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[April 26th, 1964] The Start Of A Wild Ride (Doctor Who: The Keys of Marinus, parts 1 to 3)

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By Jessica Holmes

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my monthly ramblings on Doctor Who. We’re in for a treat this time: Terry Nation’s back with another serial! This story sends the companions zipping about a planet with screaming forests and acid seas in a twisted scavenger hunt where the prize is a bit more special than a bottle of bubbly or a box of chocolates: the TARDIS.

THE SEA OF DEATH

Our journey begins on a pretty beach, and being interplanetary tourists, the companions immediately set out to explore. However, they aren’t alone on what turns out to be an island. A small fleet of one-man submarines makes landfall, and soon they have an unwanted tag-along shadowing their steps.

That’s not the only danger on the island. When Susan tries to go paddling in a tidal pool, she loses her shoe. No, it didn’t wash away: it dissolved!

Well, the sea doesn’t seem quite so appealing any more, does it?

One of the poor chaps in the mini-submarines learned that the hard way. One little crack, and all that’s left of him is his rubber suit.

Spotting a pyramid-like structure in the distance, the group investigate. Time for the educational content. This time, we’re looking at architectural history!

When Ian and Barbara notice that there's no mortaring on this pyramid, because the stonework is so precise, Barbara offers up real-world examples in the Egyptians and the peoples of central and south America. I wonder if it’s in the contract that the writers have to include an educational element, because it does feel a bit shoehorned.

Meanwhile, Susan’s off in her own little world, and her uncanny knack for putting herself in mortal peril sends her falling straight through a wall. Moments later, the Doctor enters the pyramid the same way.

Susan narrowly avoids death when a knife conveniently finds itself buried between the shoulderblades of her web-footed assailant, but she’s not out of the woods yet; there’s someone else in this pyramid.

Ian makes it through the spinning wall too, and to Barbara's surprise, so does she, with an unsettling shot revealing the hooded figure to be waiting just on the other side.

Moments later, Ian comes to the defence of the stranger when one of the web-footed invaders tries to kill them, and their tussle ends with Ian shoving him into a pit in the floor, which leads right to the sea.

The sea of acid.

So, I have to linger here for a moment, because I have a couple of things to say.

For one, who on EARTH (or rather, Marinus) put that in? If I built a house over an active lava lake, which is of course my life's ambition, I wouldn't put a great big hole in the floor where anyone could fall or be pushed in, for heaven’s sake.

For two, Ian just killed someone. A family show!

We finally get to meet the hooded figure, whose name is Arbitan, and it seems that he’s friendly. Or at least friendlier than the wetsuited invaders, who are called the Voord. Ian says he should have thought the pyramid impregnable, to which I say: pardon? Ian, the whole lot of you breached the outer walls by accident.

Arbitan shows the companions the device this pyramid was built to hold: the Mind of Marinus, which Arbitan’s people used as a moral arbiter, and later, a moral enforcer, actively manipulating the minds of men to force moral correctness.

Well, that is extremely creepy.

I don’t care that everything was supposedly hunky dory. Taking away the free will of a populace, even for a noble goal, is a genuinely frightening concept. However, unlike with The Daleks, it doesn’t appear, for now at least, that Nation is interested in interrogating this idea as he did with the virtues and pitfalls of absolute pacifism.

No, instead the companions are roped into a plot to restore this machine to full functionality, but not of their own free will — Arbitan holds the TARDIS hostage.

Oh, and the Voord came to be when one person managed to resist the machine, and freed a bunch of other people from its control.

Are we sure the Voord are the baddies, here?

There are five Keys Of Marinus, scattered far and wide, and they need to be retrieved if the Mind Of Marinus is to regain control of the Voord. Arbitan provides the companions with a set of teleport dials, worn on the wrist like a watch, and asks them to keep an eye out for his daughter while they’re looking for the keys.

And because Doctor Who is surprisingly comfortable for a family show with showing on-screen death, no sooner have the companions departed than Arbitan gets knifed by a Voord.

The Doctor, Susan and Ian arrive at their destination to find that Barbara has vanished. Ian finds her travel dial on the floor. And there's blood on it!

Fun episode, this one. An easy watch.

4 out of 5.

THE VELVET WEB

This is where things get weird.

Very weird.

It doesn’t take long for the rest of the group to track Barbara down. What fate has befallen her? Oh, it’s simply dreadful.


Honestly. Leave her alone for five minutes and she turns into Cleopatra.

She’s lounging on a daybed, dressed in fine silks, while servants feed her fruit.

Along comes a young man to hopefully clear a few things up. In this city, everything is perfect. It’s a post-scarcity society. Everyone is perfectly content, because you can get whatever you want, whenever you want. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is. That’s both commentary on the episode and life advice.

Once the group have gone to sleep, one of the servants comes back into the room and places a mysterious device on each of their foreheads. However, Barbara’s device falls off, and when she awakens, she sees this place for what it really is. The fine silks? Rags. The crystal glasses? Dirty old mugs. This city of luxury? A trap that’s about to snap shut.

Barbara flees, unable to convince the others, and their host reports her perception to his own masters…who are brains in jars. With eyestalks, no less. They look silly and unsettling at the same time. These are the true rulers of this society, all the humans in the city being mind-controlled slaves.

The inherent horror of mind-control aside, it’s funny to watch the others fall over themselves in amazement when presented with worthless junk.


"Never seen anything like it!"

Barbara runs into the servant who placed the devices, Sabitha, and quickly works out that this is Arbitan’s disappeared daughter. However, though she remembers that Arbitan sent her here, she can’t remember anything else. She manages to save Barbara’s life, however, when the creepy host attacks her. She can’t save her from a brainwashed Ian, however, who drags her before the rulers of the city.

Then they order him to kill her.

Barbara manages to escape his grasp, but does she make a run for it? No way! She goes straight for the brains in jars, who for all their intelligence, haven’t accounted for the fragility of glass, or how good humans are at breaking things when we feel like it.

With the brains all smashed up, the humans of the city are freed, and what’s the first thing they do? Burn the place to the ground!

Barbara, you sparked a revolution…and found a key!

It turns out that the young man is actually one of Arbitan’s folk, and he was sent out to complete the same task that has fallen to our companions: recovering the keys. A friend of his was also sent out, but it appears he has got into trouble. The Doctor volunteers to see if he can track the friend down, and if not him, the key. The rest of the group decide to look for the other keys, and they agree to meet up in a week.

I’m sure it’ll go fine.

Susan, not one for long farewells, is the first to leave, but to her detriment, for she winds up in the middle of a forest…and all the trees are screaming.

This was a real cracker of an episode. Loved it.

4.5 out of 5.

THE SCREAMING JUNGLE

As the forest quiets down, the rest of the group catch up with Susan, but she’s still in a state of terror.

I think Susan could do with a bit of toughening up. For someone who ends up in trouble so often, you’d think she’d be a bit harder to scare. Apart from being a poor example to set for girls her age, it’s just getting to be a bit annoying.

Barbara spots a strange idol down a dark, almost hidden path, and in her infinite wisdom goes and starts poking at it. She finds the key attached to the statue, but as she attempts to retrieve it, the arms of the idol come to life and grab her, and the wall swivels, taking away both Barbara and the statue.

Well, at least they got the key. Or did they?

It’s a fake! The others go on ahead to look for the next key, leaving Ian to stick around to recover Barbara, and the real Key of Marinus.

Still, this is Ian we’re talking about. He makes his way to the other side of the wall the same way Barbara did, and on the other side finds another statue, this time wielding an axe. Unwittingly triggering a pressure plate, it’s only Barbara’s timely intervention that saves his head from splitting like a watermelon when the axeman takes a swing at him. It looks like this whole place is booby trapped!

The pair start looking for a way out. A door opens, and Barbara, channelling the first person to get bumped off in any horror flick, goes inside, promptly gets trapped in a net, and then the wall above, covered in bamboo spikes, starts to descend.

For goodness’ sake, Barbara, don’t just bleat at Ian for help. It’s a fishing net. I’m sure you can manage.

Luckily for Barbara, before she can become a human pincushion, a hooded man intervenes. However, while he’s trying to confirm that Barbara isn’t a Voord, an inconvenient vine pops through the window and starts strangling him.


You just can’t trust nature. This is exactly why I never go outside.

Ian and Barbara save him from the overgrown ivy bush, but it’s too late. The old man holds on just long enough to give Ian a cryptic string of letters and numbers, then drops down dead.

So, they have a code, but what for? A safe? It doesn’t look like it. They get to combing the room, and Ian finds the old man’s diary, learning from it that he was working on growth acceleration, speeding up the natural world. Well, I think we can guess as to why the forest is so weird. When night falls, its growth accelerates so much that it can overrun the building within minutes.

That doesn’t really explain why the plants have minds of their own, or why it’s just at night (unless I missed something), but there you go.

As the plants are on the verge of overwhelming Ian and Barbara, they realise that the code is not a code at all, but a chemical formula, and when they find the right jar, they find the key. In the nick of time they hop to their next destination: a freezing mountainside.

I can’t wait to find out what happens next!

I don’t think I liked this episode quite as much as the previous, but it was still a jolly good romp.

4 out of 5.

CONCLUSION

In this serial, Nation seems to be going for a more episodic than serial format, stringing together a series of smaller adventures to build a greater whole. I think it works very well, building up a breathless momentum which I hope will hold with the next few episodes.

Doctor Who can sometimes suffer from slow pacing, and if that’s a problem for me, an adult, I can only assume it’s a problem for the younger members of the audience too. Nation has found a way to mitigate this problem, and while I don’t think it can be used for all stories (nor should it be), I do hope that Doctor Who makes use of this format more often.

All in all, I have thoroughly enjoyed these episodes, and I look forward to watching the rest with all of you.

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TV

[April 24, 1964] Some Justice to Mete Out (The Twilight Zone, Season 5, Episodes 25-28)

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by Natalie Devitt

Exploring how a person’s conduct can shape the direction their life takes has been a big part of The Twilight Zone, and this past month has been no exception. In some episodes, poetic justice seems to have been achieved by the episode‘s conclusion. Other times, characters are given punishments that do not quite seem to fit the crime. This month’s morality plays include a story about a dying man’s last wish to make sure his greedy relatives get what he thinks they deserve, a town is blanketed in darkness the morning it is scheduled to execute someone who may have been wrongly convicted of a crime, a man that annoys those around him with obnoxious noises is suddenly unable to block out sounds that he finds unpleasant, and a broke ventriloquist who pays the price when he is convinced by his dummy to take up robbery to improve his finances.

