Despite "shittest doctor" labels stuck to him, I too would have liked to have seen how a "darker" doctor would have worked. McCoy did it a bit, but there was a definite difference in quality between McCoy's manipulative "Merlin" morif and Bakers' looperness. And now Grade is back with the BBC. Joy.
It didn't help that the sixth doctors' companions were Mel and Peri. But even Peri was better than Mel.
Read the Virgin Missing Adventure, "Millennial Rites". It managed to make Mel actually vaguely likable. It did this mostly by giving her some backstory so that she didn't actually exist in a void, and then completely altering reality so that she was a different person. It was great, there was some crazy world-altering thing in a triangle between Canary Wharf, the Millennium Dome (or, in the Doctor's universe, Ziggurat) and the Library of St John the Beheaded (IIRC). I seem to recall the newly created reality worshipped a trinity of Gods composed of the TARDIS, Yog-Sothoth and some guy from the next universe over. Also, return of the Valeyard. Ooooooh.
As I recall, one of the Virgin books with McCoy in it has a nice take on the valeyard; that he's actually created by the bitterness of the sixth Doctor being denied a full run as an incarnation. Can't remember which one it was - probably the horribly depressing one in the small village with the psychic vampire thing that wipes nearly everyone out. Wish I could remember what it was called - but I was brought so down by the (otherwise quite good) story, I've more or less blanked it. I think it ends with the Doctor dumping Ace on a planet somewhere and refusing to let her back into the TARDIS.
I'm afraid I have no idea. The only two books I know of where Ace gets left behind are Love And War (which also introduces Bernice Summerfield) and Set Piece, neither of which have much to do with psychic vampires and neither of which feature the Valeyard.
6Doc's bitterness is touched on in Return Of The Living Dad, though, when 7Doc comes close to regenerating. At least, I think that's where it was.
Nah nah. Small village. People tormented by visions of things - regrets and that - no Valeyard, just a reference to him. Lots of soul searching from the Doctor. One of the characters is (in a post-modern way) an actor at an old peoples' home who played the equivalent of Doctor Who in a 60s television show.
Love and War - is that one with strange plant things in it, and the Doctor sets Ace's new love interest up to die horribly?
I always enjoyed the scene (in L&W) in the communal intarweb dreamtime VR thing the dirty thieving gyppo pikeys had rigged up - with impromptu appearance from Vic Reeves. "What's at the end of the race, Ace?" Only slightly incongruous...
Ah, after a spot of looking around I suspect you're thinking of Head Games. Does this ring a bell? other possibilities include Strange England and Human Nature. Unfortunately I've never read any of them, so can't narrow it down more than that...
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Date: 2004-04-03 05:03 am (UTC)It didn't help that the sixth doctors' companions were Mel and Peri. But even Peri was better than Mel.
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Date: 2004-04-03 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 05:59 am (UTC)6Doc's bitterness is touched on in Return Of The Living Dad, though, when 7Doc comes close to regenerating. At least, I think that's where it was.
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Date: 2004-04-03 06:17 am (UTC)Love and War - is that one with strange plant things in it, and the Doctor sets Ace's new love interest up to die horribly?
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Date: 2004-04-03 06:35 am (UTC)I always enjoyed the scene (in L&W) in the communal intarweb dreamtime VR thing the dirty thieving gyppo pikeys had rigged up - with impromptu appearance from Vic Reeves. "What's at the end of the race, Ace?" Only slightly incongruous...
Ah, after a spot of looking around I suspect you're thinking of Head Games. Does this ring a bell? other possibilities include Strange England and Human Nature. Unfortunately I've never read any of them, so can't narrow it down more than that...
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Date: 2004-04-03 07:03 am (UTC)"Nightshade" and a remarkably early book it is too, apparently written by one of the league of gentlemen fellas.
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Date: 2004-04-03 07:19 am (UTC)