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Review of Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. "I have not read such delightful, convincing, and readable science writing since the dearly lamented Stephen Jay Gould. This book is funny, absorbing, clear-eyed, and deeply anti-patriarchal in a way that feels incidental to the facts rather than rising from any agenda — which I find utterly, gleefully vindicating and deeply satisfying."
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"Dear Hugo nominators: please do not nominate Connie Willis's Blackout/All Clear as a single work."
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Graham Sleight on the Ninth Doctor: "Eccleston and the Ninth Doctor may now be remembered for their refusals, but refusals can sometimes be the bravest thing to do."
Monthly Archives: January 2011
C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Doctor Who
Fans of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien should check out their guest appearance in Jonathan Morris’s comic strip story in the latest Doctor Who Magazine (dated 12 January, cover featuring Matt Smith in a Santa hat with Michael Gambon and Katherine Jenkins). Very pleasing.
edited to add: Today is Tolkien’s birthday! (3 January 1892)
Abolishing the Seanad – update
It seems that Fianna Fáil have suddenly discovered the virtues of abolishing the upper house of the Irish parliament (see today’s Irish Times, here and here). Obviously, given my previous post on the subject, I think this is a good idea. However, I also have to agree with the opposition spokespeople quoted in the Irish Times who see the latest initiative as an attempt by the government to put off the general election for a couple more months.
Abolishing the Seanad is not quite as straightforward as deleting Articles 18-19 of the constitution, which deal with the composition of the Seanad, and Articles 20-24, which deal with its relationship with the Dail. There are a few other issues to be addressed as well.
- The Seanad does allow for extra time and space for draft legislation to be tweaked before it is enacted. Will the Dail add some extra committee stage to its own procedures, and/or (my own favoured option) establish a pool of external experts to give their non-binding but formal opinions on Bills?
- Article 14.2: At present, in the case of the death, incapacity, or absence of the President, the presidential powers are exercised by a three-member commission consisting of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Ceann Comhairle, and the Cathaoirleach of Seanad Éireann. Do you just delete the last of these, or add a different third member?
- Article 27.1: half of the Seanad, plus a third of the Dail, may at present petition the President to call a referendum on a Bill before it is signed. This has never been used. Obviously it’s impractical to just allow a third of TDs to call a referendum; but should the entire provision be scrapped, or perhaps go for some kind of provision for say 5% of registered voters to trigger a referendum by petition (as in the long-forgotten Article 47 of the Irish Free State constitution, also never used)? Myself, I hate referendums and would prefer the first option, but there’s room for a debate.
- Article 31.2.i: The Cathaoirleach is a member of the Council of State. Simply delete, or replace with someone else? (Probably the former.)
- Article 12, Article 33.5, and Article 35.4: The President, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and judges of the High Court and Supreme Court, can at present be removed from office only by vote of both Dail and Seanad. Is it reasonable to make that possible by vote of the Dail only? (Probably it is.)
I’m not totally convinced by the line that the Seanad should only be abolished as part of a wider programme of institutional reform – the case against its retention seems overwhelming and urgent to me. But I must say that given these tedious but necessary details which need to be ironed out, the case against rushing to abolish the Seanad in time to hold the referendum on election day seems pretty compelling.
Whoniversaries 3 January
3 January 1920: birth of Peter Stephens, who played Cyril, the Kitchen Boy, and the Knave of Hearts in The Celestial Toymaker (1966), and Lolem the high priest in The Underwater Menace (1967).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
3 January 1970: broadcast of first episode of Spearhead from SpaceThe Brain of Morbius. The Doctor and Sarah land on the desolate planet of Karn. The sinister brain surgeon Solon drugs the Doctor and the mysterious Sisterhood take the Tardis.
3 January 1981: broadcast of first episode of Warrior’s Gate. Biroc the Tharil escapes from Rorvik’s ship; the Doctor, Romana, Adric and K9 arrive at the intersection between N-Space and E-Space.
3 January 1983: broadcast of first episode of Arc of Infinity, starting Season 20. Two backpackers in Amsterdam are terrorised by the Ergon; the Doctor is attacked by a strange being in the Tardis, goes to Gallifrey and is shot by his own future self’s twin.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-3-2011
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"I think Twitter encourages us to coarsen our points of view, and I don’t think that’s good for conversation."
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Steve on Eight
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Tansy on the Eighth Doctor
Gibbon’s General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West
I had been expecting a consolidated set of conclusions as to what we have learned from three volumes and 38 chapters; but less than half of this short essay consists of Gibbon’s brief (though penetrating) general observations on what has happened so far. Gibbon the diverges from his usual topic to apply the experience of the Roman Empire to contemporary Europe. I found this absolutely fascinating, partly because I am interested in Gibbon’s very English and Enlightenment articulation of the early stages of the European ideal as it has developed, partly also because he is a useful reality-based antidote, even after more than two centuries, to the neurotic apocalypticism one sometimes hears about the imminent fall of Western civilisation.