The Masks, by Rod Serling

Actress-turned-director Ida Lupino and star of The Twilight Zone’s The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine returns to the show for The Masks. This time, she is not in front of the camera but in the director’s chair. The Masks is set in New Orleans against the backdrop of Mardi Gras. In the episode, character actor Robert Keith plays Jason Foster, a rich and elderly man, who is told by his doctor that he can measure what is left of his life “in moments.” After receiving his grim prognosis, Jason vows to live at least until midnight in order to take care of some unfinished business, which includes gathering with his family for a very unusual farewell.

During the family gathering, Jason states in a very matter-of-fact tone, “You all came here for one purpose: to watch me go and cry bon voyage, to put coins on my closed eyes, and with your free hands start grabbing things from my shelves.” He tells them in order to inherit his entire fortune, they must wear hideous masks until midnight, which proves to be much harder than expected. The masks he provides them with are from “an old Cajun” and “they have certain properties.” They are told that each mask represents the “antithesis of the wearer.” But what they do not realize is that each person wears a mask that actually reflects their true nature. Also, that Jason has one final surprise planned for them at the midnight unmasking.

With a story like this, I cannot help but wonder about the events that led Jason’s family to where they are when the episode starts. The anger and the resentments building up over the years, and whether Jason may have contributed to the situation. In any case, this episode featured one of Rod Serling’s better scripts this season. In addition to Rod Serling’s stronger script, The Masks featured a mostly good cast and some of the more impressive special effects makeup I have seen on the series in recent memory. Overall, the month got off to an impressive start with this episode, which is why it earns four stars from me.

I Am the Night, Color Me Black, by Rod Serling

The Hustler’s Michael Constantine plays Sheriff Charlie Conch, who arrives at work nervous about the day’s planned execution. Oddly, it is past the time the sun usually rises and the sun still is yet to come up. One of his deputes mentions to him, “It’s 7:30 in the morning and it’s pitch black outside. I’ve never seen it any blacker.” What is strange is that surrounding towns do not seem to be experiencing the same phenomenon.

Paul Fix of television’s The Rifleman plays Colby, a reporter who questions the department’s handling of the case. Colby reminds the men at the sheriff‘s department that, “ The murdered man was not a decent man. He was a cross burning psychopathic bully who attacked the man in there.” The accused is named Jagger, and he was protecting members of a church from a racist when the alleged murder took place. Ivan Dixon, who appeared in the earlier episode The Big Tall Wish, stars as the church’s reverend.

Practically everyone in town shows up for the hanging in “the remote, little mid-western village.” It is getting closer and closer to the execution time and the sun still has not risen. While the rope is being prepared for Jagger’s hanging, the journalist asks one of the deputies, “Did it ever occur to you that there is something odd going on around here? Perhaps we better dispense with business as usual until we find out exactly what is going on.”

I Am the Night, Color Me Black, looks great and features a number of outstanding performances, but it would have benefited from being a little more subtle. For anyone willing to look past how heavy-handed the moralizing in this entry can be, it is a good but not amazing episode. Three stars.

Sounds and Silences, by Rod Serling

John McGiver returns to the The Twilight Zone after appearing in The Bard. In Sounds and Silences, he plays Roswell G. Flemington, a man who takes delight in making noise. As Rod Serling’s opening monologue states, Roswell’s “noise-making is in inverse ratio to his competence and his character.” Roswell runs a model ship company, spending much of his free time blustering around the office like a modern day Queeg, and listening to blaring recordings of fighting battleships, much to the dismay of those around him.

One day, his wife tells him that she just cannot take it anymore. She complains, “What was once an idiosyncrasy of yours is now an obsession. This insistence on blaring noises and running a household like it was a destroyer escort on convoy duty- the combination has now become quite impossible and I can’t live with it.” After a couple decades of marriage, they are finished. But Roswell is happy about his marriage ending, because now he can devote more attention to making noise.

Shortly after, while trying to sleep, he wakes up to the sound of a leaky faucet, unusually loud and unpleasant. Once the faucet stops making noise, another sound begins to bug him. Soon little noises are driving him to the brink of madness. Eventually, he has to seek professional help. Is this punishment for what he has put others through all these years?

The episode has few redeeming qualities. The script leaves a lot to be desired. I think this entry is supposed to be funny, but it I do not remember laughing once. The main character acts like a giant child, which I know is kind of the point, but that begins to wear thin after a while. Most of the characters, which include his wife and his employees, are not much more tolerable than he is. It was hard resisting the urge to change the channel, so one and a half stars is all that I can give to Sounds and Silences.

Caesar and Me, by Adele T. Strassfield

Former child star Jackie Cooper is perfectly cast as Jonathan West, a penniless ventriloquist in Caesar and Me. He and his dummy, Caesar, perform under the name Little Caesar and Jonathan. Jonathan has difficulty securing a stable source of income, but he dreams that one day Little Caesar and Jonathan will be a headlining act. Jonathan has an unhealthy attachment to Caesar and tells the dummy that they are “together forever.” Caesar is mentioned in Rod Serling’s opening monologue as being a “small splinter with large ideas.” Jonathan considers supplementing his income with a side job until his work with Caesar starts to bring in the big bucks. The only problem is that Jonathan has never held down a “real job.”

But Caesar has been paying attention. One day Caesar asks him, “Just a little money for food and rent, is that it? Is that all you want out of life?” Caesar convinces Jonathan that robbery is the solution to his money woes, saying “Open your eyes. Look around you. The streets are paved with gold, and it’s sitting out there, waiting for us.” Caesar feeds Jonathan more lines like, “After tonight’s job, we’ll be on easy street.” Of course, things do not go exactly as planned.

I tried to watch Caesar and Me with an open mind. It is not really bad, just frustrating because it feels too much like a rehash of The Dummy. It brings absolutely nothing new to table. In fact, they even reused the same dummy. The talented Jackie Cooper could not completely save this episode. Then there was the ending, which while mildly entertaining, is hardly fair. Poor Jonathan just cannot seem to catch a break. Caesar and Me receives two and a half stars.

Characters during the past month of The Twilight Zone have encountered some interesting and sometimes unexpected outcomes as a result of their actions. Regarding the quality of the episodes, however, two were enjoyable while the other two offerings were a little disappointing. With only two months left before the end of the season, I hate to admit that I am a little nervous about the forthcoming episodes.

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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine

[April 22, 1964] World Affairs (May 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Hail, Britannia

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the Beatles again have the most popular song on the U.S. charts.  This time is it's a cheerful little melody called Can't Buy Me Love.


You'd be grinning too, if you were that popular.

I suppose there will be no end of imitations.  My sources in the UK tell me a new group just released its first album.  You can't tell from the minimalist cover, but they're called the Rolling Stones.


I thought they were called Decca.

The album isn't yet available on this side of the Atlantic, so I can't tell you what it sounds like.  Judging by the haircuts, I assume it will be a lot like the Fab Four.  Fantastic Five, maybe, if Marvel Comics doesn't object.

The British don't just export music, of course.  They also supply us with sex and violence, in the person of James Bond, Agent 007.  From Russia With Love, the sequel to the hit movie Dr. No opened on Yankee screens this month.


One should always be properly dressed while wielding a pistol.

All's Fair

Other nations besides the United Kingdom have a chance to impress Americans for the next couple of years.  The New York World's Fair opened to the public today, with exhibits from dozens of foreign countries, as well as several states and business corporations.


That's the Unisphere, symbol of the Fair.  I call it a globe.

Those of us with long memories will recall the 1939 New York World's Fair.  It's hard to believe that a quarter of a century has gone by.


The pointy one is the Trylon and the round one is the Perisphere.  They look more modern than the new one, don't they?

It would tedious to try to describe all the stuff going on at this extravaganza, but let me point out a few highlights.  Science fiction fans will want to visit the Space Park.


NASA shows off their fancy equipment.

The state of Wisconsin brags about its most famous products.


Does that mean the World's Largest Cheese gets in free?

Noted puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft will present a stage spectacular called Les Poupées de Paris (The Dolls of Paris.) So what?  Who cares about a kiddie puppet show?  Well, this musical revue is for adults only.  Seriously.  You have to be at least twenty-one years old to get in.  It's just too sexy and too scary for the little ones.


Here's one of the scary parts.  I can't show you the sexy parts unless you have proof of age.

For those of us who can't make it to the Big Apple this year or next, at least we can explore strange new worlds in the pages of our favorite magazines.  Let's head for the main gate and see what the latest issue of Fantastic has to offer.

Tickets, Please


art by Ed Emshwiller

Adept's Gambit, by Fritz Leiber

Our first exhibit is an oldie but a goodie — this issue's Fantasy Classic deserves the name, and I won't complain about filling more than one-third of the issue with a reprint.  It appeared in the pages of the 1947 Arkham House collection Night's Black Agents.


Cover art by Ronald Clyne

Just over three thousand copies of the book exist, so most fantasy fans won't be familiar with this novella featuring our old friends Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

A brief introductory note explains that the two adventurers are no longer in their usual fantasy realm of Nehwon.  Having made their way through passageways that connect all possible worlds, they are now on Earth.  To be specific, the Eastern Mediterranean area, in what seems to be ancient times.  Don't expect historical fiction, though.  This is a place full of enchantment and supernatural menace.

As they often do, the pair relax after their struggles in the arms of beautiful young women.  Things quickly go wrong when Fafhrd's paramour turns into a sow.  He suspects his companion of playing tricks on him, but this theory explodes when the Mouser's girlfriend changes into a giant snail.  Both ladies regain their normal shapes after a while, but whenever either of the heroes embraces a woman, the same thing happens.

This is, of course, an intolerable situation.  Reluctantly, they seek out their eldritch mentor Ningauble of the Seven Eyes.  That bizarre being sends them on a weird quest, in the company of a mysterious woman.  A long flashback sequence, narrated by the woman, relates the strange connection she has with her brother, a powerful practitioner of black magic.  It all leads up to a final confrontation with the evil sorcerer.

Nobody writes sword-and-sorcery adventures as well as Fritz Leiber.  This tale has just the right balance of wit, imagination, action, suspense, fully realized characters, colorful descriptions, and more than a touch of the macabre. 

Five stars.

To the Victor, by Leo P. Kelley


Cover art by George Schelling

We exit the giant Leiber pavilion and enter the first of four smaller exhibits. 

