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Post by sherlock on Mar 19, 2020 18:13:06 GMT
Just waiting for Platt to do it with Lungbarrow Both Lungbarrow and The Dying Days were released as free PDFs on the BBC website back around 2003* so the files are out there... *You may have seen Lungbarrow's ebook cover three posts above, as the avatar of our own newt5996 ... The web archive is a wonderful thing...
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Post by newt5996 on Mar 19, 2020 20:14:08 GMT
Just waiting for Platt to do it with Lungbarrow Both Lungbarrow and The Dying Days were released as free PDFs on the BBC website back around 2003* so the files are out there... *You may have seen Lungbarrow's ebook cover three posts above, as the avatar of our own newt5996 ... As well as Nightshade, The Scales of Injustice, The Well-Mannered War, The Sands of Time, and I believe Love and War (Though I'm not sure about that one).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2020 22:37:24 GMT
Both Lungbarrow and The Dying Days were released as free PDFs on the BBC website back around 2003* so the files are out there... *You may have seen Lungbarrow's ebook cover three posts above, as the avatar of our own newt5996 ... As well as Nightshade, The Scales of Injustice, The Well-Mannered War, The Sands of Time, and I believe Love and War (Though I'm not sure about that one). Very close! Lungbarrow, The Dying Days, Nightshade, The Scales of Injustice, The Well-Mannered War, The Sands of Time and two more -- The Empire of Glass and Human Nature. I'm definitely, absolutely, definitively not saying that having gone through the PDFs gathered at the time. I'm also not saying that knowing that the BBC Classic versions have Author Commentaries attached to them as well as "Director's Cut" updates and alterations for release on the website. Nope. Absolutely... not... Plausible... deniability... I need to reread some of these.
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Post by constonks on Mar 20, 2020 2:35:14 GMT
Oh cool - I've never seen that Empire of Glass cover before!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2020 3:35:42 GMT
Oh cool - I've never seen that Empire of Glass cover before! It's a lovely piece, isn't it? Done by Mark Nicholson in a style reminiscent of the early annuals. I did some checking and the cover and the interior illustrations done for the re-release are available on TARDIS Wikia. Further covers include two lovely Target pastiches by Daryl Joyce (who took the TARDIS to Cathay via the Himalayas in my profile pick) and one more by I think Peter McKinstry, who also did the interior illustrations for The Sands of Time.
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Post by whiskeybrewer on Mar 20, 2020 13:09:23 GMT
Just waiting for Platt to do it with Lungbarrow Both Lungbarrow and The Dying Days were released as free PDFs on the BBC website back around 2003* so the files are out there... *You may have seen Lungbarrow's ebook cover three posts above, as the avatar of our own newt5996 ...
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Post by constonks on Mar 20, 2020 15:14:33 GMT
On another note, my collection of Doctor Who short stories grew significantly at Christmas so I thought, this year, I'll read one short story every Friday! I started with Short Trips: A Day in the Life and given that I made a few exceptions - reading a second story when the first was quite short, or the three that were connected in one go, or One Wednesday Afternoon one Wednesday afternoon - I finished it off this week (another exception for the last one!) and will be moving onto Decalog 3: Consequences in a few minutes. But first, a few highlights from A Day in the Life! First off, for those who don't know the premise - A Day in the Life is a book that takes place over twenty-four hours, but not consecutively. That is to say, when one story ends, it might be 3:17, and when the next begins, it will still be 3:17, but in a different time and place altogether. This allows us to visit people throughout their days - we get early morning nightmares, breakfast, afternoon shopping and teatime television. A cozy concept with plenty of room for creative spins on everyday events.
Without going on about all seventeen stories, here are four that stood out to me:
The Five O'Clock Shadow by Nev Fountain: A poem - apparently about the Cushing Doctor and his young granddaughter Susan - told by an unknown incarnation of the Doctor. Inventive with some creative sloppy rhyming throughout... ie. "[You] have boomed, growled, and bored us silly/With your lengthy and tedious lecture/about what and who you are and will be/Your whole yawn-inducing raison d'être." This one might not be for everyone - a least one review online called it pointless - but where would we be if our stories didn't take risks and do silly things?? Which segues nicely into...
