Short Trips Perfect Timing

BBC Books Perfect Timing 2 A Collection of Short Stories

Editors	Helen Fayle and Julian Eales
Published	1999

Synopsis: A collection of stories and poetry featuring the Doctor in all eight of his incarnations....

• A Review by Sean Gaffney
• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Sean Gaffney 15/2/00

So, you've done your bit, you've paid your cash for a good cause, and in return you get a book. Sounds typically charitable. But is the book a quick, thrown-together hack job, or is it a wondrous cavalcade of enchantment to delight any reader and make the heart glad?

The latter, thank heaven. Perfect Timing 2 is not only a great collection, it's HUGE. 446 pages, small type, Trade PB size... there's a lot of stuff here. This is no 10-story Decalog. Only an insane reviewer would even think of reviewing every story in the book.

Sanity has never bothered me. OK, I'm not going in depth on EVERYTHING. Of the short stuff, Colin's intro was nice and to the point, Dez's intro brought back... um... memories I don't actually have, but that's OK. I was 6, and in the wrong country. ^^;;; Peter's short shorts are cute, especially the first one. Lawrence's textbook intros are... um... well, I admit they kinda went ZOOM for me. But they sound cool. The artists are all excellent, with Simon Fraser's 'Fangrrls' being my fave. And Gary Gillatt's outro gave a nice sense of closure.

As for the rest... SPOILERS!!!

Darkness Before Me: I didn't realize it at the time, but one of the major pluses of this collection is the way the stories are arranged. The editors have placed them in such a way that themes only strike you after you've finished the book. This connects with Toy Story in many ways, not least of which is the use of the TARDIS as leading lady. In fact, I wonder if the authors were asked to write TARDIS stories for this collection? She's certainly in a ton of them. As for the fic itself, it's quite dark, and well- written, dealing with past and future continuityt without getting confusing about it.

Identity Crisis: This was chilling, and depressing, and eerie, and creepy, and so reminiscent of our deepest fears of the Cybermen that I kept looking around while reading it.

Genesis of the Dustbins: Boy, was this a case of contrast and compare! Charles Daniels combines his two favorite fetishes, Zoe and cleanliness, in this bizarro twist on Genesis of the Daleks. It's not quite his best stuff (I was expecting more sex, for some odd reason), but still funny.

A Handful of Silver: I never did get around to reading The Dark Path, but I knew vaguely who Ailla was. After reading this, I may go back and look for it. Nice examination of how the Third Doctor feels abuot exile and frustration, and a good characterization of Jo. The ending might have been a tad too sudden, but it was meant to be open. The best part of the fic was how characters reacted to the damaged TARDIS. Again, we're starting to sense a theme...

Invasion of the Dinosaurs by Sarah Jane Smith: Examining that story by means of newspaper articles. The first of several stories that I thought were a tad too heavy-handed in their message.

Knitworld: This is so totally loopy that I can't even begin to describe it. High parody, filled with wit, and the opening paragraph made me spill my tea I was laughing so hard. Why can't we see more adventures with Mrs. Moggins? Fabulous.

Goodbye Rembrandt: It took me a while to get into this, mostly as it's easily the most traditional Who story in the whole book. But after a while, it got to be quite fun, with the movie references coming thick and fast. And it brought back memories of Castle of Fu Manchu, memories which I had hoped I had sealed away forever. x_x The one major flaw is that heavy-handedness again, where the Doctor and Romana get possessed by David Howe for a few lines to discuss the theatre. Still, a very nice runaround.

The Giving Invasion - Short and cute. It's refreshing to get a first-person view from a somewhat unlikeable protagonist. Not much else to say here, but I thought it was fun.

A Cup of Coffee - Entirely too heavy-handed, and Turlough was a bit off, in my opinion. Well-written, but not my cup of tea (or coffee).