The setting is a planet inhabited by primitive aliens.  Humans colonized the place long ago, filling it with vast, high-tech buildings.  They want more elbowroom, and the aliens don't want their environment sacrificed to the newcomers.  Conflict is inevitable.  This isn't the usual kind of war, however.  One human being and one alien face each other in single combat.

A man well over one hundred years old, with doubts about what humanity has done to the planet, is the protagonist.  He witnesses the battle, and makes a symbolic gesture of his own.

The author contrasts the rapaciousness of the technological invaders with the aliens' love of the natural world.  I appreciate the point he's trying to make, but he does it in a heavy-handed way.  The combat scene involves odd, almost comic Rube Goldberg devices, which spoils the story's somber mood.

Two stars.

Master of Chaos, by Michael Moorcock


Cover art by Virgil Finlay

Time for a brief excursion outside the American section of this paper World's Fair, and a quick look at what the British have on display.  Will they offer us something as groundbreaking as the Beatles?

Well, not really.  Like the lead novella, this is a swashbuckling fantasy adventure yarn.  The hero goes to a castle that lies at the edge of the Earth.  After nearly losing his way inside its labyrinthine corridors, and doing battle with a monster, he confronts the sole inhabitant (As tradition demands, a beautiful and seductive sorceress).  Their meeting leads to a new challenge.

The most interesting and original concept in this story is the idea that Earth is surrounded by ever-changing Chaos.  As Chaos is conquered, Earth grows.  It's a striking notion, and adds a novel touch to an otherwise typical example of the genre.

Three stars.

All For Nothing, by David R. Bunch


Cover art by Lutjens

Back to the States with a writer like no one else, for good or bad.  In this offbeat creation, written in the author's eccentric style, a man creates an exact duplicate of himself.  His mad scheme is to challenge God to accept the double in his place, so he can escape from life and the afterlife.  Adding to the horrific mood is the elaborate machines the fellow intends to use to kill himself in a particularly slow and painful way.

I don't know what to make of this grim account of someone who doesn't want to exist in Earth, Heaven, or Hell.  It certainly held my attention, if only in a depressing way. 

Two stars.

Gulliver's Magic Islands, by Adam Bradford, M. D.


Cover art by Blair

If Fritz Leiber's name brought me into the fairgrounds, then Adam Bradford's made me want to find the exit.  Fair is fair, however, and I have to give the man a chance to redeem himself.  His last two Swiftian pastiches failed to add anything to the original, and missed the satiric point.  Will he stumble again?

(By the way, the magazine's editorial reveals that the author's real name is Joseph Wassersug.  He's a physician who writes medical articles.  As far as I can tell, he's never published any fiction other than this series.  The editorial also promises – or should I say threatens? – another one to follow.)

Once again, the narrator follows in Gulliver's footsteps.  He visits Balnibarbi, the island of scientists; Laputa, the flying island that floats above it; Glubbdubdrib, the island of magicians; and Luggnagg, the home of the immortal struldbrugs.  Not much is done with any of these except Balnibarbi.  I have to admit that the author provides some decent satire on the way in which scientists have to chase after money for their projects.  For that reason, this entry is a little better than the others.

(One odd thing that struck me.  The inhabitants of Glubbdubdrib are described as dark-skinned.  The name of their leader is Loother Krring.  All other words made up by the author seem to be meaningless, but this one appears to be an allusion to Doctor Martin Luther King, the famous civil rights leader.  What the point of this reference might be escapes me.)

Two stars

After the Fair is Over

As night falls and we leave the fairgrounds, souvenirs in our hands, we look back over an eventful day.  Obviously, the Fritz Leiber pavilion was the highlight of the fair.  If the other exhibits were disappointing, well, that's life.  At least we can send a postcard telling the folks back home all about it.

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Magazine

[April 20, 1964] Play Ball! (June 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Opening Ceremonies

Howdy, sports fans!

Baseball season just opened up here in the good old USA.  The New York Mets, relative newcomers to the sport, faced the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game held at Shea Stadium, their new stomping grounds.


The first day, and already the scoreboard is broken

The Mets lost, 4 to 3.  I know the young team has a pretty bad win-loss record, but that's got to hurt.  Opening day at your brand new stadium and the visitors beat you by one run.

Like a baseball team, the latest issue of World of Tomorrow features nine men.  (No women.) I'm counting editor Frederik Pohl as one of the players, as well as the coach and manager, since he provides the magazine's editorial — it's an interesting essay about C. P. Snow's book The Two Cultures and a Second Look, and how science fiction can build a bridge between science and the humanities.  After he provides a few practice swings, let's get down to the real ballgame.

Batter Up!


cover by Gray Morrow

On Messenger Mountain, by Gordon R. Dickson

A reliable player steps up to the plate with a tale of war and survival in deep space.

The men (no women) of the starship Harrier are having a really bad day.  After discovering an Earth-like planet, they run into an alien vessel.  In this dog-eat-dog picture of the future, the two ships immediately try to destroy each other.  Many men and aliens die, and both vessels have to make crash landings.


by Gray Morrow

The few human survivors find themselves at the foot of a gigantic mountain.  One of the aliens attacks them right away.  They manage to kill it, but not without more casualties.  The aliens are able to alter their body structures rapidly to accommodate changing conditions.

As if that were not enough of a threat, the men have no way to signal for help without carrying a piece of equipment to the top of the mountain.  Three of the crew set out on a long, difficult, and hazardous climb.  Adding to their woes is the fact that there may be another alien alive, and it might be able to disguise itself as a human being. 

Dickson creates a great deal of tension and suspense.  The mountain climbing scenes are vivid and full of realistic details.  The icy environment and shapeshifting aliens remind me of the classic story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. (but not The Thing From Another World, the movie loosely based on the story.) Dickson's aliens are described in more detail than Campbell's, and their ability to change their bodies is believable.

I could quibble with the assumption that first contact with aliens must inevitably lead to conflict, or with the story's ending, which promotes humanity as unique and superior.  These aspects of the story make it seem intended for the pages of Analog.  Overall, however, it's a very good adventure story.

Four stars.

The Twerlik, by Jack Sharkey

Batting second is a player who often strikes out, particularly when he's trying to be funny.  Sometimes he connects with the ball solidly, when he takes off his jester's cap and gets down to serious business.

The Twerlik is a very strange alien.  Its flat, monomolecular, multifilamented body extends over an area of ten square miles, but it only weighs one pound.  It survives on its cold, dark world by absorbing light from the planet's distant sun.  Humans arrive, bringing sources of light far greater than anything the Twerlik has ever known.  Grateful for the gift of energy from the strangers, and for all the new concepts it learns from them, it gives them what they most desire.

Although the themes of be careful what you wish for and the road to Hell is paved with good intentions have been used many times before, Sharkey handles them in a new way.  The alien is fascinating, particularly in the way it picks up novel ideas from the humans.

There's a small hole in the plot logic.  The alien does not even have the concept of self until people show up.  Why, then, does it think of itself as a Twerlik after they arrive?  The humans don't call it that, or even know that it exists.

Despite this tiny flaw, this is the best story by Jack Sharkey that I have ever read.

Four stars.

Short Course in Button Pushing, by Joseph Wesley

Instead of a seventh inning stretch, we get a break from fiction with this article from a writer who has published a handful of stories, mostly in Galaxy.  It starts off with a question that seems simple enough.

What is the range of one of our latest supersonic anti-air warfare Naval missiles?

The author goes on to show how a large number of variables make this impossible to answer.  Atmospheric conditions, the nature of the target; the factors involved are incalculable.  The article has a single point to make, and does it in an efficient, if not intriguing, manner.

Three stars.

Stay Out of Our Time!, by Willard Marsh


by Nodel

Back to the game with this satiric, semi-comic time travel story.

Hiram Wetherbee is a meek little fellow living in the late Twentieth Century.  In his time, it's as easy to visit the far future or the distant past as it is to take a trip to a vacation spot.  However, certain future centuries ban visitors from the past, blaming them for the way they ruined the future.  Hiram, a painter of mediocre talent, intends to travel to 1902, in order to impress the unsophisticated locals with modern art.  (His real motive is to seduce the women of the time, as he's not exactly a big success with the ladies.) A mix-up lands him in one of the forbidden centuries of the future, without enough funds to make his way back.  After some misadventures with the authorities, he gets a guided tour of the time from some friendly folks who find him a remarkable specimen.

I was never quite clear what the author was trying to say, in this portrait of a future without imagination.  Very few people have jobs.  Euthanasia is encouraged.  Abstract art flourishes, but realism is dead.  Hiram talks in clichés, and the people of the future think he's brilliant.  The story is readable, but wanders all over the place and never quite grabs the reader.

Two stars.

Lucifer, by Roger Zelazny

Next in the batting order is a player who is making a name for himself in the writing game.

A man returns to a city that lost all its inhabitants in some unexplained disaster.  He goes into the vast building that provided its power and restarts the generators.

That's the entire plot of this story, which has only one character.  Obviously, the author isn't going for pulse-pounding action.  It's all mood, description, and psychological insight.  On that level, it works very well.

Four stars.

The Great Doomed Ship, by J. T. McIntosh


by Gaughan

Up to the plate comes an old pro with a checkered career.  Although he always swings hard at the ball, he rarely sends it flying over the wall.

The biggest and fastest starship ever built is about to set out on her maiden voyage.  Because it is scheduled to leave exactly two hundred years after the Titanic disaster, some people think it is doomed.

There are other reasons to worry.  This is a time when some folks have premonitions about the future, although these are not always reliable.  A few people have vague feelings of impending disaster about the planned voyage.  Most troubling of all, the designer of the vessel is in a mental institution, having gone into a catatonic state.  Our hero, an investigator with some psychic ability, finds out that the mad engineer deliberately set the ship to blow up when it reaches a certain speed.  He fails to prevent the vessel from taking off, and there is no way to communicate with it.  Complicating matters is the fact that the investigator's sister, who also has extrasensory powers, is aboard.

As I was reading this story, I kept picturing it as a big budget Hollywood spectacular, in Technicolor and Cinemascope.  The characters all come from Central Casting.  Besides the hero, his sister, and the madman, we've got the stubborn head of the starship company; the hard-drinking co-designer of the ship; the sister's no-good boyfriend; the brave young captain of the vessel, who wins the affections of the sister; and so on. 

I have problems with some of the things McIntosh says about women in his stories, yet, paradoxically, he creates complex female characters who are often more capable than the men are.  The sister is a prime example.  Although she's in a destructive relationship with a faithless lover, her weaknesses never prevent her from winning the reader's sympathy. 

