Doctor Who books: The Glamour Chase
Jul. 12th, 2010 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethNeeds More Amy.
Which, given the cover image, is ironic.
There's several of Amy in this book, but given that Amy gets captured early on, there's not a whole lot of Real Amy. Her main contributions involve fancying a farmer and sending a clever secret message. So then there's a bunch of Fake Amy stuff that doesn't tell us much about Real Amy and I miss Amy.
This is not just because I like Amy a lot (though I do) (also, I think I like her response to seeing Fake Amy: 'Is my bum really that small? I look great!' Confidence! :-) ) It is also because, and you know I'm going to say this, I like it when stories have strong women in them. Strong female characters. Females that may not necessarily kick arse but who have their own goals, their own methods, and their own achievements.
You know what I don't so much find in this book?
... yeah.
There are quite a lot of female characters, so that's nice, and some aliens that might be female depending on how they feel like, which complicates things. But there's a lot of In Distress going around, and a lot of waiting to be rescued. Even the explorer lady in the back cover, Noted Adventuress, gets a couple of pages of potted life history to tell us she has Adventures, though not to tell which one of them is Noted, but in the real time bits never gets to make her own decisions. Or any decisions, really. She's not much of a character, just a puzzle piece we're meant to look at while the things that will be important later are snuck in around her. Also, the Doctor makes a joke about how butch she is.
Yeah, I found that a bit difficult too.
The Doctor makes jokes about how butch she is.
So what we have here is The Doctor, intergalactic adventurer from the planet Gallifrey where they change bodies and have never actually mentioned if they stay one sex, Time Lord who has bounced up and down through human history with all its variations in what constitutes masculine or feminine, who could be expected to be a bit broad minded by now, and what he feels the need to mention at this point about this archaeologist is that she's a bit butch ?
Seems like it is concentrating on Being Funny, and not so much on Being The Doctor.
In a book with many fake doubles of people I rather wondered about the Doctor about then.
And a couple other points too.
I did not feel The Doctor was at his shining best in this book.
Which basically leaves Rory. And actually Rory does shine. Rory gets to do nurse things and know medical things and get a BIG HUGE HUG from the Doctor for being, you know, Rory, who cares about people. :-)
There was plenty good Rory in this one.
Which worries me somewhat because that's two out of three books where people have the chance to play with AMY&Rory and they end up playing with Rory while Amy needs rescued. The setup has some awkward downhill tendencies in it, is what I'm saying. And the probability of landing in the sheep dip seems quite high.
Oliver, mentioned in the quote above, is in a wheelchair because he's been drugged for his PTSD. Rory is being excellent compassionate about the PTSD. The book is using the 'he's not mad he just notices things nobody else does' idea as a big clue provider. The idea being that people with PTSD are so sensitive to their triggers that they'll notice them even when they're at levels that would be too low for other people to notice, like the smell of Bad Things. It's... okay, there's a trope about 'they called him crazy but IT'S TRUE!' that I really hate in F&SF, because of a complicated tangle of reasons involving how it ends up rejecting psychological treatment and saying hallucinations are actually secret messages and stuff. This book doesn't do that. Rory wishes he could get the guy *good* treatment, and PTSD the way he's telling it doesn't involve hallucinations, just sensitivity. But... but but but... you know when stories have gone Horribly Wrong in the same way too many times? It's like a great big bruise. The idea crazy people have magic perception levels is one of those compensatory superpowers ideas that has been around forEVER; wrapping it up in PTSD triggers... makes it sound more plausible but skims real close to the other stuff too. Also the 'you're not going mad you've got PTSD' distinction bothers me. What's it supposed to mean? Mad is a really useless word.
I liked the way the book and Rory tries to treat Oliver and his PTSD, respect and compassion and listening and noticing when he's triggered and stuff.
I don't quite know what to make about the SF stuff they wrap around it.
