Being a Doctor Who fan just gets stranger. Randomly: other fans expect you to know as much about the show as they do, others expect you to know as little as they do, some of them don't think you can be as passionate about anything else (including human relationships) and most seem to live in a state of equilibrium.
They are 'content'. What a fucking terrible word. My therapist (when she bothers to say anything at all; and I hasten to add that she is, of course, imaginary) says that both happiness and depression are two extremes of the same continuum. In life's rich twatting tapestry (and that is in no way a reference to female circumcision - my therapist is getting to you too now!) one should experience great joy and great sorrow, probably in equal measure. The key to a successful life is to achieve 'contentment'. That in between state of the neutral.
My relationship with Doctor Who is reaching one of contentment. When I started this 'blog' I was at a cross roads. I had fallen out with the programme I love (note present tense - especially as it could go all over the place at any moment). When you love something or someone you have to accept that they could be part of your life forever - Jesus you might make a common mistake and marry the bitch / bastard. Love is great. Love is wonderful. Except when...
My problem a year or so ago was that I stopped 'liking' Doctor Who. And yet I still loved it and still do. I couldn't stand to be near it, it's gross gurning overacting face. Neither could I get it out of my mind. I rebelled. I toned down my interest in all things Who. Torchwood barely got a look in. I forgot the Sarah Jane Adventures were on and missed the pilot. I stopped buying DWM.
I haven't missed out. I did other things instead. I haven't missed an episode of Who yet but I've broadened my horizons. And now I find it so odd that people get so worked up about what on the whole is a rather, cheap, and frankly shit TV show. The vast majority of Who is rubbish and never to be repeated on mainstream TV. I love it. I'm content not to like most of it because the irony is so fitting.
So what's next? Well, this blog can't carry on like this. It has to either die or regenerate. Personally I'd like to murder the little fucker but myself and Piggy Fizz and who knows who else have things to say. We've broken out of Who fandom - there's a whole new world out there and reformed Who fans have to play their part... can you hear that drumming???
Over the next two months some changes will be taking place.
The Undefinable Magic of Dr Who
Showing posts with label Fankind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fankind. Show all posts
Monday, September 10, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
The Doctor Who Pension Fund - New Member!
It comes to something when a Doctor Who DVD commentary is less interesting than the story itself. But it's accomplished with ease on the recent release of Tom Baker's first story - Robot.
The normally on form Tom was joined by Producer Barry Letts, the woman who just keeps looking younger and younger - Elizabeth Sladen (how does she do it? I wonder), and the writer of the story Terrence Dicks.
Poor old Tom was particularly dull in the two episodes I could listen too before heading to the pub for relief. Terrence Dicks on the other hand appeared to be full of beans.
Why he felt the need to congratulate himself every five minutes about his work in general rather than talk about how poor Robot is remains a mystery.... ah, I get it.
So now we know that all the good parts of Robot were in the script. The bad parts might just have been added by the actors or the director. Terrence inspired all the good writers of the new series into writing via his books. Terrence the great!
So we've got Courtney and now we have Dicks - The Doctor Who pension fund for people who really deserve our money. Please provide generously by buying their products.
The normally on form Tom was joined by Producer Barry Letts, the woman who just keeps looking younger and younger - Elizabeth Sladen (how does she do it? I wonder), and the writer of the story Terrence Dicks.
Poor old Tom was particularly dull in the two episodes I could listen too before heading to the pub for relief. Terrence Dicks on the other hand appeared to be full of beans.
Why he felt the need to congratulate himself every five minutes about his work in general rather than talk about how poor Robot is remains a mystery.... ah, I get it.
So now we know that all the good parts of Robot were in the script. The bad parts might just have been added by the actors or the director. Terrence inspired all the good writers of the new series into writing via his books. Terrence the great!
So we've got Courtney and now we have Dicks - The Doctor Who pension fund for people who really deserve our money. Please provide generously by buying their products.
Friday, June 08, 2007
How Long Can the Fitzroy Tavern Last?
It was yet another strange night at the Fitzroy Tavern. When London's Dr Who community comes out in force nobody reminds the normal people to stay indoors which can lead to overcrowding.
The Tavern always spills out onto the street even in winter but when the weather is pleasant there are empty seats inside as the devoted catch some evening sun.
Fed up with clearing up broken glass from the pavement the Tavern staff have recently resorted to plastic tankards of the kind frowned upon by serious drinkers. But now they're obsessed with people standing on a particular patch of pavement no doubt because the council has told them to control their clients. Stray over the line of bricks and the bar closes.
Last night when people refused to drink where they were told the bar did indeed close (for a while). Shock. Horror. Nah, just move to a more pleasant pub down the road.
In fact does it have to be the Fitzroy every month?
Any suggestions?
The Tavern always spills out onto the street even in winter but when the weather is pleasant there are empty seats inside as the devoted catch some evening sun.
Fed up with clearing up broken glass from the pavement the Tavern staff have recently resorted to plastic tankards of the kind frowned upon by serious drinkers. But now they're obsessed with people standing on a particular patch of pavement no doubt because the council has told them to control their clients. Stray over the line of bricks and the bar closes.
Last night when people refused to drink where they were told the bar did indeed close (for a while). Shock. Horror. Nah, just move to a more pleasant pub down the road.
In fact does it have to be the Fitzroy every month?
Any suggestions?
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Nabil Shaban - The Blue Wolf is His Favorite Animal, Apparently
When I am not earning a living.... I investigate UFOs, Ghosts and other Paranormal Phenomena.
So says Nabil on his homepage. But is he going to make a lot of money by returning to Dr Who or will he spend many a night searching instead for things that don't exist (on the whole... as far as anyone knows)???
Well, it seems that Nabil hasn't been lazy since I last saw him act back in 1985 or some such. In fact he's like a whirlwind of ideas - poetry, politics, acting; he'll attempt them all. According to his site he's the man with the ideas when it comes to getting back into Dr Who for some more Sil action. Let's take a look at his ideas:
I wrote to Russell T. Davies on the 5th of May 2006 with some story ideas
One idea I proposed was if Sil after being thwarted yet again by the Doctor, is punished by the Rulers of the Universe by being forced to reluctant companion of his erstwhile enemy, grudgingly helping in the battle against evil. I think it would be very amusing and the fans would love it.
Another idea I have is of a story that brings back Carol Ann Ford as the Doctor's grand-daughter but who now is a grandmother herself. Basically, what has happened is that Sil has kidnapped Susan's own grand-daughter, in the hope of extracting Time-Lord genes for his own evil purposes. Susan sends out an S.O.S. message to her "grandfather" who, of course, now looks more like he should be her grandson. I can imagine a complication occurring where Susan's grand-daughter doesn't realise the blood relationship of the Doctor and has fallen in love with him. Perhaps, at first, even the Doctor doesn't realise the young woman he is trying to rescue is his great great grand-daughter...and he is falling in love with her!!!I received a response from Simon Winstone, Script editor of Doctor Who, saying that they can't consider any unsolicited story suggestions, as they must avoid any confusion over copyright issues...and claims that it is entirely possible for people to have the same great idea independently of each other, and so, to avoid any potential misunderstanding, the BBC cannot read story ideas that are sent in.
Well, I don't see any confusion over the copyright issue concerning my Doctor Who ideas as described above because unless the BBC can prove that anyone working for Doctor Who Production writing scripts containing the same ideas as mine, which predate my sending in my ideas i.e. (05/05/06), I clearly have a priori evidence of owning the copyright. So if my story is produced, you, DW Fans, will know you first read about it here from me.
[posted on http://www.drwho-online.co.uk on 19th May 2006 ]
Good luck, Nabil.Oh and no copyright infringement intended!
Monday, April 09, 2007
The Lost Dr. Who Epics (...of PiggyFizz)
Written by Piggy Fizz
Okay, so I didn’t enter the Big Finish short story contest earlier this year, though I did sort of think about it. However, during the whole sort of thinking about it process, my brain dislodged several youthful and rather unpolished efforts at WHO story-writing, now offered here in a public arena that would have been a mad-man’s nightmare when I originally crafted them, many years ago.
HOW DOCTOR WHO STARTED (LATE 70’S)
I had the Tom Baker doll - I loved Dr. Who but I had no idea what the back-story was. My brothers had an annual with Jon Pertwee wandering over some rocks on the cover but I assumed this represented a form of Dr. Who that didn’t really count. Filling the gap myself, the very first story - acted out with my Baker doll - had Dr. Who as a normal physician from the olden days working in the Wild West but without his scarf! Someone phones him up to go and cure them. On the way he finds a blue box next to a post with some tethered horses. Dr. Who goes in to have a look about and is spirited away by the mysterious craft. The Doctor quickly gets to grips with flying this baffling new time/space machine and when he feels confident enough, starts wearing a scarf. And meets Leela.
DUGGAN’S INVITATION (1980)
I don’t think I got too far with this one. In real life Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were getting married so I imagined this would carry on through to the actual series. The Doctor and Romana decide to tie the knot and agree to invite their best Earth friend, Duggan from that one with the seaweed head man that was on telly last year. As they are space people, Duggan’s invite comes in the form of a small, message-bearing meteorite (something the TARDIS is obviously capable of knocking up), jettisoned at high-speed from the time machine and landing down the chimney of Duggan’s house. The tough-talking private-eye is not too impressed when this results in his face being covered in soot.
AN WEREWOLF (1980)
Having turned eight, this was a far more substantial work. I was aware that a new young companion called Adric was on his way and had read in, I think, the John Craven’s Back Page of Radio Times that the new producer wanted to do a werewolf story at some point. All I can remember of this was a cliffhanger; the Doctor, Romana and Adric were trapped at the end of corridor with a werewolf approaching. This was resolved when Adric noticed a big stained glass window above them and threw a stone at it. The trio made good their escape.