More here.
Whoniversaries 2 January: Deborah Watling, John Woodnutt, Rescue #1, Terror of the Autons #1
2 January 1948: birth of Deborah Watling, who played the Second Doctor’s companion Victoria in 1967-68.
2 January 2006: death of John Woodnutt, who played George Hibbert in Spearhead from Space (1970), the Draconian Emperor in Frontier in Space (1973), Broton and the Duke of Forgill in Terror of the Zygons (1976), and Seron in The Keeper of Traken (1981).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
2 January 1965: broadcast of “The Powerful Enemy”, first episode of the story we now call The Rescue, introducing Maureen O’Brien as new companion Vicki. The Tardis, now without Susan, lands on the planet Dido where the two survivors of a crashed space ship are terrorised by the mysterious Koquillion.
2 January 1971: broadcast of first episode of Terror of the Autons, starting Season 7 of Old Who and introducing Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Richard Franklin as Captain Mike Yates, and Roger Delgado as the Master. The Master takes over a circus, a radio telescope and a plastics factory.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-2-2011
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Excellent piece
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Seanan Maguire on the Seventh Doctor
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Tansy reaches the end of Old Who
Books and audios of 2010, reviewed
I read 278 books in 2010, counting the ten volumes of the Bloody Sunday Report as a single work (and I seem to have mislaid another book somewhere in my counting). This is down a bit from 2009’s 346 and 2008’s 374, mainly because I’ve been watching a 25-minute episode of Doctor Who every day, usually on my commute, and then writing it up. (Total page count however is down only to about 91,000 from 100,000, so in 2009, so I’ve been reading longer books.) 65 (23%) were by women (20% in 2009, 12% in 2008) and 24 (9%) by people of colour (5% in 2009, 2% in 2008) so I feel I am getting a little more diverse. 25 (9%) were rereads (11% in 2009).
Total 66 (24%); about the same as 2009 (26%) and up from 2008 (19%).
Top non-fiction book of the year:
The Bloody Sunday Report, whose 5000 pages I read over the course of late June, July and early August. A tremendous and necessary enterprise.
Also excellent in category:
Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (vols 1 and 2 of the original, vol 1 of the Penguin edition)
Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter
Thomas More, Utopia
Fiction (other than SF)
Total 50 (18%), same as 2009 (also 18%), very much up from 2008’s 7%.
Top non-genre book of the year:
Tove Jansson’s Fair Play. This may not be completely fair, as it is the freshest in my mind; certainly all the others blew me away when I read them.
Also excellent in category:
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
James Joyce, The Dubliners
Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice
Leifur Eiricksson, Njal’s Saga
SF (other than Doctor Who)
Total 73 (26%), up from 23% in 2009 and 19% in 2008
Top sf book of the year:
Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House
Also excellent and read for the first time:
Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lavinia
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Cryoburn
Chris Beckett, The Turing Test (short story collection)
Comics
18 (6%), though that goes up to 21 (8%) counting the Doctor Who comics, which would be the same as last year and well up from 2009’s 2%.
Top comic / graphic novel of the year
I voted without hesitation for Neil Gaiman’s Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? for the Hugo. It didn’t win.
Other comics / graphic novels particularly enjoyed:
Charles Burns, Black Hole
Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim vols 1, 2 and especially 4 (less so 3 and 5 though still good)
Fumi Yoshinaga, Ooku: The Inner Chamber, Volume 1
Keiko Tobe, With the Light… Vol. 3
Gareth Roberts, The Betrothal of Sontar (Tenth Doctor)
Justin Richards, The Only Good Dalek (Eleventh Doctor)
Doctor Who (books and audiobooks)
Total 71 (26%) counting three comics, up a tad from 2009’s 70 (19%), but nowhere near 2008’s *cough* 177 (47%).
Top Doctor Who (audio)book of the year:
James Goss, Dead Air (audiobook); the very last Tenth Doctor story to be released.
Other decent efforts in the Whoniverse:
Best 11th Doctor story (other than the ones on TV): Stephen Cole, Ring of Steel
Best New Series Adventure: Dale Smith, The Many Hands
Best EDA: John Peel, Legacy of the Daleks
Best Virgin New Adventure: Mark Gatiss, Nightshade
Best Missing/Past Doctor Adventure: Jonathan Morris, Festival of Death
Best Doctor Who annual: 1971
Best other Whoniverse story: Joseph Lidster, In the Shadows (Torchwood audiobook)
Best audios:
Other good Big Finish audios:
I liked a lot of the BF main sequence this year, especially the Seventh Doctor stories A Thousand Tiny Wings, Project: Destiny and A Death in the Family, and the Fifth Doctor stories Cobwebs and Cradle of the Snake. Apart from Solitaire, mentioned above, I also liked A Town Called Fortune in the Companion Chronicles range.