Morphology by Ross Strow: A tale where all dialogue has lost its vowels, save O and Y - you'll notice even the title and author follow the same pattern (Ross Strow is really Phil Pascoe, writer of ...ish, another linguistically-focused adventure). The story stars the Doctor, Jo and Osgood, the blobby Kobolds and features such dialogue as "Worry not, Osgood. Doctor knows. Brood on my words. On Osgood's own words, too. Osgood, Doctor: bookworms both. No crossword dooms Doctor nor Osgood." It's definitely the one I'd be most eager to revisit in the future because it's so high concept and fun to read.
Waiting for Jeremy by Richard Salter: This is a very short story about grief and regret and it probably says something about me but I'm a sucker for that kind of story. The First Doctor walks into a diner and a woman thinks he might be her lost love from forty years ago, who went to war and never returned - she's been waiting for him every day at the same diner since... and Steven refuses to let such a sad thing continue. No dictators, no bug-eyed monsters, just a little downer of a story with some time travel thrown in.
The three stories above also all hit something I think is important in a short story: they all feel complete, they don't feel like clips from a larger story. Sometimes, the reader's imagination is sufficient to fill in the rest and sometimes the limited perspective is part of the charm of the story (for instance, I listened again to A Stain of Red in the Sand last night and that tells you almost nothing but IMO works well). But, about as often, it just feels like it should have been a four-part full-cast story rather than ten pages of prose.
An exception to that? How You Get There by Simon Guerrier. This is absolutely just a tiny chunk of the Doctor's day, in the midst of a much larger adventure. The Seventh Doctor is stuck on a bus in traffic, trying to meet Benny and finish off an adventure involving a madman and a weather machine. Along the way, he meets the passengers of the bus and has conversations with many of them. It feels like the diner scene from Remembrance of the Daleks, blown up to fill a whole story - and I almost wish that we didn't see the final confrontation with the enemy-of-the-week. After all, it's not the destination that matters, but er, the way in which one arrives. I'm not surprised that this was this anthology's contribution to Re:Collections - it's short and sweet, and encapsulates the book well: a bit of a day we're all familiar with (commuting home), with a little bit of Doctory goodness on top.
That's only my top four of this collection - but don't take that as a snub of the other thirteen - I could definitely say something nice about all of them! So if you get a chance to get this volume, it's a cool concept and worth checking out.
As for me, it's back to 1996 and Virgin's last Who-themed Decalog and I'll probably see you all in May to talk about that!
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Post by tuigirl on Mar 20, 2020 22:38:59 GMT
Right now, all the 9th Doctor comic books are on sale on Comixology. I took the plunge and got them all. With the curfews in place, I just thought I needed the distraction. I am not the biggest fan of neither 9 nor Rose nor Jack, this is why I so far was not interested. But these got some good reviews. Just started reading and nearly finished the first volume tonight. And it is actually quite good. Even Jack and Rose are enjoyable, and the 9th Doctor is in full PTSD mode. I am hooked.
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Post by tuigirl on Mar 22, 2020 16:56:22 GMT
Finished the 4 volume run of the 9th Doctor comics in just two days. They were fantastic. They got quite dark and are certainly not for too young an audience. These are some great interconnected stories, forming a long epic. Rose and Jack are enjoyable characters in this and the Doctor is shown pretty dark and suffering badly from his PTSD. But what I liked most- that these comics tie in with Big Finish continuity and there are quite a few little Easter eggs in there. These were well worth my money, and I am pleasantly surprised since I have never been the biggest fan of this Tardis team.
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Post by frisby78 on Mar 26, 2020 23:14:08 GMT
Currently reading City at World's End by Christopher Bullis.
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Post by timegirl on Mar 26, 2020 23:15:37 GMT
Currently reading City at World's End by Christopher Bullis. How is it?😊
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Post by frisby78 on Mar 26, 2020 23:17:49 GMT
Currently reading City at World's End by Christopher Bullis. How is it?😊 Good so far, 4 chapters in. Nice bit of world building going on.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2020 7:25:27 GMT
State of Change.