This cinematic epic was enjoyable, if hardly profound, until the end.  It falls completely apart, with an anticlimax that depends on a trivial change in the meaning of a certain premonition the sister has about her fate. 

Two stars.

The Realized Man, by Norman Spinrad

Here's a rookie with only a few credits to his name.  Is he ready for the big league, or should he go back to the minors?  Let's find out.

Derek Carmody is a man who has been mentally and physically enhanced to an extraordinary degree.  His purpose is to arrive alone, without special equipment, on a planet inhabited by primitive aliens, and prepare them for later human colonists.  He does this by becoming chief of the local tribe and offering them technological advantages over their rivals.  It all leads up to a final gesture that will make him a god in the eyes of the natives.

Although the way in which the protagonist uses his superpowers is quite interesting, the story suffers from a lack of suspense.  The author tells you in advance what the character is going to do at the end, and then he does it.  I was a little disappointed that the confident superman didn't get his comeuppance.

Three stars.

What the Dead Men Say, by Philip K. Dick


by Virgil Finlay

We go into the final inning with a novella from a prolific, award-winning, but sometimes controversial author.

Louis Sarapis may be the richest person in the solar system.  So rich, in fact, that not even the tax collectors know how much he's worth.  He is also dead.

In this future, that's not a huge handicap.  By keeping the recently deceased extremely cold, it's possible to temporarily preserve a low level of brain activity.  The so-called half-lifers can communicate with the living, albeit in a limited way.

Attempts to revive the mind of the dead man fail, for unknown reasons.  That would seem to be the end of the matter, except for one thing: messages that seem to be coming from the deceased arrive on Earth from deep in space.  Eventually they take over all forms of electronic communication.  You can't listen to the radio, watch television, or pick up the phone without hearing the dead man's voice.

The deceased's heir is his granddaughter, formerly a drug addict.  Because her grandfather is legally dead, although apparently quite active, she now runs his vast business empire.  She follows his orders from beyond the grave.  In particular, she promotes the political career of a politician who formerly failed to become President of the United States, convinced he can make a comeback and win the office.

There is much more to this long and complex story than I've indicated.  Many subplots appear, along with a wide variety of richly defined characters.  The author avoids his tendency to have disparate elements, not fully integrated, in his works.  The plotting is tight, with all of the seemingly mystical elements explained in a logical way.

(One trivial observation remains.  In passing, the story states that Richard Nixon revived his political career in the 1970's.  I know science fiction writers are supposed to come up with wild speculations, but that's really stretching things.)

Five stars.

The Box Score

Coach Pohl puts his big hitters at the front and back of the magazine, making up for a slight slump in the middle.  With all bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, slugger Philip K. Dick hits a home run.  It makes you want to root for the underdogs.  Go Mets!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Conventions/Performances, Magazine

[April 18, 1964] A firm line (the May 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

World(Con) Affairs

I've heard a rumor that Galactic Journey will be up for Best Fanzine at this year's Worldcon.  I'm not getting my hopes up — after all, we were promised a spot last year, but we ended up nowhere to be found on the 1963 Hugo ballot.  Still, for all of you who nominated us, we give our humblest thanks and hope you keep doing it!  In any event, we intend on attending this year's Worldcon (dubbed Pacificon II) as it will be held quite close to home, in California's Bay Area.

One person who will definitely not be attending Pacificon II is notorious fan Walter Breen.  Unless you live under a rock (or, perhaps, east of the Colorado), Breen is at the center of the "Breendoggle," a crisis that is currently rending apart West Coast fandom.  Berkeley fans report that Breen, an adult, has a penchant for unsavory activities involving fellows too young to give consent.  Far too young.  While fandom is a tolerant bunch (after all, we're definitely a bunch of weirdos), not only are Breen's actions morally reprehensible, but they attach civil liability to any organization he is a part of.

Needless to say, we support Pacificon II's decision to ban Breen from the convention, as do many.  However, Breen has got a lot of defenders, including Big Name Fan John Boardman, and superfan-turned-pro Marion Zimmer Bradley, who we understand is now in a relationship with Breen.  This saddens us, and we hope that Breen's misguided supporters soon see the light. 

My apologies for bringing up an unpleasant topic.  With luck, that's the last we'll have to write about it.

The Issue at Hand


cover by Ed Emshwiller for The Illuminated Man

On a more (but not much) more cheery note, let's take a look at this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Once again, Editor Davidson wails that no one writes space adventure stories anymore.  That's not really true.  They just don't send them to Avram. 

Instead, we get the following mishmash of fantasy and horror, most of it pretty mediocre:

The Illuminated Man, by J. G. Ballard

Out in deep space, the mutual annihilation of matter and anti-matter depletes the universal store of time.  As a result, the remaining matter blooms, spawning crystalline growths that absorb heat and constrain movement.  In Florida, Belorussia, and Madagascar, wild terrain becomes iridescent with the stuff, and mass evacuations ensue.

Our protagonist, a journalist, becomes trapped in the Everglades while the swamp becomes a kaleidoscopic death trap.  But this phenomenon becomes the least of our hero's worries when he gets caught between two feuding vertices of a love triangle: the local chief of police and a lunatic, who are fighting over the woman now married to the former, once to the latter.

Ballard does love his world catastrophes (viz. the recent classic, The Drowned World).  But while I found the story vivid and certainly unique, Ballard's writing has a somber, sepulchral tone that puts me off.  Illuminated Man is a gloomy trip without much of a destination.

Three stars.

Three Times Around, by Jane Roberts

Beware the laundromat, for the item getting permanently pressed just might be you.  I'm glad to see Jane Roberts back in print, and this is a pleasant little piece of horror.

Three stars.

You Have to Stay Inside, by Calvin Demmon

If there is a genre called "Slice of Life," this might be a "Slice of Horror" — a nicely written episode.  But it needs a story to go with it.

Two stars.

No Place Like Where, by Robert M. Green, Jr.

I'm not sure why Avram chose to spoil the twist of Green's story, which illustrates the perils of making apartment buildings too big and look-alike.  Well, it's not much of a story anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Two stars.

The Building of a Protein, by Theodore L. Thomas

This pointless proto-story column continues, this time on the subject of synthetic protein manufacture, which Thomas suggests could ultimately feed the masses. 

The Second Law of Thermodynamics says we're not going to get quick-grown meat any faster or cheaper than cows.  Maybe more humanely.

Two stars.

Invasion, by Christopher Corson

The aliens apparently lulled us to sleep with this rather unimpressive piece of poetry.  Two stars.

A Red Heart and Blue Roses, by Mildred Clingerman

If there's anyone who can bring back the feeling of Weird Tales or Unknown, it's Mildred Clingerman, who in Roses, chills us with the tale of a mother who finds herself adopted by a most unsavory surrogate son. 

I particularly enjoyed the clever double narrative.  The story is recounted by one hospital patient to another; we initially think the story will be that of the viewpoint character, but it's really her roommate's.

Four stars.

Sea Wrack, by Edward Jesby

Far in the future, the Morlocks live in the sea.  They are not hairy brutes but rather civilized, handsome mermen.  Nevertheless, the Eloi still hate and shun them…to surface-dwellers' ultimate despair and ruin.

An interesting tale, too affected and jolting in its execution to be great.

Three stars.

Mar-ti-an, by Robert Lory

Now that the Ferdinand Feghoot pun column is gone, Avram has diversified the sources of his joke stories.  He needs to find better ones.

One star.

Ghost Lines in the Sky, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor brings us a pleasant but rather sterile article on meridians and parallels.  Of course, it's stuff I've known since junior high, so maybe I'm jaded.

Three stars.

Touchstone, by Terry Carr

Just as Ballard doesn't quite do it for me, Terry Carr always does.  You'll enjoy this one, about a Greenwich Village guy who trades his worries for a hunk of magic black rock.

Four stars.

The New Encyclopaedist, by Stephen Becker

Becker serves up one of those non-fact pieces, about nonconformists inheriting the Earth thanks to their uncommon common sense.  Not bad, though more suited to Analog, maybe Galaxy, than here.

Three stars.

Cantabile, by Jon DeCles

Last up is a baroquely pleasant story about a humanoid with a one-month life span, and the Space-Age princess who briefly loves him.  This is Jon's first sale — I look forward to more works from him.

Three stars.

Summing Up

F&SF continues to be much of a muchness, but at least it keeps Ed Emshwiller, artist extraordinaire, in lucre.  I've given up hope that it'll ever be my favorite magazine again, but it wasn't decidedly unpleasant this month.

And given the other news in this article, "not decidedly unpleasant" is pretty good!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Book

[April 16, 1964] Of Houses and World Building (Jack Vance's The Houses of Iszm/ Son of the Tree and Andre Norton's Web of the Witch World)

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by Rosemary Benton

March and April have been very satisfying months in terms of science fiction literature that really revels in the art of creating alien worlds and cultures. Between Andre Norton's next installment in the Witch World series, Web of the Witch World, and the Ace Double release of Jack Vance's novellas The Houses of Iszm and Son of the Tree, science fiction readers had their pick of genre crossing science fiction. Andre Norton's book was, like much of her works, a solid science fiction and fantasy blend with technology and supernatural elements working side by side to create a world of complicated politics and alliances. Jack Vance, on the other hand, displays an ability to write classic science fiction with a hint of sinister terror lurking at the heart of his stories.

Ace Double F-265: The Houses of Iszm / Son of the Tree, by Jack Vance


The book can be viewed here and purchased here

The Houses of Iszm (originally published in a shorter form in “Startling Stories” magazine, 1954) and Son of the Tree (“Thrilling Wonder Stories” magazine, 1951) are both older stories of Jack Vance's, but ones which have yet to show their age. In keeping with each other, the plot twist of both stories centers around strange societies with strange practices designed to keep an intellectual stranglehold on valuable information and technology. Vance likewise reuses similar settings and pacing in both stories, making them feel as if they could be long lost relatives of each other both existing in the same universe but not aware that they were related.

The Houses of Iszm follows the unassuming adventure of Earthling botanist Aile Farr's visit to the planet Iszm. While there he hopes to observe the unique and highly coveted native flora that the native peoples have shaped in wondrous ways. Through thousands of years of selective breeding the people of Iszm have evolved a form of plant that serves both as their domicile, their plumbing system, and their source of food and hydration. Only recently has Earth set up one sided trade relations through the house growing classes of the Iszic. The man who holds a monopoly on this off world house trade is the human industrialist K. Penche.

