Wonderland
Dr. Who
By Mark Chadbourn 

     Mark Chadbourn is the author of the popular and well-researched Age of Misrule trilogy, and now he has written the seventh sixth Dr. Who novella from Telos Publishing (the previous six have all been reviewed on this site) and as usual, I was extremely keen to see what another acclaimed author had done with the abundant material that is Dr. Who. This time it is the turn of the second Dr. Who, played by Patrick Troughton and accompanied here by Ben and Polly, to find out that for once his exotic appearance and habit of talking about arcane things means he is right at home-for he has arrived during the 1967 Summer of Love!

     You cannot imagine this on television viewed at teatime by wide-eyed tots. For one thing, it is all about drug abuse, easy sex and all that earthy hippie stuff, rendered beautifully tactile by Chadbourn. This talent for description and capturing the essence of a time and place is what I admired so much about his other writing, and it is more than present here. In fact, the star of the show is the evocation of that time when Kennedy's assassination, Timothy Leary, the Beatles and Vietnam ushered in the Age of Aquarius. What is it about? Young Jessica Willamy (aka Summer) has arrived at Haight-Ashbury to experience the "Be-In" and meet up with her boyfriend and soul-mate Denny. She cannot find him anywhere, although she does find The Doctor and his two assistants, as well as some very strange troubles in the shape of Blue Moonbeams, some seriously bad drugs that have the power to make people turn into monsters or vanish. All this is narrated by Summer herself, as she looks back on those balmy days from a sadder old age, after a lifetime on the road. This tends to give the tale a rather downbeat feel and the story tends not to pack much of a punch when the time for the dénouement comes, and I had expected rather more after such a terrific build-up, but as I remarked earlier this story is worth reading for the tangible atmosphere of a lost era.