
Time Lords Remixed: a Dr Who Poetical
Dr Who in fan-verse??
Arguably the most literary of science fiction shows, Dr Who has adapted its time lords and cast of companions and alien threats to audiences across the globe for more than 50 years.
In Time Lords Remixed unapologetic Whovian and digital artist David P. Reiter reimagines the voices of time lords, especially Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker, through a poetic and image remix that spans 50 episodes and includes associative internet links that build on his Western Australian Premier’s Award-winning title Timelord Dreaming.
Read, view, and, via the eBook and audiobook editions, listen, interact – and be amazed!
ISBN 9781922332134 (PB, 96pp); 140mm x 216mm |
AUD $26 | USD $18 | NZD $28 | GBP £12 | EUR €14 |
ISBN 9781922332141 (eBook) | AUD $13 | USD $9 | NZD $15 | GBP £6 | EUR €7 |
ISBN 9781922332271 (audiobook) | AUD $25 | USD $18 | NZD $27 | GBP £12 | EUR €14 |
Reviews
Here we have a satirical, surreal and insightful narrative that invites readers to click through, look up, chuckle and question everything. In this complex world of prokaryotic spiders, robots, Light Eaters and other science fiction treats, readers encounter poetry that serves as its own Tardis. Using the persona of Dr Who, Reiter warps dimensions and definitions. All is not as it seems though. Beyond the sci-fi fandom and miscellany is a distilled and vital poetry that deserves multiple readings.
– Jayne Fenton Keane, author of The Transparent Lung
Whether you’re a proper Whovian or someone who’s never encountered the Doctor before, you’re going to find plenty in Time Lords Remixed to intrigue, entertain and surprise you. David Reiter’s cunning, elegant poetic recaps of several seasons’ worth of Doctor Who take the Doctor through the most significant regeneration yet: from him to her, from Peter Capaldi’s practitioner of the midlife crisis to Jodie Whittaker’s lighter and more optimistic touch. David Reiter skilfully captures this change in voices, while bringing along for the ride all manner of companions, adversaries, monsters, and recurring characters and themes. Time Lords Remixed is bigger on the inside: climb in.
– Tim Jones, author, and co-editor of The Stars Like Sand
Time Lords Remixed is a collection of poems for Whovians or whoever likes their poetry fast-paced and clever (but not smart-arsed). It’s one for disciples of the time lords, but written by a poet who can turn a tercet or two. Reiter wants to know what makes a good man (it comes up more than once):
I realise I’m
not a good man, or a general, or even
President of the Earth, but an idiot
– (from Death in Heaven)Why do people talk aloud
when they know they’re alone,
skipping heartbeats in the dark?
– (from Listen)
Sometimes you think you’re in a surrealist dream (also in the manner of the Doctor):
Reality has a glitch in it
as you watch for the trap street
There are only twoways to escape a quantum shade:
undo your tell-tale tattoo or
unplug the raven’s death counter
– (from Face the Raven)
Time Lords Remixed stitches in references to just about everything (in the manner of the series) from Christie, to Dickens via Valhalla and the rest with a short salute to politics and more deeply to current eternal issues:
At what point does migration become
invasion? The trick is to go opaque,
shapeshift your skin or better yetyour small talk. And fine-tune your grammar
to the edge of visibility. I consider these portals
as I saunter through “Amazing Grace”
– (from The Zygon Invasion)
which feels very much like the life of a poet (or is that just me?).
Inevitably physics comes into it:
How can you doubt that poetry and physics
are the same? They almost rhyme except
when they don’t but even then their tunebegs to be discovered. Most people
frown when they don’t understand,
– (from The Pilot)
There were many things I didn’t understand because I’m not a Whovian, but there was much I did and all of it was interesting. And there are references which can be followed (I did sometimes). You could spend days inside this world if you wanted to. Whatever a day might mean in this world.
Time Lords Remixed is confident. It moves with assurance and intelligence and has something to say, then enacts it:
Trust nothing.
Interrogate everything.There are some things we should never
proxy to our dreams.
– (from Last Christmas)
– Chris Mansell, author, and publisher of PressPress
Dr David P. Reiter
Links
Interact cosmically with My Planets Reunion Memoir
Find out what 'tweetems' are in Timelord Dreaming
Follow the early drafts of Time Lords Remixed on Facebook
See how associative links can be applied to prose in Black Books Publishing
Interact with a live character from Black Books Publishing on Facebook
Hear a sample from Series 9 on Soundcloud
Samples
Deep Breath
You’ve really let yourself go
inside this vanity trap where we
need to wear cyber labels
to decode our hands right from left
so we’ll have somewhere better
to land than backwards. Never try to
control a control freak, especially a
robot urging himself into human guise
for some Promised Land. Because we’re
all organs on a preordained menu for
unwed diners outside a conjured escape
capsule. There’s something wrong
when no one else but you are breath-
ing, as you wonder what flirting has
to do with spontaneous regeneration.
Under the Lake
Ghosts? Never met one I couldn’t tame,
until now. Just say boo from behind
your sonic sunglasses and they
dissolve – or do they? But no, these
cosmic sailors hover, persistent,< br/>
curious, even. Who’s in charge?
(I need to know which one I can ignore)
Meanwhile, everyone’s abandoning
ship, or falling softly into death.
They can pass through walls, locked
doors, even Clara’s holographic double,
whispering the dark, the sound, the
forsaken temple, rewinding past, through
dark space from Orion’s Nebula. I need maps,
precise coordinates to frame their positions,
a suspended animation chamber to see
how the slain relearn to hum, transmit
via some Puppeteer’s impossible magnet.
But then the flood, and Clara has to
trust me to teleport without the Tardis
and come back, ghost-free, to her
somehow.
The Return of Dr Mysterio
What do I have in common with Clark Kent?
Certainly not his love of skin-tight threads, but yes
keeping a phone box handy for the first threat
of danger, and being on call 24/7 to buffer
humans, especially page turning companions,
despite their impulse to hug him or me
freelancers do without bronzing or vows.
During a pause, I was trying to power up a time distortion equaliser thingy with a Hazandra
gemstone, when young boy Grant swallowed it
and developed a persistent case of levitation, a capital G, and a blue rubber speed handy
24 years on to sidestep his part-time nanny
job for high school sweetheart Lucy (read Lois Lane). Tagged the Ghost because
all the better comics names had been branded,
he was super as a backstop brake for a spaceship with nukes cross-haired at NYC. I could
have snagged it myself, but I was missing Clara
and River Song, it was Christmas again, and everyone deserves a happy
reboot after a sad
ending.
The Woman Who Fell to Earth
Once you learn how to tumble
from a bike you never forget.
Bad timing: I was in mid-transform
from my grey-haired Scottish
skin (bless his sexy drawl!)
bracing for my train roof grand
entry, no time to muck about
with who I am or was or should be
though I do have this niggling
yearn for a certain runaway police-
box especially as I confront the data
coil of this flying spaghetti monster.
Have I ever tasted a Hersey’s Kiss?
Does it really matter as carriages uncouple
and Tzim-Sha can zap us at will?
I do prefer the height-thrill of cranes
to the afterburn of virtual chocolate
as I blowtorch a fresh sonic screwdriver
from random scraps of metal. Damn
those budget cuts! We can do so much
better than purloined teeth for trophies.
Yes, always be kind!