#scratchman

[temporal-mechanic]

Friends remember you how you'd like to be remembered, and forget the rest. Friends turn up at the last moment, friends tell you to keep running.

Finished Scratchman and decided I needed a lock screen

[riverspond]

“Her name was Sarah-Jane Smith, and she adored a good question as much as I adored her.”

[autumndasher]

The Idea that Harry Sullivan decided to join Sarah Jane and The Doctor on a normal picnic but was secretly thinking to himself “Please let this be a Normal Field Trip” But, over the next day or so, Having to watch a mans family pin him down and horrifically mutate him into a scarecrow, get his own head turned into that of a “Dead and ancient Ram” and meeting THE DEVIL HIMSELF makes me giggle way too much

[benevolenterrancy]

"Don't you have enough sugar here?" "All told we've got about a dozen lumps, barely enough for a good cup of tea"

reading Scratchman and I'm feeling vindicated by Four's apparent tea choices u.u

[thespianwordnerd]

13th (and 4th) doctor moments that happened onscreen. To me.

[eutravels]

Doctor Who Meets Scratchman

So my latest read was this novelisation of the original script for the unmade movie Doctor Who Meets Scratchman from the seventies written by Tom Baker and Ian Marter. The story of this lost material was already famous amongst fans because Marter and Baker had both talked about it in interviews, but it's the first time ever that the story is properly published in any kind of way.

The script was rewritten as a novel by Tom Baker himself with the help of James Goss. According to some informational stuff contained in the book, the story was not that good when it was originally dug up from the archives, this is why it needed a lot of work to make this product.

In my opinion it was a great read and it was successfully frightful at times. I'm sure a seventies horror type of movie with this material would have been just great.

The two halves are really different, but also unequal in terms of quality. That kind of makes the second half a bit frustrating to read, when you've witnessed such an amazing first part. In all the first part you can't wait to meet Scratchman, but when you finally do it's when the story goes downhill. I enjoyed the last part as well, but certainly not as much as the first one.

The trial format, which is pretty much the same as the one used in the Colin Baker TV series, is pretty light and does not weigh too much on the story. I liked that part because it helped emphasize the themes that are more discreetly brought up in the story.

It was a risk, but it all looks more like a Tom Baker story than a fourth doctor story but it's also what gives it its charm.

I don't feel like I have anything more to say that's not too spoily so I'll leave it to you to discover this wonderful story whether by reading the book or by watching documentaries about it or reading about it online!

[maxwellandthenerds]

I decided to start reading some Doctor Who books because apparently marathoning Classic Who three out of the seven days of the week isn’t enough Who for me, and I picked up Scratchman as a first pick. I loved it but man is that book a trip. Scarecrow body horror, the Doctor goes to hell, 13 is there for a second for some reason? There’s so much silly stuff in there and even the way the Doctor bests the Scratchman is ridiculous but also. It’s very fun and I’d recommend it

[fearsomeandwretchedandwrong]

Gallifrey doesn't really do eccentrics. It's why some of us leave.

[goldyapper]

The 4th dr talks about regeneration.

[crystal-lillies]

Not me absolutely weeping rereading the bits of Scratchman when Thirteen comes in to save Four from despair, and the conversation they have in the epilogue. Oh God my heart is aching...

It made me so happy to read it the first time and it only makes me feel even better that Tom Baker had chosen to do this in his book. It's such a subtle but powerful love letter to Jodie's Doctor. He could have picked any modern Doctor or even a classic Doctor post-Four. But he chose Thirteen, and she is written so well. And the way she speaks fondly of Sarah Jane and Harry in the epilogue, oh my heart!!

God man this whole book is just so very good and a blessing. But I hands down adore the small moments of Thirteen in here. Makes me wish that something could be animated like what they did with Shada. Just to bring this epic story to some visual life. But I will content myself to listen to Tom Baker reading it.