Kyreth - Hoo boy. This one took me 4 days to finish, and it's only 20 pages long. Cliched plot, some painful prose passages, continuity that's recursive and confusing (I enjoy bending continuity when it's obvious that's what's intended, but having Davison post-Resurrection visit post-Invasion of Time Gallifrey didn't really seem necessary at all, except in a small reference to Borusa's darkness)... just a lot of bad things piled on one another. The final scenes in the matrix with the Doctor accepting various parts of him made me actively wince and turn away. I did like the character of Evidon, but that's about it. Avoid.

The Effect of Dimensional Transcendence on Mozzarella Cheese - Ah, another break your neck transition. At times reading this I thought Helen and Julian were a tad sadistic. "Let's give them THIS after Kyreth! Ohohohohohoho!" Essentially Diane has pizza with the Doctor. And there's a lovely recipe following the story. It's odd, but strangely pleasant.

Nameless - This was a fascinating story. Describing how it's written would be a spoiler... At times both uplifting and tragic. Really nice.

Painting History - Three were a few stories where at times I felt that I was reading the third in the series and had missed some background. This was one of them. But once I let go of trying to figure things out, it was a good yarn. It also has one big plus, in that Damon has written a BEAUTIFUL portrayal of Colin's Doctor - I'm love to hear this adapted for a PT audio drama (oooh, what a lovely thought...).

Black Snow - An odd duck, this one, reminding me a lot of Tucker and Perry's 7th Doc and Ace more than the NA team. Didn't really leave much of an impression on me, but I can't think of anything wrong with it.

Safe in the Knowledge - Heavy Handed 3: Citizens on Patrol. See my remarks on A Cup of Coffee above.

Adjudicator's Holiday - A nice, traditional NA adventure, with Chris chasing down baddies. I also enjoyed the look at the alien culture and mores. Nice.

Past Time Catching - WARNING! This is a DAVE STONE story! With all that that entails! In other words, it's hilarious, glib, metatextual, self-referencing, and as fun as a pair of self-removing trousers. When I finished PT2, this was one of the two I immediately went back and reread. Smashing.

Pulp Cutaway - Ah, I was wondering when we'd get a crossover. This appears to take place in the famed Season 27 continuity, and also directly leads up to events in the movie Pulp Fiction. It's breezy and actionish, but works better IMO when it's being Doctor Who than when David tries to catch the patter of PF dialogue.

Isolation - This was a tad wacked, but wacked in a serious way rather than, say, Dave Stone wacked. A nice look into what makes Cwej tick, with all his foibles and faults. It reminds you how far he'd come from the perky innocent of Original Sin, and also comments (in a somewhat negative way) on the Benny Adventures. I still don't think I picked up on everything in this, I'll need to reread at some point.

Quicksilver Bees - See, THIS is how you do a moral message without screaming "HEY! THIS IS A MESSAGE FIC!". Also very reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath gone modern. Not sure exactly what made this story so good, but I liked it a lot.

First Person - Woo hoo! A wonderful analysis of how the Seventh and Eighth Doctor solved problems, and shows the Seventh Doctor's approach being wrong without making him seem foolish. Moreover, this story just sings with so much life and joie de vivre it had me grinning foolishly at the end. In the top 5.

Fishy Business - This is the story that I really felt like a sequel to something I'd never read. I actually emailed adwc to see if this was a direct sequel to someting in PT1 (which I haven't read). Apparently not. However, it does feature Bernice traveling with the 8th Doctor, for some 10 years now, and doing... other things with him too. The story itself is a nice if weird examination of alternate timelines and rewriting pasts, a la Interference. However, more to the point, I desperately want more 8th Doc/Benny stories from Lance. Please!

Empty Nest - A nice, bittersweet little tale dealing with first the Doctor, then Braxiatel realizing that there are some battles they'll have to let their favorite girl fight for herself. A nice prelude to Twilight, which is also on my TO READ: list.

Cause and Effect - Another examination of the 8th Doctor in a 7th Doctor situation. Very understated, and all the better for it.

