Time and Relative
The difference one immediately notices about Time and Relative is that it is told in first person narraitve, which is rare for a Doctor Who adventure. Obviously being a television series we are always going to be on the outside looking in without so much as an episode told with first person narraitve in voice-over form or anything, so to actually read one is a bit of a trip. And to make things even more interesting, it is told by the Doctor's granddaughter, the mysterious Susan Foreman.
Picture it: London, late March 1963. A 15 year old girl goes to school just like any other, but she knows things about the world that a normal 15 year old would not. And while she excels at some topics in her classes she is abominably bad at others, questioning the answers, arguing with her teachers, getting her facts wrong. And when she goes home at night, she goes to a junkyard at 76 Totters Lane in Shoreditch where there is nothing but, well, junk, and a blue London police box she refers to as "the Box". And that's where she and her mysterious grandfather live. The Ship has disguised itself to blend in with London of the era, and unbeknownst to the people of the time, two aliens are living amongst them.
This examination of the Doctor and Susan's activities in the months before the series began is a fascinating adventure. As with Frayed it is also best to be enjoyed after having seen some, if not all, of the televised series and having some questions answered. Not so much in the grand scale of the first three episodes of Star Wars but more the mystery and subtleties of Twin Peaks : Fire Walk With Me. Ahh prequels, gotta love em.
Susan and her school chums go about their daily lives at Coal Hill School, Susan being a bit of an outcast for her "unearthly" qualities and bonding with others who are also on the fringe of the school's culture; a girl who gets into trouble for fighting, and an awkward boy in the ROTC. Like normal kids they face a bully, spy on teachers at the pictures (an interesting cameo by Barabara Wright and Ian Chesterton, who will become very important to Susan very soon) and enjoy the lifestyle of London in the swigning sixties. It's just that it's almost April and it hasn't stopped snowing, and the whole world is feeling a distinct chill. In a world so recently threatened by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Russia is blaming the Americans, and the Americans are blaming the Russians, but the Cold is something entirely different that will soon turn snowmen into killers and hold central London in a frigid deathlock.
The Doctor is hardly in this story as a character, but his presence is everywhere. Susan feels a distance from him that every other companion in his life is bound to feel as well, and she is constantly aware of her own alien-ness that separates her from those around her. The Doctor is aloof, tending to observe the goings on around him more than take part or interfere, concerned that any action taken by him or Susan will alert their people (nameless at this point, and will remain so until The War Games in 1969) and bring down their wrath. Susan is also alert to the agents from Home finding them, but her exposure to the humans has made her much more sympathic to their plight and compels her to help them.
What's interesting to note is that for a few days as this story progresses, kiler snowmen stalk the streets, even attacking school children in a playground, and it does not alter anything in the society around it. By the time we rejoin the student of Coal Hill School in November of 1963 (or tomorrow, as the blog goes) everything will be normal, there will be no mention of it. Come on, you say, that's got to have made someone notice, someone would mention it, the school would be closed (just like Sunnydale High in Buffy the Vampire Slayer loses at least one student a week in a gory way yet is never roped off with yellow tape or closed down) but this is the way of Doctor Who. There are stranger things about to happen in the series, and it does nothing to change the world; the Doctor himself will remark in 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks that humans are very keen to ignore these sorts of things rather than try to understand them.
So. Day saved. The Doctor pulls it off (of course) and Susan goes back to school eventually. Spring is about to come at last. All in 115 pages. God bless the well written novella; I sat in my chair mesmerized by this for most of the day, and I sometimes wish there were other tales of the Doctor and Susan to enjoy before they start wandering again.
But it will soon be November. John F Kennedy will be assassinated in the street, and on the other side of the Atlantic, two school teachers will notice something strange about one of their students at last...
NEXT EPISODE : AN UNEARTHLY CHILD
Picture it: London, late March 1963. A 15 year old girl goes to school just like any other, but she knows things about the world that a normal 15 year old would not. And while she excels at some topics in her classes she is abominably bad at others, questioning the answers, arguing with her teachers, getting her facts wrong. And when she goes home at night, she goes to a junkyard at 76 Totters Lane in Shoreditch where there is nothing but, well, junk, and a blue London police box she refers to as "the Box". And that's where she and her mysterious grandfather live. The Ship has disguised itself to blend in with London of the era, and unbeknownst to the people of the time, two aliens are living amongst them.
This examination of the Doctor and Susan's activities in the months before the series began is a fascinating adventure. As with Frayed it is also best to be enjoyed after having seen some, if not all, of the televised series and having some questions answered. Not so much in the grand scale of the first three episodes of Star Wars but more the mystery and subtleties of Twin Peaks : Fire Walk With Me. Ahh prequels, gotta love em.
Susan and her school chums go about their daily lives at Coal Hill School, Susan being a bit of an outcast for her "unearthly" qualities and bonding with others who are also on the fringe of the school's culture; a girl who gets into trouble for fighting, and an awkward boy in the ROTC. Like normal kids they face a bully, spy on teachers at the pictures (an interesting cameo by Barabara Wright and Ian Chesterton, who will become very important to Susan very soon) and enjoy the lifestyle of London in the swigning sixties. It's just that it's almost April and it hasn't stopped snowing, and the whole world is feeling a distinct chill. In a world so recently threatened by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Russia is blaming the Americans, and the Americans are blaming the Russians, but the Cold is something entirely different that will soon turn snowmen into killers and hold central London in a frigid deathlock.
The Doctor is hardly in this story as a character, but his presence is everywhere. Susan feels a distance from him that every other companion in his life is bound to feel as well, and she is constantly aware of her own alien-ness that separates her from those around her. The Doctor is aloof, tending to observe the goings on around him more than take part or interfere, concerned that any action taken by him or Susan will alert their people (nameless at this point, and will remain so until The War Games in 1969) and bring down their wrath. Susan is also alert to the agents from Home finding them, but her exposure to the humans has made her much more sympathic to their plight and compels her to help them.
What's interesting to note is that for a few days as this story progresses, kiler snowmen stalk the streets, even attacking school children in a playground, and it does not alter anything in the society around it. By the time we rejoin the student of Coal Hill School in November of 1963 (or tomorrow, as the blog goes) everything will be normal, there will be no mention of it. Come on, you say, that's got to have made someone notice, someone would mention it, the school would be closed (just like Sunnydale High in Buffy the Vampire Slayer loses at least one student a week in a gory way yet is never roped off with yellow tape or closed down) but this is the way of Doctor Who. There are stranger things about to happen in the series, and it does nothing to change the world; the Doctor himself will remark in 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks that humans are very keen to ignore these sorts of things rather than try to understand them.
So. Day saved. The Doctor pulls it off (of course) and Susan goes back to school eventually. Spring is about to come at last. All in 115 pages. God bless the well written novella; I sat in my chair mesmerized by this for most of the day, and I sometimes wish there were other tales of the Doctor and Susan to enjoy before they start wandering again.
But it will soon be November. John F Kennedy will be assassinated in the street, and on the other side of the Atlantic, two school teachers will notice something strange about one of their students at last...
NEXT EPISODE : AN UNEARTHLY CHILD
Labels: Susan Foreman, The 1st Doctor
posted by Sean Hoover @ 4:01 PM
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