[carriagelamp]

A few really superb books this month and few very "meh" ones. Nothing truly appalling though so that's something. If you read nothing else though, consider reading This is How You Lose the Time War because man that book made me feel things, I knocked that one out in a day

(EDIT: I am feeling very self-satisfied, this has been sitting in my drafts for a few weeks waiting for me to stop being lazy and post it and suddenly I have the entire internet backing up my assessment that Time War kicks complete ass. Go read it if you haven't, bigolas dickolas said so)

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

After reading Legends & Lattes last month I was really craving some more “cosy fantasy”. This one is obviously scifi instead, but it came highly recommend and it was exactly what I needed. It’s a pandemic lockdown novel and you can feel it, and I mean this in a very affectionate way. Everything from the characters, the narrative, to the tone feels rather healing now that we’re three years out from the initial covid outbreak.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a look at a world, not ours but an analogy of it, that had hit its industrial climate crisis and has since come out the other side. There are multiple catalysts, but one catalyst was the sudden sentience gained by the robots that they used. Not knowing how it was done but determined to allow the robots to self-determine, they allowed the robots to retreat into nature to find themselves, and they were left with the need to completely restructure their society without robotic aid. Humans stepped away from factories and manufacturing, and managed to recreate society — smaller scale, self-sufficient, and entirely based around the idea of existing in harmony with the natural world. Most of their planet has been left to re-wild itself, and humans keep to their own areas and focus on caring for their own communities. 

The main character, Dex, is a travelling tea monk that feels a calling for something more, something different than what they’re doing. That calling leads them further into the wilderness than they have ever gone before and in doing so runs face to face with a robot who has come down from the mountains in an effort to see how humans are doing since the separation.

A Prayer For the Crown-Shy

A lovely sequel and conclusion for A Psalm for the Wild-Built. In this story, Dex and Mosscap descend from the mountains into human populated land so that Mosscap can continue its mission to learn “what humans need”. Along the way it learns how complex and varied that answer is, even for someone like Dex.

The Darkness Outside Us

I read this a little while ago but never got around to reviewing it. Honestly, I mostly found it disappointing and I couldn’t tell you why. I really enjoyed the other books I read by this author, but The Darkness Outside Us did not do it for me. I didn’t like the protagonist. I didn’t like the world it painted. I didn’t like Kodiac or the relationship it was trying to set up or how it was doing it. I don’t know, I can be picky with scifi though and I don't love amnesiac plots, so your mileage may vary, I have heard it highly recommended.

Two astronauts from opposite sides of a global cold war find themselves on an assignment together, travelling through space on a rescue mission. Ambrose wakes with no memory of the launch, and is surprised to find any sort of companion at all, never mind a surly, reclusive coworker who is determined to keep their countries’ animosity alive and well. He tries to ignore Kodiac and focus on the need to rescue his sister, but being completely alone with only an AI and a single companion on a dangerous mission makes that easier said than done.

Dear NOMAN v1

Sapphic manga with vaguely shonen adventure vibes. Don’t bother reading it, it’s mediocre at best and kinda squicky at worse. The main character is fourteen I think? And the romantic interest, a crow demon, very much is presented as an adult woman. I just can’t. The story itself isn’t very interesting either, as the girl gets recruited into a vaguely Bleach-rip-off style ghost hunting job, but the relationship is just. No. Untenable. Moving on.

Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark // Sunset of the Sabertooth

I found myself rereading this to kids and honestly they really are just excellent, fun little introductions to chapter books. No notes, still charming. Love Jack and Annie and their ability to use books to travel through time.

Doctor Who: Scratchman

EXCELLENT read. A novel spin off of a show can always be hit or miss (see the Torchwood book coming up) but this one really knocked it out of the park. Tom Baker, unsurprisingly, has a great handle on the Fourth Doctor’s character voice, and the way he wrote Sarah and Harry is completely delightful. I’ve only seen a bit of the Fourth Doctor so this is actually my first intro to Harry, and it made me fall completely in love with this dingus.

This book felt like it knew what it should be: a fun adventure — occasionally tense, often funny — that isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. It fit very naturally into the world as a good, solid, simple Doctor Who adventure. The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry are intending just to stop for a break and a picnic, but soon find themselves doing their best to protect a host of villagers against an invading force of evil, skeletal scarecrows that are attempting to infect the humans around them. A necessary plot point is understanding how phone party lines work and this delighted me more than I can say for a book published in 2019.