All this poking the story and turning it over in my head made me realise the bit that bothers me most: The Doctor didn't actually fix it. Or anything. The Doctor gets there late and makes plans that don't work out and witnesses things that as far as I can see would have worked the same anyway. Saying why I think that involves going into more plot detail than I usually would while talking about these books, so skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to know more stuff. But the set up is that the archaeologist on the back cover is going to break into an alien ship and Bad Things will happen, which indeed happens, even though the Doctor is there. And then his solution is suggested by Rory... oh dear, did they Marty Stu Rory? I didn't think so because he's noticing things that the Doctor doesn't usually notice, being good at people which the Doctor doesn't always slow down and try. But the Doctor usually gets to fix things at the end. Anyway, the plan is suggested by Rory, and then the Doctor tries it, and it doesn't work for him. But it does work elsewhere by accident. An accident involving the archaeology team, who were already there and would have been there doing that even if the Doctor never turned up. So I don't see which bit the Doctor helped. And, also, he turned out to be wrong a couple times in a row at the end. He's only supposed to be wrong in the middle for tension until he figures it all out. And, also also, the set up where the reader gets told all about Oliver means we're ahead of the Doctor for quite some time. We should be ahead of the Doctor enough to be more worried for him, to know the threat that is creeping up and be all It's Behind You. But when he makes wrong guesses about things that we've already seen, that's not a Behind You moment, that just makes him look less smart. The Doctor looking smart is his primary characteristic, so that doesn't work very well.
So, Needs More Amy, and possibly Needs More Doctor?
I liked what it did with Rory. We get lots of insight and some snippets of backstory for Rory. Like learning what his first sight of Amy was, "about 8 years old, long red hair, freckles, holding an oddly shaped teddy bear that she had loved so much back then." Awww, sweet! And there's a whole little story about his bravest thing as a nurse that is good to know, and joins back in with the narrative-now real well because Amy knows him so well she can figure what he's remembering so he's all <3 about her. And there's more about what Amy & Rory were like back in Leadworth.
There's some proper alien aliens and lots of running around and getting captured and finding things out and running away and all sorts.
But I still get that feeling like when you wanted supper but you can only find a bag of crisps. And that's two out of the last three books I've read that felt like that. Like, they've got their good points, but there's several major components under represented there. So I still wants the whole meals.
With books, as with foods, I am everso picky.
Which, given the cover image, is ironic.
There's several of Amy in this book, but given that Amy gets captured early on, there's not a whole lot of Real Amy. Her main contributions involve fancying a farmer and sending a clever secret message. So then there's a bunch of Fake Amy stuff that doesn't tell us much about Real Amy and I miss Amy.
This is not just because I like Amy a lot (though I do) (also, I think I like her response to seeing Fake Amy: 'Is my bum really that small? I look great!' Confidence! :-) ) It is also because, and you know I'm going to say this, I like it when stories have strong women in them. Strong female characters. Females that may not necessarily kick arse but who have their own goals, their own methods, and their own achievements.
You know what I don't so much find in this book?
... yeah.
There are quite a lot of female characters, so that's nice, and some aliens that might be female depending on how they feel like, which complicates things. But there's a lot of In Distress going around, and a lot of waiting to be rescued. Even the explorer lady in the back cover, Noted Adventuress, gets a couple of pages of potted life history to tell us she has Adventures, though not to tell which one of them is Noted, but in the real time bits never gets to make her own decisions. Or any decisions, really. She's not much of a character, just a puzzle piece we're meant to look at while the things that will be important later are snuck in around her. Also, the Doctor makes a joke about how butch she is.
Yeah, I found that a bit difficult too.
The Doctor makes jokes about how butch she is.
'Blimey,' the Doctor said quietly as they entered the school grounds, pushing Oliver along in his chair. 'Enola Porter's a man.'
Rory did a double-take. 'Really?'
The Doctor sighed. 'Of course not. I just meant in a Lady Gaga meets George Kirrin kind of way.'
'Who?'
'Lady Gaga?'
'No, I know Lady Gaga. Well, not "know" know, but I know who she is,' Rory explained. 'But not who - hang on. Lady Gaga's not a man!'
'Well, obviously,' the Doctor said. 'But when she first started out, they all said she was. Course, give it a few more years, when the real truth is revealed, and then watch the furore kick off. One of those gossipy magazines pay her "entourage",' the Doctor mimed the quote marks, 'their biggest ever payout to get the truth behind which dimensional rift she really fell through. Oh yes!' The Doctor stopped. 'Hang on. Do I mean Lady Gaga or the other one?'
'Which other one?'
'Won The X Factor. Or American Idol. Or was it South Korea's Got Talent? Either way, Enola Porter is a bit butch.'
'Charming,' Rory murmered, as Enola strode manfully towards them. 'OK,' he said even more quietly. 'You may have a point.'
She stuck out a dusty, scarred and deeply tanned hand which Rory shook.
Yup, he'd had patients after a Saturday night fight in Gloucester with pussier handshakes than that.
So what we have here is The Doctor, intergalactic adventurer from the planet Gallifrey where they change bodies and have never actually mentioned if they stay one sex, Time Lord who has bounced up and down through human history with all its variations in what constitutes masculine or feminine, who could be expected to be a bit broad minded by now, and what he feels the need to mention at this point about this archaeologist is that she's a bit butch ?