Unwilling to part with their trade secrets, the Iszic are the only ones in the universe who have access to the coveted techniques for the rearing of plant domiciles. Despite innumerable attempts to smuggle female seeds, cuttings or saplings off planet there has never been a successful attempt, although that doesn't stop the greedy and the blindly altruistic from trying – for the sake of personal riches or for the sake of the universe's homeless who would benefit from a self growing and repairing shelter. Aile Farr is one of the latter, and through a mix of professional curiosity in plants, bad timing, and naiveté he finds himself caught in the middle of one such ambitious attempt to get a Iszic house seed off world.


The book can be viewed here and purchased here

On the flip side of this Ace Double is Son of the Tree. This Jack Vance story unfolds around the revenge driven, and unassumingly named, Joe Smith of Earth. Traveling across the universe on whatever money he can gather, Joe is in pursuit of a man named Harry Creag who had an affair with Joe's wife, Margaret. Along his pursuit of the elusive adulterer, Joe comes to a feudal world whose ruling class is unified around a religion that worships a massive tree called The Tree of Life. Just trying to make enough money in order to continue his pursuit of the man who stole the heart of his wife, Joe becomes entangled in the dangerous back stabbing of opposing regimes vying for control of the minds of the planet's laity, as well as the natural resources of the newly industrializing neighboring planet Ballenkarch. He soon finds himself as an unwilling pawn in the mechanizations of many dangerous missionaries, spies and military personnel who see him as a means to their end. Joe struggles just to survive, but he is inexorably drawn into the intrigue as an active player. 

While The Houses of Iszm is less plot heavy than Son of the Tree, it shows a more sinister world. In Son of the Tree there is no misunderstanding that literally billions of lives are at stake in the political power play between the Druids, the Mangs, and the Ballenkarts. But by the end of Son of the Tree the evil of the people-consuming Tree of Life and its offshoot is revealed and measures are being taken to stop its slaughter of the Druid laity. Granted, Harry Creath admits that it will be a blood soaked venture, but he suggests that it will give back purpose and self determination to the peasants on the Druid's world. There is a sense of justice by the end of the book, even if it is a bitter justice. The Druid laity will be free in time, Ballenkart has avoided disaster by killing the sprout of the Tree of Life that was planted in its soil, and the Mangs have not conquered the planet.

There is no such justice to be found in The Houses of Iszm. There isn't even any societal change, positive or negative, brought about through the suffering and sacrifice of the people caught in the heist of the Iszic house seed. After the initial field raid that Farr witnesses on Iszm, Farr is tested and questioned to see if he had any hand in the plot to steal the house cultivation secrets of the planet. Part of this interrogation involves him being shown the newest experiments the Iszic are testing – the merger of animal and plant to create new potential structures. The animal part of this experimentation is a living, sentient being that was captured during the raid and lobotomized. He was then “planted” before scientists coaxed vegetation to grow from his body.

It's a nightmarish concept, and one for which the Iszic face no consequences. Granted, the experiment is a failure, but the reader is not shown that the experiments will halt, or even that there is any remorse felt by the Iszic for what they are doing to the poor being. Indeed, it's safe to say that there will be other people who will be tortured in the same manner. After Farr leaves the planet and begins his journey to Earth, there is no sign that things will be anything but business as usual in the labs of Iszm. The plot continues on without a backwards glance.

This sense of “take what you can and run” is pervasive throughout The Houses of Iszm. Justice seems to be only that which you bargain for as in Farr's sale of the smuggled seed to K. Penche, or the quick cover up of the death of the Iszic after the final confrontation at K. Penche's house. More than anything, it seems as if the creed of Jack Vance's worlds is "he who can afford to buy the power (female house seeds, knowledge of the true nature of the Tree of Life, etc.) makes the rules." 

It would be interesting to see these two stories merged to tie up some of the loose story elements in both books. For instance, what if the tree Aile Farr sold to K. Penche became the horrendous Tree of Life on Kyril? It being a male sprout Penche purchased from Farr, combined with the fact that Iszic house growing secrets would never be given up willingly, then Penche would be required to spend his resources learning to reverse engineer the Iszic growing techniques for the sake of mass producing tree homes. Zhde Patasz of Iszm made it very clear to Farr during his visit that trees are semi-sentient and directly interact with their occupants in a symbiotic way. But there is such a thing as a mad tree. An organic man-made monstrosity created in a lab for the purpose of mass marketing at an affordable price would be an very interesting origin story for the Druid's sacred tree.

Although at times wavering unsteadily between fun action adventures and pessimistic commentary on the balance of power, Jack Vance's works have definitely fired my imagination. I look forward to reading more of his work in the very near future. 

Web of the Witch World by Andre Norton

Picking up shortly after the conclusion of Witch World, Web continues with the trials of the citizens of Estcarp and their allies as they fight to save Loyse of Verlaine from kidnappers and contain another attempt by the Kolder to return to the home dimension of the former witch Jaelithe, the Earth man Simon Tregarth, Loyse, Koris of Gorm. As in its predecessor Witch World, Norton's focus on the balance of power (both technological and supernatural) alongside the geo-political intrigue remains crucial to the advancement of the plot. But also just like Witch World there is little development in the characters' personalities.


The book can be viewed here and purchased here

It's not hard to empathize with Norton's characters, but it's difficult to rationalize why we should be invested in them. Other than the hardships endured by their physical characteristics (plain faced Loyse or oddly shaped Koris), or the duties of their positions (Falconer, Witch, Border Warder, etc.), what can be said about any of these people who inhabit the the lands of Witch World? To say that any one of them is persistent, brave or intelligent is too generic a statement since these descriptors apply to all of them. Koris could be said to be the more brash of the primary protagonists, but even that is tempered by a seemingly universal understanding amongst the characters that the greater good of Estcarp and the protection of Loyse could be jeopardized with too much bravado.

In both Witch World and Web of the Witch World there are precious few characters who will act outside of the universally held objectives of their respective groups – all Kolder (native Kolder as well as their agents) work for the goal of cross-dimensional conquest, and all Estcarp allies work for the wills of the Guardians. Putting the two stories side by side the only characters who felt as if they evolved somewhat into distinguishable people were Aldis and Simon Tregarth.

As mistress to Yvian, Aldis is in a precarious position of power that could easily be lost should Yvian tire of her company or if he should recapture his runaway bride Loyse and cement a union between his territory and Verlaine. We see her exhibit cunning, duplicity, manipulation and forethought in Witch World, as well as a hardened self-serving determination to survive in a society where women are secondary accessories to the lives of the men who rule them. Sadly, only a little of this characterization survives into the plot of Web of Witch World before it is overridden by the mind control of the Kolder. Once an unpredictable and capricious character who added an edge to the chapters she appeared in, the Kolder force her to take wooden actions with nearly none of her classic cunning. 

Simon Tregarth, the man from another Earth, is one who I desperately wanted to see evolve from his flat personality in Witch World. Thankfully, in Web of Witch World he does mature somewhat as a character. Between the time when the first book ended and the second one begins Simon and Jaelithe have married. It feels like a massive waste not to have been privy to the turmoil that must have been present within Jaelithe during that time as she officially sacrifices her Witch power, her position amongst the leadership of Estcarp, and sole possession of her physical body for her love of Simon. Apparently she must have come to terms with the trade, because things seem to be peaceful between them until one morning when both she and Simon feel a call of the power. Elatedly she declares that she feels whole again and goes off on her path in the plot, leaving the reader with some of the first real insight we have had into Simon – and that insight is that he is wildly insecure about this return of Jaelithe's power.

In only a handful of instances does the writing dive back into Simon's head to analyze this development in their relationship and how it affects Simon, but through it we are treated to a small character arc in which a character is motivated to action by more than a call to a greater good or service. Simon goes through an initial bout of self doubt that he wasn't enough to make Jaelithe feel whole since the loss of her power. Now that she has it back he's worried that she will begin to prioritize her role as a magic user over her relationship to him. He worries that her career as a Witch will pull them apart from each other physically as well as emotionally. He even begins to resent her as “defecting” from him until he starts to realize that that kind of thinking is playing into the hands of the Kolder who intend to drive a wedge between all those who oppose them. Ultimately Simon realizes that Jaelithe's reestablished connection with magic is not a threat to their marriage. He comes to see her as an equal and a powerful ally in the fight against the Kolder.

Andre Norton's Witch World is shaping up to be a series that will be most appreciated by fans of fast action political epics. It's not a series for those who are looking for a character study, or for a story that develops due to interplay between unique and interesting people. Again, as I said about Witch World, Norton has laid the foundations of a world with many interesting facets. The inter-dimensional travel, technology so advanced people have reverted to calling it magic, and deeply divided cultures are fun, but this world building takes far more precedence in the plot than the people within it. 

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Book, Magazine

[April 14, 1964] COOKING WITH ASH (the May 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Melting Down

The cover of the May 1964 Amazing depicts an astronaut whose space helmet and surrounding objects are melting as the giant sun blazes in through his rather large porthole.  This illustrates Lester del Rey’s story Boiling Point, or more likely the story rationalizes the cover; I suspect more strongly each month that a lot of Amazing’s cover stories are in fact written around an already purchased cover painting. 


by Schelling

Boiling Point

The story starts out as routinely clever.  Protagonist Stasek is a technician residing on Venus and studying “energy-eaters,” amorphous creatures who hang out near the sun and live on its energy.  He is pressed into service to do maintenance on“the ring of satellites strung like beads between the orbit of Venus and the orbit of Mercury.” They are there to relay communications, observe sunspots, absorb energy and beam it to wherever it’s needed. 

Stasek sets out and, of course, quickly comes across an energy-eater wrapped around a satellite he’s supposed to service.  What an opportunity!  He disregards regulations, gets close to it, and finds out why nobody who has done so has come back: it wraps itself around his little spaceship.  Turns out it’s telepathic, and it’s hungry: it wants to go towards the sun, and when Stasek demurs, it takes control of the ship.  Curtains!  Except Stasek, before he cooks completely, figures out a better deal to offer it.

This would be a perfectly acceptable piece of hardware-opera yard goods except that it turns on the assumption that telepathic communication, if it exists at all, could work right off the bat between creatures of such utterly different background and experience.  I read that some guy named Wittgenstein said, “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” Sounds right to me, and that goes at least double for a shape-shifting vacuum-dweller that feeds on pure energy.  Sorry, too much to swallow, downgraded from yard goods to factory reject.  Two stars.

