License Denied: Rumblings from the Doctor Who Underground

Rating:
Summary: An interesting peak into Doctor Who fandom.
Review: I had doubts ordering and reading this book. I even feared that it might be one of those books where someone nicks stuff off the internet and publishes it to make a quick buck. I was happily wrong.

This book was an interesting peak into the strange and interesting world of Doctor Who fandom. I've been a fan of Doctor Who for many years but never really got into 'fanzines' and conventions, so it was very interesting to read about the world of fandom.

The book is a selection of passages, readings and amusing comments by various authors. This means that some sections are better than others. Some sections are well written and contributed by such luminaries as Kate Orman and Tom Baker (the man himself!). However, others are contributed by people who seem to want to see how many times they can use the word "zeitgeist" and how sad they can sound slagging off fandom one second and praising it the next like some insecure neurotic. But even these strange passages are enjoyable, at least for me since I'm a fan too.

This book is definatley intended for the die-hard fan of Doctor Who. The writing style, as most contributions come from the UK and are written in a relaxed everyday voice, can be difficult for us Americans as the lingo and slang takes a while to be deciphered. Favorite quote so far: "Sylvester McCoy's Doctor and Sophie Aldred's Ace are definate products of the fin-de-siecle 1989 zeitgeist..." Whew, How many times I've said the same thing myself!

Tom Baker's interview is the high point of the book for me. He's his usual philosophical and witty self, saying something deep and meaningful and something vaguely shocking back to back in that disarmingly nice way that only Tom Baker can. I liked the "Analysis" section of the book, and the section with the Gallifreyan University Exam. As the Brigadier himself might say "Great reading selections, all of them."

Rating:
Summary: An interesting peak into Doctor Who fandom.
Review: I had doubts ordering and reading this book. I even feared that it might be one of those books where someone nicks stuff off the internet and publishes it to make a quick buck. I was happily wrong.

This book was an interesting peak into the strange and interesting world of Doctor Who fandom. I've been a fan of Doctor Who for many years but never really got into 'fanzines' and conventions, so it was very interesting to read about the world of fandom.

The book is a selection of passages, readings and amusing comments by various authors. This means that some sections are better than others. Some sections are well written and contributed by such luminaries as Kate Orman and Tom Baker (the man himself!). However, others are contributed by people who seem to want to see how many times they can use the word "zeitgeist" and how sad they can sound slagging off fandom one second and praising it the next like some insecure neurotic. But even these strange passages are enjoyable, at least for me since I'm a fan too.

This book is definatley intended for the die-hard fan of Doctor Who. The writing style, as most contributions come from the UK and are written in a relaxed everyday voice, can be difficult for us Americans as the lingo and slang takes a while to be deciphered. Favorite quote so far: "Sylvester McCoy's Doctor and Sophie Aldred's Ace are definate products of the fin-de-siecle 1989 zeitgeist..." Whew, How many times I've said the same thing myself!

Tom Baker's interview is the high point of the book for me. He's his usual philosophical and witty self, saying something deep and meaningful and something vaguely shocking back to back in that disarmingly nice way that only Tom Baker can. I liked the "Analysis" section of the book, and the section with the Gallifreyan University Exam. As the Brigadier himself might say "Great reading selections, all of them."

Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining
Review: Licence Denied is a collection of articles, cartoons, jokes, and other extracts from Doctor Who fanzines produced mainly in the 1980s (there are some from later eras, but the emphasis is on this period).

This is a good book for anyone who wasn't there, i.e. people who came to Doctor Who fandom in the 1990s and afterwards, but it's also good for those of us who were there, as we remember just how funny, clever, or downright silly some of the articles were. My own personal favourites are the do it yourself Pertwee adventures and the Tat Wood intellectual essays about the series.

I found myself getting annoyed with one writer who made assumptions without backing them up in support of a point of view that I profoundly disagreed with. Then I realised that this is the point of these articles, they get you thinking about different aspects of Doctor Who which you may not have considered. You may even want to write your own article to rebut the original.

There is a disproportionate amount of material taken from Cottage Under Siege, however as I missed that particular periodical at the time, I was grateful for the chance to catch up.

An informative, educational, and entertaining book.