Seems like it is concentrating on Being Funny, and not so much on Being The Doctor.
In a book with many fake doubles of people I rather wondered about the Doctor about then.
And a couple other points too.
I did not feel The Doctor was at his shining best in this book.
Which basically leaves Rory. And actually Rory does shine. Rory gets to do nurse things and know medical things and get a BIG HUGE HUG from the Doctor for being, you know, Rory, who cares about people. :-)
There was plenty good Rory in this one.
Which worries me somewhat because that's two out of three books where people have the chance to play with AMY&Rory and they end up playing with Rory while Amy needs rescued. The setup has some awkward downhill tendencies in it, is what I'm saying. And the probability of landing in the sheep dip seems quite high.
Oliver, mentioned in the quote above, is in a wheelchair because he's been drugged for his PTSD. Rory is being excellent compassionate about the PTSD. The book is using the 'he's not mad he just notices things nobody else does' idea as a big clue provider. The idea being that people with PTSD are so sensitive to their triggers that they'll notice them even when they're at levels that would be too low for other people to notice, like the smell of Bad Things. It's... okay, there's a trope about 'they called him crazy but IT'S TRUE!' that I really hate in F&SF, because of a complicated tangle of reasons involving how it ends up rejecting psychological treatment and saying hallucinations are actually secret messages and stuff. This book doesn't do that. Rory wishes he could get the guy *good* treatment, and PTSD the way he's telling it doesn't involve hallucinations, just sensitivity. But... but but but... you know when stories have gone Horribly Wrong in the same way too many times? It's like a great big bruise. The idea crazy people have magic perception levels is one of those compensatory superpowers ideas that has been around forEVER; wrapping it up in PTSD triggers... makes it sound more plausible but skims real close to the other stuff too. Also the 'you're not going mad you've got PTSD' distinction bothers me. What's it supposed to mean? Mad is a really useless word.
I liked the way the book and Rory tries to treat Oliver and his PTSD, respect and compassion and listening and noticing when he's triggered and stuff.
I don't quite know what to make about the SF stuff they wrap around it.
All this poking the story and turning it over in my head made me realise the bit that bothers me most: The Doctor didn't actually fix it. Or anything. The Doctor gets there late and makes plans that don't work out and witnesses things that as far as I can see would have worked the same anyway. Saying why I think that involves going into more plot detail than I usually would while talking about these books, so skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to know more stuff. But the set up is that the archaeologist on the back cover is going to break into an alien ship and Bad Things will happen, which indeed happens, even though the Doctor is there. And then his solution is suggested by Rory... oh dear, did they Marty Stu Rory? I didn't think so because he's noticing things that the Doctor doesn't usually notice, being good at people which the Doctor doesn't always slow down and try. But the Doctor usually gets to fix things at the end. Anyway, the plan is suggested by Rory, and then the Doctor tries it, and it doesn't work for him. But it does work elsewhere by accident. An accident involving the archaeology team, who were already there and would have been there doing that even if the Doctor never turned up. So I don't see which bit the Doctor helped. And, also, he turned out to be wrong a couple times in a row at the end. He's only supposed to be wrong in the middle for tension until he figures it all out. And, also also, the set up where the reader gets told all about Oliver means we're ahead of the Doctor for quite some time. We should be ahead of the Doctor enough to be more worried for him, to know the threat that is creeping up and be all It's Behind You. But when he makes wrong guesses about things that we've already seen, that's not a Behind You moment, that just makes him look less smart. The Doctor looking smart is his primary characteristic, so that doesn't work very well.
So, Needs More Amy, and possibly Needs More Doctor?
I liked what it did with Rory. We get lots of insight and some snippets of backstory for Rory. Like learning what his first sight of Amy was, "about 8 years old, long red hair, freckles, holding an oddly shaped teddy bear that she had loved so much back then." Awww, sweet! And there's a whole little story about his bravest thing as a nurse that is good to know, and joins back in with the narrative-now real well because Amy knows him so well she can figure what he's remembering so he's all <3 about her. And there's more about what Amy & Rory were like back in Leadworth.
There's some proper alien aliens and lots of running around and getting captured and finding things out and running away and all sorts.
But I still get that feeling like when you wanted supper but you can only find a bag of crisps. And that's two out of the last three books I've read that felt like that. Like, they've got their good points, but there's several major components under represented there. So I still wants the whole meals.
With books, as with foods, I am everso picky.