JohannesVIII's Doctor Who liveblogs archive: The Burning

[Original blog post on Tumblr: September 30th, 2016]

Some highlights of the last EDA I’ve read (The Burning).

I took these screens while reading, along with my reactions. As usual, this is full of spoilers.

I expected next to nothing from this book. Like... come on. It follows The Ancestor Cell. Its only job is to reestablish Eight’s character. It’s written by Justin Richards and his previous contributions to the series were Option Lock and Demontage (which I respectively noted 3/10 and 6/10).

What I got instead was the best book since The Taking of Planet Five.

Is it stellar? No. Is it original? Hell no. By all accounts it shouldn’t be good. But it uses its simple plot and basic ideas particularly well, while building a haunting, foreboding atmosphere all throughout the book.

Also, anybody who knows me a little can tell you I’m a sucker for villains with absurd ambitions motivated by very small things, AND for faustian pacts stories, AND for Silent Hill-like imagery. The odds are clearly rigged in favor of this book. 8/10

As you can see we’re off to a good start

Is that the Doctor? Could be him.

Okay I don’t know who you are good sir but you’re creeping me out - which doesn’t automatically mean you can’t be the Doctor, mind you

Ah, so the creepy gentleman is called Nepath. False alarm.

How is this not a giant red flag for Lord Urton, I don’t know

Why does this sound so ominous

Told you, Lord Urton. Told you.

Oh shit Lord Urton has been replaced by something.

To be fair that’s exactly how my appartment would be if I had enough money

Oh. So Nepath’s sister is on display in his collection, then.

E͢v͟eryth͟ing i̧s ́p̵eŗf͖̱̗̞ͅe̖͙̪͍c͓̺͜t̲̹͓̱l̯̭͖̱y͎̯͘ ͓̮̤͕̮n̥o̖͙͟r͔m̨̲̹̝̼͈ͅa̮̺̼̱̼̕l

̗̱

STOP TROLLING US WITH CHARACTERS WHO COULD BE THE DOCTOR BUT AREN’T HIM, THIS IS TURNING INTO A F█CKING WHERE’S WALDO BOOK

...I’m going to be so angry if this isn’t the Doctor either

OH. Oh. Found him. Found him.

I think Eight is breaking new records of amnesia here, most of the time when it happens to him it doesn’t last very long, but apparently he’s already been on Earth for a few years at this point and still can’t remember who he is, his friends, where he comes from and what he did in the last book.

He just vaguely knows he’s a traveller of sorts and remembers a lot of Earth trivia and History but that’s about it.

Hahaha at least Eight hasn’t lost his ability to arrive somewhere without anybody noticing or caring about it

And then they realise there’s one more person in the room and are like “what the hell, where did that guy come from he wasn’t there a second ago”

He’s got a vague idea of who he was before but it manifests in useless ways

Ooooh, he kept the burnt-out TARDIS, though. He must feel it’s important.

Oh no this is cute

Doctor this isn’t the time for alcohol

Eight’s notion of “small talk” can occasionally be terrifying

I mean I’m not frequently calling him a Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant for nothing - you know, you’re talking about books and he thinks of the number of animals you had to kill to make a book back when vélin was the latest thing, you’re talking about babies and he tells you about an alien race where babies grow inside some of their own siblings

These are examples from previous books by the way, I’m not making this up

To be honest this is a very interesting conversation

Despite being a shadow of himself Eight still has a very short attention span

“Eight’s notion of “small talk” being occasionally terrifying“ is also extremely relatable as far as I’m concerned, I don’t think I’ve said that before

DOCTOR DON’T ASK PEOPLE TO LICK RANDOM THINGS LIKE VAGUELY ACIDIC WEIRD WATER

Holy shit what the f█ck

“IT SUGGESTS THAT THERE IS A DEGREE OF URGENCY TO OUR INVESTIGATIONS” YEAH YOU THINK

DOCTOR PLEASE TRY TO PRETEND YOU GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE DEAD GUY FOR LIKE TWO CONSECUTIVE SECONDS

Please take me there

I honestly love how Eight is written in this book. It’s so completely him and yet he seems lost, distant and uncertain most of the time.

