Short Trips:Zodiac
A Doctor
Who short story.
I was one of, I suspect, 500,000 people approached to pitch a
short story for this collection in which each story was to have some kind
of connection to a Zodiac sign. I immediately pitched an idea from Stenterpegs,
an unpublishable novel I wrote some years ago for Cancer, that of people living
sideways in time across parallel universes, their lives at right angles to ours.
I then wrote
the whole thing to prove it could be done and made sense.
Matt Michael for Doctor Who Magazine seemed to like it-
'Finest of all are the two Third Doctor stories The Switching and Still Lives, both of which give us some insight into his character. The former has the Master and Doctor swap bodies, and the latter a particularly moving and well conceived tale of doomed love that sees a soldier form our universe slowly and unstoppably slipping into the Inferno dimension.
'Like all short story collections Short Trips: Zodiac is uneven. One or two of these tales are a load of old Taurus, but to compensate, we're offered two of the best short stories with Still Lives and Jealous, Possessive.'
Stuart Douglas on the Doctor Who book list Jade Pagoda wasn't impressed either, thinking only five of the twelve stories were any good thankfully I sneak into his five
On the plus side, the
collection starts well with a near note-perfect Poe
from Mark Michaelowski and manages two good stories in a row with Ian
Potter's "Still Lives" (the revelation available only to the reader of
Helen's eventual fate when contrasted with her own burgeoning hope was the
best moment in the collection for me) and SAF's "Constant Companion"
which
was both amusing and as well written as ever. After that though, all there
is to savour is an nice (and quite subtle) take on the Master-Third Doctor
relationship in Simon Guerrier's "The Switching" and an all too brief
peak
during Paul Magrs' bitchy K9s,
Matt Ivy on the internet site Outpost Gallifrey was less convinced-
'The rest of the short stories are sadly not very memorable. It's not that the majority of the stories are badly written, it's just that no story is engrossing or innovative.'
Mine was one of those, I'm afraid. Lawrence Conquest, once again reviewing on Outpost Gallifrey, didn't think much to it either-
'Next up is ‘Still Lives’ by Ian Potter, a minor but effective sequel to Inferno. This enjoyable character piece sidelines the 3rd Doctor somewhat, but for all that it’s a big improvement on The Face of the Enemy…'
Trey Korte on the same site was even less enamoured-
'Cancer's entry is Ian Potter's "Still Lives", an interesting extrapolation of the events of Inferno where a UNIT soldier from our universe slips sideways in time. The premise is interesting, but it's written in that sort of angsty, "I'm so deep" style that often plague high school literary magazines. When the first section ends with the paragraph "Patterns recur." I get the feeling it was intended to be deep and meaningful but it only comes across trite and cliched in my view. Of course patterns recur. That's why they're patterns! The story is a very good idea, but there are too many moments like these where Ian tries to say "Look! This is the theme of my story!" and it becomes very unsubtle.'
Ian Moore on the newsgroup rec.arts.drwho.moderated said-
'Short Trips Zodiac: This was a pleasant change. A DW short story anthology that I actually liked. A couple of weak links, but a massive improvement on the BBC's Short Trips efforts. Special mention for Paul Leonard's and Ian Potter's contributions and of course Paul Magr's, which had me in stitches, if only it was a bit longer!!'
Scott Sherritt on the Doctor Who book list Jade Pagoda was kinder still-
'STILL
LIVES by IAN POTTER
'A sequel to Inferno looking at the consequences for the 'little people'
caught in the Doctor's wake. Horrific in its implications and a terrible
indictment on human nature is demonstrated in what it is suggested Mark
does for fun in his still world. Depressing, but with a note of hope,
this is another mini-masterpiece despite the virtual absence of the
Doctor. 9/10.'
Again on Jade Pagoda Philip Purser-Hallard said-
'CANCER: "Still Lives" by Ian
Potter
'"He really hoped that itch wasn't crabs". I loved this one. A
simple concept, but elegantly and rigorously thought through --
something we don't see often enough. The early scenes tease
nicely before making their big revelation, and Mark and Helen
were both sympathetic, three-dimensional characters. The only
problem is, again, that the third Doctor and Liz are rather
superfluous -- having set events in motion, the Doctor can't by
definition be involved in them -- so the story resorts to
questioning the Doctor's revelations concerning freedom of choice
in Inferno. Which does allow for some nice characterisation of
Liz, but doesn't meet up with the main plot strand at all.'
