Mad Dogs and Englishmen (Doctor Who)

Rating:
Summary: Truly bizarre take on our favourite time-traveller
Review: First of all, let me describe the cover, since it doesn't appear on the site. It is bright pink, with a pink poodle lounging on a divan. The poodle has human-like hands, and is holding a ray-gun out of a 50's sci-fi movie in one hand, and a cigarette holder with a smoking cigarette in the other. If that doesn't indicate the tone of the book to follow, I'll eat a horse.

Yes, camp is the word of the day to describe this one. Reginald Tyler (J.R.R. Tolkein, very obviously) has devoted his life to the writing of his master work, The True History of Planets. It is a large story about elves, trolls, goblins, etc. At least, that's the book that the Doctor has always known. However, after arriving at a science-fiction convention in the early 21st century, he discovers that the book is no longer about such fantastical creatures, but instead it's a book about the true events on Dogworld, where the Queen is overthrown and a new Emperor has taken over. A movie has been made of the book, which will make the situation on Dogworld even worse. Thus, the Doctor, Anji and Fitz have to figure out what's going on and how to stop it. They pick up some friends along the way and separate into the time stream in order to do this. The Doctor and one poodle go to the 1940's and infiltrate the Smudgelings, Tyler's elite Cambridge writing group. Fitz and Flossie (another acquisition) go to the 1960's and fall in with the flamboyant torch singer, Brenda Soobie, who's also more than what she seems. Finally, Anji and another poodle go to the 1970's, where work on the film is beginning. What follows is truly, truly...well, bizarre is probably the best way to describe it.

However, this is bizarre in a good way, rather than the weird events of Henrietta Street, the previous book. Paul Magrs has written a very broad comedy, with wonderful parodies of Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and even George Lucas in a very over the top manner (he acts out his scenes by playing with his toys). There's even a comment on the decline of stop-motion animation and the rise of computer graphics in movies. In fact, that's a major plot point. And you'll never look at Noel Coward the same way again after reading this book.

But is it any good? Oh yeah, it's good. The plot is a bit too thin for this to be a 5-star book and the characters are fairly two-dimensional, but it is definitely up there. The Eighth Doctor series really needed this break in tone after Henrietta Street. It's funny, makes a couple of interesting points and fulfills the promise of the cover. The comedy is so broad that the characters can't help but be two-dimensional. There are no deep thoughts, the regulars don't develop at all, and the plot is flimsy. But that's hardly the point in this book. This is Dr. Who that doesn't take itself seriously, and where's the problem with that once in awhile?

Paul Magrs has written three other Dr. Who books, and each one has been infested (yes, that's the right word) with his character, Iris Wildthyme. This one has her too, but she's not that intrusive or annoying in this book. Thus, it's Magrs' best book of the lot. She's very subdued, or at least she is once you find out who she is. Magrs has also avoided doing some of his literary tricks that he did with his previous books that annoyed me. This book has an ending, for one thing. He has played with the English language, how it's used, and how literature is written in his previous ones, and they've left me cold in the process. However, this time he plays with tone instead, and he's much better for it.

You will laugh at this book. You will laugh *with* this book. You will glory in the wonders of Dogworld, sympathize with some of the poodles, while cursing at the other poodles. You will laugh at an aphid named Professor Alid Jag, who is involved in a wonderful gag right at the beginning of the book. I hope you won't be embarrassed by the cover as you read it on the bus to work. I wasn't. But I'm not easily embarrassed. It is, shall we say, garish. But that's ok. It's well worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Truly bizarre take on our favourite time-traveller
Review: First of all, let me describe the cover, since it doesn't appear on the site. It is bright pink, with a pink poodle lounging on a divan. The poodle has human-like hands, and is holding a ray-gun out of a 50's sci-fi movie in one hand, and a cigarette holder with a smoking cigarette in the other. If that doesn't indicate the tone of the book to follow, I'll eat a horse.

Yes, camp is the word of the day to describe this one. Reginald Tyler (J.R.R. Tolkein, very obviously) has devoted his life to the writing of his master work, The True History of Planets. It is a large story about elves, trolls, goblins, etc. At least, that's the book that the Doctor has always known. However, after arriving at a science-fiction convention in the early 21st century, he discovers that the book is no longer about such fantastical creatures, but instead it's a book about the true events on Dogworld, where the Queen is overthrown and a new Emperor has taken over. A movie has been made of the book, which will make the situation on Dogworld even worse. Thus, the Doctor, Anji and Fitz have to figure out what's going on and how to stop it. They pick up some friends along the way and separate into the time stream in order to do this. The Doctor and one poodle go to the 1940's and infiltrate the Smudgelings, Tyler's elite Cambridge writing group. Fitz and Flossie (another acquisition) go to the 1960's and fall in with the flamboyant torch singer, Brenda Soobie, who's also more than what she seems. Finally, Anji and another poodle go to the 1970's, where work on the film is beginning. What follows is truly, truly...well, bizarre is probably the best way to describe it.