The Hand of the Goddess - A standard Doctor Who runaround, with the added factor of Sam's female lover, Maguire, added to the mix. The two bounce off each other in a very "opposites" way, leading to both sparks and fights. There's also a beautifully written scene where the Doctor and Maguire talk about guns. I'd have liked to see more from Sam's POV, but otherwise excellent.

Unseen Rooms - Another TARDIS examination, as to how she views her companions. Almost drabbleish, but still very good.

This Hollywood Life - Not as compelling as I would have liked it to be, with the villain's denoument being particularly... not good. But this is balanced by the movie scenes, and the Doctor's reaction to them, both of which are so wonderful they make this worth reading anyway.

Fangrrl Life - Up until this point, there were several excellent stories, and one or two that made me laugh out loud, but none that reached up, grabbed my lapel and said "I am the best story in this collection!" Until this one, that is. Fangrrl Life is, easily, THE best story in this collection. It's so amazing I don't even know where to begin. The idea is wonderful, the ambiguity of the Doctor's motives (I really disliked him for much of the story) is compelling, the heroines are incredibly sympathetic, and the ending is gut- wrenching, but still optimistic. Plus it's filled with so much metatext you'll make a note to ask your writer to have you thank the author in an email later. There's also a subplot with Leah that makes her seem... I can't get into the myriad reasons this needs to be read. You just should. Best short story of the collection, and of the year.

Mysterious Ways - Bizarre. This is probably the most ambitious of the stories, creating an entire universe all its own (and only the first of two to really do this). It all holds together too, with the Doctor fitting right in with the eccentricities of the Malleus. Addison in particular is excellent. And did I mention the prose? Deep, very deep. Great story.

Memories to Forget - An interesting little story, showing the Doctor and his companion having an interesting disagreement about morality... even more interesting when you discover her past. On the other hand, the resolution is incredibly contrived. "A lucky guess." Gah. Still, I did enjoy reading about Amaryllis.

Touching Indigo - I had actually read this a couple of years earlier. However, as I adore Rebecca's fiction, I didn't mind reading it again. It's still wonderful, and you should try to seek out the sequels to it on her page (if they're still there...)

Grey - Did I say Mysterious Ways was bizarre? Forget it, THIS is bizarre. Featuring two incarnations of a woman who seems to be the Doctor, or at least to have taken up the Doctor's mantle, another paranormal investigations team, and several really weird dream sequences, this was a bit too choppy to really intrigue me. However, the ideas are great.

Apocalypse Angel - This really reads like an excerpt rather than a story, but that doesn't make it any less visceral. It's the end of the universe, and Romana and the Master battle to try to discover God before her son finds out about it. I think. Reality gets manipulated so much during this story it's tough to tell where the past is. Faction Paradox writ large (no, they aren't in it). Very... modern, but I seemed to enjoy it. No idea why. ^^;;;

The Next Universe But One - Metatext? You're soaking in it! A combination of the TV and novel universes of The Daleks/Mutants/Serial B, Dave weaves a very skillful tapestry showing how one decision made early in Ian's life can influence so many things yet still bring him to the same point. Very thoughtful.

A Tapestry of Shadows - Another crossover of a sort, but this one works a little better, mostly as the prose format allows the author to avoid copying Zelazny's speech patterns. Liz Shaw goes chasing after her boyfriend and ends up helping Flora from the Amber books with a brother of hers. Thinking man's action adventure, switching back and forth between Ffyona (Fiona) and Liz, and the resolution is quite clever.

A Day in the Death of the Land of Fiction - An illustrated, BIZARRE story, which seems to examine the role of the hero, villain, and sidekick in Doctor Who through abstract art and poetry. Or something. Um.

It's Raining Again - Examining the 5th Doctor's era through the lens of a Grimm Fairy Tale gone wrong. In the end, though, I wasn't as enraptured by it as I'd like to have been.

Unlimited - Another one which I liked a whole lot without really knowing why. The talk between the Doctor, the Master, and Sarah was probably my favorite, with the Doctor really coming across as a thug. It's also got a wonderful scene with Faction Paradox losing, badly. Nicely done.