John Seavey had similar thoughts, also on Jade Pagoda-
'"Still
Lives", by Ian Potter, is an interesting slice of a story (albeit with
no connection to Cancer I can think of)...it's about a woman stuck moving
sideways in time after being caught in the Doctor's time experiments in
'Inferno'. Well-written and clever, but unfortunately, it doesn't really
end--just suggests the possibility of an ending.'
Roger J Pocock's brief five star review of the collection on www.doctorwho.hquk.co.uk very kindly says-
'and for some serious food for thought there is the touching Still Lives.'
In 2003, Zodiac was voted Best Past Doctor novel of 2002 by the readers of Doctor Who Magazine, a particularly neat trick when you bear in mind it's not a novel and featured the then current Doctor as well as the past ones.
p49 Pangloss, of course inspired a group of Doctor Who villains in Gareth Roberts' novel Tragedy Day. His role as a dodgy mentor of science and philosophy and his attitude towards other possible organisations of the world, is of thematic relevance. The translator's name is an obscure joke.
The first true line of the story is a riff on a line from Paul Cornell's first Doctor Who novel.
Helen lives where I did while working for the BBC in the summer of 2001.
p50 A playful reference to crabs occurs here, one of several allusions to crabs, their method of movement and to cancer in the story.
The Doctor's reference to free will, reveals this story to be set in the aftermath of the story Inferno. I assumed most people reading the book would be familiar with the basics of it, and used it as a jumping off point to explore an idea which has interested me for a while.
p51 Young Kimpton is named after the exceptionally bright Cambridge philosophy graduate and Who fan Matt Kimpton.
Playing with continuity on this page I foreshadow the Brigadier's maths teaching, name a UNIT doctor after the medical officer name checked in an early draft of Planet of the Spiders (changed to foreshadow the introduction of Harry Sullivan in the event), mention James Stevens from David Bishop's superb Who Killed Kennedy, and Harold Chorley, a crumby TV presenter who plays an active part in the Troughton story The Web of Fear. According to the novel The Face of the Enemy the events in this story played out rather differently in the Inferno Universe so I decided somewhere between these two worlds Chorley's life was probably slightly different again.
p52 Eastchester and Nuton are two of Doctor Who's fictional attempts to address the UK's 1970s Energy Crisis, there are loads of them actually when you start looking at the stories with those kind of filters on.
p53 Siberia is a reference to the Fortean folklore of the hole to Hell there, though, as a bonus, loads of suspicious stuff seems to go in Siberia in the Whoniverse.
Bell is the UNIT Corporal who has a lot less to do than her rank would lead you to expect.
p54 The Brigadier as a practical joker is an, albeit obscure, play on the convention story of the eyepatch from Inferno, beloved and derided by Doctor Who fans in turn. If you don't know it, I'm amazed you're reading this page.
In continuity corner we play with a couple of attributes of the Doctor from several stories, particularly the third Doctor's use of dubious science, excessively sweetened tea and his egotism.
p55 The building which houses one of UNIT's London HQs here is the BBC building that once housed the Radiophonic Workshop on Delaware Road in Maida Vale.
p57 We toy with the science of The Time Monster here briefly.
p58 A production mistake in Inferno is sneakily turned into one of the Doctor's here.
Swifty G Singh is a nod to the wild ideas man of Antipodean fandom, Sietel Singh Gill. Sietel, we salute you!
Originally, the comic strip would have been American but I changed that because it would have clashed with David McIntee's vision of the Inferno world in Face of the Enemy, and it hurt me not a jot to change one line to fit it with what he'd established.
Finally, UNIT dating, it's a nightmare! Thankfully everyone knows it, and it's also fairly well established in books such as No Future that the history of the late 20th Century is a bit garbled. As a rule of thumb, I reckon UNIT stories occur anywhere between the late 1960s and early 1980s but not necessarily in that order. Time has been rather bent, twisted and mangled around UNIT and cause and effect would appear at times to work backwards and quite possibly sideways.
I chose to fit in with the calendar visible in the video release of Inferno for the dating of this story (particularly as that also puts the story within the period covered by Cancer, allowing me to echo the collection theme again) but not specify any year. This does mean the date is slightly at variance with what is suggested in Who Killed Kennedy, I can live with this, as could its author when I mentioned the fact to him. It's giving weight to a primary source over a secondary one. We know Stevens is a slightly unreliable narrator, and is recording his story in a popular conspiracy paperback, it's possible he got some details wrong, it's also possible that the events Stevens describes took place in different ways in different universes...
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