DOWN THE MINES (1980)
Romana’s gone but the Doctor and Adric are still travelling about, running into trouble immediately when they turn up on a world where people are made to work down the mines, mining radioactive things for the people in charge. The Doctor is captured and put under a machine like an upside down copper bath tub that makes him better at working in a radiation mine. When the huge metal bath rises, the Doctor has a green face, no mouth and a red jump suit! Adric makes him better before the end though.
TRUCKER (1981)
Davison had been cast but wasn’t on telly yet. This may explain his unusual character in these tales. Going for a more urban, gritty feel that wouldn’t appear on screen till the McCoy era, this story had Davison, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric coming to Earth for the funeral of a UNIT soldier (you can tell I’d done some research by this point). Landing outside a greasy-spoon cafe, the group inadvertently annoy a muscular truck driver who wants to punch the Doctor. The Doctor panics, activates his sonic screwdriver and makes the sign above the café fall down. This worries the trucker, who decides to call it a day. A few years later it occurred me that in a time-travel show it would be ludicrous for the Doctor to start attending funerals as he’d have to be doing it permanently. Then came Revelation of the Daleks.
THE DESERT (1981)
The Doctor lands in the desert but not close enough to where he was supposed to be, so for comic effect he forces his three companions to push the TARDIS through the sand to the location in question. He then meets the people he was hoping to meet, taking Nyssa and Tegan with him while leaving Adric to cover the TARDIS in sand so it won’t be spotted by anyone evil. By now I didn’t actually hate Adric, but was envious that he was in the show while I wasn’t. I was planning to do stories boasting an expanded cast of Davison, Nyssa, Tegan, Adric and Prince Sebastian; young space royalty who rode around on a motorbike. He would have been played by me. I would be useful as I was small enough get through air vents and things.
NEXT TIME- The ‘lost’ Colin Baker adventures!
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Doctor Who and the Blue Rinse Brigade
Well, I'm sure you woke up feeling scared, insecure and utterly terrified for the future of Doctor Who. After an episode that did exactly what everyone expected the newspaper critics have turned on the show in what could be the beginning of the end of the programme's love affair with the tabloids. Some called it 'tired', 'lazy' and 'lame'. Others criticised the lead actor.
Now if this is going to be the beginning of the end then it has to be followed up with a loss in viewers but this has not materialised - yet. Smith and Jones has done very well in the ratings but it will be interesting the follow this and the critic's assessments over the next 3 months.
Meanwhile down in Croydon, I awoke with a headache. Yesterday involved me going to watch the series launch with 350 other nutters at The Printworks pub in Farringdon - which at times resembled one giant day care centre, I swear at one point a member of staff went around wiping the tables and then accidentally some of the mucky chops faces sat at them. I know that the Government would like to get more private sector provision into social services but I didn't expect it to extend to JD Wetherspoons.
I went to a few pubs before and after going to the launch so decided the best approach for today would be to head into Addiscombe for a fry up. I was warm by the time I arrived and nearly took my jumper off but then remembered I had a WHO t-shirt on underneath. Slightly embarrassed I opted to sweat it out rather than show my sad fan qualities.
After a while two old ladies of about late 60s / early 70s came in and ordered today's special - Roast beef, potatoes + 3 veg. They chatted about old ladies stuff and then I thought I heard one of them mention 'Doctor Who'. I thought I must be just obsessively hearing things so ignored it. Then I heard her say 'hospital' and 'Moon' and figured she probably was referring to that lame and lazy tat from last night.
They had a nice long chat about it:
"Did you see Anne Reid? From Coronation Street? And Dinnerladies?"
"Yes, she was very good"
"I don't think they've had a black companion before"
"No dear"
"I'm really looking forward to the new series of Torchwood now"
"Oh I don't think that'll be on until the Autumn, dear"
"Oh well, it's Shakespeare next by the looks of things"
I should have gone over whipped my jumper off and got them down to The Keepers of Croydon - I'm telling you, they weren't good looking but they could be the most interesting women in fandom. Heck if they can get into London and find a seat they'd probably have a blast at the Tavern.
So if these old dudes can keep living and carry on watching I think the critics can say what they like - the public are talking about WHO today and they're talking positively. Well I say the public; I mean Doris and Frieda.
Now if this is going to be the beginning of the end then it has to be followed up with a loss in viewers but this has not materialised - yet. Smith and Jones has done very well in the ratings but it will be interesting the follow this and the critic's assessments over the next 3 months.
Meanwhile down in Croydon, I awoke with a headache. Yesterday involved me going to watch the series launch with 350 other nutters at The Printworks pub in Farringdon - which at times resembled one giant day care centre, I swear at one point a member of staff went around wiping the tables and then accidentally some of the mucky chops faces sat at them. I know that the Government would like to get more private sector provision into social services but I didn't expect it to extend to JD Wetherspoons.
I went to a few pubs before and after going to the launch so decided the best approach for today would be to head into Addiscombe for a fry up. I was warm by the time I arrived and nearly took my jumper off but then remembered I had a WHO t-shirt on underneath. Slightly embarrassed I opted to sweat it out rather than show my sad fan qualities.
After a while two old ladies of about late 60s / early 70s came in and ordered today's special - Roast beef, potatoes + 3 veg. They chatted about old ladies stuff and then I thought I heard one of them mention 'Doctor Who'. I thought I must be just obsessively hearing things so ignored it. Then I heard her say 'hospital' and 'Moon' and figured she probably was referring to that lame and lazy tat from last night.
They had a nice long chat about it:
"Did you see Anne Reid? From Coronation Street? And Dinnerladies?"
"Yes, she was very good"
"I don't think they've had a black companion before"
"No dear"
"I'm really looking forward to the new series of Torchwood now"
"Oh I don't think that'll be on until the Autumn, dear"
"Oh well, it's Shakespeare next by the looks of things"
I should have gone over whipped my jumper off and got them down to The Keepers of Croydon - I'm telling you, they weren't good looking but they could be the most interesting women in fandom. Heck if they can get into London and find a seat they'd probably have a blast at the Tavern.
So if these old dudes can keep living and carry on watching I think the critics can say what they like - the public are talking about WHO today and they're talking positively. Well I say the public; I mean Doris and Frieda.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Saxon Files: So / So Television
Written by Mr Saxon
Imagine my surprise last Saturday to get an email from a TV production company - So Television (Graham Norton's company). The email was a request for information on the members of the Keepers of Croydon and my contact telephone number.
Naturally I asked for further information (as I try not to give my phone number out to strangers even when they dangle sweets) and I've not heard from him since!
However I know some people who have. Much less circumspect than little ol' me and clamouring for fame, some of my chums in Who fandom got back to Norton's bunch and the interim result was the news that several fans had been invited to the South Bank of the Thames to record the show tomorrow night (Wednesday 28th).
The set up (there always has to be one with this kind of crap) is that they would pretend to be 'ordinary' members of the public and then be invited by a roving reporter to ask questions to that chap that pretends to be Dr Who. Mr Tennant would be in a studio ready to answer the questions live!
I have to say the last thing I watched with Graham Norton in was "Rose" a couple of years back and I haven't missed his style of light entertainment lite. But let's face it he has a special place in Dr Who history just because of that accident.
The plans of Mr Norton changed at some point for our intrepid super fans though. The latest news is that the production team now want to make the interviews as realistic as possible so they're getting real 'ordinary' people in instead. I kid you not.
The fans have been told to stand down but as a special treat they get to see Messrs Norton and Tennant live in the studio and see the show being recorded. Well, it's a night out innit.
I was really looking forward to a game of 'Spot the Ordinary People' though. The rumour that the production team changed the plan after the photographs they'd requested of the fans came in is, of course, laughable. In many ways.
Anyway, as they'll all be there tomorrow night in the audience there's still a chance that these fame hungry anoraks could make it on to TV. The programme airs on BBC2 Thursday night at 10pm, I believe. See if you can spot anyone in the audience that might just be a Who fan. Answers via email to So Television.
Imagine my surprise last Saturday to get an email from a TV production company - So Television (Graham Norton's company). The email was a request for information on the members of the Keepers of Croydon and my contact telephone number.
Naturally I asked for further information (as I try not to give my phone number out to strangers even when they dangle sweets) and I've not heard from him since!
However I know some people who have. Much less circumspect than little ol' me and clamouring for fame, some of my chums in Who fandom got back to Norton's bunch and the interim result was the news that several fans had been invited to the South Bank of the Thames to record the show tomorrow night (Wednesday 28th).
The set up (there always has to be one with this kind of crap) is that they would pretend to be 'ordinary' members of the public and then be invited by a roving reporter to ask questions to that chap that pretends to be Dr Who. Mr Tennant would be in a studio ready to answer the questions live!
I have to say the last thing I watched with Graham Norton in was "Rose" a couple of years back and I haven't missed his style of light entertainment lite. But let's face it he has a special place in Dr Who history just because of that accident.
The plans of Mr Norton changed at some point for our intrepid super fans though. The latest news is that the production team now want to make the interviews as realistic as possible so they're getting real 'ordinary' people in instead. I kid you not.
The fans have been told to stand down but as a special treat they get to see Messrs Norton and Tennant live in the studio and see the show being recorded. Well, it's a night out innit.
I was really looking forward to a game of 'Spot the Ordinary People' though. The rumour that the production team changed the plan after the photographs they'd requested of the fans came in is, of course, laughable. In many ways.
Anyway, as they'll all be there tomorrow night in the audience there's still a chance that these fame hungry anoraks could make it on to TV. The programme airs on BBC2 Thursday night at 10pm, I believe. See if you can spot anyone in the audience that might just be a Who fan. Answers via email to So Television.
