12 Tides of Time # 15

IMAGI~E, FOR a moment, a differ-ent ulllverse ...."'A corridor stretches out ahead

of me. dark and gloomy to my sight,gleaming metal and rusted architec-ture. There is dirt beneath the cleansurfaces. I do not understand it here,perhaps there is some different wayof doing things, some history thatforces this travesty (in my mind) ontheir people. When in Rome ... but Ican't accept that. Even here, they arehuman. not cattle or sheep, to followthe same patterns, have the sameideas. Even worker bees can fly toany colour flower without beingstung to death. This is worse thanreal death, for it is death of theimagination.'

"The dark figure pauses in hisconsiderations. rests a thoughtfulfinger on the side of his chin, strokesthe measure of rebellion, the music-maker. in his pocket. He watches thescene ahead, staying to the shadowsthat always exist, even in a worldwhere they force light."

Consider, for a moment, the plotof your everyday or garden cyber-punk/dark. flash s.f. novel. With adash of black humour. William Gib-son. for example, but we wantsomething less fake-tech orientedand a little more human. Bruce Stirl-ing, maybe. Barry Longyear. If thesenames ring no bells, think ofGraeme Curry, a little known namebut one still registered in the annalsof Doctor Who. But more of himlater.

The plot might go as follows.Man arrives in a different. high-techculture. People look different, theythink (or they are forced to think)different thoughts. He is different, anoutsider. A stranger in a strangeland. He questions the validity oftheir existence, condemns it, and

forms a subversive company -possibly beginning only with himself- to combat it at the most funda-mental level - belief. We are intro-duced to what we consider, as doeshe, the horrors of their culture. Thetruth of culture shock is broughthome to us by, perhaps, a robot orthe perennially popular mad scien-tist/politician, maybe even a com-bination of any, or all, of these.Something dear and familiar to us ismade poisonous in their world-view.Maybe there is some sort of satire oncontemporary politics or politicians.Horror strikes and moral outrageoccur to us: even though we barelyrecognise their society. we presumeto judge it. We are meantto judge it.With the help of other strange out-siders, the man fights at all levelsand eventually manages, at leasttemporarily, to suppress what heconsiders a despicable individual orpractice and bring about the con-sciousness of the problem within so-ciety itself.

Corruption bites deep at theheart of this sort of novel. Perhapsnot fitting for a children's pro-gramme, less for The science fictionchildren's programme. Doctor Who.

Now, let us look at Graeme Cur-ry's creation, The Happiness Patrol.This could have been. I believe, oneof the most striking moments ofcontemporary science fiction in theprogramme's history. and anticipat-ing the main rush of interest inhuman-oriented (as opposed to ma-chine-obsessed) cyberpunk. On apar, perhaps, with something likeLogopolis [cough - Ed] or the under-rated Warriors' Gate. Before youask, no, I didn't think that the epi-sodes as they stood were particularlyworthy of praise. but I saw their po-tential greatness and the powerful

storytelling of the man behind them:Graeme Curry. Remember his name.

You know, they considered mak-ing it in black and white, even dis-cussed it in a magazine interview. Itwould have worked far better inmonochrome. The dark grey TAR-DIS could have been sprayed white.The distinction between the black,male Earl, and the white, female Pa-trol would have been more notable.Fill would not have been quite soridiculous [well, I liked bim - Ed)and the true horror of this situationwould have been brought home tous more clearly. A matter of distin-guishing between the clear-cut blackand white rather than the various,laughable, vibrant and unreal shadesof luminous pink. The Kandy Manshould have followed the authorsdirections and been an R & D mad-man in a white coat rather than aBertie Basset - although the satiricattractions of having him as theR & D madman with a Bertie headare unmistakable.

It would have worked. it couldhave worked - to a certain extent itstruggled through some drawbacks.used McCoy's flamboyant. music-hall style to the best advantage andmade it work. But is should haveworked so much more memorably- for the best reasons - than it did.The novelisation is superb sciencefiction. It should. I insist, have oper-ated in conscious knowledge of itsscience fiction leanings, and then, asthe Doctor tells Earl in the book:

"Come on, the dream's over.Back to the nightmare."

In a different universe, we wouldhave followed.

Corlnne Berg