how they’re going to use a lot of the old actors in the show itself — particularly Christopher Eccleston who famously walked out after only one season amid a lot of rumor and not much fact, which is a shame because he remains my favorite Doctor. To be fair, I haven’t bothered to check out Classic Who yet — I only started watching a couple of months ago, but have already burned through the first six seasons.

Thoughts? Opinions? Anyone you’d like to see on the list? Fantasy football match-ups?