Aria for the Broken Hearted - Another short drabbleish fic, this was very sweet and touching.

From the Cutting Room Floor, Take 2: Craig Hinton's "The Crystal Bucephalus" - Really just Chapter 4 from the unpublished NA version of what eventually became the MA. Bernice is quite fun to read here - I'd forgotten how snappish and untrustworthy the TARDIS crew was back then. She also gets some lovely innuendo. Fun stuff, and I'm hoping Craig can scan the rest in soon so I can read it.

Here Be Dragons - Another TARDIS-oriented story, but also an examination of Merlin's life as story. It's quite good, and I love the way the children debate fascinatedly about it - just as we do about the Doctor's life.

Toy Story - Oooh, nice! An intriguing look at the future War, from the point of view of two very biased participants. This reads even better knowing more about the current EDA arc, but works well on its own too. You've gotta admire the TARDIS for sticking by her team like this. Also has more hints about Compassion, for those who enjoy that sort of thing...

Overall - Yes, like any collection, there are some stories in it that don't work. But it's a HUGE collection, and there are far more fun, intriguing, well written stories, and there are a few that simply DEMAND to be read by any discerning Who fan. Buy this collection, you simply will not regret it.

10/10.

A Review by Finn Clark 5/3/00

Okay, here's my review. I realise that it's terribly bad form to criticise a short story collection in which one's own offering appears, but what the hell. I'm shameless. :-)

Overall, it's just such FUN! A great gianormous brieze block o' words with hardly a clunker among them. Perhaps there's a higher percentage of stories that are only "okay to good" than in the first Perfect Timing collection, but that was probably inevitable given the sheer size of the thing. It's sodding enormous! Let's face it, at this length you could hate half the stories in here and still come out with plenty for your money. I don't think you'll ever see another collection quite like this one.

And don't get me wrong; almost all of the stories here are good. Some are wonderful, and a handful are just bloody stand-and-stare awesome.

The art makes a hell of a difference too. The cover is beautiful and the internal illustrations brighten things up no end. You gotta love these. I swear, anyone who doesn't laugh out loud at least once at the pictures in here must have a sense of humour bypass. I'm seriously impressed.

Okay, that's the preamble done. I'll talk a bit about all but one of the stories (guess which!), then wrap things up at the end with a more general overview. Here goes!

FOREWORDS & AFTERWORDS - Very nice.

A COUPLE OF DRABBLES (Peter Anghelides) - Good for a laugh, which is all one can reasonably expect at that length.

DARKNESS BEFORE ME (Jim Campbell) - I found this quite hard to get through. A bit of an oddity, more of a fractured stream of consciousness than a story. However this is an anthology with a loose linking theme, starting in this first tale and running all the way through to the very last one - it's about the TARDIS. I personally cherry-picked my way through the stories, but someone going through from start to finish might get an extra little something out of this.

IDENTITY CRISIS (Nathan Skreslet) - Awesome! Stonking cyberstuff; grim, nasty and brutal. Full of atmosphere and gives the metal bastards back an edge they haven't had for far, far too long.

GENESIS OF THE DUSTBINS (Charles Daniels) - I laughed my tits off at Nathan Skreslet's picture of Lavros. The actual text is a rather surprising combination of straight short story and the more bizarre perversion we've become accustomed to from the good Mr Daniels, but it's still a full-bloodedly enjoyable piece of work. Bounces along vigorously in its own peculiar world o' fun. Groovamatic!

A HANDFUL OF SILVER (Mags L. Halliday) - A follow-up to The Dark Path. A perfectly well-constructed story, passing the time pleasantly enough without ever grabbing me by the lapels and making me love it.

INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS BY SARAH-JANE SMITH (Mike Sivier) - Different! I don't like the idea that Mike Yates was named and shamed in the press, but on the other hand it's nice to see Invasion of the Dinosaurs being given its proper weight in the Whoniverse. It's the oft-forgotten second London evacuation, after all. I think this short... um, clipping anthology (?) suffers from the fact that we know what's going to happen - if I hadn't known the televised story, I suspect this would have grabbed my attention a great deal more. Still an interesting piece of work, though.

