The Glamour Chase - Gary Russell **SPOILERS**

So, last Friday night, being a bit bored and in a book and Doctor Who mood, I finally pulled the Doctor Who novel my brother gave me two Christmas' ago off my bookshelves. I finished it the next morning. In my defence, it's not exactly an epic - 18 chapters and 243 pages with fairly well spaced print.




The Glamour Chase - Gary Russell

The first couple of chapters had me a little confused. They were completely different entities in a way. The prologue was very much a fairytale.

That reminds me, I should mention that it is a Eleventh Doctor story with Amy and Rory, set before The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood (they keep referring to Rio, and Amy and Rory aren't married yet). In fact from the Rio references I can only infer that it is pretty much directly before the Silurian episodes. I'm drifting. My point was going to be that the prologue definitely fits with Steven Moffat's stated use of a fairytale quality for series 5 & 6.

Back to the story...

The prologue is a previous version of the Doctor (although that is revealed later) doing what he does and promising a little girl that he'll come a say hello one day if she sets of this beacon when she's older and exploring the universe. Chapter 1 has an alien ship crashing on Earth near an ancient village. Chapter 2 is a quaint English scene razed to ashes by another alien race. My reaction was 'well that's a bit grim'. At that point I felt a bit jarred. Each section had been so very different and didn't seem to have anything to do with each other. Without spoilering too much, by halfway through the book I think I'd started figuring out where each bit fit.

The main thing that struck me about the rest of the book was Rory. It's a really lovely Rory character piece. Amy wanders about with the cute farm hand, gets captured, screams a bit, gets replaced by an imposter etc. The Doctor waffles, insults Rory, notices something is odd, insults Rory, and eventually figures stuff out. Rory, however is incredibly compassionate and perceptive. The key to the mystery is a man suffering from what Rory very quickly realises is PTSD. Rory's compassion and need to help, need to heal this man is just lovely and warm. And his medical knowledge (even though he's a nurse, not a psychologist) is instrumental in helping ort through Oliver Mark's issues in order to tease out the very vital knowledge he has. And it Rory's care that lets Oliver trust the Doctor, because he trusts Rory.

It;s not just this. It is Rory who discoveres the benelovent alien race and allows the Doctor to figure out who they are. Rory notices the odd comments from Amy that the Doctor also notes when he figures out that it is a fake Amy, though the Doctor does figure it out first. And when the Doctor is trapped in a fantasy world at the end, it is Rory who notices the details and figures out how to get them out.

I found that Rory was pretty much the heart of the story.

I don't think the alien stuff was quite so strong. The Weave was reasonably well explained as a race. A people made of protien fibres that look like wool who can take on any appearance and in fact keep their captives alive and in hibernation because they need a live template. But they also don't use a person without said person's consent. A rather nice race really. The Tahnn are a bit pathetic really. The enemy of The Weave, they get destroyed before they even get close to really being a threat.

And Then there is The Glamour.

An energy source that is used as some form of entertainment by The Weave - I think? It seems to have the ability to recreate the fantasies of the user. Far too powerful to be used by a human mind, so of course when it is released it hones in on a human mind, managing to trap the Doctor in the fake reality. For some reason it is attracted to peopl who desperately want to escape their reality? I didn't really understand that bit.

Although it did provide a hilarious moment at the climax when theDoctor wanted to wake up one of the hibernating humans who in fact was not aware of what was going on in order to scare her into drawing The Glamour back into the ship. In act, she was a proper English lady who was not ruffled at all, much to the Doctor's shock. In fact it was a rather unpleasant character who freaked out and drew it in.

So, yeah, my conclusion - a fun read and wonderful Rory character piece, though some of the Sci Fi elements were a bit dodgy.

'I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away'

Where did my Doctor Who journey start?

Strangely enough, with not liking Doctor Who.

I was brought up on a diet of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Tolkien, Star Wars, Narnia... all feature heavily in my childhood memories. It wasn't all positive. I have two distinct negative impressions of science fiction. My Dad, bless him, wasn't all that good at judging what was age appropriate. Even The Empire Strikes Back gave me nightmares, though I loved it.

One of those negative impressions has led to my life long hatred of Star Trek, so much so that even with a cast I loved, the newest movie failed to get any reaction other than apathy (The Wrath of Kahn - worms in ears and screaming are not a good combination for a first memory).

The other, even earlier and fuzzier impression was of Doctor Who. I have no idea which episode, or even which Doctor it was. But it definitely involved those imperialistic pepperpots. Yes, the Daleks. For my entire life up until my mid 20s, all I knew of Doctor Who was that the Daleks terrified me and to bring the show up in conversation was a good way to make me to flee into the hills.

So growing up, Tom Baker was a grumpy marshwiggle living in a teepee and eating eel stew, certainly not a time travelling alien.

Oh how times change.

The 2005 revival of the show didn't have much of an impact on me. I wanted nothing to do with it. I knew it was happening, and I think I saw tiny bits of the Slitheen 2 parter (no that I knew that was what it was) while babysitting kids who were fans. It wasn't until friends of mine started talking about this show called Torchwood and how great it was that slash was canon on their own journals that I started to fall into the Who!verse.

2009, the year of the specials, I got hold of the first couple of Torchwood episodes and fell in love with a man called Captain Jack Harkness. And no Daleks in sight! Then a friend brought her DVDs around so I could see some of Captain Jack's original Doctor Who episodes. I was hooked by the end of The Doctor Dances (thank you Moffat!).

Still, I never managed to see anything as it aired. I bought every DVD box set I could get my hands on.

I promptly fell in love with David Tennant.

So I eagerly awaited the release of the specials on DVD. In the meantime I rewatched the previous 4 series and the first 2 Torchwood series over and over again. I had to gird my loins for Torchwood: Children of Earth, knowing my favourite character would be lost. But I watched it (once - I think I've only seen the first episode twice).

I was in a frenzy of anticipation tinged with worry over The Eleventh Hour. It arrived in due course... and left me gobsmacked.

Steven Moffat brought me the sheer joy of watching this amazing show week by week. And Matt Smith...

I will always love Ten. I have a crush on David Tennant a mile high and I adore much of his other work. No one else would convince me to see a horror movie in the cinema, yet I toddled off to Fright Night merely for Tennant (and loved it btw). However...

Eleven is truly MY Doctor.

Looking back, he had me at "Early days. Steering's a bit off."

Steven Moffat's brilliant writing and Matt Smith's fantastic portrayal have given me the childish joy to outweigh the long standing Dalek fear of my childhood.

So, my name is Elanor and I am an unashamed Doctor Who geek.

GERONIMO!