As for the rest of the issue, I can’t say there’s anything especially good here—but at least some of it is bad in more interesting ways than usual.  Also, as someone suggested to me, this seems to be the Special Bad-Mouthing Issue.  Once past the del Rey story, every piece of fiction contains some derogatory stereotype or a character who is nasty to the point of caricature.

Sunburst (Part 3 of 3)


by Schelling

This issue concludes Phyllis Gotlieb’s serial Sunburst, which seems sincere and well-meaning, but ultimately inconclusive. 

Premise (in case you haven't been reading along): years ago, in a small Midwestern city called Sorrel Park, a nuclear reactor accident resulted in the town’s being quarantined under martial law, and in the birth of a number of mutant children with very strong psionic powers.  A few years later these feral superchildren ran rampant through the town destroying everything within reach, and were themselves quarantined behind a force field in a barren place called the Dump (hence, Dumplings).

The main character is Shandy Johnson, a 13-year-old orphaned girl who is an “imperv,” i.e., someone with no psi talent who is undetectable via psi, and who is trying to get by in depressed and police-dominated Sorrel Park.  She is apprehended and taken to the authorities, who want to use her as a go-between with the Dumplings, though that doesn’t actually happen.

Instead the author launches a very busy plot full of escapes, pursuits, disappearances, captivities, disturbances, threats of massive sabotage of essential government functions, etc.  Midway through, Shandy unspools her big idea: psi talents tend to develop in people who are psychopaths anyway—born juvenile delinquents!  I.e., mesomorphs who have had trouble with the police starting early, who mostly “come from families without very strong morals—often immigrants who have trouble coping with a new country. . . . I’ve heard poverty is a cause of delinquency, but I think these kinds of shiftless, helpless people could be a cause of poverty too. . . .”

After this detour into discredited pseudo-science, the busy plot machine cranks up again, with the Dumplings mostly acting like the natural-born delinquents we’ve been told they are, and at the end most of those who are still alive are back in the Dump behind a more secure force field.  That is, after all the hugger-mugger, the story’s basic problem, young people essentially sentenced to life imprisonment in a barren environment because nobody can control their dangerous talents, is unchanged.  It is suggested that Shandy is the real mutant superperson here, though what that means is unclear. 

Meanwhile, we have never seen the Dumplings and their outcast society—the most interesting part of the set-up—except second-hand, and in melodramatic bursts during their breakout.  It’s all perfectly readable, if you can overlook Gotlieb’s frequently clumsy writing.  (Sample: “She had come to a hard decision, and she silently awarded herself the razz for her sense of its altruism, without stopping the ache.”) It just never adds up to much despite the potentially interesting premise.  Two stars.

The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal


by Schelling

Next up is The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal, by Cordwainer Smith, he of the suddenly soaring reputation.  This one is told in high whimsical tall-tale style, about the eponymous Commander who is dispatched to probe the “outer reaches of our galaxy.” He encounters a colony planet where “femininity became carcinogenic,” so the women all died off and the only means of survival was to turn everyone medically into men, which of course had effects beyond the medical.  Smith describes the results at some length.  Here’s a sample:

“They, themselves, were bearded homosexuals, with rouged lips, ornate earrings, fine heads of hair, and very few old men among them.  They killed off their men before they became old; the things they could not get from love or relaxation or comfort, they purchased with battle and death.  They made up songs proclaiming themselves to be the last of the old men and the first of the new, and they sang their hate to mankind when they should meet, and they sang ‘Woe is earth that we should find it,’ and yet something inside them made them add to almost every song a refrain which troubled even them.

“And I mourn Man!”

One must ask whether this is a glimpse of the far future, or of the author’s insecurities.  We don’t hear much about homosexuals here in this small Kentucky town, and what we do hear amounts to locker room talk.  I wonder if Smith is just passing on the locker room talk of intellectuals.  His extravagant fantasy about people I doubt he knows much about reminds me of some of the strange things people in this mostly segregated town say about Negroes.  Anyway, two stars: a story that started out like a bravura performance, brought down by what reads like gross stereotyping.

Incidentally, the blurb to the story reads like the editor tried to get into the swing of Smith’s sometimes outlandish prose.  I wonder if she just appropriated a piece of the story to serve as a blurb.

The Artist


by Schelling

Rosel George Brown contributes The Artist, a purposefully difficult and unpleasant story about an artist, a stupid and nasty jerk who has become successful by painting what his long-suffering wife sees (it’s not too clear how that works).  Now she sees something strange and frightening in a corner of the room, and rather than have him paint what she sees, she provokes him into getting a stepladder and looking for himself, with unpleasant results (for him anyway).  It’s sort of like that playwright of bad marriages, Edward Albee, meeting H.P. Lovecraft, to mutual dislike.  For lagniappe, the action takes place at a party featuring caricatured secondary characters.  Two stars for making the story seem interesting enough to persevere with it (including a second read) long enough to figure out what is going on. 

According to His Abilities


by Schelling

Another nasty jerk is featured in Harry Harrison’s According to His Abilities, though this one isn’t so stupid, and is also rationalized at the end of the story.  The refined milquetoast DeWitt and the boorish thug Briggs have been dispatched to rescue an Earthman from primitive aliens who are pretty boorish and thuggy themselves.  Briggs’s belligerence wins the day, and there’s a facile revelation about him at the end, of an all too familiar sort.  It’s dreary hackwork executed professionally.  Two stars.

For Every Action


by Adkins

C.C. MacApp’s For Every Action starts with a mildly clever idea, spaceborne life forms around the orbit of Pluto that glom on to spaceships’ rocket exhausts so they can no longer steer accurately, then adds another such idea (a guy could move around in space using a bow and arrow!), and sets them in a silly frame of Cold War suspicion, concluding with a reference to Soviet spacemen (implicitly, drunk) floating in space singing Volga Boat Song (sic).  It’s generically similar to Boiling Point but much weaker.  Two stars, barely.

Planetary Engineering

And of course Ben Bova is back with the latest in his interminable series of fact articles though this one gets no farther than the Moon.  It’s about what people will have to do to establish colonies there, and is frankly a rehash of what we’ve seen not only in dozens of SF stories but in plenty of articles in general-interest magazines, complete with platitudes (“Finally, carving out a human settlement in a literally new world will give man an opportunity to create a new society.” Etc.) and observations so mundane as to be suffocating (“Corridors will no doubt be painted in special color codes, to help travellers find their way.”).  Two stars, largely for good intentions.  Also, no one is insulted here.

The Verdict

So: not much here of much merit, but, as already suggested . . . if you can’t be good, at least find an interesting way to be bad.


by Schelling

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TV

[April 12, 1964] Mold of a Man (The Outer Limits, Season One, Episodes 25-28)

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by Natalie Devitt

Recently The Outer Limits has primarily featured storylines about intellectually superior aliens and mutants treating people like something easily controlled or shaped to suit their needs. Episodes have included stories about a man-turned-mutant using his telepathic abilities to keep members of his crew prisoners on another planet, an alien holding a group captive in an old mansion until they can provide him with important information, a man and a woman being thrown into a deadly game for the entertainment of creatures from another planet, and an alien posing as a tutor so he can recruit children as tools for his nefarious plans.

The Mutant, by Allan Balter and Robert Mintz

In The Mutant, Larry Pennell, an actor you may have seen in anything from Thriller to Have Gun – Will Travel, plays Evan Marshall, a man who travels to a planet that seems to be “suitable for colonization by Earth‘s overflowing population.” The planet, Annex One, resembles Earth. He arrives there intending to investigate the death of a scientist stationed at planet.

Marshall is instructed to wear special goggles while outside as protection from the planet’s harsh weather conditions, which can include anything from “constant daylight” to severe storms. A member of the team, played by Warren Oates (he recently appeared on The Twilight Zone’s Number 7 is Made Up of Phantoms), plays Reese Fowler. Fowler assures Marshall, “You begin to feel like they [the goggles] are a part of your person, which is the way that we feel.” Fowler fails to mention to Marshall that he rarely removes his goggles in order to hide his swollen eyes, which started protruding after he was accidentally caught in a storm without his protective eyewear. This incident resulted not only in bulging eyes, but it also gave Fowler telepathy and the ability to kill people with just a touch of the hand.

Fowler is abusing his new powers, keeping everyone on Annex One as “his prisoners” as he frantically searches for a cure to his mutations. Members of the group try to warn Marshall about Fowler. All the while they try to prevent the mutant from reading their minds as they devise a plan to return to Earth. But as Fowler warns them, it is nearly impossible for anyone to quiet their thoughts for long.

Between Fowler’s telepathic powers being almost inescapable and the effects of endless daylight on a person‘s sanity, The Mutant does a pretty good job of establishing a sense of dread. Further, I think the sight of Fowler’s eyes will be forever seared into my mind. One aspect of the episode that certainly did not work very well was the romantic secondary plot, which was not very convincing and did not do much to support the main plot. But overall, I would say The Mutant is strong enough to deserve three stars.

The Guests, by Donald S. Sanford

The Guests, opens on an elderly man being pursued on foot by an alien through the woods. The man collapses as a young man, Wade (Geoffrey Horne, from The Twilight Zone’s The Gift), stops to offer a hand. As the extraterrestrial vanishes, a mansion appears in its place. Wade picks up the old man’s pocket watch, inside of which is a very old picture of a young woman that appears to have been taken in the 19th century. As Wade approaches the house, the front door seems to open itself.

Upon entering the house, he spots the same young woman in the picture, Teresa, looking exactly as she did in the old man’s photo. Wade also meets another fellow, and two other women, one of which is played by none other than the famous Gloria Grahame. They are all wearing clothing from different time periods. Not thinking much about their outdated clothing, Wade goes on to tell them about the old man. Teresa does not miss a beat, responding rather coldly with he must be “gone by now.” She then adds, “He’s been dead for a long time.”

Wade tries to leave the house at once, but he is pulled back in, then up the stairs, where he finally comes face to face with their host: a glowing version of the creature from this season's The Mice. Their captor says he is looking for “the factor that will balance the equation.” After being interrogated by the alien, Wade is told by the others, “You won’t leave here, young man. None of us will ever leave here.” The other guests may be content to remain frozen in time, but Wade is determined to escape.

