purplecat

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Reading: The latest issue of DWM. An article on the New Adventures made me very nostalgic. Their flaws are well documented but it seems sad that so much of fandom hates them, or at least that that is the perception of many of the people who wrote them.

Listening: The Buzz is a University of Manchester, Faculty of Science and Engineering podcast. The last issue focused on Turing. It feels like a slightly odd beast in a way I can't quite put a finger on - maybe it is slightly too produced to be an amateur podcast but not really professional enough to be a professional podcast. Interesting, but not hugely enlightening.

Watching: We've picked up my Mysterious Cities of Gold DVD. It's a shame the voice acting in the English version is passable at best since I have fond memories of it as a child. I'm hoping the story will carry it. So far its interesting mostly for the educational detail both in the story itself and the slightly weird documentary segments at the end.

Crossposts: https://louisedennis.livejournal.com/675035.html

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From:

romanajo123

I’ve read... 3 New Adventures ( Human Nature is my fave). The ones I read weren’t too bad. Benny rocks! But I can see why they’re not for everyone.

Oooo Mysterious Cities of Gold! Been meaning to watch that since I learned about it a few months ago! ( It apparently aired on Nickelodeon here and I follow a Youtube series about the history of the channel)

From:

purplecat

I think it's definitely true to say they suffered from an often fairly limited concept of what "adult" meant; and there was a tendency to bandwagon on a small number of SF tropes that were popular at the time (Virtual Realities, Cthuloid monsters from before the dawn of time); and, you know, they were written by a bunch of fan writers who were at the very start of their careers and edited by similarly inexperienced editors.

On the other hand they have a sense of excitement, experimentation and a real drive to write something that is both Doctor Who and its own thing with a certain coherency of vision and world-building. In my late teens and early twenties it was very much the sort of thing I wanted Dr Who to be trying to do.

From:

sir_guinglain

As I assured at least one of those writers via Twitter, lots of young fans (or at least the Oxford ones and their friends whom I meet) love the New Adventures. They are not forgotten.

From:

purplecat

That's good to know. They were very important to me and certain important in retaining my link to the show through the "Wilderness Years" far more so than Big Finish which I've never really go into.

From:

a_cubed

Documentaries at the end of historical dramas seem to be a common feature of Japanese TV. The recent major NHK historical drama about the wars leading to the Tokugawa shogunate featured mini documentaries about the areas where the action of the episode is set.

From:

purplecat

That makes sense, though you also feel they are somehow feeding into that US requirement in the 70s and 80s that children's cartoons had to be educational to the extent of having a little moral at the end - not that these mini-documentaries have a moral but they do have a sense of "now we are going to educate you about the things you have just seen in the last episode". I do worry a little that once we get to interactions with the Inca these documentaries may begin to look rather unfortunate but we will have to see.

From:

daniel-saunders.livejournal.com

I never really got the impression that the NAs were hated. I felt the reverse, that I was the odd one out for not being 100% enthusiastic for them! I think I was the wrong age when they came out. I was in my early teens and hadn't really hit adolescence yet. I was very prudish about sex, swearing and violence and had very rigid ideas about what "good" Doctor Who was. If I'd been ten years older, I might have liked them more.

I've re-read a few NAs and MAs over the last few years and found the quality highly variable, but most of them are readable and enjoyable on a basic level. The Left-Handed Hummingbird in particular struck me as a very good book beyond being good Doctor Who, and I have a lot of fondness for Lungbarrow even though no one else seems to.

From:

purplecat

The quality wad definitely hugely variable (sometimes within one novel) and I do think the inexperience of almost everyone (except maybe Terrance Dicks) involved shows. On the other hand at least they had ambition and enthusiasm and a certain amount of raw talent at their disposal.

From:

vivdunstan

I’ve read very few New Adventures, mainly because by the time I wanted to read them - late 90s onwards - my progressive brain disease was already so bad I couldn’t read normal print much any more. And very few were ever Kindled since.

However I love Benny as a character, mainly thanks to her own series of Big Finish audios, that started before BF got the Who license. Lisa Bowerman is excellent in the role. Her early solo stories were recently finally made available as low cost downloads. Big Finish have also adapted a lot of the Benny NAs as full cast audios.

From:

purplecat

Benny is definitely one of my favourite characters, though I began to outgrow her a bit as my experience of academia diverged from hers (if you see what I mean). I've never really got into Big Finish (something about Audio Drama makes me quite tense in a way I can't put my finger on and things need to be really good to get me over that).

From:

vivdunstan

Big Finish have also published a lot of Benny fiction books. Mainly short story collections, but also novellas and novels. Generally very well regarded by readers. Still of course a problem for me to read in print, but I have read a few of them, and enjoyed.

From:

vivdunstan

Many of the books are out of print now, and those that remain in stock are heavily discounted.

https://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/v/bernice-summerfield-books?sort_ordering=date_asc&search_product_type=book&search_availability=all

From:

purplecat

I think I already have most of them - though my book shelves are confusing. I have paper backs numbers 1 - 5 and then hardbacks numbered from 2 - 13 in a mixture of arabic and Roman numerals (to the extent that I have both 7 and VII and 8 and VIII) - so possibly I'm missing number 1 of the hardbacks, but I think that unlikely given I have all the others. The fly piece of number 13 suggest there may be more...

... Hmm, a glance through wikipedia suggests that I have all the novellas and paperback novels, and then the first three hardcover novels and roughly the first half of the short story collections and the confusing numbering is because ranges cut back and forth between paperback and hardback with similar covers but are numbered in sequence for the range.

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