However, this is bizarre in a good way, rather than the weird events of Henrietta Street, the previous book. Paul Magrs has written a very broad comedy, with wonderful parodies of Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and even George Lucas in a very over the top manner (he acts out his scenes by playing with his toys). There's even a comment on the decline of stop-motion animation and the rise of computer graphics in movies. In fact, that's a major plot point. And you'll never look at Noel Coward the same way again after reading this book.

But is it any good? Oh yeah, it's good. The plot is a bit too thin for this to be a 5-star book and the characters are fairly two-dimensional, but it is definitely up there. The Eighth Doctor series really needed this break in tone after Henrietta Street. It's funny, makes a couple of interesting points and fulfills the promise of the cover. The comedy is so broad that the characters can't help but be two-dimensional. There are no deep thoughts, the regulars don't develop at all, and the plot is flimsy. But that's hardly the point in this book. This is Dr. Who that doesn't take itself seriously, and where's the problem with that once in awhile?

Paul Magrs has written three other Dr. Who books, and each one has been infested (yes, that's the right word) with his character, Iris Wildthyme. This one has her too, but she's not that intrusive or annoying in this book. Thus, it's Magrs' best book of the lot. She's very subdued, or at least she is once you find out who she is. Magrs has also avoided doing some of his literary tricks that he did with his previous books that annoyed me. This book has an ending, for one thing. He has played with the English language, how it's used, and how literature is written in his previous ones, and they've left me cold in the process. However, this time he plays with tone instead, and he's much better for it.

You will laugh at this book. You will laugh *with* this book. You will glory in the wonders of Dogworld, sympathize with some of the poodles, while cursing at the other poodles. You will laugh at an aphid named Professor Alid Jag, who is involved in a wonderful gag right at the beginning of the book. I hope you won't be embarrassed by the cover as you read it on the bus to work. I wasn't. But I'm not easily embarrassed. It is, shall we say, garish. But that's ok. It's well worth it.

Rating:
Summary: More Camp Than A Holiday With John Inman
Review: Pity the eyes of the Doctor Who fan. In November of 2001, the BBC published THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET - a book written in such a small font that it's currently being used as a calibration device for electron microscopes. After numerous readers were spotted literally bleeding from the eyes due to excess squinting, reports of blindness spread throughout fandom faster than casting rumors about Ken Dodd. "The BBC," up-in-arms fans demanded, "will have to do something about this state of affairs! No more janus thorns! No more tiny print! No more making our eyeballs bleed! Have pity on our orbs of sight! Give us something soothing to look at!" And in their wisdom the BBC, upon hearing these pleas of mercy from our optically challenged fans friends (of which this humble reviewer counts himself as a fully paid up member), decided to follow ADVENTURESS with a new book from Paul Magrs. A new book about poodles. A new book with a bright pink cover, featuring a bright pink poodle reclining on a yellow sofa, holding a cigarette and a yellow water pistol. In case there were any optic nerves that hadn't spontaneously combusted upon initial viewing of this cover, there is also a giant reflective Doctor Who logo on the front, that screams to anyone who will listen about how there are now one hundred BBC Doctor Who Novels in existence (I can only assume that a cover claiming that this is the one hundredth book since the BBC took the license away from Virgin didn't go over terribly well in the board meetings). So, in case you missed anything, there's a bright, shiny, reflective gold logo glowing on top of a screamingly bright pink cover published right after November's Hold-The-Book-Very-Close-To-Your-Head fest. Why does BBC range editor Justin Richards hate my eyes so?

Personally, I think the cover is one of the most killingly funny things I've even seen on the front of the book in a very long time. On the other hand, I have absolutely no wish to persuade that of anyone who happens to think that it is the most garish and ugly work that they've ever seen in their life (I would probably only mention the fact that they seem to be completely missing the point). The extreme pinkness of the cover is something that someone is going to either love or abhor and there's absolutely no reason to try to dissuade a person from their opinion on that. While fans will forever be divided on that subject, the book itself is quite a lot of fun. It is the epitome of romp. It is the embodiment of camp. It is the quintessence of silliness. It's great.

For those readers who thought that all books following THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET would end up being massively heavy books, have no fear. MAD DOGS is possibly one of the lightest books that the Doctor Who range has ever produced. The novel is so light that while I put the book aside during breaks in reading, if it was not for the weight of the bookmark that I shoved into its pages, I would be in eternal fear of the novel being caught on a stray current of air and floating away to some unknown destination. (For any overly sensitive review-reader who is worried about the fate of my copy now that the bookmark has been removed from MAD DOGS' innards need fret no more. My copy is now resting comfortably on my bookshelf next to a copy of ADVENTURESS, and the gravitational pull of that tome will keep MAD DOGS securely anchored to the Earth for many many years to come.)

