Big Finish Limbo #3: The Murky Land of Wikipedia

Written by The Mara

With the recent announcement that the Big Finish judges will have completed reading through all their short story submissions in twenty-two days (no, I’m not counting or anything like that), it seemed time to recommence the blog entries that the Keeper asked me to write as a way of documenting one individual’s experiences of the whole competition process.

It also seemed like a good idea to pull my entry out and read it again – something I’ve not done since the day I submitted it. A few niggles sprang forth, but generally I’m still happy with it, although I do think it is not enough in the Big Finish house style to be a contender. But twenty-two days shall see me out of limbo at least

The actual writing of the story didn’t take that long. I’m the type of writer who edits as I’m writing, so there isn’t a lot of difference between my completed first drafts and the final product for anything I write. It means that a first draft for a 3000 word story or chapter can take anything between a day and four days to produce, depending on how well things come together. The first draft I was happy with was finished on the 15th of January at 8.52pm. File modification dates are a useful thing. I think I started writing the story maybe two or three days prior. Over the next two weeks I had it proofread by others in order to improve the grammar and confirm everything made sense, and only submitted it to Big Finish at the last possible moment. I bet the judges hated me and everyone else who was part of that last rush over the (Big) finish line.

So the writing and drafting process was neither terribly labour nor emotionally intensive. What took me the majority of December and January was the research to ground the story with technical details to increase realism (and to avoid any chance that some mega-fan could pick up continuity problems in my use of the Doctor).

What started as a fairly innocent Internet search on the effects of radiation on the human body, led to me delving into the murky online world of hearsay and gossip about real-world events. I found out some fascinating information that was pure gold for my story, but the amount of mis- and dis-information masquerading as "truth" on the ‘Net is disturbing.

I need to put on my "School Teacher" persona for a bit. For those of you who went to University and did not spend all of your time in the Bar, you may remember the importance of referencing in your assignments, and also the importance of having reputable sources. This is something the ‘Net has forgotten. While I found sources that in themselves appeared reputable, they disagreed with each other on a number of ‘facts’ and none of them were consistent in stating the sources for their information. Fighting this to give veracity to my own work was time consuming.

Wikipedia - the bane of all thinking minds everywhere - has got some particularly loony stuff stated as fact in their entries. Unfortunately, because it has been created by a hive-mind, it’s hard for people to believe that it often operates on prejudice and assumption rather than facts. I couldn’t help myself - I had to change an entry on the construction of nuclear reactors in the Soviet Union (it had the reactor specifications wrong). My very first engagement with the hive-mind – hurrah!

It must have been that pesky school ma’am coming out that made me alter the entry, although she quietened down again and left a following entry totally alone. I checked today, and the entry is still up there in its full wacky glory.

Chasing down radiation references led me to an entry that states that in the 1970s, the Soviets dumped a whole bunch of nuclear warheads in the Bay of Naples, and that they’re still there. The source cited by Wiki for the veracity of this statement is actually a wild piece of journalism (reproduced from The Independent) which itself uses no sources other than the Italian dude who did/did not eat sushi with Litvinenko the day he was poisoned with Polonium 210. For someone else who is less of a source-nerd than I, Wiki using The Independent article as a source would be enough to take the Wiki entry as fact. It is only on reading the Independent article that the lack of proof becomes blindingly obvious.

Still, my research did lead me to more fruitful places. As part of my research I came across the ‘Goiânia Radiation Incident’ (http://arts.bev.net/roperldavid/GRI.htm), a tragic yet fascinating account of radiation poisoning through neglect. Besides the short story leading me to my first foray into adding to Wikipedia, I also now have an understanding of nuclear reactors, the different forms of leukaemia, possible treatments and survival rates, and the specific doses of radiation needed to cause side effects and fatalities.

This last piece of research dovetailed quite nicely into watching Doctor Who on TV.

I can now tell you that the annual radiation dose to your gonads from the TV set is around 0.2-1.5 millirems. For some of you it is likely to be much higher. But before that worries any of you, natural background levels are around the 100 - 180 millirem mark - there’s no need to bring out the lead codpieces just yet.

Unless you want to.


Coming soon – Big Finish Limbo #4: Walking in Big Shoes.