snorkackcatcher | Crossover answers -- and a brief review

The answers to the 15 Word Crossover Meme I posted the other day.

1. Star Wars and The Sarah Jane Adventures. If you've seen the episode The Lost Boy it probably helps here, that's what the reference is to.
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight. Neither of which are fandoms of mine, but I'm sure someone must have made this comment before ...
3. Star Trek: Voyager and Red Dwarf. Nice try on Lister's part, but even Janeway wouldn't be daft enough to take on Rimmer.
4. Torchwood and A Song of Ice and Fire. I hoped the spelling 'Ser' might give it away, although I'd better not say which Ser as that would be very spoilery ... obviously if you've read Storm of Swords you know who I mean. But Captain Jack would totally have a thing for knights in armour. Or out of it.
5. This Life and Pirates of the Caribbean. The connection here being Jack Davenport characters. I have fond memories of This Life from uni days. I really must watch PotC sometime -- hmm, Keira Knightley ...
6. Blake's 7 and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Ensor and Soong are the creators of Orac and Data & Lore respectively. The garden planets appear in the episodes Orac and Brothers -- at least as far as I remember them.
7. Indiana Jones and Lord of the Rings. From what I hear, this would be a much better plot than the Crystal Skull one. Marshall is the name of Indy's university if I got my Googling right. The Red Book is the supposed source material for LotR. I did hope someone would spot that ... :(
8. Jeeves and Wooster and Mina de Malfois. That's kind of cheating, I suppose, since the relationship between Arc and Mina in the latter is loosely based on the former.
9. Doctor Who and Harry Potter. Hermione is a secret batchipper who named her daughter accordingly, eh? This is TOTALLY canon as PROVED by the epilogue! :)
10. Farscape and Johnny Mackintosh. (Crichton creates wormholes with special sekrit knowledge implanted in his mind by an advanced alien. Johnny just uses worms.)

Ah yes, young Mackintosh. I did say I was cheating with that one, so I'd better explain it. I work for an offshoot of a large company in the media business, the entertainment section of which get sent various books, CDs etc for review. These tend to be left out afterwards for people who want to investigate them. One book I picked up a week or two ago was called Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London by Keith Mansfield, published earlier this month with a blurb and logoised dustjacket that suggests the author and publishers are aiming for a hit series in the tween market. And you know, they might just do it, because this one's a lot of fun.

Johnny has just turned 13 as the story starts. He's being brought up in an orphanage because his parents are locked away under high security. As it happens, he's a genius type able to adapt tech easily, star midfield general of the football team, owner of a loveable and intelligent dog -- OK, he's at least wandering along the border of Studonia, but never mind. One day his home-made supercomputer and satellite tracking system picks up some mysterious signals, and that launches him on one of those Incredible Journeys in which he finds the sister he never knew he had, gets kidnapped by aliens, and ends up on a rollercoaster ride through time and space in his ship the Spirit of London. (Exactly how he acquires it would be a bit too spoilery, methinks.) There are a few questions left unanswered at the end which will doubtless be explained in sequels.

The plot and accoutrements did perhaps feel rather familiar and guessable from time to time, but work well, with lots of timey-wimey Predestination Paradox type things. And there are some nice touches that were a bit different -- e.g. the means of FTL travel. One is the aforementioned worms which always breed where they were born -- so if you take them to a distant point, they burrow though space creating a point-to-point wormhole (literally). The warp drive equivalent ('folding') is generally done by an octopus-like creature called a plican, which when it spreads its tentacles wide can fold space with them (and is therefore generally kept in a small container so it doesn't have room to do so, in case it inadvertently deposits you halfway across the galaxy).

Characterisation is on the simple side, maybe, and Johnny does seem to get out of a number of scrapes a bit too easily -- I was reminded of a number of HP fanfic epics I've read -- but then again that might just be me looking at it with an adult's eye. If I was 13, I'm sure I'd love this. Basically, it's a good old-fashioned ripping yarn, and there's definitely nothing wrong with that! I'll await any news of its reception with interest.