Monday, March 12, 2007
"...AND IN AT 26"
Written by Piggy Fizz
If music channel, TMF’s eight hour run down of the ‘100 Sexiest Videos’ last Saturday was a rotten swizz, with something by Pussycat Dolls in poll position but no sign of Junior Jack’s Stupidisco anywhere, some sense of justice was restored when ‘Doctor Who’ was crowned 26th Greatest Drama on C4’s somewhat brisker chart special.
This felt right and proper, far more so than the many occasions when WHO has ranked much higher in list shows celebrating Kids TV, Favourite Telly Characters or even Top Ten Bastards where I recall Davros had a good turn-out, (Can I just make it clear that I tend to video these things and skim-view through them the next morning).
Here, WHO was being measured against legitimate dramas rather than clips of David Jason falling through a pub's open bar, and was voted for by actual programme makers rather than a gestalt of short-term memory viewers who could be bothered to tick an on-line box.
Not that any of this actually matters of course, but as this site has had its share of articles rolling their eyes at the notion of being a WHO fan, it was great, not to mention surprising, to suddenly be reminded of the show’s good points; it’s fun, it’s imaginative, it’s got an infinitely adaptable set-up, well...potentially. It’s made a triumphant return from the dead, it gets kids interested in history, literature and science...well potentially, and is cherished even by people who aren’t obsessed with it. Dare I say it, much of the show’s run has actually been well-written or has at least made a genuine effort to tap into issues and popular culture of the day as the recent ‘About Time’ reference books have demonstrated without having to resort to much tenuous evidence.
The revelation for me was that the very inclusion of WHO at all seemed just fine, entirely lacking in the sore thumb status it might have prompted stuck amongst highly regarded heavyweight productions. The only other dweeb show present was The Prisoner, but then that’s always been lauded as Kafka dressed up as The Avengers.
There was a feeling that had this been a party, WHO would have been warmly welcomed by the other guests rather than sneered at for turning up with a 2-litre bottle of Woodpecker.
If The Naked Civil Servant, Threads, or The Singing Detective are all far more serious and important in the sense that they directly addressed issues, at the same time they all seem to have something in common with WHO in their outlook, attitude or willingness to do something different with the television format, almost as if they’re the sort of programme that might develop out of WHO. Okay, that’s starting to sound pretentious, and I must stress that I don’t regard WHO as anything much beyond a fun, goofy adventure show, but at its best the series has usually attempted to get audiences thinking, even if its original remit to educate kids about school-book subjects soon got lost in a miasma of robots and space monsters.
So, while I’ve still got a very big problem with the idea of the show as an all-consuming hobby, it’s been a genuine pleasure to see it in a fresh context, to remember or perhaps realise for the first time why it’s always been so appealing.
...apparently Torchwood didn't quite make the Top50.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Big Finish Limbo #2: The Devil is in the Detail
Written by The Mara
Click here for Big Finish Limbo #1
There is a chasm between intention and actuality. I’m sure readers who intended to enter the competition and didn’t end up doing so, know this very well. Although I had every intention of writing a short story for the competition, and entering it, this presumes I had an idea worth writing up and also happy with the final draft.
Morbius started writing three different stories before he hit on the one that worked. And there were other concepts that didn’t make it to the writing stage because he could already foresee complications. These were usually the result of his ideas being too complex for such a short word count (2500 words – more on that in the next entry). Mine came together a lot more easily than that.
When I started writing my story I did not have blogging the experience in mind, so the actual steps of creation are a bit fuzzy now. What I am definite about is that I had only one idea. I wrote it up. Yet I can piece some of the earlier steps together relatively easily, and a lot of it comes down to me being strategic.
The first thing I knew is that I had to come up with a story that would be different to other entries (although originality is overrated – a well-written story will appear fresh, whereas a collection of new ideas will seem dull if written poorly). It also needed to talk to a modern audience, have a theme greater than itself. It had to fit with the rest of Big Finish’s output. There were two pivotal points to achieving these things; how was I going to approach the competition brief, and what Doctor was I going to use?
Morbius and I discussed the brief first. The premise of each story needed to work from "How the Doctor changed my life". We decided that the use of the determiner ‘my’ would probably lead to a lot of first person narratives in the vein of ‘Love and Monsters’. Both of us like that story, so that wasn’t why we wanted to avoid that style – it was simply that we could see a lot of other entries written like that, as well as the fact that Big Finish work, while it does experiment in narrative style and structure, generally does not come from this perspective. We could also see people taking the brief too literally and writing a piece based on themselves, which we also decided was a no-no. We also decided that we had to be quite creative with the brief as the premise could be applied to every Doctor Who story – he does change people’s lives.
So what could we add that would make this premise a new force rather than a run of the mill story? Me being the morbid soul that I am, eventually picked on the Doctor changing someone’s death. This was not fixed in stone – if I had come up with a different idea that would not fit I would have happily discarded the premise, as it isn’t that brilliant, but it did hold up with my other choices.
The choice of Doctor was easy. The third Doctor is my favourite, and strategically also made sense. In all of the BBC, Big Finish and Virgin output the third Doctor is underrepresented. On the Big Finish site they had example short stories, and none of them came from the third Doctor. If we now take the 110 entries mentioned on Outpost Gallifrey as a representative sample of the 1072 submissions, it would appear that this strategy was not as successful as I thought it would be; there are less submissions for the fifth Doctor, and about the same amount for the first and second incarnations.
Having picked the third Doctor, a lot of things fell into place. I wanted the story earthbound; the short word count means there’s no real space to indulge in world or culture building, and an earthbound story suits the third Doctor just fine. This Doctor has always had stories that reflect on the ‘bigger issues’ in society, and given my political bent, it was quite clear I could write something that would fit both the Doctor and my own need for a social message.
I toyed briefly with global warming, but quite frankly it sucks as a narrative device. That’s probably why it has had little impact on our collective psyche even though we’ve known about it since the days of Kit Pedler. I also toyed with heavy metal poisoning of fish, and the dumping of industrial and nuclear waste in the ocean, both being contemporary with the Pertwee era, and still having resonance with today. But these did not really grab me. I decided to focus on the setting instead, and see if that generated any plot ideas.
I’m pretty pleased with the setting I picked. I am pretty sure, after questioning some of my walking encyclopaedic friends, that it is one that has not been seen in professional Doctor Who output before. Go me. So excuse me for keeping it fairly close to my chest – I may want to use it again. I feel safe enough to drop a hint though; Morbius and I have always discussed the merits of the claustrophobic space and inherent value of a small cast in creating a tension-laden narrative.
At any rate, with the 3rd Doctor, a claustrophobic space, me wanting an earthbound story in the 1970s (although again, I could have moved it if it hadn’t worked as well as it did), and a change of death, I picked the 3rd Doctor favourite of ‘radiation’ as my form of social commentary. I must have still had poisoned fish on my mind, although I should also acknowledge how prominent the Litvinenko Polonium-210 poisoning case was at the time.
So about two weeks into December I am ready to start writing. So I start up the PC, open OpenOffice Writer, crack my knuckles and look at the fresh, unlimited possibilities offered by that big blank rectangle on my monitor…
And can’t write a single word.
My story is set in the real past, and I’m about to write about real issues. I need this story to hang together both historically and scientifically. There is no point writing it all just to find out it is fundamentally flawed - especially if I got it to the point of being publish-worthy.
Damn! After all that strategy, now I had research to do.
Coming soon – Big Finish Limbo #3: The murky land of Wikipedia.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Displacement
Sit back, relax and enjoy.
I saw a book in a shop this week all about thinking differently and therefore making your life more successful, less stressful and generally better. The basic point was that people who make a difference to the World start first by making a difference to their own lives. It's really simple too: When they have a good idea they put it into action despite it being daunting. Some people make a huge difference to their own lives without impacting on the World as well which is great too. Then there's us - we like an easy life.
We make no difference to anyone. Not even ourselves.
If you're a committed (not necessarily institutionalised) Who fan the chances are that you will watch every Who story available more than once, read about the programme regularly and spend time discussing it with fellow fruitloops. You might even go to the length of having your own blog and enjoy endlessly correcting your friends by telling them "it's not a blog - it's a site" despite reality.
We're talking years of lives - you don't win them back. There's no 10p when you redeem the bottle and it doesn't work like the Co-Op dividend either. The time is lost. Forever. Gone. Wasted. And you don't have the bottle anymore anyway.
What has begun to worry me more than anything else is that most fans I know have a secondary waste of time, some even more. Perhaps you'll watch Life on Mars, Lost, 24 or perhaps you're gonna have a weekend with that great Bod DVD. I stayed up into the early hours of this morning watching motor racing from America on the internet. My eyes hurt and on the whole it was dull. But I know exactly why I did it.
I tell people I enjoy it. The Life on Mars people tell me they watch it cause they enjoy it, comic fans read comics because they enjoy them. But the truth is they can all be used as displacement activities.
The motor racing was enjoyable because it stopped me from doing the hoovering, tidying my room and all the other things that I tell myself are outlawed on a Friday night. In short, it stopped me from organising my life and taking control. That is the peril of displacement activity.
I read an article by the environmental campaigner George Monbiot this week and he made a similar point regarding conspiracy theorists after he was attacked for saying he did not believe that there was a 9/11 conspiracy. The main thrust of his argument was that conspiracy theories are the political equivalent of displacement activity. Rather than getting involved with real issues and getting out and campaigning, conspiracy nuts can get their kicks safe at home in the knowledge that nobody can ever enter an informed debate with them. They don't leave the house to investigate their claims or campaign for changes. If anything, they just hamper real causes trying to get on the political agenda by taking up precious newsprint.