I was less impressed by the revival of the ‘lost’ Sixth Doctor stories; the only one I felt was much good was Brian Finch’s Leviathan which was also the only one not originally written for the Sixth Doctor (or indeed for television). Likewise the year’s Eighth Doctor stories only really grabbed me with their conclusion, The Resurrection of Mars.
But I was delighted both with the first series of Jago & Litefoot and with the dramatisation of Moris Farhi’s lost First Doctor stories.
Best non-Big Finish audio:
Aliens in the Mind.
Most read author of the year: Ian Rankin (7 books) unless you count the ten volumes by Lord Savile of Newdigate and his colleagues. Also-rans in this category: Lois McMaster Bujold, Justin Richards and Brian Lee O’Malley with 5 each. (2009: William ShakespeareTerrance DicksIan MarterCharles Stross.)
Book of the year:
Certainly the one I spent longest reading, and wrote and thought most about: The Bloody Sunday Report.
Least favourite book of the year (that I actually finished):
Timeless Adventures: How Doctor Who Conquered TV, by Brian J. Robb
2010 book poll, second attempt
Sorry for the annoyance caused by my poll yesterday; I think I had jammed too much HTML into it for those who share my reading tastes reasonably closely. I’m therefore trying again, leaving out the hyperlinks to reviews this time; hopefully this will work better. (Leaving yesterday’s poll up, though, and will post grand totals from the two in due course.)
Whoniversaries 1 January
I do the research for each day’s anniversaries on the Tardis Index File (Doctor Who wiki), but rather than just use the individual pages for each date (such as the one for today) I use the list of pages linking to that date (again, such as the one for today) and follow through each link to see if it is worth noting. Actors get listed if they have played a significant speaking role in more than one story. Writers, directors, and senior production team get listed if they have worked on any story at all and their birthdate is known to the Tardis Index File. Broadcast anniversaries always get included; other significant performance and production anniversaries almost always. I may sometimes skip dates supposedly specified in canon if it’s a spinoff story I haven’t heard of, or worse have actually read / watched / heard but can’t remember, but will try and err on the side of inclusion as well. I usually prepare the posts a couple of days in advance – they are synchronised across my various computers and my phone using Evernote, which I heartily recommend.
I started by posting to both my own LJ account and to
Now that I’ve put the work in for half the year, I am thinking abou how to preserve the project, or even add to it, in some way other than in LJ archives. If I had the time and energy, I’d put some effort into updating the Tardis Index File daily pages, but there may be scope for some other way of presenting the info as well. I’d be very keen to hear thoughts from other people.
i) births and deaths
1 January 1935: birth of Dave Martin, co-author with Bob Baker of The Claws of Axos (1971), The Mutants (1972), The Three Doctors (1973), The Sontaran Experiment (1975), The Hand of Fear (1976), The Invisible Enemy (1977), Underworld (1978) and The Armageddon Factor (1979) as well as four spinoff novels.
1 January 1969: birth of Sophie Okonedo, who played Alison in Scream of the Shalka (2003) and Liz 10 in The Beast Below (2011).
1 January 1979: birth of Freema Agyeman, who played Martha in New Who’s third season (2007) and returned for a few episodes of the fourth season and the second season of Torchwood (both 2008) and a cameo in The End of Time II (2010).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
1 January 1966: broadcast of “Volcano”, eighth episode of the story we now call The Daleks’ Master Plan. The Daleks realise that the Taranium core is a fake; the Doctor, Steven and Sara encounter the Meddling Monk on the planet Tigus, also passing through Lord’s cricket ground and Trafalgar Square for New Year’s Eve.
1 January 1972: broadcast of first episode of Day of the Daleks, starting Season 9. Diplomat Sir Reginald Styles is under attack by mysterious guerrillas from a Dalek-dominated future.
1 January 1977: broadcast of first episode of The Face of Evil. First appearance of Louise Jameson as Leela. Leela is exiled from the tribe of the Sevateem for blasphemy; the Doctor finds that the Evil One has a familiar face.
1 January 2007: broadcast of Invasion of the Bane, the first episode of the new Sarah Jane Adventures. Sarah, her young neighbour Maria, and Maria’s annoying friend Kelsey (who is never seen again) team up to discover that the alien Bane are behind the new Bubble Shock! soft drink; Sarah adopts the human boy at the centre of their plan.
Also 1 January 2007: broadcast of Captain Jack Harkness (Torchwood), the one where the team get timeshifted back to 1941 and Jack falls in love with his namesake.
Also also 1 January 2007: broadcast of End of Days (Torchwood), the one where the big demon thing kills both Rhys and Jack but they come alive again.
1 January 2010: broadcast of The End of Time II, the last episode for the Tenth Doctor. The Time Lords return; the Master is persuaded to blast them back into the Time War; and the Doctor rescues Wilf, at the cost of his own life. And the new Doctor yells, “Geronimo!!!!”
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-1-2011
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Tor's take on the Sixth Doctor
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Tansy on Six.