If you have any additional information you would like to supply, please notify Kevin (kevin.parker@wap.org).
I have ceased transcribing the Companion actor activities from Doctor Who Magazine because it has become a tedious and unrewarding activity. If you have been visiting this page for that information, let me know, and I will consider reinstating this feature.
Australian author David Franklin has written a book entitled Looking for Sarah Jane Smith, a review of which follows. If you're interested in buying a copy of the book, I recommend that you contact Franklin at babyicedog_dave@hotmail.com in order to make arrangements. The book is available for US$11.99, including postage, but only if appropriate arrangements are made for payment.
I was given a complimentary copy of this book as a fervent Sarah Jane fan. However, the tie-in with Doctor Who is rather tenuous, and no one should open this up expecting anything resembling a New Adventure. In fact, no one who is easily offended should open up this book at all.
Actually, I was thinking the strongest resemblance to Doctor Who is that the culture presented is about as alien to me as any mysterious distant planet shown on Doctor Who.
Marty, Mike, and Wasp (the nickname is never explained) are three dismal, lost working-class guys in Newport, Wales. Their main joys in life (if they can be called that) are drinking, screwing, and, in some cases, fighting. It's a world laced with profanity where anyone who isn't well into double-digits on the number of women he's slept with is suspected of being a woofter. These are guys who bet on women's tennis, not on who's going to win but on whose panties are sweatier.
The story, such as it is, is keyed on Marty's emigration to Australia, where he hopes to escape his current dismal life and find a better one. His friends come along with him, temporarily anyway, and the book recounts events just before and just after the "Three Musketeers" fly to Oz.
Of the three friends, Wasp is the most extreme, and also the simplest, with no evident goals in life other than the aforementioned three. Amazingly enough, he's married and has a daughter. This doesn't seem to slow him down in the least from trying to add to his double-digit total, though he shows a startling sign of humanity at one point, bristling furiously when Mike jokes about bedding his daughter.
Mike is a couple of notches up the evolutionary ladder, one of those depressed, apathetic souls probably everyone knows, who is blessed with a great potential but never makes use of it. He may be the brightest of the three but is convinced that God, the universe, or whatever powers are in charge have it in for him. He seems to be right--for just one example, on the flight to Australia, he's stuck in a seat next to a grossly overweight fellow passenger, who spills over onto his seat. He copes by making clever remarks and never taking anything seriously, except for his own misfortunes.
Marty is our main character, though he seems to be more along for the ride than anything else. He's a journalist, though we never see him at work. His place is the common hangout and retreat for the three of them. He drinks to be sociable, is reluctantly willing to fight to defend his friends, and is relatively indifferent to sex, having accumulated a contemptible eight partners to his friends' twenty-plus. He's a Doctor Who fan and supplies several mentions of various stories, plus his videotape collection makes a cameo appearance. And he is the one looking for Sarah Jane Smith--if she isn't in Wales, then perhaps he can find her in Australia.
The story moves along in patches and vignettes. Mike gets himself fired by his prick of a boss by getting back at his boss in a unique way after his boss reprimands him. (I won't spoil things by telling you just how.) One of the most notable characters isn't even human, but is Marty's evil, sadistic talking bird, Sister Morphine, who meets an unfortunate end when she pisses Wasp off one too many times. Mike and Wasp get into a competition to add to their scoring totals, though their attempts come to an unfortunate conclusion--Mike's potential score, in particular, freaks when she finds a human skeleton placed in the bed they are about to use (affectionately placed there, of course, by the other two friends).
The second half of the book moves to Australia, and the three have to cope with a whole new culture, to humorous effect, as they take some time to explore the country. They rejoice in the (sometimes) scantily clad barmaids, are baffled by the Australian obsession with keeping beer cold, and laugh at a bizarre Aussie man's haircut called the mullet (short on top and long in the back). Wasp loses his jacket to a kangaroo after he draps it over the 'roo for a photo opportunity, and the kangaroo hops away.
Meanwhile, accompanying them during their travels is a woman named Anne, a friend and former intimate of Marty's, a seemingly quite nice young lady who is now all but throwing herself at Marty. But she's not his Sarah Jane, so he's going to keep on looking.
I fear that my description may make the book sound dismal, but it's far from it, though it's certainly not a book for children. And even if it presents a world alien to me, it does so with unflinching honesty leavened with wit and humor, and I've been close enough to local versions of this world to know that it rings true. Normally I have little patience with any book, movie, or whatever that presents life in such a negative way. However, the humor and the quirkiness of the characters and their situations shone through for me, making the book come alive and making it memorable. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed it.
Back to the TARDIS.
An Afternoon with Elisabeth Sladen takes place on July 7, 2001, at Ambrosia Books in Los Angeles.
United Fan Con XI (Springfield, MA, November 9-11, 2001), as promised, has Elisabeth Sladen scheduled as their Doctor Who Guest of Honor again. (She unfortunately had to cancel out at the last minute last year.)
Gallifrey One (Van Nuys, CA, February 15-18, 2002) is sensibly inviting another triumvirate of Companion actors. This time it will be Carole Ann Ford, Frazer Hines, and Nicola Bryant.
Back to the TARDIS.
Back to the TARDIS.