I’ve always loved this bit of history right there ; people felt cheated because there was a guy inside the automaton. And yet they didn’t think that was extraordinary in itself. I mean. Could you imagine playing chess inside a very small cramped space and only seeing the game through mirrors and still winning

Haha the Doctor is completely killing Nepath’s groove

Amazing

Eight seems hell bent on winding Nepath up and honestly I love it

I have no words

OOOOOOOOOH SNAP

No argument from me

I’m cackling

I’d say it’s just a shape-memory alloy but this is Doctor Who we’re talking about so it’s going to be something a lot more sinister isn’t it

Eight you don’t have any money

Thank you for your precious contribution Doctor

Okay so the burnt-out TARDIS is really cool and strange and I love it

Imagine yourself in that situation for a moment. You have no idea where you come from, there’s a strange cube in your pocket guiding you in a certain direction and you have no idea why or how it does that, and you’re trying to explain that to other people. You have no means of explaining why that happened, and you sound completely insane, but it did happen, you saw it happening, and yet you can’t explain it.

Holy shit is that Nepath’s sister

Honestly this scene is making my hair stand on end

Nope. No. No no nope. Goodbye.

I just realised what this whole situation was reminding me of

The descriptions in this book are very visual and it really draws you in

Did the TARDIS absorb some part of the flames somehow?

I LOVE THE DESCRIPTIONS IN THIS BOOK seriously the story is clearly not the most original thing ever but the descriptions are so alive

What the what TARDIS what lava small cube big box what

Hmm indeed

Okay so back when I was drawing some crossovers between Doctor Who and comics I liked, I drew Eight in a panel from Philémon, a very surreal French comic from the seventies.

And in that comic, people often react to all the weird things around them by just going “hmm”.

So basically that drawing was even more accurate than I thought.

I honestly like the beginning of this arc a lot

Tell that to Seven and Ten

Again thank you for your precious contribution Doctor

Okay so let me get this straight this whole area is built on top of a mine which is now occupied by something close to living lava which wants to get out at all costs and create some sort of surreal hellish version of Centralia

I love the imagery in this book and I’ll be disappointed if that scenario doesn’t happen in the end

Times like this, I wish my imagination wasn’t as good.

Also the death count in this book is absolutely ruthless.

Are you okay Eight

I mean no you’re not you’re completely lost AND amnesiac AND you’ve just seen someone being engulfed by sentient lava but still, are you okay Eight

I guess you’re not okay

In which things continue to nOT BE OKAY

In which ThinGs coNtinUe to nOT BE OKAy at AlL

̧͕̩̦͉͖̲

The only things missing to make this into a Silent Hill story are 1) some heartbreaking scheme to resurrect someone or some god of sorts 2) a soundtrack composed by Akira Yamaoka

OH SHIT OH DAMN IT REALLY IS LIKE CENTRALIA

YES PLEASE LISTEN TO THE WEIRD GUY FOR ONCE AND EVACUATE THE WHOLE DAMN PLACE

Friendly reminder that Eight finds beauty even in the most sinister things and I love it okay

I was about to say “oooooh burn” but in the context of that story it would look like a terrible pun

Again, thank you for your precious contribution Doctor

Oh, okay, I get his point now.

OH DAMN

WHAT DID I JUST SAY

AH YES “The only things missing to make this into a Silent Hill story are 1) some heartbreaking scheme to resurrect someone or some god of sorts 2) a soundtrack composed by Akira Yamaoka“

WELL WELL WELL

BE RIGHT BACK I NEED TO PUT WOUNDED WARSONG ON A LOOP FOR THE REST OF THIS BOOK

azsdfghjklm

I’m cackling again

STOP MAKING ME LAUGH IN THE MIDDLE OF A VERY TENSE SCENE

To be fair this seems to be the only option left at this point

I love this scene. The book promised us a f█cked up surreal hellish version of Centralia and it certainly delivered.

Wait no what do you expect Doctor don’t antagonize them

I usually love villains who have incredibly ambitious and destructive plans revolving entirely around a very small, very human motivation, and Nepath fits that role perfectly

I also love the fact the author avoided the cliché of the dead wife. A dead sister works just as well and it’s somehow even more tragic in that case, because they were both kids when that happened.