The whole alien holding people captive in a big strange mansion sounds an awful lot like this season's Don’t Open Till Doomsday, and while The Guests is not quite as strong, it almost succeeds in capturing the same creepy atmosphere. If there is one thing that The Outer Limits does extremely well, it is create mood. While you can predict this story‘s outcome, there is a scene involving a character rapidly aging that has stayed with me since I watched it.

I am kind of disappointed that I did not enjoy Gloria Grahame in this entry as much as I would have liked. I have seen the Oscar winner shine in a wide range of roles.  This performance is not bad, just a little uninspired. Given her impressive body of work, I am not sure that matters very much. In any case, this entry receives three stars.

Fun and Games, by Robert Specht and Joseph Stefano

Fun and Games tells the tale of a man and a woman, played by Nick Adams (whom you might know from the TV show, The Rebel) and television actress Nancy Malone. They are teleported to another planet, Andera, where they are informed by a shadowy figure that they have been selected to represent the men and the women of Earth in a “rather terrible kind of game” for the amusement of their kind. The humans, Mike and Laura, will fight against one male and one female representative from another planet, the Calco, in a fight “until the death.“ The creature insists that they will not be forced to participate, but if they choose to not join, their “opponents will win by default.“ Most importantly, if they lose the game, Earth will be destroyed.

The Calco resemble apes, and are so primitive that they use boomerangs as weapons instead of guns. Participants are prohibited from using guns at any time during the game, but when Mike and Laura discover that one of their adversaries murdered its own partner in order to stretch out its own food supply, they realize just what they are up against. Do they really stand a chance against such a ruthless opponent?

The two lead actors really deliver some fine performances in this hour of the series, which almost succeeds in distracting from how goofy and unthreatening the Calco appear. Fun and Games revisits important moments in the story, exploring different decisions characters can make. I imagine watching the same thing over and over is enough to drive some viewers insane. Personally, I really enjoyed it, but I could see how it could feel like padding to fill the entire hour. Luckily, the conclusion has some interesting twists. Fun and Games is in my opinion the best entry of the series this past month, which is why it earns three and a half stars from me.

The Special One, by Oliver Crawford

One stormy night, a family is visited by stranger who goes by the name of Mr. Zeno. He claims to be “from the Educational Enrichment Program,“ and expresses his interest in tutoring their son, Ken. But not long after studying with Mr. Zeno, who is really an extraterrestrial in disguise, Ken begins behaving strangely. When Ken’s dad (played by Hitchcock-thriller Shadow of a Doubt’s MacDonald Carey) wants him to do anything besides homework, Ken tells him, “Sorry, Dad. I’ve got to study. Mr. Zeno will be here in a minute.” Also, Ken’s father, Roy, thinks it is strange that Zeno does not seem to give advance notice when he is coming over to their house, and how he seems to be spending an increasing amount of time with his son.

Roy stumbles on a periodic table that Ken has been working on. The strange thing is that it includes 23 extra elements. This leads to Ken‘s father to tell his buddy about the situation, who states, “I wouldn’t let my boy join the group.” When Dad confronts his son about the extra elements on the his periodic table, Ken simply states that they are not there “yet,” but that the “balance is in the future.” Ken’s mother accuses Roy of being jealous of Mr. Zeno. On top of all of that, the Education Enrichment Program’s office has never heard of Mr. Zeno and claim their tutors do not do house visits. So, what does a creature from outer space need with Ken?

The Special One is not really my favorite episode about aliens plotting to take over the world, but it's not really a bad one, either. The acting is strong, except for a somewhat awkward scene where Mr. Zeno tries to get Ken’s dad to commit suicide, which also reminds me of a similar scene in a previous episode, Corpus Earthling. One thing the episode really has going for it is its special effects, which are surprisingly good, especially for television. Three stars.

It has been another enjoyable month of the series, which seems to have been filled with even more than usual number of narratives about people being easily influenced by extraterrestrial beings. Given that this month included one very good episode and three good episodes, I am confident the remaining month of the season will also entertain.

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Science / Space Race

[April 10, 1964] Piercing the night (Gemini, Zond, Kosmos 28, and Explorer 9)

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by Gideon Marcus

After what felt like a pause in the Space Race, things have now het up, and I'm getting excited abouting being on the NASA beat again.  To wit, both superpowers seem on the cusp of making a giant leap forward in the exploration of the great black unknown.

Two for the Price of One

It has been nearly a year since the Mercury program wrapped up.  Since then, NASA has been feverishly working on its Apollo lunar program, comprising the Saturn rocket, the three seat Command/Service Module, and the two seat Lunar Excursion Module.  We finally got a peek at a full scale mock-up of the last, and it's unlike any spacecraft I've ever seen before.

Even while NASA is progressing with Apollo, the space agency has also been proceeding with its Gemini two-seat spacecraft.  Gemini is a sort of bridge to Apollo, a direct successor to Mercury that will allow astronauts to perfect the techniques of orbital rendezvous and docking.  It is also likely that the Air Force will use Gemini to build a staffed space station and perhaps for other military purposes.

On April 8, 1964, the first Gemini soared into orbit atop a modified Titan II ICBM.  There was no one on board, but the flight was still an important one.  Using missiles borrowed from the Air Force is always a dicey proposition — they aren't designed to carry people, after all.  I am happy to report, however, that the new rocket did its job just about perfectly, delivering Gemini 1 to an orbit just slightly higher than planned.

The uncrewed spacecraft fell silent after its first orbit when the battery became exhausted, a planned occurrence.  In fact, no plans were ever made for recovery; the Titan second stage was left attached to the spacecraft, and holes were drilled into Gemini's heat shield to ensure it completely burns up when its orbit decays about two days from now.

This launch marks an important first step for Gemini.  The Titan II, a much simpler and stronger rocket than Mercury's Atlas, is now "man-rated."  It only remains for the capsule itself, to get the same certification.  That should happen with the Gemini 2 mission, planned for late this year. 

In any event, it's another "first" for America — we got the first two-seat ship into orbit!

Destination Unknown

The Soviet Union beat us to the moon in 1958 with Mechta, and they almost beat us to Mars last year, too (their craft went silent along the way).  Now, it looks like they're setting the stage for another deep space endeavor.

On April 2, 1964, the Russkies launched Zond 1 "for the purpose of developing a space system for distant interplanetary flights."  It left orbit, and TASS continues to report that Zond is functioning properly.  However, they are being extremely cagey about where the spacecraft is going.  Experts suggest that it might be a Venus probe based on its launch date and trajectory.  I suppose it could also be a long range mission with no planetary target like Pioneer 5 was.

Two days later, on April 4, the Soviets launched Kosmos 28, an orbital satellite "intended for the further exploration of outer space in accordance with the program announced by TASS March 16, 1962." 

Which is to say, probably a spy satellite like our own Discoverer program.

The Balloon Goes Down

Yesterday, we bade a fiery farewell to Explorer 9, the first of six planned 12-foot balloon satellites whose task is to measure the density of the top of Earth's atmosphere.  The satellite confirmed the daily bulge in the upper atmosphere caused by the sun's heating the air during the day, and it also verified the model of the region's temperature, established by prior satellites. 

Moreover, the satellite lasted long enough that its data could be compared to that of its identical successor, Explorer 19, which is still up there.

Explorer 9 was the first satellite to be launched by the Scout solid-fuel rocket and the first to be launched into orbit from Wallops Island in Virginia.  Ya did good, pal!

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TV

[April 8th, 1964] Pooooolo! (Doctor Who: Marco Polo, Parts 5 to 7)

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By Jessica Holmes

The caravan winds ever onwards across Cathay. Let’s catch up, shall we?

We’re a bit over halfway through our first historical serial, tagging along with Marco Polo as he travels across China to meet with Kublai Khan. With him are Tegana, a Mongol warlord and obvious baddie, Ping-Cho, a young lady from Samarkand on her way to be married, and of course, our Doctor and his companions. Tegana has been trying (and failing) to bump off our tag-alongs so he can nick the TARDIS for his master, Logai, a rival to the great Kublai Khan. And now a guard has just turned up dead. Could this journey be about to come to a sudden and bloody end?

RIDER FROM SHANG-TU

Our companions find the murdered guard, and are quick to raise the alarm. The men arm themselves, and prepare to fight. There’s a bandit attack coming (a gold sticker for whoever guesses who orchestrated that), and they’ll need all the fighters they can muster.

So they send the women into the tent.

On your own heads be it, lads.

The Doctor advocates taking shelter in the TARDIS, but to no avail, because Marco is just bit too stubborn for his own good. Tegana tries to convince Marco that the Doctor and his companions murdered the guard. To be fair, they did have the motive and opportunity, but what about the means?

I suppose Ian could have made use of the forgotten art of war crockery.

Marco doesn’t really listen to Tegana, so his stubbornness can be good for something, it seems.

Still, they’re going to need more than a few swords if they’re going to win against a pack of bandits. Ian comes up with the ingenious idea to throw bamboo on the fire. Bamboo is a hollow grass, so there’s air inside each stick. What happens to air when it heats up? It expands. And what happens if the grass can’t expand with it?

Pop!

The bandits turn up, and we’re treated to a bit of swashbuckling action as the battle commences. In all the hubbub, Tegana kills the leader of the bandits, sending his secret complicity to the grave with him, and the Doctor dusts off his fencing skills.

Ian’s exploding bamboo trick pays off, and the bandits scatter, leaving the caravan free to lick its wounds and get going again. The Doctor is smart enough to figure out that Tegana was in league with the bandits (well, duh), and Marco starts to warm to the companions again.

A courier from the great Khan arrives, to the surprise of everyone, for they are many, many leagues yet from Shang-Tu. He explains that he had a fresh horse waiting for him at waystations every league, and he wears bells on his clothing to let the ostlers know when he’s about to arrive, so as to waste as little time as possible.

You see, he had an extremely important message for them. A matter of grave urgency.

Kublai Khan says: Hello, how are you?

Oh. Nice of him, I suppose.

Then off we go to Cheng-Ting, the ‘white city’.

The set and costumes here are lovely. I’ll be waxing lyrical about this in a little bit.

What I will not be waxing lyrical about, however, is this fellow here, whose name I never did catch, because I was so distracted by how bizarre his intonation and mannerisms are. He’s the most pompous prat in all of China.

The Doctor’s uncharitable but accurate impression of him is very funny. So, perhaps it was deliberate.

A one eyed man, Kuiju, meets Tegana in the stables, and they strike a deal. Kuiju will steal the TARDIS for Tegana. In great trade caravans, it is so easy for things to be misplaced, after all.

