RIP Barry Letts

I seem to be the last person to find these things out. Doctor Who News Page my arse. I'm stunned. No idea what to say apart from "Bugger" "He'll probably get a credit on Waters of Mars" and "those audios were rubbish though".

Um...

By way of completely inappropriate (and entirely unintentional) tribute, I finally got round to Orbis.

Um... and the next section of Avon: A Terrible Aspect is kind of wierd. It focusses on Avon's mother, Rowena, who reminds very much of Pella as a deeply manipulative but deeply-cracked-in-the-head woman.

Five years after Axel Grease cut off Rogue Avon's head, Rowena and her family meet a Little-John-type bloke who amazingly enough is not an evil backstabbing Judas but in fact a completely honorable bloke who never betrays anyone and, for no real reason other than being nice, helps the Avon family catch a ship to Saturn so young Kerr can be educated at Cambridge. In a demonstration of what a good mother Rowena is, she's named her son "Desolation" (or Kerrguelen in Phaxese). And I thought my parents chose a crap name...

Alas, the fates take a turn for the damn-well-deranged on Saturn. Avon's grandmother, used to the turbulant atmosphere of Miranda, can't survive the one on the (presumably terrorformed) Saturn and dies upon leaving the space port. Luckily, Rowena and Lil Kerr bump into a surgeon called Pi Grant who falls in love with Rowena and offers to marry her and adopt her son in less than fifteen minutes. The fact Rowena and Pi note how ridiculous this sudden relationship is doesn't QUITE come across as realistic. Indeed, it rivals Guy of Guisborne marrying Dawn French as most unlikely true loves ever. Leela and Andred were a Joss Whedon relationship against this.

So Kerguelen Avon becomes Kerr Grant, one of the three adopted Grant children along with Del and Anna. Can you see where this is going? Man, first Rogue's sexual appeitites and now Kerr lusting after his step-sister. It's starting to look like Verkoff: A Terrible Chat-Up Line. Amazingly enough, the idea that Avon, Del and Anna were all related doesn't AT ALL contradict the TV series given the fact they all ultimately split up and changed their names. Ah, I hear you note, what about SpaceFall where Avon sees a vision of his brother - who, apart from calling his own brother by his surname, also looks nothing like Del Grant?

Well, the truth is revealed. That guy was Avon's pal at military school, and they were referred to as "Brothers". It seems that Iron Guard traineeship specializes in Holmesian Double Acts.

So, Avon spends the next ten years going to school, being very clever, sleeping naked and fancying the Tarial Cells off his stepsister. Meanwhile, his mother revels in all the high society to do and meets an old wheelchair bound lech who reveals what happened to her former lover. Rowena is horrified to discovered that Axel Grease was part of a faction of the Federation that tried to become more powerful by first creating a terrorist threat (that'll be Rogue) and then capturing against all odds, weaking the original government and making them look cool. Rowena then poisons the old wheelchair bound cripple for being part of it and orders Avon to murder the others the moment he gets a chance.

Around fifteen, Avon gets his first line of dialogue - a polite question about why his mum is an insane bitch determined to avenge the death of a suicidal bastard she met for five minutes and tells everyone raped her? Rowena's best answer is that she has nothing to live for bar revenge. It's a pissweak argument that serves only to upset her son. But Avon being Avon, he promises to kill Axel Grease - and then, frankly, he never wants to see this mad cow ever again. He gives a characteristic speach about how he intends to roll with the punches in life and not let him get obsessed about anyone or anything, with the painfully obvious subtext he wished he had a mother who didn't consider him first and foremost a weapon.

On the last day before heading to Earth, Anna (Del having left home by now) sneaks into Avon's bedroom and takes advantages of him - which doesn't ultimately do his mindset much good as basically he now gets to leave knowing what a great sister he'll be missing. With his Brother, Avon sets off to Earth (Rowena sees him off at the station but doesn't wait for the train to leave, so to speak). But within about five minutes all hell breaks loose.

Turns out Axel's spies picked up Rowena's rather unsubtle jihad and so a swarm of Mutoids storm the Grant household, and kill Pi and then Rowena (after letting one of Axel's flunkies beat her up and rape her first, of course). All this is made more disturbing by Anna, who watches it all laughing insanely.

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Anyone else amused that on the day Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize he declares war on the Moon?

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Sheesh. I still can't think of anything to say. We'll miss you, Bazza.