Monthly Archives: October 2020

Whoniversaries 22 October: Derek Jacobi, K9 joins the TARDIS, both Torchwood and Class begin

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i) births and deaths

22 October 1938: birth of Sir Derek Jacobi, who has played the Master in both the TV story Utopia (2007) and the webcast Scream of the Shalka (2003) as well as the central character in the Big Finish 'Unbound' audio Deadline (also 2003).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

Two different spinoff series launched on 22 October, ten years apart!

22 October 1966: broadcast of third episode of The Tenth Planet. The Doctor is taken ill; Cutler decides to launch the Z-Bomb.

22 October 1977: broadcast of fourth episode of The Invisible Enemy. The Doctor manages to kill off the virus with antibodies before it can swarm; and K9 leaves with the Tardis.

22 October 2006: broadcast of Everything Changes and Day One, the first two episodes of the first series of Torchwood. Everything Changes is the one where Gwen joins the team (also therefore first appearance of Rhys, Owen, and Ianto, and return appearances from Jack and Tosh). Day One is the one with the sex-fuelled alien.

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22 October 2007: broadcast of second episode of Warriors of Kudlak (SJA). Luke and Clyde rescue the other captured children; Sarah and Maria then rescue Luke and Clyde, and the whole war turns out to be a mistake.

22 October 2009: broadcast of first episode of The Mad Woman in the Attic (SJA). The eponymous woman is Rani, fifty years in the future in a devastated future Earth. She tells the story of how this happened, when she and an old friend investigated a spooky derelict funfair…

22 October 2016: broadcast of For Tonight We Might Die and The Coach With the Dragon Tattoo, the first two episodes of under-rated spinoff Class. In the first episode, the mysterious Doctor charges four young earthlings, and an incognito alien prince and his minder, with protecting Coal Hill School and syrroundings. In the second, it turns out there is more than there seems to the sports coach…

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Time Lord Victorious: Defender of the Daleks, Master Thief/Lesser Evils

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As mentioned yesterday, I'm following the multi-platform Doctor Who "event", Time Lord Victorious, with great interest. Yesterday it was webcasts and a book; today it's comics and audios

Second frame for page three of each of the two volumes of Defender of the Daleks:, written by Jody Houser, art by Roberta Ingranata, colours by Enrica Eren Angiolini (NB an all-woman team):

I really liked this. We start promisingly with the Doctor pursued to various destinations by the Daleks, who he eventually allows to bring him to their HQ. There he meets a battered Dalek strategist, with whom he strikes an unlikely alliance against the Hond, a slightly crap monster which the Daleks are still scared of. I am reminded of my friend Ian's quip:

For the very first time, I managed to get the Kindle on my iPad to scroll through the comic frame by frame. Apparently this is standard for ebooks these days. Just brilliant.

And, sorry for spoilers but you sort of know it's going to happen, it makes the start of the final act all the more vivid:

I loved this more than I expected and perhaps more than it deserved, and I'm also not really clear how it fits the overall narrative, but you can judge for yourself by getting the first volume here and the second volume here.

In addition, Big Finish have released a double audiobook featuring the Master, both read by Jon Culshaw: "Master Thief" by Sophie Iles, with the Delgado incarnation, and "Lesser Evils" by Simon Guerrier with the Ainley version. Here's a short trailer:

In the first story, the Master attempts to infiltrate The Repository, a secure vault, to steal a map for some unexplained reason; in the second, he enounters one of the death-dealing Kotturuh, bringing immortality to an unblemished planet. Fan reaction has been generally positive, particularly to Culshaw's impressive summoning of the characterisation of both Delgado and Ainley in their different ways. I'm afraid I was a bit more meh, I found the first story a slightly by-the-numbers heist yarn, and while I loved the second story's sense of place and character, I didn't quite understand the ending – went back and listened several times, and still didn't get it. They were certainly both enjoyable enough for me to stick with the ongoing revelations for a bit longer, and I do hope that we see a bit more of the Master (or indeed Missy). You can get it here direct from Big Finish.

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Whoniversaries 21 October: Alan Rowe, Peter Moffatt, Abominable Snowmen #4, Pirate Planet #4, Rosa

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i) births and deaths

21 October 2000: death of Alan Rowe who played Evans and the voice of Space Control in The Moonbase (Second Doctor, 1967), Edward of Wessex in The Time Warrior (Thrd Doctor, 1973-74), Skinsale in Horror of Fang Rock (Fourth Doctor, 1977) and Garif in Full Circle (Fourth Doctor, 1980).

21 October 2007: death of Peter Moffatt, who directed State of Decay (Fourth Doctor, 1980), The Visitation (Fifth Doctor, 1982), Mawdryn Undead (Fifth Doctor, 1983), The Five Doctors (Fifth Doctor era, 1983), The Twin Dilemma (Sixth Doctor, 1984) and The Two Doctors (Sixth Doctor era, 1985).

21 October 2009: death of Chris D'Oyly-John who worked in various production capacities on fifteen Classic Who stories from The Ark (First Doctor, 1966) to The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Fourth Doctor, 1977).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

21 October 1967: broadcast of fourth episode of The Abominable Snowmen. Victoria is hypnotised by Padmasambhava; the monks evacuate; and the Intelligence grows in physical manifestation.