Torchwood: Something In The Water

Meh. In the spectrum of Torchwood novels this falls smack dab in the middle. Not atrocious but certainly not good. It had instances I really quite enjoyed, the beginning was pretty fun, and there was a lot of promise to it, but reading about a fatal and rapidly-spreading respiratory infection that requires a government response hits VERY differently post-pandemic. Maybe it would have felt more believable or enjoyable in 2008, but when you know what a global response actually does/should look like? It ends up taking a book that should have really been Owen’s time to shine and just made him look like an absolute fucking moron. It was disappointing. I would secretly love to see it rewritten because it had potential, it had so much potential. Tosh was the only character with half a brain in the whole novel, god help her.

The Sprite and the Gardener

I’ve been meaning to read this for ages, ever since I found out that original comic that circulated tumblr was being developed in a fully fledged story. And it’s so worth reading, the art is stunning. The story is sweet, and every page is just such a pleasure to look at, I can’t get over the colour palette.

Before, caring for plants was the task of sprites... but that was before humans appeared and begin to carefully and rigidly cultivate them. Now sprites have little to do... except Wisteria finds herself enamored by one young gardener who is trying so hard but continuously failing to bring life to her dead little garden.

This is How You Lose The Time War

I was skeptical about this one because, again, I’m picky about my scifi and often don’t love time travel stories (ignore all the Doctor Who…) But this was one of the best books I read this month, easily. It’s a very quick read, and it’s more poetic imagery than heavy duty scifi. It feels like a pure example of the truly romantic love letter genre blasted into the future.

If you read any book from this list, I would recommend this one. It was so delightfully different from anything else I’ve read in a while.

EDIT: to allow the much more influential voice have a say:

Doctor Who: Time Lord Fairytales

Pure fun. This book is composed of various twisted fairytales all set in the Doctor Who universe. Some involve the Doctor, others borrow species, characters, or props. I had the audiobook of this and my mother, who knows almost nothing about Doctor Who, ended up listening to it and enjoying it immensely just as scifi-flavoured fairytales. 

The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp

I’ve been meaning to read this book for years and finally got around to it. It was a really fun middle grade read! If you liked Holes this hits a similar notes in the way it weaves a number of seemingly disconnected stories and histories together into a single narrative.

In part the story is about two raccoons who take over as the Sugar Man Swamp Scouts, who have the job of listening for Intelligence and to wake the Sugar Man in case of emergency. In another part, it’s about a boy who is trying to help his mom save their little cafe on the edge of the swamp. In part it’s about a conniving businessman and his alligator-wrestling colleague attempting to profit off the swamp. In part it’s about a grandfather who loved his grandson, his swamp, and wanted nothing more than to take a picture of a woodpecker.

The Underneath

I wanted to read another book by this author after reading True Blue Scouts (and Maybe a Fox, which a few years back) but this one didn’t do it for me. It was a fine book, and a fine animal adventure, but the pacing just felt like it dragged too much to really keep me interested. I could have finished it if I’d really wanted to, but there were other things I wanted to move on to more. If you feel like a rather melancholic, somewhat mythological middle grade animal story though you’d probably quite enjoy it.

Like True Blue Scouts, The Underneath weaves together a number of different stories, including one about a mythical snake and her daughter, a hateful isolated man, an old injured dog, and a mother cat. The dog, who stepped in front of his master’s gun at the wrong moment, is now kept chained in the yard and spends most of his time hiding beneath his master’s house. He was lonely and isolated… until a mother cat joins him and ends up giving birth to her kittens. They’re now both devoted to caring for the kittens, and trying to protect them from the horrible master in the house above.

[temporal-mechanic]

Harry Sullivan looked down at his chest. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I was afraid of that.’

A tree trunk burst through his stomach, branches spreading out and wrapping themselves around him. His flailing arms twisted and sagged, and the skin of his face blossomed and bloomed into moss as the skull underneath became that of a dead and ancient ram.

The ghastly remains of Harry Sullivan jerked towards Sarah, imploringly. ‘Sarah,’ he said, reaching out a hand.

[spockvarietyhour]

Currently reading

[megline]

who knew that when I read Tom Baker's book I would be LITERALLY SOBBING OVER A SCARECROW

[doctorkinktraveller]