Short Trips:The Muses
A Doctor Who short story. No major plot clues or spoilers will appear here until well after the thing's released. When that's happened I might talk about a few bits of it in a bit more detail, and whether or not anyone liked it at all. In the meantime let me tempt you with a few notes of no interest.
I was one of 9 authors approached by Jacqueline Rayner for this collection, each of us given a Doctor and one of the Ancient Greek Muses around which to build a story (bar Justin Richards who just got a Muse and a free hand because at the time there was no 9th Doctor to write for). I got the 5th Doctor and the Muse Erato.
This was the hardest story to write yet, far longer than the others and, because I was busy on other projects, and written in less time. I've since learned the finished piece is technically novelette length rather than a short story, which explains a lot!
Four reviews so far, one from Trey Korte on Outpost Gallifrey in which he heartily recommends the whole collection says:
'In the extremely clever and satisfying, "Confabula", Ian Potter gives us a beautiful story featuring the fifth Doctor and Nyssa. From Erato, Muse of Lyric Poetry and Mimicry, Ian weaves a tale about illusion and love. The fifth Doctor and Nyssa are the perfect pairing for this and Potter references their adventures in the audio series. The dynamic between these two is an interesting one and, like the sixth Doctor, Nyssa has been given a wonderful Big Finish makeover. The story itself weaves themes of mimicry as the Doctor and Nyssa aren't in a proper reality. Illusion piles upon illusion. Likewise, while not about lyric poetry, the language of the story is quite lyrical and poetic, especially when it comes to the jargon and slang of the characters the Doctor and Nyssa meet. There's a wonderful moment where the Doctor and Nyssa reveal their feelings for each other, and it helps make this one of the strongest Doctor/companion pairings the series has ever seen, on par with the seventh Doctor and Ace, the eighth Doctor and Charley, and the first Doctor and Susan. "Confabula" is an emotional tour de force and one of the highlights of the collection.'
To be honest I think he over-praises, because there's a wealth of great writing in this collection that makes my story seem a rather poor relation.
In the second review, Lawrence Conquest, also on Outpost Gallifrey, writes:
"This
5th Doctor story initially seems as though it’s going to be a murder mystery
amongst a Ballardian enclosed society aboard a constantly moving train, before
veering off into more bizarre angles. Some excellent characterisation for the
5th Doctor and an ending maliciously open to interpretation add to the
experience. (7/10)"
Again he recommends the collection, and I'm really chuffed that he enjoyed my mean ending!
Roger J. Pocock at http://www.doctorwho.ukhq.co.uk added the following in his review which rated the book with five stars:
Ian Potter has spotted the dynamic that exists between the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa, and exploits the possibilities of this pairing to great effect in Confabula, which also plays well on the emotions of the reader.
Finally Matt Michael's review for Doctor Who Magazine in which he called the book 'the best ever Doctor Who short-story collection' said the following about my tale...
Confabula by Ian Potter sticks close to its given theme of love poetry and
mimicry, featuring a planet-sized alien, Maya, that has fallen in love with
the Fifth Doctor, and which creates a whole adventure in which to ensnare
him. Potter sets up such an intriguing false world, which has survivors of a
holocaust perpetually travelling round on trains, waiting for the signal to
re-populate the planet that it's almost a let-down when it turns out that
the whole story has been engineered by Maya.
To give the counter-argument though there have recently
been a couple of brief comments on the book on Jade Pagoda the Doctor
Who book list which are rather less fulsome...
John Seavey stating...
ST: The Muses is a waste of time for all concerned.
and Andrew Leighton adding...
