purplecat

Ben Aaronvitch wrote the Dr Who episode Remembrance of the Daleks which catapulted classic Doctor Who into the Cartmel era. It represented a hugely dramatic shift in style to any Doctor Who that had gone before and it is difficult to evaluate it properly. I suspect to new eyes today it would look over-lit, over-earnest and self-conscious, but it did a combination of things radically differently to what had gone before, its inter-cutting between scenes and shots was much faster, it relied on the audience to do a lot of the mental legwork to join the storytelling dots, the companion was relied upon by the Doctor to act independently*, and it explicitly sought to deal with "issues" and use metaphors.

Aaronovitch went on to write novelisations of his own Dr Who episodes which were distinctly more ambitious than many of the series novelisations though not quite as stand out as the actual episodes had been. Once the series ceased, he wrote a couple of original novels the first of which I've always thought of as Aaronovitch writes William Gibson (and was incredibly controversial which says much about the reading habits of Dr Who fans) and the second of which I've always thought of as Aaronovith writes Iain Banks. Despite their incredibly derivative nature, both novels were stand outs in the range. A third original novel was hugely late, suffered from a computer crash and was eventually completely by Kate Orman - I've never personally rated that one very highly.

The upshot of all of this is that I've always thought it would be interesting to see what an Aaronovitch novel looked like when he was writing himself rather than a more famous author. I finally have my answer and I'm impressed.

( Mild spoilers beneath the cut )

*The odd thing at the time was that although this was stark contrast with Doctor Who of the 1980s, the 1970s was awash with independent and resourceful companions. I've always found the 80s back-sliding in this regard very peculiar and it is difficult not assume it was related to script-editor Eric Saward's "macho" approach to storytelling. Remembrance of the Daleks comes a year after Saward's abrupt departure from the job and coincides with the new script editor, Andrew Cartmel, clearly beginning to find his stride.

I just finished reading Genius Loci by Ben Aaronovitch. This has taken me over six weeks to do which sounds a bit like an appalling comment on the book, but has more to do with Gwendolen's occupation of our bedroom during the whole electrician thing. However it does tell you that the book was not sufficiently gripping to make it out of bedside reading and get taken downstairs.

( Review of Genius Loci )