Reading comics all night, eating fast food, watching every surviving episode of Up Pompeii in one sitting might keep people happy for hours but waste a lifetime. That novel you could have written, that invention you're waiting for somebody else to patent, that boyfriend waiting to discover he's yours. It's all out there but you have to search it out and get it while you can.
[ooh! Hang on "Song for Ten" has just come on - I'll be back in 3 minutes and 29 seconds.]
Perhaps you don't want to achieve anything: professionally, personally, whatever. Fine but at least be man or woman enough to admit to yourself that you waste nearly every moment of your life filling it with Dr Who, Battlestar Gallactica, anything with a bloody spaceship in it, comics, football (come on the Imps!), beer, soaps. Don't use 'enjoyment' as an excuse not to join the human race.
There's another way which, in the long term, might lead to greater satisfaction and more enjoyment.
Give up most of the time you spend on displacement: get a girlfriend, cook a new dish, walk in the countryside during the rain, interact with humanity a bit more, ditch those blogs you sad git. Just get off your fat ass, Jon and do something with your life.
Oh sod it.
I saw a book in a shop this week all about thinking differently and therefore making your life more successful, less stressful and generally better. The basic point was that people who make a difference to the World start first by making a difference to their own lives. It's really simple too: When they have a good idea they put it into action despite it being daunting. Some people make a huge difference to their own lives without impacting on the World as well which is great too. Then there's us - we like an easy life.
We make no difference to anyone. Not even ourselves.
If you're a committed (not necessarily institutionalised) Who fan the chances are that you will watch every Who story available more than once, read about the programme regularly and spend time discussing it with fellow fruitloops. You might even go to the length of having your own blog and enjoy endlessly correcting your friends by telling them "it's not a blog - it's a site" despite reality.
We're talking years of lives - you don't win them back. There's no 10p when you redeem the bottle and it doesn't work like the Co-Op dividend either. The time is lost. Forever. Gone. Wasted. And you don't have the bottle anymore anyway.
What has begun to worry me more than anything else is that most fans I know have a secondary waste of time, some even more. Perhaps you'll watch Life on Mars, Lost, 24 or perhaps you're gonna have a weekend with that great Bod DVD. I stayed up into the early hours of this morning watching motor racing from America on the internet. My eyes hurt and on the whole it was dull. But I know exactly why I did it.
I tell people I enjoy it. The Life on Mars people tell me they watch it cause they enjoy it, comic fans read comics because they enjoy them. But the truth is they can all be used as displacement activities.
The motor racing was enjoyable because it stopped me from doing the hoovering, tidying my room and all the other things that I tell myself are outlawed on a Friday night. In short, it stopped me from organising my life and taking control. That is the peril of displacement activity.
I read an article by the environmental campaigner George Monbiot this week and he made a similar point regarding conspiracy theorists after he was attacked for saying he did not believe that there was a 9/11 conspiracy. The main thrust of his argument was that conspiracy theories are the political equivalent of displacement activity. Rather than getting involved with real issues and getting out and campaigning, conspiracy nuts can get their kicks safe at home in the knowledge that nobody can ever enter an informed debate with them. They don't leave the house to investigate their claims or campaign for changes. If anything, they just hamper real causes trying to get on the political agenda by taking up precious newsprint.
Reading comics all night, eating fast food, watching every surviving episode of Up Pompeii in one sitting might keep people happy for hours but waste a lifetime. That novel you could have written, that invention you're waiting for somebody else to patent, that boyfriend waiting to discover he's yours. It's all out there but you have to search it out and get it while you can.
[ooh! Hang on "Song for Ten" has just come on - I'll be back in 3 minutes and 29 seconds.]
Perhaps you don't want to achieve anything: professionally, personally, whatever. Fine but at least be man or woman enough to admit to yourself that you waste nearly every moment of your life filling it with Dr Who, Battlestar Gallactica, anything with a bloody spaceship in it, comics, football (come on the Imps!), beer, soaps. Don't use 'enjoyment' as an excuse not to join the human race.
There's another way which, in the long term, might lead to greater satisfaction and more enjoyment.
Give up most of the time you spend on displacement: get a girlfriend, cook a new dish, walk in the countryside during the rain, interact with humanity a bit more, ditch those blogs you sad git. Just get off your fat ass, Jon and do something with your life.
Oh sod it.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Big Finish Limbo #1: In the beginning there was the Word.
Written by The Mara
The people who entered the recent Big Finish short story competition have entered a time of limbo while we all wait for the judges to announce the winner – and the 1071 also-rans. "Limbo" was the term in Roman Catholic theology given to the region between hell or heaven serving as the abode after death of unbaptised infants and the righteous who died before the coming of Christ. Now, while some entrants may feel strung up between heaven and hell, given that the RC church is currently debating whether or not to do away with the concept of limbo altogether, we would be better to take on a more secular definition of the word. According to the speedy, if not terribly brilliant, dictionary.com, definition 3: "an intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place", is far more appropriate.
We’ve all been there. Waiting for exam results, confirmation that we got "the job", the agonising seconds while we wait for someone we’ve asked on a date to say ‘yes’... or ‘no’. Even City boys experience it during the time between the annual round of bonuses being announced, and finding out that theirs is enough to support a developing-world village for a decade. An even more relevant example to this blog would be all the times Doctor Who has been off the air; 1985, 1989 – 1996, 1996 -2005, the seasonal breaks, the rest of the week…
During limbo we need something to pass the time. Rather than take up smoking, I seized the Keeper’s suggestion of writing a few pieces about my individual experiences during the competition as a way of doing just that.
So consider the last 271 words as just the preamble for a collection of musings on the entire competition process. 291.
In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was ‘competition’. It was closely followed by the words ‘Doctor’, ‘Who’, ‘writing’, ‘short’, ‘story’ and ‘published’. These divine words were uttered by a small-time god. From now on this minor deity will be known as "Morbius". I listened unto Morbius and said, ‘yea verily unto which URL shall I venture forth?’ And Morbius listened unto me and gave his wisdom of the URL and proclaimed; ‘go forth and create!’
It is the strength of the Doctor Who community and their use of word of mouth that has led to Big Finish being inundated with entries. I would never have known of the competition had it not been for Morbius informing me of it. He also would not have known of it without someone else mentioning it to him.
Of course the 1072 submissions (originally 1073, but we have since had an entrant own up to previously published paid fiction work) are just from those who managed to complete and chose to enter. Add a guesstimate of how many people wanted to enter but didn’t, and we end up with an impressive number touched by this competition.
The enthusiasm for the competition was highly visible in face-to-face meets and on fora like Outpost Gallifrey. Conversations about entry details, writing trials and tribulations, open declarations of support and encouragement were sparked by the competition and still continue through this limbo period.
Ultimately this competition has served as a catalyst for a level of enthusiasm, support and encouragement that stands as Testament to the strength of the Doctor Who community at its best.
But now I’ve jumped too far in the future. Also, warm n’ fuzzies don’t make for brilliant blogging; there needs to be more confession and Hail Marys, more ‘insight’ to keep the voyeurs of blog-land happy.
When Morbius told me about the competition, there was never any doubt that I’d write an entry. This comes down to the simple conceit that I do consider myself as a writer. I’m very much the amateur, which is a good thing given the rules for the competition, but I do have a bit of a writing résumé. I’ve had a short story printed in a county English teachers’ journal, a poem printed in a University collection, articles for street press and university rags, and my crowning glory, a non-fiction chapter in a collected work where I got to be printed alongside such luminaries as Francis Bacon, Aristotle, Goethe, Chaucer and Shakespeare… but none of these exploits received remuneration.
While I am conceited enough to think I have a better than average chance of winning, this was not my main motivation for writing. I primarily saw the competition as a writing challenge. Where other people may be driven by the impulse to win, or have a story they felt had to be told in the Whoniverse, or saw this competition as a way of legitimising their fan-fiction output, or did not consider any of these things and just thought writing an entry would be fun, I saw this as a structured method to hone my skills. I had never written any Doctor Who fiction before this short story. In fact, I never wrote any science fiction either; my usual areas of fiction writing are fantasy, and things that can be amorphously grouped under ‘modern fiction’. So the tingle of doing something new, added to the tingle of possible publication and ‘winning’, meant that before I even put finger to keyboard I was already giddy with excitement… and hassling the rest of my fandom associates to discover who else was writing and thus being conferred the weird status of both competitor and comrade.
So! I sat down at my keyboard, after discovering three comrade-competitors, after reading the rules and –
In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was ‘Hell!’ It was closely followed by other words, and became a question; ‘What the hell do I write?’
Coming soon – Big Finish Limbo #2: The Devil is in the Detail.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Love & Croydon - A Pub Crawl
Many thanks to all those lonely hearts who took part in the pub crawl yesterday. I don't think a single one of us found love but it wasn't due to the lack of trying - well no more than normal anyway.
For the record: 8 people strutted their stuff and a mega 1 came from Croydon (Me!)
For the record: 8 people strutted their stuff and a mega 1 came from Croydon (Me!)
Friday, February 09, 2007
My First Time # 1
Name: The Mara
Gender: ♀
First Story: Talons of Weng Chiang
Approximate Date: September 1996.
Age: As old as nightmares, or you can do the math yourself.
When the Keeper asked if I would set the ball rolling on submitting guilty confessions of 'My First Time', I have to admit that I had to make sure that, yes, he was talking about losing my Doctor Who virginity and not that other kind. Yet for me there is a clear connection between the two concepts.
Of course for many of you the analogy between sex and Doctor Who does not hold - given you can clearly remember that your first time was at the age of six or seven, if it were sex we were talking about we'd have to have called in Social Services because your parents were clearly abusing you or letting you be abused.
