"The Star Beast" novelization [review]
Apr. 24th, 2024 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverOmg, I'm actually reading! What is this, two books and one comic in about three weeks? Well, that's mostly because they finally released the comic and 60th novelizations in the U.S. I hadn't wanted to buy them early on the Kindle, so I only got them now.
Anyway, on to The Star Beast. I'm not likely to get to Wild Blue Yonder any time soon, since I know, from Mark Morris at Gallifrey One, that he wasn't allowed to deviate from the script or add anything, so it's less of a draw. I'll get there eventually, just not this entirely too-busy week.
Putting the tl;dr at the beginning of the post instead of the end of the post (because if you're going to put it at the end, why bother writing it at all - people who don't read your post won't see it, and people who do don't need it), "The Star Beast" was an enjoyable read. I came into it knowing that it wasn't going to be mind-blowing like The Giggle, but it's written by Gary Russell, who wrote my favorite DW novel, Beautiful Chaos. Of course, he's just writing down someone else's story, so I wasn't expecting a new Beautiful Chaos, but he's a talented writer and he'd said (again, at Gallifrey One) some things that really got me interested.
The main difficulty he'd had with planning the novelization was that he didn't have a viewpoint character. Usually the novelizations have a companion that the story can be told from, but in this case... Well, let's just say that it's tough to tell a story from the point of view of a character who doesn't know what's going on and doesn't even know who that strange man facing down the alien is. So, he had to tell the story from another character's point of view: one of his favorites, Sylvia.
Sylvia, as you probably know from my journal, is one of my favorites, too. I love all of the RTD mothers (including Carla). All of them are strong women who care deeply about their daughters but show it in different ways, stemming from their personalities and histories. Sylvia gets a lot of hate because she's mean to Donna, and the portrayal is meant to make you hate her, because her target is the character you're meant to like and associate with. However, if you look at how she's mean, you see that she's yelling at Donna to grow up and take responsibility for her life. She's trying to make Donna better but she doesn't know how; she's only doing what she knows how to do. Which is nag. Which is not endearing.
In The Star Beast, Mr Russell explores Sylvia's experiences and hopes and fears for her daughter, as well as the difficulties of the last fifteen years and her thoughts towards the Doctor, and he makes sense of all of it. One of the most insightful things he writes is that Sylvia recognizes that the Doctor came and made her daughter better, and she hates him for it, for doing what she couldn't do. And then for having to take it all away.
However, Sylvia is only a small part of the story and isn't there for a lot of it, so the book also delves into other characters. There's more on the backstory for Shirley Anne Bingham. Mr Russell brings a minor character back from "The Stolen Earth" - Stew, the milkman who was present when the TARDIS landed on Earth at the beginning - and expands on him, to establish his character while also inserting him at the steelworks to have someone who could see what was happening there. Some of the story is told from the Doctor's point of view, as he's trying to figure out why this face has come back and he's been drawn back to Donna and as he's trying to stop the Meep without re-triggering the metacrisis.
A fun bonus to the story are additions at the beginning of each chapter, of different communications that provide some backstory for what's coming up, such as Kate Stewart's memo to UNIT about the hiring of the new scientific advisor, or the string of texts between Fudge (Rose's friend who showed her the empty escape pod) and Shazza, Fudge's friend, as Fudge is watching the firefight in the house and then the dagger drive destroying the city. If you're observant, you'll spot yet another series 4 character in these.
One thing that had me doing extra research was that the Doctor was mentioned as having blue eyes. In case you didn't know, David Tennant has brown eyes, and is the only Doctor until Ncuti Gatwa to have brown eyes - all have been blue except William Hartnell and Matt Smith (both green or hazel). So, DT wore blue contacts? I spent a good hour scouring the screencaps from "Power of the Doctor" and the 60th (such noisome work, staring at pictures of David Tennant!) and concluded, no, Mr Russell was wrong. Much of the three episodes had bluish environments (especially "Wild Blue Yonder" and the UNIT scenes in "The Giggle"), which made it difficult to tell what color his eyes were - they looked grey or possibly steel blue in most of them. However, there are a couple of shots where his eyes are clearly brown, notably the final scene while he's telling the story of the Warrior Queen of the Felooth and wiggling his eyebrows. Maybe they're continuity errors where he forgot to wear blue contacts while filming, but no, I think it's much more likely that Mr Russell got it wrong. (The novelization authors got only a single viewing of their uncut/unedited episode, so maybe he thought his eyes were blue?) But that would have been such a cool way to indicate that yes, this is not the Tenth Doctor, to have his eyes be a different color.
So yes, I really enjoyed this book, and will probably re-read it in the next month or two. It's not as amazing as The Giggle, but well worth the read.
