RAGS by Mick Lewis, featuring the Third Doctor (BARELY), Jo Grant (when will I learn my lesson?) and the Brigadier…
‘Join the Unwashed… Join the Unforgiving. Join the Ragged, for we are the way’.
PUNK ROCK in entirely NOT being rewritten shockah!! Tony Parsons you may sleep contented in your little bed tonight, a book which started me off with such high hopes has completely failed to reach it’s target. How can a Who book which starts off on the ludicrous premise of thanking the Damned and the Anti-Nowhere League in it’s acknowledgement be ANYTHING ELSE apart from a New Rule of the Ye Old Punxx0r? The old order is swept aside!! Welcome to a brave new world where The Clash are revealed to be Sontarans!! I mean, the fact that the Dammed and the Anti-Nowhere League are as far from my personal definition of punk rock as to be, well, scabrous lepers crawling over the mysterious faces of Easter Island aside, cor!! Got to be ripping stuff, innit?
BOLLOCKS. This book is about as punk rock as the tramps who congregate on the council’s freshly-paced street benches at 09.01 in the morning with their freshly nicked cans of Luny Super already half-consumed. (Actually hem hem). A band of ‘mummers’, which I gather is some 17th century pish, traverse the environs of the South West playing violent and hate-filled gigs that end up in massacres. No-one seems to want to acknowledge the events, and a convoy grows, following the band from horror-filled gig to horror-filled gig. We’ve all attended gigs where we’ve felt like murdering, haven’t we? The farthest I’ve usually got is flinging a manky slice of lemon at ‘pastoral’ milksops The Essex Green once at the Spitz. The book then concentrates on the band’s transportation, a mysterious… cattle truck. Poo ur yes the mystery is STAGGERING don’t you think?
But omg!! What is this?? Who is this person who joined the convoy? A BLONDE lady you say? Who seems a bit posher than the rest of them? Not quite a grubby unwashed punk? Oh, it’s YOU, Jo. How unspeakably tedious. Jo gets carried away with the band’s hate-filled ways, rejects the Doctor and starts smoking joints. Oh, and what of the Doctor? He’s barely mentioned. A few paragraphs of wanking about with the Doctor being stuck in the dimensionally transdescent cattle truck (oh, but of course…) with the poor old white-haired be-caped old codger being menaced by his own Ego/Id, until er… he walks out. Assisted by the Time Lords, we’re meant to think. COP OUT.
Oh, also? If you have to list the Brig as a “companion”, you might as well just admit it. Jo Grant is NOT up to the task of being the only companion of the Doctor. What tasks Jo is exactly capable of is another good question but one for me to address on some kind of freaking mental Doctor Who community on the interweb. Mick Lewis (aka THE ENEMY from now on) is clearly totally gay for Mike Yates and in his spare time no doubt spends an awful lot of time writing Yates/Brigadier mpreg slash on the interweb. In a nice change from the Doctor casually saving the day, I grudgingly grant, it’s jolly nice to see Mike playing a part but it’s still not enough to make up for the WASTE OF MY LIFE that was my reading of this BLOODY BOOK. One of the worst Who books I’ve read – avoid like the UK Subs reunion tour.
I therefore JUDGE THAT this book gets NOTHING OUT OF TEN (nothing like the nihilistic nothingness at the heart of punk rock etc etc YEAH YEAH WHATEVER).