Fiona Moore

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-robots-of-death-by-fiona-moore-and-chris-bou...

Unusually for a Black Archive author, Fiona Moore has already contributed fictionally to the Robots of Death universe via the Kaldor City audios, which you can get here. So it’s not very surprising that she comes to the story with an even more positive approach than me, wanting to explain why it works so well, without explaining it away. She succeeds in this.

The first chapter, ‘The Robots of Death in Context’, starts with the big picture of 1970s arty TV, then zooms in on the Hinchcliffe era of Doctor Who and then briefly examines some of the aspects of the story that make it work.

The second chapter, ‘Script to Screen’, delightfully finds that some of the best bits were added at the last moment, by the actors including Tom Baker.

The third chapter, ‘The Machine Man’, looks at the very direct impact of Expressionism on the design of the story, specifically through the classic film Metropolis.

The fourth chapter, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Stupidity’, points out that contra some descriptions, the robots themselves don’t actually rebel; and finds roots for the story’s take on AI in the back-story of Dune.

The fifth chapter, ‘Class and Power in the Works of Chris Boucher’, looks at how these themes played out in The Robots of Death and in his other TV work, the series Blake’s 7, Gangsters and Star Cops and the two other Doctor Who stories (both of which have been Black Archived), The Face of Evil and Image of the Fendahl.

The sixth chapter, ‘Cast All Ethnicities’, makes the point that the story is ahead of its time in assembling a multi-ethnic cast and treating them equally, though the character of Leela is a little problematic.

The seventh chapter, ‘The Legacy of The Robots of Death’, lists at the various Kaldor-set sequels in print and audio (though curiously does not mention Moore’s own authorship explicitly, except in a footnote), and then also looks at the treatment of similar themes in the Ood stories of New Who, and Voyage of the Damned, Oxygen and Kerblam!.

All in all this is a good roundup of why the story is a good one.… (más)

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/bsfa-best-non-fiction/

Fiona Moore is a professor of Business Anthropology in her day job, and a fan and critic on the side (at least I think it’s that way round), and this is her elucidation of some of the principles of basic management theory as they are demonstrated in the TV series Game of Thrones, with occasional reference to the books where needed. It’s always useful for someone like me to see some of the principles I find myself engaged with at work applied in fiction, so in a sense the book ticks both a fannish box and a professional box for me. Also mercifully short.… (más)

Having enjoyed Fall Out, Stevens and Moore's guide to The Prisoner, I decided to pick up their Blake's 7 book and watch it alongside the parent show during the third and fourth seasons, going back to read the entries for earlier ones as I did. The book is necessarily less detailed than Fall Out (The Prisoner ran seventeen episodes to Blake's 7's fifty-two), but suffers more in that, when it comes down to it, I like Blake's 7 a whole lot less than The Prisoner. I think that there's a huge disconnect between the show Blake's 7 thought it was (a hard-hitting drama about revolutionaries) and the one it actually was (a show by Terry Nation). So a lot of their analyses just engendered eye-rolling in me, especially when they refer to episodes building on each others' themes when in fact they mean that the show recycles a lot of plots. But it's not all the book's fault; I felt the same way reading the Telos guide to Torchwood, a show I also don't like very much. That said, they are good at teasing out more subtle moments, and they can often build compelling arguments for interesting interpretations-- such as with the hidden backstory of Gan, who the show never did much with. On the other hand, sometimes they feel like they're reaching; when Series Three's inconsistent about the details of the war that happened just before it, it's probably because of bad writing, not that there were two wars. And sometimes their reviews are just weird, such as one that tells you an episode is primarily worthwhile for the draft scripts that reveal the original setup for Series Four. Only to those of us who sit around with draft scripts of Blake's 7 episodes; the rest of us had to suffer through "Traitor"! Their list of shows inspired by Blake's 7 are a stretch, too-- Farscape, I believe; Red Dwarf, not so much.

The thing that aggravates me most is that the appendix covering spin-offs has no room for officially-sanctioned comics... but plenty of room for the fan audios made by co-author Alan Stevens. Really? I'd stick to The Anorak Zone; even if the website is gone, you can still access its much-less-serious reviews of Blake's 7 on the Wayback Machine. He, at least, can admit that the show actually had flaws.… (más)