Dene October's Blog

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It’s really satisfying when a review of your book ticks all your own boxes. This one from Minjie Su, writing in the open access journal Medievally Speaking, does just this thing. Especially pleasing is the way it focuses on Marco’s travels as teaching us about the xenophobia and rise of white supremacy during our own times.

The critical reviews for my Marco Polo book have been great (so far) but I am particularly pleased with the positive review in Sci Fi Bulletin today. It doesn't hurt that the reviewer, Brigid Cherry, is a respected writer on Doctor Who.

"the strength of it lies is in the extremely detailed unpacking of the extant material, including the soundtrack and especially the sound effects, in creating the sense of travelling across unknown, dangerous, and sometimes frightening landscapes, and the camera movements, editing, and mise-en-scene in creating a sense of space, period, and location [...] The kind of fan who loves collecting detailed information on every aspect of production will find much of interest here."

So yes, I am well chuffed.

Here's a try-before-you-buy brief sample of Black Archive Marco Polo

The sample is from chapter seven, which is all about transformation. I'm going to try and find some time to pop by here and explain the full context of all seven chapters. In the book, I tag along with Marco and the time travellers over the seven episodes of the lost serial, in other words, I join them on their journey across Cathay. But while I am there, I also select and highlight specific themes in each chapter. In this chapter I am interested in Marco's transformation, and the time travellers, and also the viewer's including - in this sample - the fans.

Since today is all about travel, I thought I would flash an excerpt from Black Archive Marco Polo – the book celebrates popular culture as a mechanism for imaginative travel, from Marco’s oral recollections, through to the medieval itinerarium, stylised merchant manual, literature and television story.

“The travel story is barely developed when Marco and Rustichello come to write The Travels, certainly not as an adventure genre, and much of its sense of danger and intrigue comes from how it interpolates the reader onto the journey. Indeed, the authors give prominence to documenting and describing the diversity of places, histories and customs. Marco’s sincerity, even when describing outlandish and fantastical marvels, alongside the narrative’s stylised deployment of authorial, linguistic and readerly address, adds considerably to the sense of movement in time and space, and it is these factors that produce in The Travels ambiguities of virtual travel comparable to those of the later forms of itinerarium. The Travels thus fits into a tradition of the imaginative journey in a way that helps to explain the embellished aspects to some of Marco’s descriptions as assertions of first-hand testimony. Marco and Rustichello create an immersive and chameleon text, one Lucarotti unconsciously imitates in creating an unusual Doctor Who story, and which others, including the very next serial along, The Keys of Marinus (1964), sought to emulate (albeit less successfully) in providing the changing locations, people and subplots that are inherent in the travelogue’s movement, pace and seriality (where stages are repeated with variations).”

Excerpt From: Dene October. ‘Marco Polo’ Obverse Books 2018

Currently believed wiped, you would be forgiven for thinking that any analytic study focusing on this sprawling adventure would be a bit short of things to talk about. Yet, this volume leaves the reader far more enlightened than they were before. So, what is going on? Do Obverse Books have a secret copy of ‘Marco Polo’? The answer is simple … Dene October, provides an in-depth discussion of the source material, and heavily references the travelogues of Marco Polo himself. Christian Cawley, Hero Collector

In possibly the greatest coup in Black Archive history, we have sourced something potentially unique – and it’s the author! Obverse Books

Obverse Books has pulled off quite a coup with the latest volume of The Black Archive – author, Dene October is in the possibly unique position of having seen Marco Polo not once, but twice, on broadcast! […] a physical copy will set you back just £4.99, and trust is when we say it’s more than worth it! Doctor Who Companion

Marco Polo (Black Archive) by Dene October.

In the first episode  the Doctor’s spaceship is abducted. ‘How does it move?’ its thief demands to know, mistaking the TARDIS for a caravan. ‘Through the air’, answers Ian. This conversation parallels the serial’s real-life transmission through the media of television, the magic doorway through which the audience steps into the future and past. OBVERSE BOOKS AMAZON UK

 

It's Saturday, 22nd February 1964, and there's a large footprint in the snow ...

... into which, on Saturday 7th April 2018, a new Black Archive has been added, #18, Marco Polo. It's a big tome, with a lot of words, for a big gap in the archive. The book has been a long writing journey, a huge responsibility and sometimes overwhelming privilege. But I've been a fan of this particular serial for as long as I remember... and I saw it twice.

All of which is a way of introducing myself here. I am new to GoodReads, but not exactly new to Doctor Who fandom or publishing. Please say hello, or ask me questions about the book.