Anyway, on to The Star Beast. I'm not likely to get to Wild Blue Yonder any time soon, since I know, from Mark Morris at Gallifrey One, that he wasn't allowed to deviate from the script or add anything, so it's less of a draw. I'll get there eventually, just not this entirely too-busy week.
Putting the tl;dr at the beginning of the post instead of the end of the post (because if you're going to put it at the end, why bother writing it at all - people who don't read your post won't see it, and people who do don't need it), "The Star Beast" was an enjoyable read. I came into it knowing that it wasn't going to be mind-blowing like The Giggle, but it's written by Gary Russell, who wrote my favorite DW novel, Beautiful Chaos. Of course, he's just writing down someone else's story, so I wasn't expecting a new Beautiful Chaos, but he's a talented writer and he'd said (again, at Gallifrey One) some things that really got me interested.
The main difficulty he'd had with planning the novelization was that he didn't have a viewpoint character. Usually the novelizations have a companion that the story can be told from, but in this case... Well, let's just say that it's tough to tell a story from the point of view of a character who doesn't know what's going on and doesn't even know who that strange man facing down the alien is. So, he had to tell the story from another character's point of view: one of his favorites, Sylvia.
Sylvia, as you probably know from my journal, is one of my favorites, too. I love all of the RTD mothers (including Carla). All of them are strong women who care deeply about their daughters but show it in different ways, stemming from their personalities and histories. Sylvia gets a lot of hate because she's mean to Donna, and the portrayal is meant to make you hate her, because her target is the character you're meant to like and associate with. However, if you look at how she's mean, you see that she's yelling at Donna to grow up and take responsibility for her life. She's trying to make Donna better but she doesn't know how; she's only doing what she knows how to do. Which is nag. Which is not endearing.
In The Star Beast, Mr Russell explores Sylvia's experiences and hopes and fears for her daughter, as well as the difficulties of the last fifteen years and her thoughts towards the Doctor, and he makes sense of all of it. One of the most insightful things he writes is that Sylvia recognizes that the Doctor came and made her daughter better, and she hates him for it, for doing what she couldn't do. And then for having to take it all away.
However, Sylvia is only a small part of the story and isn't there for a lot of it, so the book also delves into other characters. There's more on the backstory for Shirley Anne Bingham. Mr Russell brings a minor character back from "The Stolen Earth" - Stew, the milkman who was present when the TARDIS landed on Earth at the beginning - and expands on him, to establish his character while also inserting him at the steelworks to have someone who could see what was happening there. Some of the story is told from the Doctor's point of view, as he's trying to figure out why this face has come back and he's been drawn back to Donna and as he's trying to stop the Meep without re-triggering the metacrisis.
A fun bonus to the story are additions at the beginning of each chapter, of different communications that provide some backstory for what's coming up, such as Kate Stewart's memo to UNIT about the hiring of the new scientific advisor, or the string of texts between Fudge (Rose's friend who showed her the empty escape pod) and Shazza, Fudge's friend, as Fudge is watching the firefight in the house and then the dagger drive destroying the city. If you're observant, you'll spot yet another series 4 character in these.
One thing that had me doing extra research was that the Doctor was mentioned as having blue eyes. In case you didn't know, David Tennant has brown eyes, and is the only Doctor until Ncuti Gatwa to have brown eyes - all have been blue except William Hartnell and Matt Smith (both green or hazel). So, DT wore blue contacts? I spent a good hour scouring the screencaps from "Power of the Doctor" and the 60th (such noisome work, staring at pictures of David Tennant!) and concluded, no, Mr Russell was wrong. Much of the three episodes had bluish environments (especially "Wild Blue Yonder" and the UNIT scenes in "The Giggle"), which made it difficult to tell what color his eyes were - they looked grey or possibly steel blue in most of them. However, there are a couple of shots where his eyes are clearly brown, notably the final scene while he's telling the story of the Warrior Queen of the Felooth and wiggling his eyebrows. Maybe they're continuity errors where he forgot to wear blue contacts while filming, but no, I think it's much more likely that Mr Russell got it wrong. (The novelization authors got only a single viewing of their uncut/unedited episode, so maybe he thought his eyes were blue?) But that would have been such a cool way to indicate that yes, this is not the Tenth Doctor, to have his eyes be a different color.
So yes, I really enjoyed this book, and will probably re-read it in the next month or two. It's not as amazing as The Giggle, but well worth the read.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-24 07:25 pm (UTC)That’s pretty cool it’s limited to Sylvia’s POV. Rewatching a lot of Nine and Ten has given me more of an appreciation for the RTD moms. ( Carla was great, Francine and Sylvia are too. Jackie is delightful!)