Then again, my mother obviously considered Doctor Who some form of child abuse, as it was banned in my house. She was, and still is, the type of mother who only allowed soft drink and chocolate on your birthday, bought educational presents, and sent you off to school with brown bread sandwiches with grated cheese and sultanas in it. So my early experiences of Doctor Who are exactly like my early experiences of sex; both were reduced in my existence to occasional glances at books or television on the topic, but never knowing what either was really about. I knew there was a Timelord that changed shape and there was a police box involved. I knew that the 'scream' at the beginning of the end credits during the Tom Baker era made me jump, and I have a vague recollection of a yellow vintage car on the edge of a mound of gravel. But I never saw a complete episode, let alone a complete story.
It is probably telling that I lost my Doctor Who virginity a good four years after that other sort. And it still involved sex. Like a social disease, I had Doctor Who 'passed on' to me by my boyfriend. Like any social disease, there was a spectrum of ways he could approach the knowledge of him being a carrier; with the two extremes being that he could have told me at the very beginning and run the risk that I might turn around and say 'I'm sorry, I just don't think my feelings for you are strong enough to overcome the fact you're infected with Doctor Who', or he could have been one of those ones who kept his disease completely hidden. Watch the new BBC remake of Dracula, if you need an example for why that is always a bad idea.
In the end it was somewhere in the middle. He told me early on that he ‘liked Doctor Who'. The evidence that this was an understatement was the complete VHS collection with hand typed labels and extant Target novelisation collection in his bedroom. Oh, and the porcelain TARDIS moneybox and Dapol figurines of the 7th Doctor and a Cyberman. I always stuck these in compromising positions and, I found out later to my mortification, were also always tidied up by his mother.
But the time-coded copies of ‘The Ice Warriors’ were turned off as soon as I arrived. Doctor Who had been partitioned off; it was present, but never really talked about. Until I pressed him about it and he eventually relented, starting my education with the classic of Doctor Who 'The Talons of Weng Chiang'.
Bad Move.
Losing one's virginity often involves a lot of confusion, surprise, disappointment and fear. I was confused by the simultaneous slowness and unfathomable plotting, surprised when I was shown the silly rat (and yes, the sex analogy works very well here), disappointed in that this was supposed to be the highlight of Doctor Who, and fearful that a major part of my partner's life was something I was never going to understand. Like first time sex where expectations have been built up too high, Talons was an utter let down.
But just like sex, one moves past the first time, knowing that it just has to get better. And Doctor Who did get better for me, although not through watching 'classics' or the boyfriend’s personal favourites. For those of you who watched Doctor Who when it was on, even if you did not begin on 23rd November 1963, you did watch stories pretty much in order until you got hooked and decided to go looking for more fixes (like the sex addicts you are). There is a reason this works, and jumping to random stories does not.
So my advice to the experienced that wish to embark on deflowering Old Series Doctor Who virgins of an adult age is to start slow and work with missionary for a while before trying the seventh position of the Perfumed Garden. Use ‘Rose’ and the rest of the new series as foreplay. When the time is right to move to the next base, pick an Old Series story with a natural introductory bit. Start with colour, because it's 'safer' than black and white. In other words, start with ‘Spearhead From Space’.
Gender: ♀
First Story: Talons of Weng Chiang
Approximate Date: September 1996.
Age: As old as nightmares, or you can do the math yourself.
When the Keeper asked if I would set the ball rolling on submitting guilty confessions of 'My First Time', I have to admit that I had to make sure that, yes, he was talking about losing my Doctor Who virginity and not that other kind. Yet for me there is a clear connection between the two concepts.
Of course for many of you the analogy between sex and Doctor Who does not hold - given you can clearly remember that your first time was at the age of six or seven, if it were sex we were talking about we'd have to have called in Social Services because your parents were clearly abusing you or letting you be abused.
Then again, my mother obviously considered Doctor Who some form of child abuse, as it was banned in my house. She was, and still is, the type of mother who only allowed soft drink and chocolate on your birthday, bought educational presents, and sent you off to school with brown bread sandwiches with grated cheese and sultanas in it. So my early experiences of Doctor Who are exactly like my early experiences of sex; both were reduced in my existence to occasional glances at books or television on the topic, but never knowing what either was really about. I knew there was a Timelord that changed shape and there was a police box involved. I knew that the 'scream' at the beginning of the end credits during the Tom Baker era made me jump, and I have a vague recollection of a yellow vintage car on the edge of a mound of gravel. But I never saw a complete episode, let alone a complete story.
It is probably telling that I lost my Doctor Who virginity a good four years after that other sort. And it still involved sex. Like a social disease, I had Doctor Who 'passed on' to me by my boyfriend. Like any social disease, there was a spectrum of ways he could approach the knowledge of him being a carrier; with the two extremes being that he could have told me at the very beginning and run the risk that I might turn around and say 'I'm sorry, I just don't think my feelings for you are strong enough to overcome the fact you're infected with Doctor Who', or he could have been one of those ones who kept his disease completely hidden. Watch the new BBC remake of Dracula, if you need an example for why that is always a bad idea.
In the end it was somewhere in the middle. He told me early on that he ‘liked Doctor Who'. The evidence that this was an understatement was the complete VHS collection with hand typed labels and extant Target novelisation collection in his bedroom. Oh, and the porcelain TARDIS moneybox and Dapol figurines of the 7th Doctor and a Cyberman. I always stuck these in compromising positions and, I found out later to my mortification, were also always tidied up by his mother.
But the time-coded copies of ‘The Ice Warriors’ were turned off as soon as I arrived. Doctor Who had been partitioned off; it was present, but never really talked about. Until I pressed him about it and he eventually relented, starting my education with the classic of Doctor Who 'The Talons of Weng Chiang'.
Bad Move.
Losing one's virginity often involves a lot of confusion, surprise, disappointment and fear. I was confused by the simultaneous slowness and unfathomable plotting, surprised when I was shown the silly rat (and yes, the sex analogy works very well here), disappointed in that this was supposed to be the highlight of Doctor Who, and fearful that a major part of my partner's life was something I was never going to understand. Like first time sex where expectations have been built up too high, Talons was an utter let down.
But just like sex, one moves past the first time, knowing that it just has to get better. And Doctor Who did get better for me, although not through watching 'classics' or the boyfriend’s personal favourites. For those of you who watched Doctor Who when it was on, even if you did not begin on 23rd November 1963, you did watch stories pretty much in order until you got hooked and decided to go looking for more fixes (like the sex addicts you are). There is a reason this works, and jumping to random stories does not.
So my advice to the experienced that wish to embark on deflowering Old Series Doctor Who virgins of an adult age is to start slow and work with missionary for a while before trying the seventh position of the Perfumed Garden. Use ‘Rose’ and the rest of the new series as foreplay. When the time is right to move to the next base, pick an Old Series story with a natural introductory bit. Start with colour, because it's 'safer' than black and white. In other words, start with ‘Spearhead From Space’.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Soundtrack To Our Lives
It's always been the case that fans have associated Dr Who with their outside World. People can remember outside events purely because they remember watching a particular story or episode. It started on Day 1 when more news of JFK's assassination filtered through but it also manifests itself in the more personal memories. I'm talking about those moments when watching an old story reminds you of a specific time and place, a song or a film, a book or a friend.
Whenever I watch Trial of a Timelord I am taken back to cub camp. I can instantly remember the fire side sing alongs, the massive games of hide and seek and the dreaded chicken not supreme. When I watch The Doctor Dances I'm reminded of a wedding I attended not long afterwards and the fact that my best man speech went much better than I hoped. And after a lull in the senses due to a lack of new Who for a decade-ish 21st Century Who is really beginning to be the backbone of my consciousness. I didn't realise until my copy of Murray Gold's music came through the post.
Russell T Davies has created a hit version of Dr Who by updating the show to include emotions on a level previously not tried in the history of the show. And Murray Gold's music is a massive part of making that work. Christ, I hate the volume level of the music compared to the dialogue - I can barely hear the actors sometimes - and sometimes I hate the music itself but Jesus, when I listen to the album the memories are intense.
The music that started the show off in Rose really didn't work for me but on listening to it in isolation I was reminded of the intense and wonderful feelings I had at the show returning, how I finally started mixing with other nutters, and also what was happening in real life at the time.
This show gets us feeling as well as thinking. if you blubbed your way through School Reunion you'll know just what I mean. And then there's Doomsday - who didn't blub at the end of that? This album brings those memories flooding back and it also reminds me of other moments in my life over the last 2 years. Moments of great happiness, very dark and sad moments - Murray Gold was writing the soundtrack to my life and I suspect he's written one just for you as well.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Big Finish? Get Your Short Story Published!
The closing date for the Big Finish short story competition is 31st January 2006. Big Finish will be receiving a bumper mailbag with fans up and down the universe scribbling away with high fever.
The winner gets a great prize. They will work with an editor to perfect their work and then it will be published in a collection of short stories and they'll be paid the going rate. How mega is that?! You can be a published Dr Who author.
But what of the rejects? No money, no publishing and nobody knows just how wrong Big Finish were to reject you! That's where The Keepers of Croydon steps in.
OK I can't offer you money (sorry!) but I can get you published. If you get rejected by Big Finish and your story isn't indecent I will stick it on this website and show it to a Worldwide audience.
All you have to do is post it to me in an email with confirmation of your rejection from Big Finish. If you would prefer to remain anonymous please state that in your email.
Please note that this offer is only open to people who have been rejected by Big Finish and only those stories that have gone through that process will be published as part of this exercise.
Finally, I would like to wish you all luck with your writing and the competition. If your luck runs out, just contact me at mailto:thekeepersofcroydon@doctorwhofans.net
The winner gets a great prize. They will work with an editor to perfect their work and then it will be published in a collection of short stories and they'll be paid the going rate. How mega is that?! You can be a published Dr Who author.