21 October 1978: broadcast of fourth episode of The Pirate Planet. Xanxia killes the Captain; the Mentiads destroy her and the bridge; and the Doctor and Romana convert the remains of the planet Calufrax into the second segment of the Key to Time.

21 October 2019: broadcast of Rosa. The Doctor and team find themselves in civil-rights era Alabama.

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Time Lord Victorious: the UNIT Field Logs; and The Knight, the Fool and the Dead, by Steve Cole

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In the absence of televised Who, the BBC and the other main spinoff creators (Big Finish, Titan Comics, etc) are getting together and producing a linked set of stories under the banner Time Lord Victorious which "will tell a new and untold story, set within the Dark Times at the start of the universe, when even the Eternals were young". I'm going to do my best to follow and post about them here as I get through them. Here's the initial teaser trailer:

The start is not all that promising – a series of four short videos in which UNIT is mysteriously assailed by a Time Fracture. Here they are. (No credits for the actors or writers or directors.)




More digestibly, the next installment that I got to is the first of several new novels – Stephen Cole's The Knight, the Fool and the Dead. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

And was he aiming for the robot, thought the Doctor, or for me?

The book brings the Tenth Doctor, just after anointing himself as "Time Lord Victorious" in The Waters of Mars, to the earliest stages of the universe, a time before death, where he encounters Brian the Ood assassin, a girl called Estinee, and the mortality-inducing Kotturah, who the Doctor needs to deal with. Cole is one of the better Who writers out there, and I think this is an excellent launch for the entire Time Lord Victorious sequence – I see other keener reviewers regretting that they did not read it before other installments, so I guess the answer is to do as I did and read it first. You can get it here.

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Whoniversaries 20 October

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i) births and deaths

20 October 1929: birth of Colin Jeavons, who played Damon in The Underwater Menace (Seocnd Doctor, 1967) and George Tracy in K9 and Company (1981)

20 October 1941: birth of Anneke Wills, who played Polly Wright, companion of the First and Second Doctors, from 1966 to 1967. I do recommend her autobiographies.

20 October 1942: birth of Caroline Hunt,who played the TARDIS crew's ally Danielle in The Reign of Terror (First Doctor, 1964) and a mind probe technician in Frontier in Space (Third Doctor, 1973).

20 October 2008: death of John Ringham who played Tlotoxl in The Aztecs (First Doctor, 1964), Josiah Blake in The Smugglers (First Doctor, 1966), and Robert Ashe in Colony in Space (Third Doctor, 1971).

20 October 2009: death of Hubert Rees who played the Chief Engineer in Fury from the Deep (Second Doctor, 1968), Captain Ransom in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969), and Stevenson in The Seeds of Doom (Fourth Doctor, 1976).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

20 October 1979: broadcast of fourth episode of City of Death, the one with John Cleese, Eleanor Bron, and the punch that saves the universe. Really, if you haven't seen it, you ought to.

20 October 2008: broadcast of first episode of Secrets of the Stars (SJA). A mysterious astrologer is able to tell Sarah Jane's history with the Doctor; Clyde appears to be under his influence.

iii) date specified in canon

20 October 1901: The cargo ship Lankester is sailing from Madagascar to New Orleans with passengers including the Sixth Doctor, Peri and some even stranger entities – as told in the Big Finish audio Cryptobiosis (2005).

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Carmilla, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

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Second para of third chapter:

Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an illusion of a moment but the young lady, who just at that moment opened her eyes. I could not see, for her face was turned from me, but she raised her head, evidently looking about her, and I heard a very sweet voice ask complainingly, “Where is mamma?”

I read this in advance of a discussion at Octocon the otehr weekend. It’s a classic vampire story from 1872, 26 years before Le Fanu’s fellow-countryman Bram Stoker wrote Dracula. It’s a much shorter book; the protagonist is a young Anglo-Styrian noblewoman, Laura, whose friend Carmilla is not quite what she seems. Carmilla’s vampirism is pretty clearly a lesbian seduction as well; there are a lot of interesting parallels with Dracula, including the first person narrative, sleepwalking, the symptoms of vampirism and the expert who comes in to solve it all (Baron Vordenburg here is the precursor to Van Helsing). The ending is not executed all that gracefully (too much of the important action is offscreen), but otherwise it’s a fun, quick read. You can get it here.

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Whoniversaries 19 October: Paradise Towers #3, Remembrance of the Daleks #3, Vault of Secrets #2

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19 October 1987: broadcast of third episode of Paradise Towers. Mel is rather implausibly rescued by Pex; the Caretaker is munched by Kroagnon; and the Doctor taken by the Cleaners.

19 October 1988: broadcast of third episode of Remembrance of the Daleks. The Hand of Omega is dug up and the rival Dalek factions start to slug it out in the school.

19 October 2010: broadcast of second episode of The Vault of Secrets (SJA). Androvax is imprisoned in the Vault, the aliens leave and Gita's memory is erased so that she is not troubled by blief in aliens.