In addition to be a delightfully quick book to read, it's also a terribly funny one. MAD DOGS is one of the few Doctor Who stories where virtually every joke or bad pun creates a laugh. Not a book to be taken seriously, it succeeds largely because it's written in such a fun and quick style. Paul Magrs' prose style is incredibly engaging; it's Terrance Dicks with a real sense of poetry. While some books get humor all wrong by dwelling too much on the outrageousness of the situational comedy, MAD DOG quickly moves from one insane setup to another. There are some wonderfully described passages that will have you chuckling to yourself for weeks. It's fluffy, but it's not insultingly so. It's vaguely clever enough that I certainly didn't feel that I had wasted my time on something inconsequential. It's amazingly entertaining, and while I wouldn't want to read an entire series of books like this, as a one-off it succeeds magnificently.

MAD DOGS works as a great standalone romp through the weird and wacky world of Who. If you're someone who doesn't like your Who to be horribly serious at all times, then in all likelihood you'll adore this one. But then, you probably realized the lack of inherent seriousness present in the text when you threw your hands over your face to protect yourself from the intense radioactive blast of a cover.

Rating:
Summary: More Camp Than A Holiday With John Inman
Review: Pity the eyes of the Doctor Who fan. In November of 2001, the BBC published THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET - a book written in such a small font that it's currently being used as a calibration device for electron microscopes. After numerous readers were spotted literally bleeding from the eyes due to excess squinting, reports of blindness spread throughout fandom faster than casting rumors about Ken Dodd. "The BBC," up-in-arms fans demanded, "will have to do something about this state of affairs! No more janus thorns! No more tiny print! No more making our eyeballs bleed! Have pity on our orbs of sight! Give us something soothing to look at!" And in their wisdom the BBC, upon hearing these pleas of mercy from our optically challenged fans friends (of which this humble reviewer counts himself as a fully paid up member), decided to follow ADVENTURESS with a new book from Paul Magrs. A new book about poodles. A new book with a bright pink cover, featuring a bright pink poodle reclining on a yellow sofa, holding a cigarette and a yellow water pistol. In case there were any optic nerves that hadn't spontaneously combusted upon initial viewing of this cover, there is also a giant reflective Doctor Who logo on the front, that screams to anyone who will listen about how there are now one hundred BBC Doctor Who Novels in existence (I can only assume that a cover claiming that this is the one hundredth book since the BBC took the license away from Virgin didn't go over terribly well in the board meetings). So, in case you missed anything, there's a bright, shiny, reflective gold logo glowing on top of a screamingly bright pink cover published right after November's Hold-The-Book-Very-Close-To-Your-Head fest. Why does BBC range editor Justin Richards hate my eyes so?

Personally, I think the cover is one of the most killingly funny things I've even seen on the front of the book in a very long time. On the other hand, I have absolutely no wish to persuade that of anyone who happens to think that it is the most garish and ugly work that they've ever seen in their life (I would probably only mention the fact that they seem to be completely missing the point). The extreme pinkness of the cover is something that someone is going to either love or abhor and there's absolutely no reason to try to dissuade a person from their opinion on that. While fans will forever be divided on that subject, the book itself is quite a lot of fun. It is the epitome of romp. It is the embodiment of camp. It is the quintessence of silliness. It's great.

For those readers who thought that all books following THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET would end up being massively heavy books, have no fear. MAD DOGS is possibly one of the lightest books that the Doctor Who range has ever produced. The novel is so light that while I put the book aside during breaks in reading, if it was not for the weight of the bookmark that I shoved into its pages, I would be in eternal fear of the novel being caught on a stray current of air and floating away to some unknown destination. (For any overly sensitive review-reader who is worried about the fate of my copy now that the bookmark has been removed from MAD DOGS' innards need fret no more. My copy is now resting comfortably on my bookshelf next to a copy of ADVENTURESS, and the gravitational pull of that tome will keep MAD DOGS securely anchored to the Earth for many many years to come.)

In addition to be a delightfully quick book to read, it's also a terribly funny one. MAD DOGS is one of the few Doctor Who stories where virtually every joke or bad pun creates a laugh. Not a book to be taken seriously, it succeeds largely because it's written in such a fun and quick style. Paul Magrs' prose style is incredibly engaging; it's Terrance Dicks with a real sense of poetry. While some books get humor all wrong by dwelling too much on the outrageousness of the situational comedy, MAD DOG quickly moves from one insane setup to another. There are some wonderfully described passages that will have you chuckling to yourself for weeks. It's fluffy, but it's not insultingly so. It's vaguely clever enough that I certainly didn't feel that I had wasted my time on something inconsequential. It's amazingly entertaining, and while I wouldn't want to read an entire series of books like this, as a one-off it succeeds magnificently.