But what of the rejects? No money, no publishing and nobody knows just how wrong Big Finish were to reject you! That's where The Keepers of Croydon steps in.
OK I can't offer you money (sorry!) but I can get you published. If you get rejected by Big Finish and your story isn't indecent I will stick it on this website and show it to a Worldwide audience.
All you have to do is post it to me in an email with confirmation of your rejection from Big Finish. If you would prefer to remain anonymous please state that in your email.
Please note that this offer is only open to people who have been rejected by Big Finish and only those stories that have gone through that process will be published as part of this exercise.
Finally, I would like to wish you all luck with your writing and the competition. If your luck runs out, just contact me at mailto:thekeepersofcroydon@doctorwhofans.net
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Whoicide
‘Hobbies are supposed to pass the time, not fill them.’ I may be misquoting Norman Bates as I’ve not seen Psycho in quite a while, but that line has always haunted me. The idea of something one enjoys eventually becoming a measure of how much emptiness is in your life; that’s far more terrifying than merely dressing as your dead mother and murdering anyone who gives you an erection. Actually, my apologies for spoiling the end of Psycho there if you’ve not seen it.
The question is, does your own fandom depress you? Do you ever go to watch The Web Planet only to find the tape still left where you stopped it on the previous attempt some years earlier? Yes, I know it’s on DVD now, but buying it in that format when you never watched the VHS version smacks of obsessive routine rather than a display of genuine love. Maybe I’m being unfair - perhaps you greatly admire The Web Planet, if so then good for you - but in a series as.. erm.. diverse as WHO, there’s bound to be something you hate, a story or even an entire era you don’t regard as merely sloppily made, but so very wrong that it provokes feelings of existential dread in you.
For want of a better example, let’s call this hypothetical bete noir, Trial of Time Lord. Despite the fact that you know you detest it, do you still watch it every so often as it’s the next one in sequence for your chronological viewing schedule? Why do it? Why subject yourself to such a monumental squandering of the senses? Sitting through that story feels like having blood siphoned off at the rate of one pint per hour - wouldn’t your time have been better spent talking to someone, learning to cook some new dish or walking in a park, even if there’s a hail storm kicking off?
But Trial is the absolute nadir of WHO - what about those classics? Have you ever felt profoundly empty after sitting through one of the ‘all-time greats’, suddenly seeing it exposed as just a shoddy piece of old telly? Beyond that, have you ever realised that you’ve watched something you adore past the point when the last drop of enjoyment has been squeezed from it? I must confess that this happens an awful lot with me. It’s probably my own fault as I tend to plough any furrow of pleasure long after it’s stopped being fun, mainly as a displacement activity from getting on with stuff that I should be doing but secretly suspect will be rather hard work.
In this respect WHO for me is frequently like putting all your albums in order so you can delay exam revision. The public view of fans is of course one of just such obsessive lunatics, autistic list-makers who’ve no hope of interacting with real people. If we’re honest there’s clearly a fair bit of this about and if you’re active in fandom then chances are you probably know a few candidates who fit the bill. But stop a second; aren’t you one too? Even if you can justify the pursuit of something designed to be entertaining and magical, is it really normal to be spending so much time and energy- let alone cash- on a television programme?
Something frightening happened to me recently - I’ve been perfectly happy to ignore the whole debate on canon; if a story’s good, then it’s good, if it’s bad then it’s probably an unpardonable stinker. I know that Tides of Time, Voyager and Adventuress of Henrietta Street are unlikely to make it on to the acknowledged lists of stories that have officially ‘happened’ in the WHO universe, and this bothers me not one jot. I think they’re great stories, adhering to what I like my WHO to be doing. Then I discovered that unbeknownst to me, a VHS tape which previously I’d only kept as it contained the greatest ever edition of the game show ‘Catchpharse’, (I began recording five minutes in when I realised that one contestant, a monstrous idiot who couldn’t grasp the show’s concept, was going to carry on giving increasingly surreal answers such as ‘Clever in the box’, ‘Stand-up plant’ and ‘Personality pot’) also contained something else dating from that same year... 1993.
‘Dimensions in Time’ is unforgivably atrocious. To this day I’ve still yet to see its conclusion. The reason it features here is that upon sitting through this mammoth pudding of shit, I found myself thinking, ‘But of course this isn’t actual WHO - it’s just a charity runaround.’ Hold on... why did my brain feel it was important to reach that conclusion? Why the need to remind myself that ‘..it doesn’t count’? I’m writing this mid way through January and hopefully many of us will still have enough new year’s momentum to have stuck with resolutions so far. One I’m adding is that if I ever find myself thinking that way again, then it’s time to back away. This after all is a tv show. It may be entertaining, it may be great to see its triumphant return making such a huge impact, but dating UNIT stories or taking a firm stance on whether Susan truly is the Doctor’s granddaughter is a waste of this short life.
Enjoy it, slag it off when the production’s a disaster, celebrate it on those occasions when the show’s pulled off a corker, but should you ever find yourself watching it for the sake of it, then for Christ’s sake stop. That may sound obvious, patronising even, but let’s face it - everyone’s guilty of it, and not just WHO geeks. How many people sit through endless, unchanging soap operas and sit-coms because it feels traditional and reassuring? Why are so many movies or hit albums bland, formulaic rip-offs of each other? Because audiences are much happier sleepwalking through the comfortably familiar rather than trying the new and unknown - this would mean some risk-taking, even if all that’s required is passing up a retread of something you already know inside out. To this end, the producers of Casino Royale deserve considerable praise for totally recreating James Bond from scratch even when the appalling predecessor, ‘Die Another Day’ provided them with great box-office.
But I’m going off subject, the point is that anything we find pleasurable is likely to develop into a crutch, then a rut and eventually a trap. As I said, this whole ramble may just be for my benefit - for all I know you’re an entirely well-adjusted individual - you may have quite rightly never got past part two of The Time Monster or Underworld, flatly refusing to sit through the whole mess merely for completions sake - but I’d be willing to bet that there are many of you with the same reservations; the odd pang of ‘why?’ every once in a while. Do you really need the same episodes as vanilla disc releases, limited edition box set and standard version, especially when you recorded them all off the telly anyway... even more so if we’re talking about Torchwood rather than Doctor Who itself?
Even though one of the recurring themes of the show has always been to maintain a childlike enthusiasm rather than calcifying into a dreary adult, let’s not forget that this is also a series celebrating a guy who abandoned his comfortable home because his peers were Olympian bores, poring over reams of accrued facts instead of going out and experiencing things first-hand. Bear that in mind next time you spend a weekend in with the curtains drawn, watching The Two Doctors.
On Wednesday I learnt that The Dominators is being released in audio-only format despite the fact that the tv story exists in its entirety. Why? The common excuse for this sort of thing is that many fans enjoy listening to stories while they’re in the car, and as a result, I think I now understand its true purpose; imagine this interminable excrement blaring out from the dashboard stereo, the vehicle itself remaining stationary in a garage, the door sealed down while a length of hose runs from the exhaust and in through the driver’s side window...
Happy times and places!
Written by Piggy Fizz
The question is, does your own fandom depress you? Do you ever go to watch The Web Planet only to find the tape still left where you stopped it on the previous attempt some years earlier? Yes, I know it’s on DVD now, but buying it in that format when you never watched the VHS version smacks of obsessive routine rather than a display of genuine love. Maybe I’m being unfair - perhaps you greatly admire The Web Planet, if so then good for you - but in a series as.. erm.. diverse as WHO, there’s bound to be something you hate, a story or even an entire era you don’t regard as merely sloppily made, but so very wrong that it provokes feelings of existential dread in you.
For want of a better example, let’s call this hypothetical bete noir, Trial of Time Lord. Despite the fact that you know you detest it, do you still watch it every so often as it’s the next one in sequence for your chronological viewing schedule? Why do it? Why subject yourself to such a monumental squandering of the senses? Sitting through that story feels like having blood siphoned off at the rate of one pint per hour - wouldn’t your time have been better spent talking to someone, learning to cook some new dish or walking in a park, even if there’s a hail storm kicking off?
But Trial is the absolute nadir of WHO - what about those classics? Have you ever felt profoundly empty after sitting through one of the ‘all-time greats’, suddenly seeing it exposed as just a shoddy piece of old telly? Beyond that, have you ever realised that you’ve watched something you adore past the point when the last drop of enjoyment has been squeezed from it? I must confess that this happens an awful lot with me. It’s probably my own fault as I tend to plough any furrow of pleasure long after it’s stopped being fun, mainly as a displacement activity from getting on with stuff that I should be doing but secretly suspect will be rather hard work.
In this respect WHO for me is frequently like putting all your albums in order so you can delay exam revision. The public view of fans is of course one of just such obsessive lunatics, autistic list-makers who’ve no hope of interacting with real people. If we’re honest there’s clearly a fair bit of this about and if you’re active in fandom then chances are you probably know a few candidates who fit the bill. But stop a second; aren’t you one too? Even if you can justify the pursuit of something designed to be entertaining and magical, is it really normal to be spending so much time and energy- let alone cash- on a television programme?
Something frightening happened to me recently - I’ve been perfectly happy to ignore the whole debate on canon; if a story’s good, then it’s good, if it’s bad then it’s probably an unpardonable stinker. I know that Tides of Time, Voyager and Adventuress of Henrietta Street are unlikely to make it on to the acknowledged lists of stories that have officially ‘happened’ in the WHO universe, and this bothers me not one jot. I think they’re great stories, adhering to what I like my WHO to be doing. Then I discovered that unbeknownst to me, a VHS tape which previously I’d only kept as it contained the greatest ever edition of the game show ‘Catchpharse’, (I began recording five minutes in when I realised that one contestant, a monstrous idiot who couldn’t grasp the show’s concept, was going to carry on giving increasingly surreal answers such as ‘Clever in the box’, ‘Stand-up plant’ and ‘Personality pot’) also contained something else dating from that same year... 1993.