KNITWORLD (Stephen Marley) - Oh my God. I don't think I've read a sillier story in my entire life. The fourth Doctor feels way off, but I could forgive almost anything for the wonderful Mrs Moggins. Greatest pseudo-companion in the entire multiverse. A bescroodling, grindlesome diamond to be taken about as seriously as a sockful of elephants.

GOODBYE REMBRANDT (David J. Howe) - Wow! Loooooooooong, but apart from maybe a little slack in the Fu Manchu section it supports its length amazingly well. I loved it more at the beginning with creepy horror, but hey. Particularly impressive in that few authors would have been able to resist burying a tale with this subject matter beneath a wearyingly self-referential pile of metatextual commentary (or other such bollocks). Dave Howe manfully resists and instead gives us a lovely piece of storytelling.

I have one gripe: in my opinion you can't have the Doctor doing something grossly unDoctorish without great care. Even if it's being done deliberately, it knocks the reader out of the story. I had a problem with this.

THE GIVING INVASION (Paul Leonard) - The best short story I've read from Paul Leonard, pissing all over his longer offerings for the BBC. Maybe he's better when not being paid by the word? Venomously bright and bouncy, portraying the world of charity workers with such libellous glee that I wonder if Paul Leonard himself once held precisely that job. It needs a reread to work out precisely what was going on with the otherworldly stuff, but still lots of fun.

A CUP OF COFFEE (Daniel Ben-Zvi) - A quiet, pretty little piece, perfect for the fifth Doctor. I felt mentioning funerals hammered things home too hard; the story would have been stronger had everything been kept on a domestic level. But it's good, and what it's saying is important.

KYRETH (Kimberley Yale and John Ostrander) - I'm a massive John Ostrander fan. For me, no praise is too high for his comic books - Suicide Squad, Hawkworld, the Spectre... he's a versatile and stunningly talented writer who can bring subtlety and intelligence to the telling of a rattling good story. The word I'm looking for is "class". Quite simply, the man's a star. When I heard that he'd agreed to come on board with a story for Perfect Timing 2, I could hardly believe it.

Oh, and he also wrote a nearly-produced American Doctor Who stage play in the Eighties, called the Inheritors of Time. So what went wrong here?

Underneath I think there's a far better story struggling to get out, possibly in another medium. Its continuity is distracting. The Doctor gets little to do and jumps to silly conclusions. It's set on Gallifrey, that oh-so-dreary setting that more properly should be known as the "Kiss of Death". And yet, and yet...

Borusa is a dude. I don't know if the author realised this, but our favourite ex-Chancellor is the real hero of this story instead of the Doctor. The events here are actually quite disquieting, for the first time making me actually *care* about Borusa. For once we have a bit of fanboy retconning that adds to the uberstory, turning the villain of The Five Doctors from a cardboard cut-out into a man of tragedy. Terrance Dicks had the same instincts, I think, feeling that something was wrong with Borusa's personal story arc on TV... but unfortunately Uncle Terry lacked Ostrander's almost surgical precision in laying a finger on the precise point in need of amendment. Until now, Borusa's post-5Docs fate in the NAs had only pissed me off. After reading this, it feels right.

However, as I said, I'm not sure Ostrander really understood his own story - either that or he just didn't have time to do it properly. His credited co-writer, Kimberley Yale, is in fact his late wife and I think this story may have been expanded from an idea of hers. For an example of something that could have been fixed so easily and to such effect, I give you the gnarled continuity.

You see, this appears to be an out-of-order Davison Gallifrey story. Borusa's presence obviously means that the events of The Five Doctors haven't happened yet on Gallifrey, but the Doctor appears to remember Tegan's departure in Resurrection of the Daleks. On first reading there appear to be further continuity complications, though one later discovers that these are deliberate. But what about the out-of-sequence Doctor?