Rating:
Summary: One sentence review: Buy this book!
Review: Paul Cornell, a fanzine editor and writer who hit the big time with several NA entries, has been writing about his favorite TV shows for years. He has published program guides for The Avengers, X-Files and Star Trek, and his "Discontinuity Guide" is, no doubt, sitting next to the VCRs of many obsessive-compulsive DW fans. But this book is a breed apart. It is a celebration of fanzines and the people behind them - but it's a wild, funny, broadly sweeping celebration that glories in the strange and often ridiculous world of fandom.

Concentrating on DW fans in the UK (with nods to Canada and Australia but no US material), Cornell does a simply magnificent job of introducing the zany spectrum that modern DW fans encompass. He describes early fanzines of the sixties and seventies as "gosh wow!" - and proves it with a visit to the set of "Carnival of Monsters" so breathless it nearly dies of asphyxiation. From those days of innocent reverence to the sarcastic, sardonic scribblings of university students and professional conventioneers is a long, windy road. Cornell sketches merely the outlines of that journey, collecting works from various times and people (mostly favoring the mid 1990's), to show off some of the best writing he could find. That it leaves the reader hungry for more is precisely his goal.

Highlights include the infamous TARDIS review from 1976 of "The Deadly Assassin" (which I'd heard about for years but never actually read). To say that it rips Robert Holmes a new one is being too kind; it wasn't until I began catching up on Doctor Who websites that I recalled how people could be so morally outraged over DW in the 1970s. Compare this to David Darlington's impassioned defense of Davison's work, or Kate Orman's love-letter to Sylv McCoy, to see how fans can revel in the pleasure of their experience with little or no shame over the fact that we are, after all, talking about an admittedly silly TV show.

He doesn't shy away from the dark side of fandom, including several articles that snipe at fellow fans or the show's producers, but that sort of material is easy to dismiss for the whole that fanzines have to offer. So he balances the arcane with the mundane, the intellectual with the grotesque, and the fanboy with the fangirl. The examples of analysis run the gamut from brilliant (Tat Wood on the use of science in the early years, Thomas Noonan on conventions in televised narratives, Matt Jones on the gay subtext of "The Happiness Patrol") to flat-out bizarre (articles on the symbolic uses of hot beverages, Adric's nose and why the "Trial of a Time Lord" season was merely our imagination). There are wonderful spoofs and gags, including mock exams, a scandalously funny form-letter for inviting former stars to your convention, and, one of my faves, a guide to writing your own Jon Pertwee story. There are pieces that indulge the continuity commandos (how many regenerations were there before Hartnell?) and for closet cases (how to let your roommates know you're a DW fan before they catch you at it). All this and an entirely accurate index!

What these disparate bits have in common is, simply put, terrific writing. It's imaginative, articulate and engaging throughout. At some points the subject matter becomes almost incidental to the enjoyment one can take in reading well-written, personal essays by people with endearing personalities and generous senses of humor.

There is, incidentally, a lovely interview with Tom Baker that, unusually, is written in the form of a continuous monologue. Usually, the Q&A format is employed to demonstrate the cleverness of the interviewer, but Ness Bishop allows her side of what was obviously a conversation to go unrecorded, and as a result Baker's essence is presented undiluted. Anyone who was not already enamored of him before reading this piece could not help but be charmed.

I could complain that the book is too brief, but that's really beside the point - and for the price, it's more than a bargain. A familiarity with British slang isn't required but it doesn't hurt: he defines "menky" and "Olympiads" helpfully, but if you don't already know what "A4 format," "BSB" or "taking the piss" mean - not to mention half the acronyms for various fan and SF publications or people like "Mr. Benn" and "Su Pollard" - you're on your own. ["A4" is a size of paper, slightly longer than US standard 8.5x11. "BSB" is British-Sky-Broadcasting, Rupert Murdoch's satellite network. "Taking the piss" is what David Letterman does to his guests.] He hints that a similar collection of American fan literature may be forthcoming. One can only hope! In the meantime, especially for us Yanks who rarely if ever got to see the original `zines Cornell has scoured, "License Denied" is a delightful excursion to a universe that is still thriving outside of Shepherd's Bush.