MAD DOGS works as a great standalone romp through the weird and wacky world of Who. If you're someone who doesn't like your Who to be horribly serious at all times, then in all likelihood you'll adore this one. But then, you probably realized the lack of inherent seriousness present in the text when you threw your hands over your face to protect yourself from the intense radioactive blast of a cover.

Rating:
Summary: Like pirating a few copies of "Beethoven's 2nd"
Review: This is the only one of its kind.

How often, on your morning commute in to work, do you see someone on the train reading a bright pink book? It doesn't happen very often, especially if the reader is over the age of, say, eight. Thanks to "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", you too can witness the impossible, if you happen to share your commute with a "Doctor Who" fan. I have to admit that one of the reasons I read this book in a ridiculously fast three days was so I could minimize the amount of time people would see me, an attorney at law, reading a bright pink novel with a pink, cigarette-smoking and pistol-packing poodle, on the cover.

For all that, is it any good?

"Mad Dogs and Englishmen", even though it's the next book in the series after the intense, moody, arc-changing "Adventuress of Henrietta Street", is lighter than air and less serious than a Leslie Nielsen movie. At one point I tried to keep track of notable lines, but quickly ran out of room. The whole thing's a broad satire of the sci-fi fandom culture -- broad riffs on J.R.R. Tolkien, George Lucas, and Ray Harryhausen dominate the book. Noel Coward's also in it. Several times. The book jumps breezily from 1942 London to 1960 Las Vegas to 1978 Los Angeles to Outer Space, and more than gets away with it.

Now, this book is by Paul Magrs, one of the more divisive "Doctor Who" novel writers. Most of his books are parodies, not satires (there's a fine line) of "Doctor Who", and revolve around his own pet character Iris Wildthyme. Not so this book -- in fact, the word "Wildthyme" doesn't appear anywhere within its four corners. Yes, there are the broad pokes at DW stories (the Doctor's descriptions of some of his 1970s TV adventures are drop-dead funny), but this time, Magrs doesn't seem to be trying to show off his Immense Literary Cleverness to the audience. Like I said, it's the broadest and lightest of his books to date and I think even those readers dead set against him, will at the worst be only slightly amused.

And, even though it's light on the arc (the Doctor does still have his goatee), it's the second "fake history" novel in a row -- referring to all sorts of Earth events that, well, never happened. Something very odd is happening with time -- if not necessarily with Wildthyme -- in the 8th Doctor's universe...

Rating:
Summary: Like pirating a few copies of "Beethoven's 2nd"
Review: This is the only one of its kind.

How often, on your morning commute in to work, do you see someone on the train reading a bright pink book? It doesn't happen very often, especially if the reader is over the age of, say, eight. Thanks to "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", you too can witness the impossible, if you happen to share your commute with a "Doctor Who" fan. I have to admit that one of the reasons I read this book in a ridiculously fast three days was so I could minimize the amount of time people would see me, an attorney at law, reading a bright pink novel with a pink, cigarette-smoking and pistol-packing poodle, on the cover.

For all that, is it any good?

"Mad Dogs and Englishmen", even though it's the next book in the series after the intense, moody, arc-changing "Adventuress of Henrietta Street", is lighter than air and less serious than a Leslie Nielsen movie. At one point I tried to keep track of notable lines, but quickly ran out of room. The whole thing's a broad satire of the sci-fi fandom culture -- broad riffs on J.R.R. Tolkien, George Lucas, and Ray Harryhausen dominate the book. Noel Coward's also in it. Several times. The book jumps breezily from 1942 London to 1960 Las Vegas to 1978 Los Angeles to Outer Space, and more than gets away with it.

Now, this book is by Paul Magrs, one of the more divisive "Doctor Who" novel writers. Most of his books are parodies, not satires (there's a fine line) of "Doctor Who", and revolve around his own pet character Iris Wildthyme. Not so this book -- in fact, the word "Wildthyme" doesn't appear anywhere within its four corners. Yes, there are the broad pokes at DW stories (the Doctor's descriptions of some of his 1970s TV adventures are drop-dead funny), but this time, Magrs doesn't seem to be trying to show off his Immense Literary Cleverness to the audience. Like I said, it's the broadest and lightest of his books to date and I think even those readers dead set against him, will at the worst be only slightly amused.

And, even though it's light on the arc (the Doctor does still have his goatee), it's the second "fake history" novel in a row -- referring to all sorts of Earth events that, well, never happened. Something very odd is happening with time -- if not necessarily with Wildthyme -- in the 8th Doctor's universe...