I just had a thought. How heavy is the TARDIS? We saw a few additional rooms during The Edge Of Destruction, so we know that the TARDIS is at least the size of a house on the inside. So, does the weight of the TARDIS match the outer dimensions, or the inner dimensions, or both?

I’m just wondering how they’re managing to transport it. They seem not to have had any problems loading it onto the wagon, so perhaps it does only weigh as much as the outer dimensions. That’ll make it easier to steal, I suppose.

I feel like that probably breaks some law of physics. Don’t ask which. I’m not a Science Lawyer.

Well, it looks like it’s soon to be a moot point, because Ping-Cho’s stealing the keys to the TARDIS! She promised Marco that she wouldn’t reveal to the others where the keys were hidden, but she didn’t say anything about not taking them herself.

I would honestly love it if Ping-Cho came along with the companions as a permanent addition to the crew. Susan gets a friend her own age, Ping-Cho doesn’t have to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather, everybody wins!

But it’d also bring the serial to an end two episodes early, and I’m quite enjoying myself, thank you very much.

Let’s throw a Tegana in the works.

4 out of 5.

MIGHTY KUBLAI KHAN

Tegana foils the companions’ attempt to escape, and Ian ‘confesses’ to taking the key, to protect Ping-Cho. With that, the caravan moves on, and our next stop is at an inn between Cheng-Ting and Peking.

Ian tries once again to convince Marco to give the TARDIS back, and this time, he throws all caution to the wind and flat out tells him that he’s from the future, the TARDIS flies through time and space, and no, they can’t just hang about and get a ship back home from Venice.

Marco, though having seen some wild things in his travels across the far east (like a burning black stone!), has to draw the line somewhere, and the notion of travelling freely between tomorrow, today and yesterday is about a hundred leagues over that line.

What’s more, Marco figures out that Ian lied about stealing the key, and deduces that the only reason he would lie is to protect the real thief: Ping-Cho, who is nowhere to be found.

She has slipped out and is now making her less-than-merry way back to Samarkand, so Ian offers to ride back to look for her.

Ian, can you actually ride a horse? I mean really, properly ride a horse? No, plodding along the beach on a donkey when you’re holidaying in Blackpool doesn’t count.

Ping-Cho makes it back to the way station, and runs into Kuiju as he puts his scheme into action, posing as an envoy from the Khan and tricking that pompous official into letting him take possession of the TARDIS. Oh, and while he’s at it, he scams Ping-Cho out of all her money when she tries to book passage to Samarkand with his caravan.

Nice chap.

Just when it seems Ping-Cho is royally stuffed, along comes Ian! And with the arrival of the real envoy from Shang-Tu, it doesn’t take anyone long to realise that the TARDIS has been stolen.

I think I’d have really liked Ian if he’d been one of my teachers. In another life he’d have been a hero in one of those old adventure serials. Ergo, a cool teacher.

Ian figures the TARDIS is most likely being taken on the road to Karakorum, which was the capital of Genghis Khan’s empire, though by now it’s little more than a field. The Mongols were, and still are, a nomadic people, after all. Their cities don’t tend to stay in one place.

Meanwhile, in Shang-Tu, the companions have finally arrived!

The set for the summer palace is gorgeous. Throughout this serial the sets have been impressive, and the palaces are sublimely ornate. I’ve managed to procure a few colour images taken from production, so as we can see they’re even more beautiful when not viewed on a monochrome television set. The level of detail and care that’s gone into every inch of the production certainly shows, and sells the palace as the splendid heart of this mighty empire.

Still, for all the majesty of the Yuan dynasty, the Doctor isn’t about to kowtow to some puny Earth ruler. He has a bad back, anyway. Perhaps he should try a curtsey?

And now, dear readers.

The moment you’ve been waiting for.

Enter the mighty Kublai Khan!

Were you expecting him to come galloping in on horseback or something? That’s more his grandfather’s style. Kublai Khan is, as Marco Polo notes, ‘the greatest administrator the world has ever seen’, which is a weird boast, but I’ll take his word for it. His vizier is a bit uptight, but the Khan turns out to get along with the Doctor quite well, and it’s not long before the pair potter off to have a soothing bath in the local healing waters.

Back at the way station, Ping-Cho and Ian track down Kuiju (and also the TARDIS), and at knife-point the thief admits that Tegana paid him to steal the ‘caravan’.

And speak of the devil, here he comes!

3.5 out of 5. Nothing extraordinary, but not bad.

ASSASSIN AT PEKING

The confrontation turns deadly when Kuiju ends up on the wrong end of a knife, and moments later the courier from Shang-Tu arrives. Tegana claims Ian was trying to steal the ‘caravan’, Ian claims Tegana was plotting against the Khan, and the courier, having just come to deliver a message and being far too busy to play judge, more or less throws up his hands and says it’s up to the Khan, who has left Shang-Tu for Peking.

Speaking of Peking, we have a lovely set once again. I don’t know much about Chinese art, so I couldn’t say for sure if it’s appropriate to the right period of Chinese history, or whether it’d be like seeing a Norman Rockwell painting in George Washington’s study.

Period accurate or not, it sure does look pretty.

The Doctor and the Khan are getting along happily, drinking tea and playing backgammon. Oh, and betting colossal amounts of lands, goods and chattel on the outcome. I think the Doctor owns about half of the empire now. What’s more, the Doctor seems to have got over his aversion to bowing, as he manages just fine when the Empress shows up.

Lovely costumes once more. Very pretty fabric and some lovely cuts, as can be expected of Chinese textiles.

However.

They’re the wrong period.

Yes, they’re Chinese. They look very authentic. Some nice, authentic, Qing dynasty clothing. The Qing dynasty was last in power in 1912. The last Qing Emperor is actually still alive.

This serial is set during the Yuan dynasty, which ended in 1368. Oh, and we have the entire Ming dynasty separating these two periods.


Courtesy ofWikimedia Commons

This fresco, dated to the Yuan dynasty, shows some differences in the style of clothing. What jumps out to me most are the abundance of flowing fabrics and wrapped robes fastened with a belt. I could be wrong, but the costumes just don’t look like Yuan dynasty clothes to me.

I can’t claim any expertise but I think this might be comparable to seeing Charlemagne in a ruff.

The betting heats up when the Doctor asks to put up the TARDIS as stakes in their game. It’s a big risk, but it might be his best chance of reclaiming his ship. The Khan, however, would much rather he took something a bit less valuable, like the island of Sumatra.

I’m fairly certain that’s not yours to give, Kublai. Do you even have a navy? From what I know of the Mongols they were more into land-based empire building. Horses don’t do all that well on water.

Along comes Marco, and shortly after Ian turns up with Tegana and Ping-Cho, and I will give you three guesses as to whose accounting of events the court sides with. Because of course, Tegana is a Mongol, and Ian is not.

Oh, and Ping-Cho is getting married tomorrow. Now, I think weddings are great. Everyone has fun and you get free cake. But I’m also a big fan of this neat concept called ‘consent’ which seems to be glaringly absent in this marriage. Poor Ping-Cho.

Marco finally admits that laying claim to the TARDIS was wrong of him, but what’s done is done, and Kublai won the game of backgammon anyway.

A sentence ago I said ‘poor Ping-Cho’, but it looks like she’s in luck! Her husband-to-be? A little less so.

Her fiancé, so excited to get to spend the rest of his life with his pretty young bride, decided to try and extend his time on Earth with an ‘Elixir of Life’.

…Made of sulfur and quicksilver.

Something similar happened to the first Qin emperor, and the first man to unify China, Qin Shi Huang, who took mercury pills in the hopes he would live forever.

He did not live forever.

Ping-Cho is much relieved at the old man’s death, though she is smart enough not to be too open about that fact. She does, however, decide to stay in the court of Kublai Khan. Who knows, perhaps she’ll meet someone nice. It’s a bit too convenient for my liking, but still a nice little nod to Chinese history.

Marco, however, is feeling defeated. His gift didn’t work and the Khan no longer trusts him. It looks like Tegana’s won.

Good for him, but what does he want? What is Tegana’s game? Logai, his master, could attack Peking, but Kublai’s superior numbers would surely crush him.

But what is an army without a leader? Kublai is an old man, after all. It wouldn’t be hard to kill him. Especially if you’re a strong young warlord who has been welcomed into the city with open arms.

Oh, dear.

Realising the danger, the companions rush to the Khan’s chambers, warning Marco along the way, just as a messenger arrives and informs them that as they feared, Logai’s army is marching on Peking!

In the throne room, the Khan narrowly escapes death when Tegana kills his vizier by mistake, and it buys him just enough time for Marco and company to arrive, and we at last get the duel we’ve been waiting for, a thrilling clash of steel, a dance of blades, between the warlord and the explorer.

Marco succeeds in disarming Tegana, but before he can be brought to justice, Tegana grabs a guard’s sword and falls upon it, and all his schemes, along with the man himself, come to naught and slump onto the throne room floor.

With Tegana defeated, Marco hands the Doctor the keys to his TARDIS. Everyone says a hasty farewell, and the companions pile in, with the ship vanishing into the ether a moment later as the court looks on in astonishment.

Marco apologises to the Khan for giving away the gift from under his nose, but the Khan shrugs and quips that the Doctor would only have won it back in a game of backgammon anyway. Still, it’ll be quite a tale to tell everyone back in Venice. That is, assuming anyone believes it.

Well, poor old Marco Polo had great trouble convincing any of his contemporaries that most of what he wrote was true. Even the bit about seeing unicorns. Look it up.

4.5 out of 5, largely for the swordfight.

CONCLUSION

So, that was Marco Polo. I quite enjoyed our journey across China, though the serial is not without its flaws. It drags in places, I began to find everyone’s obliviousness to Tegana’s obvious scheming quite irritating after a while (the perils of invoking dramatic irony), and as I noted last time there’s the disappointing casting choices, along with I think some issues of historical accuracy when it comes to design. Also, the ending is a bit abrupt.

However, this is the most impressive production the Doctor Who team have put on for us yet, bringing the grandeur of a Hollywood epic to the small screen. It’s not quite Cleopatra in terms of scale (or budget), but I definitely feel a similar sense of ambition in this story of great journeys, great rulers and great treachery.

All in all? Well worth the watch, and more of this sort of thing, please and thank you.

THE SCORE

Now, the maths says (factoring in the score I forgot to include for The Wall Of Lies) that this serial gets a 3.57, but I’m feeling generous, and because of the quality of the latter half I’ll be nice and bump it up to a 4.

4 out of 5 stars

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