Another one from Christopher Bulis. Hey, does anyone remember that time the Sixth Doctor bested a chamber of sword-wielding Praetorean guards using an incense holder, a pair of curtains and a tie-back? (In a scene that feels like a serious reprise of the First Doctor's fight with the assassin in The Romans.) Or Peri being turned into an honest-to-goodness bird-woman who frightens a gaggle of grave robbers from Cleopatra's tomb? In a funny sort of way, it feels reminiscent of the point-and-click adventure games of the era. Exploring a pseudohistorical Rome that never fell through scrupulous historical eyes.
It's subtle, but there's a nice little moment in the part I'm reading where the Doctor has to identify their TARDIS console, as he calls it. There are the modifications he's made, of course, but he can also tell by the scrape that Peri's coffee mug made when she dropped it on one of the panels.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2020 13:52:36 GMT
One for Sylvester McCoy era fans in particular: Some decent reading for a rainy Sunday afternoon (wasn't planning on going anywhere).
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Post by tuigirl on Apr 15, 2020 17:24:51 GMT
Since we discussed it at length and it was thoroughly endorsed by member @wolfie53- I have caved in and got the audiobook to the Two Doctors.
Not sure when I can get around to it since I am back to work tomorrow. However, who knows how the next few weeks will develop.
At least something to look forward to and I am curious to learn more about the Androgums.
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
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Post by lidar2 on Apr 21, 2020 10:45:30 GMT
To tie in with my Season 12 bluray, I am reading Device of Death after watching Genesis of the Daleks and before Revenge of the Cybermen
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Post by newt5996 on Apr 23, 2020 5:22:06 GMT
I'm reading Interference: Book One by Lawrence Miles which is a very weird book for me. It's one that is incredibly slow and there is simultaneously nothing and everything happening all at once. I'm moving slow, but I can't put it down. It's also got a fairly standard Doctor Who plot so far, but I'm expecting that's going to change as the story goes on, because there are plenty of metatextual elements in the first six chapters alone.
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Post by frisby78 on Apr 28, 2020 15:46:42 GMT
Just finished Psi-ence Fiction by Chris Boucher. An odd book in my humble opinion. It really ambles along with not much happening, then reaches a conclusion that's a bit of a nothing. All the supporting characters are thoroughly unlikeable, the young students in particular.
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Post by constonks on May 8, 2020 18:32:45 GMT
(March 20, 2020:)On another note, my collection of Doctor Who short stories grew significantly at Christmas so I thought, this year, I'll read one short story every Friday! I started with Short Trips: A Day in the Life (...) and will be moving onto Decalog 3: Consequences in a few minutes. I'll probably give my thoughts on Decalog 3 as a whole in two Fridays when I finish the final story, but today I read Steven Moffat's Doctor Who debut, "Continuity Errors" and had to talk about it! This was the one I was most interested in reading - and it was fantastic. Moffat's prose is always so much fun but honestly he does a great job here with the dark and dangerous Seventh Doctor of the VNAs. The ending is equally satisfying and frustrating, which would one day become a Moff trademark, but it doesn't undermine the story... The Doctor needs to be beaten by our protagonist to learn his lesson, but he's got one last trick up his sleeve and gets away with his plan, so he doesn't learn a thing!
Ultimately, it just proves the point the story is making - sure the Doc means well, but if he is willing to change history just to take out a library book, what else might he do? I'll read this one again and eagerly await whatever prose Moffat is willing to write next, Who or otherwise.
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Post by Tim Bradley on May 24, 2020 13:34:31 GMT
Hello everyone! I'm currently reading 'The Darksmith Legacy' series with the Tenth Doctor for my 'Bradley's Basement' Easter review season in 2021. Just finished 'The Dust of Ages' by Justin Richards. Greatly enjoyed it. I'm scheduling my review for the book for April 2021. Tm.
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