‘Dimensions in Time’ is unforgivably atrocious. To this day I’ve still yet to see its conclusion. The reason it features here is that upon sitting through this mammoth pudding of shit, I found myself thinking, ‘But of course this isn’t actual WHO - it’s just a charity runaround.’ Hold on... why did my brain feel it was important to reach that conclusion? Why the need to remind myself that ‘..it doesn’t count’? I’m writing this mid way through January and hopefully many of us will still have enough new year’s momentum to have stuck with resolutions so far. One I’m adding is that if I ever find myself thinking that way again, then it’s time to back away. This after all is a tv show. It may be entertaining, it may be great to see its triumphant return making such a huge impact, but dating UNIT stories or taking a firm stance on whether Susan truly is the Doctor’s granddaughter is a waste of this short life.
Enjoy it, slag it off when the production’s a disaster, celebrate it on those occasions when the show’s pulled off a corker, but should you ever find yourself watching it for the sake of it, then for Christ’s sake stop. That may sound obvious, patronising even, but let’s face it - everyone’s guilty of it, and not just WHO geeks. How many people sit through endless, unchanging soap operas and sit-coms because it feels traditional and reassuring? Why are so many movies or hit albums bland, formulaic rip-offs of each other? Because audiences are much happier sleepwalking through the comfortably familiar rather than trying the new and unknown - this would mean some risk-taking, even if all that’s required is passing up a retread of something you already know inside out. To this end, the producers of Casino Royale deserve considerable praise for totally recreating James Bond from scratch even when the appalling predecessor, ‘Die Another Day’ provided them with great box-office.
But I’m going off subject, the point is that anything we find pleasurable is likely to develop into a crutch, then a rut and eventually a trap. As I said, this whole ramble may just be for my benefit - for all I know you’re an entirely well-adjusted individual - you may have quite rightly never got past part two of The Time Monster or Underworld, flatly refusing to sit through the whole mess merely for completions sake - but I’d be willing to bet that there are many of you with the same reservations; the odd pang of ‘why?’ every once in a while. Do you really need the same episodes as vanilla disc releases, limited edition box set and standard version, especially when you recorded them all off the telly anyway... even more so if we’re talking about Torchwood rather than Doctor Who itself?
Even though one of the recurring themes of the show has always been to maintain a childlike enthusiasm rather than calcifying into a dreary adult, let’s not forget that this is also a series celebrating a guy who abandoned his comfortable home because his peers were Olympian bores, poring over reams of accrued facts instead of going out and experiencing things first-hand. Bear that in mind next time you spend a weekend in with the curtains drawn, watching The Two Doctors.
On Wednesday I learnt that The Dominators is being released in audio-only format despite the fact that the tv story exists in its entirety. Why? The common excuse for this sort of thing is that many fans enjoy listening to stories while they’re in the car, and as a result, I think I now understand its true purpose; imagine this interminable excrement blaring out from the dashboard stereo, the vehicle itself remaining stationary in a garage, the door sealed down while a length of hose runs from the exhaust and in through the driver’s side window...
Happy times and places!
Written by Piggy Fizz
Monday, January 08, 2007
Wherever you are in the world, stand up if you think "Doctor Who" is iconic
Back in 1997 Tony Blair told Britain it needed to be 'modernised'. In speech after speech he talked about how the country needed a dose of what he'd done to his own party. 'Modernisation' was a by word for reform but crucially it didn't actually help anyone to understand what he was going to do. He banked on people wanting to be modern and he was right. But this didn't suit everyone.
The Conservatives by their very nature are more reserved and contemplative. So the voters had a choice - "New" Labour with it's modernising agenda or the same old Tories.
Say something often enough and people will make the connection. Now TV isn't the same as party politics but there's a two word phrase that used to be a by word for Doctor Who. "Wobbly sets". It was trotted out as often as "Behind the Sofa" and whilst I wouldn't say that Doctor Who has never suffered from wobbly sets as a fan I know it didn't happen quite as often as the general public might think. It was damaging for the programme and when the show was recommissioned the stereotype needed to be fought.
The current production team in Cardiff are a canny bunch and to avoid the problems of the past they've taken a few lessons from the political marketeers. Doctor Who is now and always has been "Iconic"! It's the one word that keeps cropping up from September 2003 to the present and I'm sure it'll continue.
It's your duty to tell a non-fan (if you know any) that Doctor Who is iconic. Just to emphasise this (and to help get you in the mood), here are a few of my favourite iconic quotes - I do hope you're all 'on message':
"Doctor Who is a much-loved, truly iconic piece of television history." Mal Young (Head of Continuing Drama, BBC) September 2003.
"I am delighted to be joining the team bringing back such an iconic and exciting series" Phil Collinson (Producer) February 2004.
"We are delighted to have cast an actor of such calibre in one of British television's most iconic roles." Jane Tranter (BBC Bod) on Chris Eccleston March 2004.
"He loved working with Russell on The Second Coming and that relationship was very useful in his agreeing to play such an iconic role." Julie Gardner (The Queen of Who) on Chris Eccleston, March 2004.
"Doctor Who is an iconic show and I am absolutely thrilled to be playing the part of Rose Tyler," Billie Piper May 2004.
“The new production has fantastic storylines and production values and has already gained an iconic status around the world." Candace Carlisle, Senior Vice President, BBC Worldwide Americas. [Date unknown]
"It's such an incredible thrill to step inside the Tardis and to be part of such an iconic show." Freema Agyeman 2006.
"The iconic image of Doctor Who has always been of Tom Baker in his floppy hat and long, multi-coloured scarf, but it looks like that's been replaced." Clayton Hickman, Editor of DWM, on Mr Tennant's remarkable popularity, December 2006.
"Iconic moments which will no doubt recruit the next generation of fans. It's going to be great to see how all this is resolved. The end of this series is fast approaching and The Empty child has just upped the ante. Brilliant." Jonathan Bigger, reviewing The Empty Child, Summer 2005.
The Conservatives by their very nature are more reserved and contemplative. So the voters had a choice - "New" Labour with it's modernising agenda or the same old Tories.
Say something often enough and people will make the connection. Now TV isn't the same as party politics but there's a two word phrase that used to be a by word for Doctor Who. "Wobbly sets". It was trotted out as often as "Behind the Sofa" and whilst I wouldn't say that Doctor Who has never suffered from wobbly sets as a fan I know it didn't happen quite as often as the general public might think. It was damaging for the programme and when the show was recommissioned the stereotype needed to be fought.
The current production team in Cardiff are a canny bunch and to avoid the problems of the past they've taken a few lessons from the political marketeers. Doctor Who is now and always has been "Iconic"! It's the one word that keeps cropping up from September 2003 to the present and I'm sure it'll continue.
It's your duty to tell a non-fan (if you know any) that Doctor Who is iconic. Just to emphasise this (and to help get you in the mood), here are a few of my favourite iconic quotes - I do hope you're all 'on message':
"Doctor Who is a much-loved, truly iconic piece of television history." Mal Young (Head of Continuing Drama, BBC) September 2003.
"I am delighted to be joining the team bringing back such an iconic and exciting series" Phil Collinson (Producer) February 2004.
"We are delighted to have cast an actor of such calibre in one of British television's most iconic roles." Jane Tranter (BBC Bod) on Chris Eccleston March 2004.
"He loved working with Russell on The Second Coming and that relationship was very useful in his agreeing to play such an iconic role." Julie Gardner (The Queen of Who) on Chris Eccleston, March 2004.
"Doctor Who is an iconic show and I am absolutely thrilled to be playing the part of Rose Tyler," Billie Piper May 2004.
“The new production has fantastic storylines and production values and has already gained an iconic status around the world." Candace Carlisle, Senior Vice President, BBC Worldwide Americas. [Date unknown]
"It's such an incredible thrill to step inside the Tardis and to be part of such an iconic show." Freema Agyeman 2006.
"The iconic image of Doctor Who has always been of Tom Baker in his floppy hat and long, multi-coloured scarf, but it looks like that's been replaced." Clayton Hickman, Editor of DWM, on Mr Tennant's remarkable popularity, December 2006.
"Iconic moments which will no doubt recruit the next generation of fans. It's going to be great to see how all this is resolved. The end of this series is fast approaching and The Empty child has just upped the ante. Brilliant." Jonathan Bigger, reviewing The Empty Child, Summer 2005.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
"Dad, There's Too Much Dr. Who"
Over Christmas, while many of us were revelling in (else being 
extremely critical of) the bumper helping of WHO related broadcasts, a friend of mine who’d probably be quite happy to have his identity exposed, but I won’t just in case, was approached by his two young daughters, both avid fans of the show, proclaiming ‘Dad there’s too much Dr. Who.’
extremely critical of) the bumper helping of WHO related broadcasts, a friend of mine who’d probably be quite happy to have his identity exposed, but I won’t just in case, was approached by his two young daughters, both avid fans of the show, proclaiming ‘Dad there’s too much Dr. Who.’One can sympathise with this, especially since at the time their father was merrily watching the Children in Need WHO concert special, while mum and the grandparents got on with eating Christmas dinner. If you’re reading this, you’re probably an ‘Above & Beyond’ level devotee with a diary stuffed full of upcoming WHO events, but didn’t you feel overworked keeping up with the Christmas Day Special, the BBC 7 McGann adventure, Sarah Jane & triple Torchwood? Even if you did catch the whole lot, can you honestly say that they all did a good job of furthering public interest in the children’s own show that way too many adults adore?
