I enjoy a nice bit of classic sci-fi. I have been reading The Voyage of the Space Beagle, a fine tale of space exploration by A E Van Vogt. If you enjoy Star Trek, in any incarnation, I recommend you seek out this slim volume.

In structure, the overall tale takes in more than one shorter story bridged into this format. We join Grosvenor, head of the one-man Nexialist department, onboard the Space Beagle. The ship supports both a military and a scientific crew in a precarious balance that becomes a real power play halfway through the book. Nexialism provides a basis for combining all the best elements of the sciences into a more effective and embracing whole – a holistic vision of conceptual perfection. Nexialism also embraces the uses of advanced educational techniques to enhance learning and provide an ideal way to expand the potential of almost anyone in a totally non-obtrusive subliminal way. Grosvenor uses his ability to grasp a little of everything to great effect throughout the book, showing that a narrow-minded approach consistently leaves your weaknesses open to unrelenting and hostile forces.

Star Trek and Alien owe something (or, indeed, a lot) to Van Vogt’s stories of the Space Beagle. One tale deals with an alien menace that uses the crew to implant it’s eggs. The parasitic menace apparently proved influential enough to force 20th Century Fox to settle out of court when Van Vogt sought to press charges against them for plagiarism. More generally, the overall vision of the book feels like proto-Trek, including a specific reference to a 5 or 10 year mission of exploration. Time and again, one or other member of the crew question whether to linger and explore after defeating an assault on the ship, but the demands of the mission and the need to push forever onward always weighs in. The composition of the crew and the power struggles survive in a milder form within the classic Trek of the Original Series, with Kirk depending on the skills and knowledge of his various Departmental Heads. In each villain, the stories also harken back to the Star Trek of old, as these mean and menacing creatures either seek to do harm in the most horrible way or simply exist in an alien fashion beyond the ken of mere mortals to comprehend. Of course, our dear Grosvenor harnesses his new science to grip that which cannot be gripped – otherwise, the ship wouldn’t make it past the first obstacle!

Seriously, I recommend reading this book because of these many influences, the generally enjoyable science fiction stories therein, and the fact it isn’t that long. You’re not committing yourself to reading something monstrously thick here. You have a thin volume of less than two hundred pages, split into five consecutive tales. I love the simplicity, the purity. I read it now for the fourth or fifth time. I can’t say the same about many other books – and my copy becomes increasingly dog-eared. I expect to read it a few more times before it finally disintegrates.

Watched this on DVD for the first time. I’m simply too young to have been watching any Pertwee, so every Third Doctor episode and story comes to me fresh.

For a first episode, it throws up far more questions than it answers. In that respect, the story does well to draw the viewer in and leaves them wanting to find out more.

On the one hand, we have Jo and the Doctor on the S. S. Bernice, confused about where they might be and faced with a strange loop in events. Elsewhere, on Inter Minor, we have Vorg and Shirna, intergalactic entertainers and hucksters, intent on turning round their fortunes with their Scope. The Functionaries, little more than labourers and porters, seem fascinated by the entertainers and their device, but the xenophobic Officials show no such interest.

I appreciate the difficulties of ‘blue screen’ style technologies (or whatever form of colour-separation overlay the BBC would have used at the time) – and the episode struggles when it tries to use them. I suspect I’ve used the wrong technical term for what they’re doing here. When we watch the Officials observing the ship landing at the spaceport, with the entertainers aboard, one momentarily loses his arm. The plesiosaurus elements on the ship look better, though the actual model proves less effective. Isn’t it the same model they use later for the Zygon Skarasen (or Loch Ness Monster)?

Overall, I found the story engaging because it pulled you along with it. The two stories seems separate and tell you little, then the final view pulls them together and answers a question you might not have been asking!

I have discovered the Diary of the Doctor Who Role-Playing Games, a relatively regular and current amateur online magazine, free to download, providing characters, environments, adventures, and features for all incarnations of the Doctor Who RPG – include the FASA and Timelord versions.

While I haven’t had the chance to read through the thirteen issues in detail, I certainly appreciate the effort put into bringing them together. I have opened a few issues and they contain a lot of interesting ideas, plenty of content, and a plethora of pictures. I suspect you’ll find something here of interest, whether complete or simply as the seed for an adventure or encounter of your own creation.