Rating:
Summary: One sentence review: Buy this book!
Review: Paul Cornell, a fanzine editor and writer who hit the big time with several NA entries, has been writing about his favorite TV shows for years. He has published program guides for The Avengers, X-Files and Star Trek, and his "Discontinuity Guide" is, no doubt, sitting next to the VCRs of many obsessive-compulsive DW fans. But this book is a breed apart. It is a celebration of fanzines and the people behind them - but it's a wild, funny, broadly sweeping celebration that glories in the strange and often ridiculous world of fandom.

Concentrating on DW fans in the UK (with nods to Canada and Australia but no US material), Cornell does a simply magnificent job of introducing the zany spectrum that modern DW fans encompass. He describes early fanzines of the sixties and seventies as "gosh wow!" - and proves it with a visit to the set of "Carnival of Monsters" so breathless it nearly dies of asphyxiation. From those days of innocent reverence to the sarcastic, sardonic scribblings of university students and professional conventioneers is a long, windy road. Cornell sketches merely the outlines of that journey, collecting works from various times and people (mostly favoring the mid 1990's), to show off some of the best writing he could find. That it leaves the reader hungry for more is precisely his goal.

Highlights include the infamous TARDIS review from 1976 of "The Deadly Assassin" (which I'd heard about for years but never actually read). To say that it rips Robert Holmes a new one is being too kind; it wasn't until I began catching up on Doctor Who websites that I recalled how people could be so morally outraged over DW in the 1970s. Compare this to David Darlington's impassioned defense of Davison's work, or Kate Orman's love-letter to Sylv McCoy, to see how fans can revel in the pleasure of their experience with little or no shame over the fact that we are, after all, talking about an admittedly silly TV show.

He doesn't shy away from the dark side of fandom, including several articles that snipe at fellow fans or the show's producers, but that sort of material is easy to dismiss for the whole that fanzines have to offer. So he balances the arcane with the mundane, the intellectual with the grotesque, and the fanboy with the fangirl. The examples of analysis run the gamut from brilliant (Tat Wood on the use of science in the early years, Thomas Noonan on conventions in televised narratives, Matt Jones on the gay subtext of "The Happiness Patrol") to flat-out bizarre (articles on the symbolic uses of hot beverages, Adric's nose and why the "Trial of a Time Lord" season was merely our imagination). There are wonderful spoofs and gags, including mock exams, a scandalously funny form-letter for inviting former stars to your convention, and, one of my faves, a guide to writing your own Jon Pertwee story. There are pieces that indulge the continuity commandos (how many regenerations were there before Hartnell?) and for closet cases (how to let your roommates know you're a DW fan before they catch you at it). All this and an entirely accurate index!

What these disparate bits have in common is, simply put, terrific writing. It's imaginative, articulate and engaging throughout. At some points the subject matter becomes almost incidental to the enjoyment one can take in reading well-written, personal essays by people with endearing personalities and generous senses of humor.

There is, incidentally, a lovely interview with Tom Baker that, unusually, is written in the form of a continuous monologue. Usually, the Q&A format is employed to demonstrate the cleverness of the interviewer, but Ness Bishop allows her side of what was obviously a conversation to go unrecorded, and as a result Baker's essence is presented undiluted. Anyone who was not already enamored of him before reading this piece could not help but be charmed.

I could complain that the book is too brief, but that's really beside the point - and for the price, it's more than a bargain. A familiarity with British slang isn't required but it doesn't hurt: he defines "menky" and "Olympiads" helpfully, but if you don't already know what "A4 format," "BSB" or "taking the piss" mean - not to mention half the acronyms for various fan and SF publications or people like "Mr. Benn" and "Su Pollard" - you're on your own. ["A4" is a size of paper, slightly longer than US standard 8.5x11. "BSB" is British-Sky-Broadcasting, Rupert Murdoch's satellite network. "Taking the piss" is what David Letterman does to his guests.] He hints that a similar collection of American fan literature may be forthcoming. One can only hope! In the meantime, especially for us Yanks who rarely if ever got to see the original 'zines Cornell has scoured, "License Denied" is a delightful excursion to a universe that is still thriving outside of Shepherd's Bush.