I would have to disagree - I thought that Rob Shearman's story
_Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing_ was a nice piece. It is the only story I
remember fondly from that collection. The book isn't worth buying for that one
story though (unless you can find a copy second-hand for a couple of quid).
p105
Shakespeare, again, and in my favourite
spelling too. The quotation introduces the themes I decided to play with when I was
offered the chance to do the story. The remit was to include the fifth
Doctor and deal somehow with the territory of the Muse, Erato, Greek goddess of
love poetry, mimicry and lyrical poetry. Once, I'd dismissed my initial flippant idea of
a sequel to The Creature from the Pit, I decided I wanted to do
something about love, its creation, and the creation of written 'art' and
artifice,
ideally with a feel of Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller
to it, a fabulous book that charts the processes of reading a novel and
falling in love, side by side. Something else came out of course but it
was that decision that made it do so. The city
names are obvious plays on 'The Big Smoke' and 'Edinburgh'. The
Doctor's eye defect is mentioned in Four to Doomsday, I thought it might
be fun to pick up on here, Four to Doomsday is also the story in which
Nyssa hears love defined negatively as referred to on p106. p106 The
young Doctor's analysis of love is touched on in the audio The Wormery. Borusa is established as one of the Doctor's tutors in The
Deadly Assassin. The
name Kinloch-Jones occurs in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, I liked the
sound of it and used it here too. p107 The
Inuits are in the audio The Land of the Dead and Nyssa discovers how
Chinese people look in Four to Doomsday. As I began giving my characters
names I noticed a few sounded like cod
French, so I went with it and gave the others cod French names
too. Burdine was originally called Bermange after 1960s dramatist, Barry
Bermange, but that sounded too French. Mellin takes his name from
Robert Mellin, the co-composer of the music to the French Robinson Crusoe
serial
well known to most British TV viewers over 30. Guilliame and Villeharduin's names
are borrowed
from Guilliaume de Villehardouin a 13th Century AD Frankish leader. p112 Nyssa
visited Mondas in the audio Spare Parts. p113 Lissaea
and Urtalis, are my inventions, they may not really exist beyond this
story. I tried to reflect the feel of previous Trakenite names when I created
them without slavishly copying. Lime Wasps, is a reference the Lime Grove Wasps
in the audio The Mutant Phase, themselves of course a reference to Doctor
Who's first BBC studios. p114 Carisaille
is suspiciously like Carlisle. p115 The description of the face seen is meant to evoke a younger version of the
first Doctor. p120 Maya
is named after the Eastern concept of the web of Maya, not after the Space
1999 character, though to be fair she was probably named for the web of Maya
too The bracelet she plays with is a small Mandala symbolising another
Eastern concept, the net of Indra. p121 The
puppeteer is a reference
to the Master, who stole the body of Nyssa's father, the conveniently named Tremas,
of course. p122 A
MacGuffin is the generic name for handy device used to set a plot in motion.
Generally, it's whatever powerful thing the good guys and bad guys in a given
story are both after. The term was allegedly first coined by Angus Macphail, a
script editor for Alfred
Hitchcock. p123 The
Makers will be referred to more in Mark Michalowski's 2004 Doctor Who novel HalfLife.
I borrowed the race with his permission and I hope I've returned them undamaged. p125 The Invisible Enemy would suggest
this is what the Doctor's unconscious is full of anyhow... p128 Here
I mention two things we've seen the Doctor forsee in dream states, a third he
often seems implausibly quick to react too, and the huge paradox on which the
fifth Doctor's life depends. p130 Empathy
first appeared in an unproduced science fiction play I wrote some time ago
called Emulators. p131 This
scene foreshadows aspects of Nyssa's final departure from the series, and
deliberately echoes Susan's leaving too. Kwundaar
was the villain in the audio Primeval. Sidelian memory transfer
was what set the story The Face of Evil in motion. p134 In
writing this story I came up with a solution for who the Doctor secretly was, to
aid my depiction of him fearing his secret might be discovered. I then
totally removed any reference to it! I hope, somehow the shape of the mystery remains
in the story despite the absence of any of the details I had in mind while
writing it. Most of the hints I cut were originally in this section. p135 The
standard ending for all such tales, of course. Whose viewpoint is right? Click on the logo below
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