Oh No It Isn’t!, 1997, Paul Cornell
After Virgin lost the license to Doctor Who, they continued the “New Adventures” line with Bernice Summerfield. This led to interesting conundrums for continuity purists, as the Benny Adventures could refer to events and characters from the New Adventures period, but not to characters or events related to the television program.
In this first novel, Benny faces off against the evil forces of pantomime.
Yes really.
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Rather brilliantly Terrance Dicks considers himself to have carte blanche to mention Who stuff from his own era, so Mean Streets has an Ogron lead character and blithely mentions Draconians and the like.
I’m really enjoying these PBBC ventures into the Virgin ranges, a good bit of NAstalgia.
Mark–Didn’t Dicks create the Ogrons and Draconians? I was under the impression that, under British copyright laws, he had at least partial ownership of any original creations, and could therefore use them in his own works outside of the series.
I think the Draconians are Malcolm Hulke. The Ogrons first turn up in Day of the Daleks, which is Louis Marks. So if you presume they’re created by the scriptwriter that’s where they’d go.
Dicks was on staff at the time, so if he created either of these as Script Editor they would be owned by the BBC. I don’t think he really had a legal hold on them, more a moral and practical one – that the BBC were never going to bother suing a mainstay of the TV series. Or maybe even that Louis Marks (who was certainly alive at the time, and may still be) and the Hulke estate were never going to take action against an old friend.
Either way, Terrance certainly pushes it further than others. And good luck to him, he’s earned that latitude.
The one thing I really wish the new series would change is their policy of not letting the freelancers create (and thus own) anything- every new monster or major character has to be a BBC staff creation and owned by them. Kinda shady.
I don’t understand. The only stuff I’ve read from Cornell has been good (but that’s limited to the new MI-13 series he’s doing), but every Who paperback I see with his name on it just looks utterly stupid.
Dan–I’m sorry, but if you fail to see the intrinsic awesomeness of Puss-N-Boots with a ray-gun, I don’t think I’m the one who can help you understand.
It’s ‘Doctor Who’. If it doesn’t look at least a bit silly, then it’s doing something very wrong.
“I’m the King Cat!”
“Oh, no you aren’t!”
“Oh, yes I am!”
“Oh, no you aren’t!”
“Oh, yes I…well, anyway.”
Well. . .if it’s the right kind of self-aware utterly stupid, I’ll give it a try. The one 50th paperback with the marriage-reunion of a zillion Who characters I’ve never heard of put me off trying to catch up with non-TV Who continuity.
Yeah, ‘Happy Endings’ is really for the Olympian level ‘Doctor Who’ book fan, preferably after having completed a correspondence course in 90s fan politics on the side.
Dan, if you want to dabble in ‘Who’ books then the original version of ‘Human Nature’ is as good a place to start as any: http://bit.ly/rslj.
So is the reason that Dicks still kinda-sorta part owns the Daleks because he was a freelancer and not officially on-staff at the time?
Terry Nation rather than Terrance Dicks, and yes.
Ditto Robert Holmes who created the Sontarans, Autons etc as a freelancer, but not characters like the Master, who first appeared in a Holmes script but was created on-staff by Dicks and producer Barry Letts.
I feel I should be wearing a paper crown with the word ‘SAD’ written on it at this point.
Or an anorak. :-p
I don’t think being freelance or on staff matters for British copyright law; Alan Moore e.g. owns the rights to the supporting cast he created when working on Captain Britain.
Dan, if you want to give Paul Cornell’s novel writing a try, you might want to check out British Summertime which I quite liked.
This is surely one of the most hilarious and best structured Who-related stories. I love it. And I am hereby putting the dramatisation on my ipod for tomorrow’s pleasure :)