Yes- I said the public’s interest. After all, as fans we’ll watch anything faintly WHO related, even if that means sitting through David Tennant on The Friday Night Project, an experience about as entertaining as wiping your arse with steel wool. But when kids are getting WHO fatigue- and admittedly it was only two of the blighters, but still- shouldn’t this be seen as a worrying portent?
Obviously television has changed a great deal since the days of the programme most of us grew up on. WHO lasted nearly thirty years not because it was event TV with a publicity blitz for
every new story, but because it offered a regular fix of the unknown and bizarre-paradoxically it was traditional and comforting even while its appeal lay in being unlike anything else around. There’s no doubt that TV today is far more commercially driven despite the BBC’s remit to provide a broad range of shows rather than chase profits, so when WHO returned in 2005 it broke big with high-profile features in even the least likely of publications and a stack of merchandise, much of which became either useless or far more collectible once Christopher Eccleston quit a few minutes later.
In short, WHO was demanding much more than the contents of our wallets- it was staking a claim on the UK’s attention. Clearly the series needed this level of visibility to begin with, but can the public be expected to keep the attitude of ‘Ooh, I’ll have a look at that show’ for very long before thinking, ‘Christ- it’s that bloody thing again’ ? A Radio Times cover announcing the show’s return and the mid-season unveiling of the iconic monster- fair do’s. Another couple for a WorldCup/Season finale tie-in… plus a pseudo one for Billie Piper’s departure…and Torchwood? Would you be too surprised if a backlash kicks in? As a glossy, effects heavy series you can’t blame the BBC for sticking an awful lot of fanfare behind the show- this isn’t like a long-running soap whose re-usable sets make it relatively cheap to produce and which has a duty to remain broadly similar from week-to-week, year-to-year.
Also, let’s not ignore the fact that the heavy coverage in both high and low-brow press is down to what readers are responding to rather than some nefarious plan by the show’s producers. But still, can’t this level of hysteria only be detrimental in the long-term? How many ‘must see’ shows have crashed spectacularly after a couple of spins when they’re no longer this year’s model? Moonlighting and Twin Peaks come to mind, and more recently Lost seems to have plummeted from mainstream hit to minority cult in the space of one season and while that may largely be due to its now premiering on Sky, the general public don’t seem terribly bothered, nicely illustrating their fickleness as they settle down to Ugly Betty for at least a couple of weeks.
With WHO, the arrival of two spin-off shows (so far) and three ‘making of’ strands may help to keep the core series in the public eye, but won’t these just hasten the speed with which it goes from much-loved gem to ubiquitous irritant? To be fair the broad audience of Torchwood probably won’t be setting their Sky+ boxes for Totally Doctor Who or The Sarah Jane Adventures, but it all contributes to the general amount of WHO hanging about in everyone’s peripheral vision, draining one’s patience rather like the Macarena or the Spice Girls. I don’t think anyone can seriously imagine the new WHO lasting uninterrupted until 2031 regardless of how many magazine covers and spin-off series it produces, but might not a vast scaling down be in order before some hypothetical CGI revival of The A-Team starts to look more appealing?
Many have wondered if the show’s future might involve switching from annual, three month series to a couple of specials a year, possibly at Christmas and Easter. Then wouldn’t these few adventures once again have to be much publicised events in order to make them worth the BBC’s time and money, as well as always telling ‘end of the universe’ level adventures if they’re going to be sufficiently epic to warrant a stand alone special. Actually that may not be true; with BBC3’s policy of repeating programmes endlessly, it might be possible to slowly build up a library of one-off stories which premier quietly before going on to pick up a gradual audience in some form of syndication. Whoever’s playing the Doctor at this point may well be happy to continue for many years if the low production rate left them free to pursue other work the rest of the time.
This approach might result in less extravagant sets or prosthetics and zero story arcs, but may see an upturn in CGI with effects boffins having more time to execute a smaller number of shots(assuming the BBC haven’t brought back The Tripods by then) and perhaps try out a greater range of design styles. The truth is that so long as WHO is making a stack of cash in merchandising and overseas sales, the BBC will want to keep it going and probably in some form beyond a bunch of spin-off books and officially licensed audios. The problem will be in maintaining WHO’s reputation with the general public as a show that they may want to check out to see what’s going on this week, rather than making it all seem about as appealing as chocolate does… once you’ve un-wrapped two drums of Quality Street, a tray of After Eight mints and a box of cherry liqueurs on Christmas morning that is.
Written by Phil Richards
Yes- I said the public’s interest. After all, as fans we’ll watch anything faintly WHO related, even if that means sitting through David Tennant on The Friday Night Project, an experience about as entertaining as wiping your arse with steel wool. But when kids are getting WHO fatigue- and admittedly it was only two of the blighters, but still- shouldn’t this be seen as a worrying portent?Obviously television has changed a great deal since the days of the programme most of us grew up on. WHO lasted nearly thirty years not because it was event TV with a publicity blitz for
every new story, but because it offered a regular fix of the unknown and bizarre-paradoxically it was traditional and comforting even while its appeal lay in being unlike anything else around. There’s no doubt that TV today is far more commercially driven despite the BBC’s remit to provide a broad range of shows rather than chase profits, so when WHO returned in 2005 it broke big with high-profile features in even the least likely of publications and a stack of merchandise, much of which became either useless or far more collectible once Christopher Eccleston quit a few minutes later.
In short, WHO was demanding much more than the contents of our wallets- it was staking a claim on the UK’s attention. Clearly the series needed this level of visibility to begin with, but can the public be expected to keep the attitude of ‘Ooh, I’ll have a look at that show’ for very long before thinking, ‘Christ- it’s that bloody thing again’ ? A Radio Times cover announcing the show’s return and the mid-season unveiling of the iconic monster- fair do’s. Another couple for a WorldCup/Season finale tie-in… plus a pseudo one for Billie Piper’s departure…and Torchwood? Would you be too surprised if a backlash kicks in? As a glossy, effects heavy series you can’t blame the BBC for sticking an awful lot of fanfare behind the show- this isn’t like a long-running soap whose re-usable sets make it relatively cheap to produce and which has a duty to remain broadly similar from week-to-week, year-to-year.Also, let’s not ignore the fact that the heavy coverage in both high and low-brow press is down to what readers are responding to rather than some nefarious plan by the show’s producers. But still, can’t this level of hysteria only be detrimental in the long-term? How many ‘must see’ shows have crashed spectacularly after a couple of spins when they’re no longer this year’s model? Moonlighting and Twin Peaks come to mind, and more recently Lost seems to have plummeted from mainstream hit to minority cult in the space of one season and while that may largely be due to its now premiering on Sky, the general public don’t seem terribly bothered, nicely illustrating their fickleness as they settle down to Ugly Betty for at least a couple of weeks.
With WHO, the arrival of two spin-off shows (so far) and three ‘making of’ strands may help to keep the core series in the public eye, but won’t these just hasten the speed with which it goes from much-loved gem to ubiquitous irritant? To be fair the broad audience of Torchwood probably won’t be setting their Sky+ boxes for Totally Doctor Who or The Sarah Jane Adventures, but it all contributes to the general amount of WHO hanging about in everyone’s peripheral vision, draining one’s patience rather like the Macarena or the Spice Girls. I don’t think anyone can seriously imagine the new WHO lasting uninterrupted until 2031 regardless of how many magazine covers and spin-off series it produces, but might not a vast scaling down be in order before some hypothetical CGI revival of The A-Team starts to look more appealing?Many have wondered if the show’s future might involve switching from annual, three month series to a couple of specials a year, possibly at Christmas and Easter. Then wouldn’t these few adventures once again have to be much publicised events in order to make them worth the BBC’s time and money, as well as always telling ‘end of the universe’ level adventures if they’re going to be sufficiently epic to warrant a stand alone special. Actually that may not be true; with BBC3’s policy of repeating programmes endlessly, it might be possible to slowly build up a library of one-off stories which premier quietly before going on to pick up a gradual audience in some form of syndication. Whoever’s playing the Doctor at this point may well be happy to continue for many years if the low production rate left them free to pursue other work the rest of the time.
This approach might result in less extravagant sets or prosthetics and zero story arcs, but may see an upturn in CGI with effects boffins having more time to execute a smaller number of shots(assuming the BBC haven’t brought back The Tripods by then) and perhaps try out a greater range of design styles. The truth is that so long as WHO is making a stack of cash in merchandising and overseas sales, the BBC will want to keep it going and probably in some form beyond a bunch of spin-off books and officially licensed audios. The problem will be in maintaining WHO’s reputation with the general public as a show that they may want to check out to see what’s going on this week, rather than making it all seem about as appealing as chocolate does… once you’ve un-wrapped two drums of Quality Street, a tray of After Eight mints and a box of cherry liqueurs on Christmas morning that is.Written by Phil Richards
Sunday, December 17, 2006
The Most Disgusting Screen Kiss Ever!
The famous first kiss in the TV Movie has always produced hot debate amongst fankind.Here is a snapshot of the moment when The Doctor gave Grace Holloway a very wet clinch.
See the gross out city levels of saliva falling from his mouth, if you dare.
Freezing the scene frame by frame was one of the most harrowing moments in my life but it didn't stop me from taking another snapshot and showing it to you all.
Here's the gloop a few frames later falling towards his chin and clothes. Grace Holloway can't believe her eyes.
At the time Paul McGann and Daphers Ashbrook said it was a very nice moment but at last the truth can be told.
This should stop women from banging on about how sexy McGann is - he's like a dog eating hot chips and you know it!
Saturday, December 16, 2006
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