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Mar 21 2009

Paperback Book Club

Posted by Dorian in Doctor Who, PBBC

Transit, 1992, Ben Aaronovitch
And in Benny’s first solo outing with the Doctor…she gets side-lined immediately so that the focus will be on Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, a twenty-second century descendant of the Brigadier, who would be an occasionally reoccuring chracter throught the New Adventures period, in the mistaken belief of the editors that readers found her the slightest bit interesting. Even though she’s one of the Mary Sue-est characters to appear in the line. Which is saying something, when you think about it.

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8 Responses to “Paperback Book Club”
  1. Greg McElhatton says:
    March 21, 2009 at 8:12 AM

    “in the mistaken belief of the editors that readers found her the slightest bit interesting”

    Nice misleading statement there.

    There was no editorial edict to include Kadiatu in other books, and of course, you can count her other appearances on one hand and still have fingers left.

    (Set Piece, in which Kate Orman really messes her up; The Also People, which follows up on the loose end and finishes off the character’s story; and then cameos in Happy Endings (which had cameos from characters from the previous 49 books) and So Vile a Sin. And of course, Also People and So Vile were by Aaronovitch as well.)

  2. Dorian says:
    March 21, 2009 at 8:46 AM

    Okay, fine: “in the mistaken belief of certain writers that some readers found her the slightest bit interesting.”
    Sheesh.

  3. Siskoid says:
    March 21, 2009 at 10:02 AM

    I can’t believe you didn’t mention this is the only Doctor Who story, ever, to use the word smegma.

    And now I’m really sorry I did.

  4. Mark Clapham says:
    March 21, 2009 at 11:04 AM

    Is Mary Sue the right word? Kadi isn’t really much like Aaronovitch, more his fantasy girlfriend. Is there a term for that?

  5. Matthew Craig says:
    March 21, 2009 at 2:41 PM

    Princess Pedestal

    TM AND C.

    //\Oo/\\

  6. Dorian says:
    March 21, 2009 at 6:27 PM

    Mark–I’ll refer you to the Wikipedia definition:

    Mary Sue, sometimes shortened simply to Sue, is a pejorative term used to describe a fictional character who plays a major role in the plot and is particularly characterized by overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, or having too many, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as “Mary Sues” is that they are too ostentatious for the audience’s taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the “Mary Sue” character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an “author’s pet”.

    Kadiatu certainly seems to fit the “author’s pet” part of the description.

  7. Mark Clapham says:
    March 22, 2009 at 5:31 PM

    Ah right, I’ve only ever heard the term Mary Sue used to describe a character who is an obviously idealised version of the author. And there are plenty of those in Doctor Who books.

  8. Steve The Lesser says:
    March 23, 2009 at 7:35 PM

    I was annoyed they changed the definition too and wish the entries i could find had attributed when and where this happened. It just feels like too huge a connotation shift, you know? I found out about the change in pretty much the same way you did, BTW…

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