Maybe Ostrander goofed? Apart from that one mention of Resurrection of the Daleks, there's nothing to suggest that this story needn't be set in its natural home of somewhere in Season Twenty. It would be quite easy to rationalise away (strange things happen to the Doctor's memories in this story) and it would incidentally explain why the Doctor doesn't bat an eyelid to see Borusa on Gallifrey and treats him consistently as his very best friend. I rather suspect this is the "real" explanation.

However if we take the Resurrection reference at face value, this adds a whole new twist to the Borusa stuff which I've argued is the real heart of this story. Think about it. The Doctor already knows what will happen to his former mentor. Anyone who's rewatched the Black Guardian trilogy knows that the fifth Doctor was almost scarily good at knowing more than he let on. Obviously he can't tell Borusa a thing about it, so treats him exactly as he's expected to... but oh God, the irony. The last scene! It almost hurts.

As I said, I don't think this was Ostrander's intention. The last scene is hard to read with this interpretation, but I suspect Davison could have pulled it off. The clowning would be deliberate, to conceal the dark knowledge. Why else do you think he's so quick to get out the door? For the fifth Doctor, that last goodbye would hurt.

I've said so much about this story because so much of its potential lies buried. I'd guess the word count blew up on John Ostrander, taking him by surprise and turning it into a rush job. It's not really a bad story. But by God, I wish I could have edited this one...

THE EFFECT OF DIMENSIONAL TRANSCENDENCE ON MOZZARELLA CHEESE (Diane Duane) - AHAHAHAHA! It's just so not a story, but instead a self-indulgent delightful portrait of the fifth Doctor making pizza in the kitchen. Perfect! Full of magic and strangeness and... ooooo. Love it!

NAMELESS (David Bickley) - Terrific! It's lovely to see an entire story revolving around something like this; it's just so RIGHT for the Doctor. Here you'll see wit, compassion and even a moving moment at the end. A super bit of work. Splendid.

PAINTING HISTORY (Damon Cavalchini) - Personally I think the sixth Doctor works best on the page. Get him right and you're always on to a winner. The story itself is a fairly unremarkable whodunnit with a confusing throwaway twist at the end, but the character of the Doctor is what makes this work.

BLACK SNOW (David Bishop) - Contains the odd little clumsiness; for instance it feels wrong for the Brigadier to say "bugger". It's an okay story, but a bit dull. If David Bishop hadn't been a published author, I wonder if this would have got in. One of the weaker offerings, I'm afraid.

SAFE IN THE KNOWLEDGE (Mark Phippen) - Almost identical to A Cup of Coffee, unfortunately. They're both good reads, but...

ADJUDICATOR'S HOLIDAY (Kathryn Sullivan) - I loved this! These crab dudes are definitely one of my favourite alien races in Doctor Who. The story itself is simple, almost cosily predictable, but the local detail is delightful. A gem.

PAST TIME CATCHING (Dave Stone) - One of the best things Dave Stone has done in my opinion, and I'm a Stone fan. Bursting with wit and laugh-out-loud attitude 'n outrageousness. This is one of the very few brilliant Doctor Who short stories that sing in the memory and make you want to hunt down the author and hug him. The Decalogs managed... oh, maybe two or three. The BBC hasn't managed any at all yet. This is just so full o' life. I couldn't stop laughing. And the epilogue... oh, man...

PULP CUTAWAY (David A. McIntee) - Excellent! Big fun! Promised for PT1 but delayed by work commitments, at last delivered. Groovster. Jules and Vincent are on the nail, with laugh-out-loud dialogue.

ISOLATION (Gareth Humphreys) - The Benny books are returning, but apparently without Chris Cwej. Thus this story may well end up being the Closure of the Story o' Cwej, much as Schrodinger's Botanist in PT1 will probably become the last word on Grant Markham. It's impressively ambitious, managing to cover his entire life (and I mean that more literally than you think). The story's an excuse for the portrait of the man.

