Before I talk about the second half of Shooty Dog Thing, I would like to reiterate what a pleasure it was
reading this collection of fanzine articles. Often, when I read magazine
articles concerning the world of Doctor
Who, I get the sense that the writer composing the piece has to please a
plethora of masters: editors, the interviewees, Doctor Who production people, and, most annoyingly, fans, who
usually just want the facts, some innocuous gossip, and little to no commentary
from the author. With fanzine articles, the opposite occurs, as the writer does
not care about pleasing anyone since there’s little to no monetary rewards
involved in the process of exchanging ideas; instead, a gift of opinions is
granted. Lewis Hyde, in his work The
Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (Vintage Books 2007
[1979]), argues that this free exchange of ideas forms a “gift economy,” in
which fans share their original works with one another, be it art, stories, essays,
or videos they have created in celebration of their chosen beloved media
property, not for any monetary reward. Sometimes, in terms of fan essays, these
“gifts” would never have been actively sought out by other fans as their
content is the type designed to piss people off – kind of like the early punk
musicians did as they played jarring chords and shouted offensive,
incomprehensible lyrics with the only hope of reward being beer bottles angrily
hurled by an enraged audience at their spiky-haired heads!
In the case of Shooty
Dog Thing editor Paul Castle composing “Do The M.O.N.S.T.E.R.M.A.S.H.!”, I
do not believe his intent is to aggravate fellow Doctor Who fans when he examines the physiology of aliens from the
show in an exhaustive manner, choosing a specific race to represent each letter
for the third part of his article’s title. With such ruminations on why the
Mandrels (featured in “The Nightmare of Eden”) decompose into the powdery,
addictive substance Vraxoin, why Sontarans genetically differ from appearance
to appearance (in actuality, due to different design teams’ costume choices),
and what the Mondasians, who would later become the Cybermen, needed to do to
survive into their cybernetic forms, Castle takes a fun, clever, detailed
approach in his pseudo-scientific explanations. When he reaches the Autons,
however, who are controlled by the Nestene Consciousness, which has an affinity
for plastic, he begins by confessing, “I can’t give you a full definition of
what plastic means, as I’ve not done any research for this article so far and
don’t intend to start now” (163-64). Whether Castle is being factiousness or
not, I’m not entirely certain, but I do respect his honest tone, especially
knowing that he’s writing for the sake of pure fannish pleasure.
Another Castle piece that takes an exhaustive look at an
object of Doctor Who study, in this
case the Cybermen, in regard to their various appearances in the 1960s, can be
found in the article, “Cy – Fi: The Sixties.” While I enjoyed Castle’s
assessment of the William Hartnell (First Doctor) and Patrick Troughton (Second
Doctor) Cybermen stories, I was more intrigued by reading about his thoughts on
the TV Comic spin-off strips, as I
have only seen a few strips from that era. I likewise enjoyed the jargon he exclusively
concocted for this article, with “Cy-Fidelity – Whether the basic premise of
the Cybermen is upheld” and “Cy-Hi! – Welcome Developments!” exuding a humorous
charm. For me, creating new jargon for other fans to appropriate for their own
responses to Doctor Who stories and
culture is part of the gameplay that accompanies being a member of this
energetic, eclectic, and expressive fandom!
Looking back on many of the Doctor Who episodes I’ve watched over the years, I like to engage
in the occasional game of “What if?” Some of my wish list in this game includes
the fantasy that Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) played the role for an eighth
season, with John Nathan-Turner producing, that Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh
Doctor) had a muli-Doctor story for the his second season as it marked the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the show, and that the Master (John Simm’s version)
was a major player in a third David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) season in which
the evil Time Lord would rule over a galactic empire. Authors Nick Mellish and
Castle (aka Brax) similarly play this narrative speculation games in their
piece, “Doctor What If?” Their first,
and most interesting speculation involves them discussing the scenario of the
First Doctor not regenerating at the end “The Tenth Planet,” and instead being
revealed as an organic element of the TARDIS itself (Mellish’s idea) or as an
identity that could be passed on via the TARDIS to the Doctor’s companion, Ben
(Castle’s counterproposal). This out-of-the-box thinking, working from some of
the spin-off media narratives, is the stuff fandom is made of, meaning it’s a
place where both amateur and future professional writers of the show hone their
craft.
The question as to where these writers who make the
transition to professional will publish in the Whouniverse, however, is an
uncertain one. Jon Arnold points out the rather limited and unimaginative state
of the official BBC Books line since 2005 in his article, “Short Trips: The End of the Road?” While Arnold agrees that the Big
Finish audios do a fine job of expanding the mythology of the classic Doctor Who series, he laments the
company’s decision to terminate their line of Short Trips short story collections. In his words, “Perhaps my
melancholia at the end of Short Trips
is because there’s now less opportunity than ever for new voices to break into Doctor Who fiction; perhaps it’s because
of that ending to literature based on the classic series” (229-30). For the
most part, Arnold is correct. Although BBC Books recently published a
classic-era novel by established science-fiction author Stephen Baxter (The Wheel of Ice, a Second Doctor
story), opportunities for new authors writing about the original show to be
professionally published seem remote at this time. To take a negative stance on
this state of the Doctor Who
publishing industry would be understandable, but we can resort to a more
positive outlook by remembering that fans of the itinerant Time Lord are a
resourceful bunch, many of them already adapted to the Internet gift economy of
creating, sharing, and reciprocally reading one another’s short tales of
Doctors one through seven! Admittedly, they may never have the chance to write
for this era of the series, but they will be honing their craft nevertheless,
with their eye on the worthy prize of becoming published writers…
No comments:
Post a Comment