Big Orange wrote:Oh, I guess the most severe critic can not put where his mouth is and reading up on him it seems like Lawrence Miles is essentially the Harlan Ellison of Doctor Who, he seems to be a reasonably talented writer
Have you actually tried to read any of his stuff? After almost half an hour of thinking about it, I can name one worse writer...
Hitler.
Hitler, Adolf Hitler, is the only writer I can think of whose prose makes less sense than Lawrence Miles'. No, I'm not saying his politics are fasicst, or that he's personally like Hitler. However, aside from Mein Kampf, I've never encountered any other book in print as poorly written as
Interference.
It's not the only book I've stopped reading for one reason or another down the years. It is however, the only one I stopped reading because it was actually less interesting than sitting back and experiencing my constipation at the time.
It has no merit. It is his opus, outlining his greatest contribution to Doctor Who. It's shit. It's actually more shit than sitting back and taking an anus-bashing physical actual literal shit.
He is a worse writer than Karen Traviss, Kevin J Anderson, all the sundry terrible writers in the world of Star Trek franchise fiction (whom he has the nerve to dismiss as 'poxy Star Trek people' even though they are for the most part inordinately more talented and capable than he) I have encountered. He is worse than John Norman. Yes, the guy who wrote the Gor seires. He is a worse person, but even he has more writing talent than Lawrence Miles. Which is saying something, given how abominable his 'style' is.
Alien Bodies was a tolerable book, because it almost directly copied
Terror of the Zygons, and Invasion of the Dinosaurs and put in the reflected glory and supporting cast from Talons of Weng-Chaing. Even then, there were seeds of his own execrable invention.
I repeat. His skill as a writer (no, not his politics or ethics) is somewhere between John Norman and Hitler. And this may be because Hitler loses something in translation.
He has the nerve to criticise Lance Parkin, whose last BBC novel essentially undid the Faction Paradox arc, and whom he should rightly be worshipping the feet of as an idol of his chosen profession, by saying "but... it's what actually happens that's the problem. There's this enormous artifact from the future... [Yawns.]" when he [Miles] himself tried to pitch six books around an identical hook.
The only thing that's nearly as bad as his work is The Ancestor Cell, and even that at least had one redeeming feature, amongst its 'mightiest race in the universe being stymied by a door for years' and 'starving people being gunned down on the streets of Gallifrey' idiocy. At least that gave (evil... sigh) Romana a neat looking TARDIS in the shape of a giant ice cube. As far as I could get in any of Miles' books (save Alien Bodies) there wasn't even anything cool. Just shit and hyperbole.
He can't even do a Time Lord weapon right (I wouldn't mind, but he repeatedly wrote and pitched books about them at war) 'conceptual entities' and 'The Cold' and other bollocks. Davies' N-form leaves them standing in the dust. At least Time Torpedos and such crap are outrageously camp and fun.
And just for good measure, Miles claims that The Ancestor Cell was plagarised from him, too! So that suckery is partly his invention too!
I would wager money that you, right now, could invent better contributions to the Doctor Who universe. So could Stark and Bounty, and any lurker here.
He is a terrible writer. He is by a long way the worst writer in Doctor Who. He is possibly the worst living writer in Britain. Perhaps the worst writer in the English speaking world, or the world entire.
EDIT: Turns out, I was confusing Alien Bodies with The Bodysnatchers another early EDA book. Alien Bodies appears to actually be the same repulsive drivel as the rest of the Faction Paradox arc.