I wasn't entirely happy with Chris's apparent homophobia, but at least we get a reason for it. It's slightly dreamy, almost hallucinogenic, and keeps you reading even when you can't quite work out why. Sexual politics aside, this is a worthy coda to Chris Cwej's life and adventures. You may not be able to work out exactly what's happening herein, but it feels right.

QUICKSILVER BEES (Martin Day) - Sinister and morally ambiguous, though violently hostile to genetically modified crops and other such scientific developments. Unfettered capitalism doesn't get a good press either. The more I think about it, the more I find myself wanting to start arguing with the author... but it's still a fine story.

FIRST PERSON (Philip Purser-Hallard) - Loved it! It's a hoary old cliche (both in Doctor Who and SF in general) for our touchy-feeling hero to bring meaning to the lives of emotionless homogenised drone creatures, but it's rare to see it done so intelligently. The hack version is for the Doctor to achieve a magical transformation by staring meaningfully into the camera and burbling about sunsets. Dear oh dear... In contrast, what we have here is thoughtful and witty. Great stuff.

FISHY BUSINESS (Lance Parkin) - Loved it. Very funny, bursting with good humour. My only niggle - and it's a tiny one - is that it feels more like an opening chapter than a self-contained tale.

EMPTY NEST (Jon de Burgh Miller) - As assured as we all expected, like a prologue to Where Angels Fear, the Gods storyline and indeed the entire Benny book line from the man who co-wrote its conclusion. I don't know how much sense this would make to someone who hasn't read the books, but it passes smoothly.

CAUSE & EFFECT (Rebecca Dowgiert) - A Brief Encounter, but that doesn't mean it's not lots of fun too.

THE HAND OF THE GODDESS (Susannah Tiller) - Another really long one, but it reads so easily that it feels like one of the shorter ones. I really hated the Gods of Pain, Death, Time, etc. in the NAs, but I'll reluctantly concede that for the duration of this story at least, they work. There are some intriguing ideas in here, the kind that make perfect sense though you wouldn't want to see them canonised as the One True Explanation. Sam's still annoying, but I really liked this.

UNSEEN ROOMS (Imran Inayat) - Possibly the only one-page story I've ever seen that really works. This very collection has some great two-pagers, but even those are completely different beasts to the blink-and-you'll-miss-it short-short. Not a story, but an idea... but man, what an idea.

THIS HOLLYWOOD LIFE (Jonathan Dennis) - A bit of a missed opportunity, I'm afraid. Oh, don't get me wrong. It's smoothly written, ingenious and even manages to raise a giggle or two in the reader. It's a good story. However I think a great deal more could have been done with the central concept, which is an absolute killer and I take my hat off to Jonathan Dennis for thinking of it in the first place. Joel Schumacher's Doctor Who! Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Doctor! All tied in with the TVM... the satire in this could have scorched the page. You could have heard the fanboys screaming from here to California. But as it is, it comes over as a nice little tale with a faint touch of satire here and there. It's okay, but I'd have preferred to see the author set his sights higher.

FANGRRL LIFE (Philip Pascoe) - Wild stuff, loosely akin (I won't say linked) to recent developments in the 8DAs in its use of the TARDIS. Clever and even poignant. For me, one of the most memorable stories in the collection.

MYSTERIOUS WAYS (Julian Eales) - The first of two stories starring Rupert Booth's Doctor from the Timebase videos, this is a rich and atmospheric world with touches of Night of the Living Dead, Kim Newman's Anno Dracula and many other supernatural sources. It's a good story and a great setting, but the Doctor felt a bit shoehorned in. I hated the parallel universe introduction (which always seems to me a code for: "this is just one of an infinity of alternatives, so it's completely inconsequential") but it's probably needed to prepare the reader for what follows. Not really Who, for me, but a worthwhile read.

But what's the deal with the ending? It took me completely by surprise when I turned the last page to find the next story! You can't just stop a story like that, Julian!