Anyway, this is just hello. Saturdays are never the same without ... you know Who.

Also, some savings advice Obverse Books are offering it for 4.99 and 3.99 for the eBook

[image error]In the first episode  the Doctor’s spaceship is abducted. ‘How does it move?’ its thief demands to know, mistaking the TARDIS for a caravan. ‘Through the air’, answers Ian. This conversation parallels the serial’s real-life transmission through the media of television, the magic doorway through which the audience steps into the future and past. OBVERSE BOOKS AMAZON UK

BLACK ARCHIVE #18 MARCO POLO by DENE OCTOBER April 2018

A few words on the Doctor Who and History book

Doctor Who & History

Doctor Who and the Never Ending Story

The writers of Doctor Who and History focus on a different aspect of history as it expressed thematically in the show. Dene October looks at the programme’s depiction of thirteenth century explorer, Marco Polo.

Marco Polo is in the fourth serial of the show, and not only the first historical proper, it is sadly the first ‘lost’ story. Dene explores the decision to present the story of the Doctor and his companions, whose characters we as viewers are still learning about, through the observation and narrative focus of the renowned Venetian explorer.

“That decision has implications not only for how the camera treats its subjects, but also for the how the travelogue situates the audience as fellow travellers and historians,” he says.

The serial’s quirky narrative style also mirrors the Polo’s journey across Asia.

“The stories have always reflected the odd process of…

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This is a really thorough review of a book I worked on. As Sophia Deboick, the reviewer, says I question ‘authorship’ in my chapter on ‘Low’ …Bowie’s and his biographers’, putting the fan-listener at the forefront of an intersensory ‘reading’ of the music, augmented by the three figures of Bowie who compose, perform and listen. This is all about my own authorship really, of course, in pushing through the biographical and trying to use these words about Bowie that are already borrowed and reassembled, and then reassemble them again in a new way, listening, performing, composing … the way Bowie uses sound on his album to paint a picture that isn’t necessarily real but is performative, an impression that becomes another real chapter on him. Do I mean his sounds or my words? Oh yes, I know the answer to that – the answer is yes.

Sophia Deboick

Enchanting David Bowie: space/time/body/memory, edited by Toija Cinque, Christopher Moore and Sean Redmond, New York and London, Bloomsbury, 2015, 368 pp., £23.99 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-6289-2303-2

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I should have blogged this earlier as today is the last chance to see my entry in the London Design Festival 2016. I’ve been a bit busy writing a chapter that relates to the themes that my art/design piece discusses. More about that when I deliver the conference presentation on it.

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The work is a mirror through which fans can reflect on their mortality. Cheery, huh? In particular, it’s for all those fans who, like me, see something of themselves in the sad death earlier this year of David Bowie, my idol, my hero, my mirror growing up. It’s not actually a mirror – and I apologise to the LDF organising committee for the confusion and them having to ask where’s that mirror got to – but I had indeed been inspired by mirrors, the ones I collected as a boy; backed with vague outlines of Ziggy – or the Duke – and BOWIE printed proudly in black, they came in all sizes, stuck with a safety pin through as a make-do-badge or big enough to paint your face by before a Friday night spent trying to get into pubs, clubs and discos. You found the badges at record fairs, an alternative to the button badges I invariably brought home in the fruitless searches for The Prettiest Star (Mercury, 1970). My exhibition piece is not that kind of mirror, but it is about reflections, fan reflections, and reflections on mortality.

I am very proud to have the opportunity to submit anything to anywhere but I did hesitate [image error]about submitting this. For two reasons. Firstly, as one of the exhibition team mused, it is an incredibly personal piece compared to the other design pieces being hung. It is what I call the fan-sandwich, a collision of ‘found’ designs with the fan in the middle. At 13, the iconic Aladdin Sane album was the first piece of design that talked to me, while the front page of The Sun reporting Bowie’s death continues to be a conversation I try to avoid. Each design subverts the other even while magnifying the other’s power, and I found myself caught in the middle of this affective collision, forever trying to break the relationship and bring the two back together. I mentioned there was a second reason. Ah yes, it really is a very personal piece you know.

As I say, I’m writing a chapter on these themes, so I don’t want to talk it all out here.  A massive shout out though to photographer Brian Duffy from whose original session both Aladdin Sane and The Sun versions are taken. I also want to genuinely thank those folk who have been kind enough to get in contact with me and share their feelings about the piece. Here’s to the good fan memories!

14 September – 14 October

London Design Festival