MEMORIES TO FORGET (Barry Williams) - The second Rupert Booth story, this time very firmly rooted in the sub-universe of the Timebase videos. It stars Amaryllis, the emotional vampire companion, and relies so heavily on the events of the aforementioned videos that I wonder how much of it will work for the casual reader. It's not a brilliant story, but a solid and acceptable one.

TOUCHING INDIGO (Rebecca J. Anderson) - Cutely bizarro, with an angle on reality that's far from the norm. Something like this stands or falls by the portrayal of the central character. Rebecca J. Anderson gave herself a mountain to climb here, but I think she pulls it off. It's certainly different, anyway. I liked it!

GREY (Jon Anderson) - A "V for Vendetta"-style passing on of the Doctor's baton after he's gone. If nothing else, it's an intriguing concept that exercises the mind infinitely more than the easy route of "oh, he's regenerated into a woman". I understood more of this than I did of the same author's Dark Paragon in PT1, but that wouldn't have been difficult. I couldn't follow the plot and I didn't understand what was going on with the characters' backstories, but the moments of emotion, resonance and true feeling made this a worthwhile read for me.

APOCALYPSE ANGEL (Finn Clark) - No comment. :-)

THE NEXT UNIVERSE BUT ONE (Dave Owen) - A cute idea let down by a descent into disappointing technobabble at the end. I'd hoped for a more interesting explanation, but the preceding stuff is fun.

A TAPESTRY OF SHADOWS (Alan Taylor) - Clever and intriguing, though I'd have enjoyed it more with a bit more resolution (i.e. any at all). Despite this fairly large nit, however, it sustains its considerable length with panache and genuine unpredictability.

A DAY IN THE DEATH OF THE LAND OF FICTION (Jim Mortimore and friends) - Wow. Suffice to say that this is weird even for Mortimore. I think I liked it...

IT'S RAINING AGAIN (Stewart Sheargold and Paul Magrs) - Huh?

UNLIMITED (Ian McIntire) - I thought this was really funny! Full of ideas; an essay and several stories all rolled into one delightfully rich package. It could have been a mess, but it's remarkably assured and confident in the execution. Didn't Ian McIntire also write something rather good for PT1? (Goes off to check.) Yes: Schrodinger's Botanist. I think I like this guy's work.

ARIA FOR THE BROKEN-HEARTED (Richard Prekodrovac) - Hmmm. It's hard to object to something that short, but I suspect I'd have loved this snippet if I'd been softened up first with a little more context.

FROM THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR TAKE 2 - THE CRYSTAL BUCEPHALUS (Craig Hinton) - Good for a laugh, I suppose. It's literary archeology rather than actual literature, but you can rely on Craig Hinton at the very least to be light and fluffy.

HERE BE DRAGONS (Helen Fayle) - I really like what Helen's doing here, putting Doctor Who in another fantasy context and picking up on the backstory of Battlefield to create something richer. Or should that be forestory?

TOY STORY (Lawrence Miles) - Firmly in 8DA continuity, to the point where one can guess which books it fits between. More important for its ideas than interesting for its story, but still purdy darn good.

OVERVIEW

So overall, a hit. My congratulations to the editors and their pixies! Seriously, anyone who's bought PT1 should certainly go out and buy PT2... and so should everyone else! I know that the distribution was a problem last time, but that was last time. Trust me; you're getting a good package for your money!

In the stories, I found past Doctors more interesting than the undefined future ones or - dare I say it - McGann. It's just a matter of having a compelling character at your story's core. My favourite stories tended to be in the first half of the book, in the Past and Present sections as opposed to the Future and Oblique ones, though I hasten to add that the quality of the actual writing is equally impressive all the way through. Ironically the stories which disappointed me most came from professionals, though I can see how that could be. It must be hard to reject a piece for which you've pleaded and badgered a big name writer. You won't win many friends if you make a habit of doing that.

And if the above hasn't convinced you, let me finish by noting that the proceeds from the sales of Perfect Timing 2 go to a charity that's trying to stop babies from dying.

http://sauna.net/perfecttiming/