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Colin Wilkie, 1934-2020

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Very sorry to learn that the singer-songwriter Colin Wilkie left us today, at the age of 86. His wife and long-time performance partner Shirley Hart went before him, in August last year. They were folk musicians who made a reputation in the UK in the early 1960s, eventually settling in Germany in 1966 where they integrated into their new home while also becoming informal ambassadors for their home culture.

I particularly loved them because in the summer of 1986, when I had an accommodation crisis, they took me in, no questions asked, as an non-paying guest in their home for two months. Their son Vincent, now a musician in his own right, was travelling so I was able to stay in his room. I was 19 and must have been really annoying.

But Colin was always mellow, especially after his evening joint – the first time I’d seen anyone use marijuana. Their household also included a cat, by the name of Pink Floyd, who enjoyed the attention I gave. (“Do you think it’s legal”, Colin asked Shirley, indicating me and Pink Floyd, “for a chap to marry a cat?”) I taught them to play Dampfross, the German version of the great boardgame Railway Rivals, and Shirley won every time. (“Next thing”, said Colin, indicating me to Shirley, “he’ll suggest we start playing for money.”) In return they demonstrated the virtues of hospitality and generosity. And they had a wonderful collection of novels of varying degrees of quality.

Shirley’s vocal chord problems meant that she wasn’t performing professionally, but they would occasionally do a bit of jamming in the evening, to keep their hand in. Colin had a regular weekly TV spot. as well. Sadly there is no video of them together, but here’s an audio of their performance of “The Family of Man”, one of their standard numbers, matched with pictures of the two of them at the height of their career.

Here’s Colin on his own performing “One More City” in 2003.

I lost touch with them after I left Germany in 1986, but was very glad to renew contact with Colin via Facebook in the last few years. They were a tremendous couple, and the world is poorer without them.

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July 2008 books

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July 2008 began very painfully. At the very end of June I had a vasectomy, and with somewhat imperfect timing moved office a few days later, thinking I would have recovered over the weekend. No. My testicles were swollen to the size of a tennic ball (felt much bigger) and I could barely walk. My gallant intern D and neighbour J did most of the packing up of the old office, and young F joined in the trip to IKEA and putting furniture together. I should also chronicle that the first external visitor to the office was A, who then worked for AP across the corridor but shortly after moved downstairs to Bloomberg, where she has been ever since. Here is D, screwdriver at the ready, wishing I would start helping her rather than sitting in the comfy chair taking photos.

More cheerfully, Anne's brother R married V. I attended the civil ceremony in Etterbeek Town Hall.

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And we all attended the religious ceremony in the Église Sainte-Croix (the one off Place Flagey) a week later.

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F had his ninth birthday at the end of the month, and two friends came round to meet the star attraction.

I had a day trip to London at the end of the month, and on 1 August we set off for our summer holiday.

Non-fiction 4 (YTD 36)
Why I am not a Christian, and other essays on religion and related subjects, by Bertrand Russell
The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi
The Cruise of the R.Y.S. Eva, by Arthur (McMurrough) Kavanagh
A History of India, by John Keay (did not finish)

Non-Genre 3 (YTD 16)
Collected Short Stories, by E.M. Forster
The History of Richard Calmady, by "Lucas Malet" (Mary St Leger Kingsley Harrison)
A House for Mr Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul

SF (non-Who) 3 (YTD 21)
Children of the Atom, by Wilmar H. Shiras
Farthing, by Jo Walton
PEACE, by Gene Wolfe

Doctor Who 24 (YTD 144)
Doctor Who and the Visitation, by Eric Saward
Doctor Who – Arc of Infinity, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who – Snakedance, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who – Mawdryn Undead, by Peter Grimwade
Doctor Who – Terminus, by John Lydecker / Steve Gallagher
Doctor Who – Enlightenment, by Barbara Clegg
Doctor Who – The King's Demons, by Terence Dudley
Doctor Who – The Five Doctors, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who – Warriors of the Deep, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who – The Awakening, by Eric Pringle
Doctor Who – Frontios, by Christopher H. Bidmead
Doctor Who – Resurrection of the Daleks, by Paul Scoones
Doctor Who – Planet of Fire, by Peter Grimwade
Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma, by Eric Saward
Doctor Who – Attack of the Cybermen, by Eric Saward
Doctor Who – Vengeance on Varos, by Philip Martin
Doctor Who – The Mark of the Rani, by Pip and Jane Baker
Doctor Who – The Two Doctors, by Robert Holmes
Doctor Who – Timelash, by Glen McCoy
Doctor Who – Revelation of the Daleks, by Jon Preddle
Doctor Who – The Mysterious Planet, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who – Mindwarp, by Philip Martin
Doctor Who – Terror of the Vervoids, by Pip and Jane Baker
Doctor Who – The Ultimate Foe, by Pip and Jane Baker

6,000 pages (YTD 53,800)
7/34 by women (YTD 22/240)
2/34 by PoC (YTD 6/240) – NB that Glen McCoy was the first non-white writer of Doctor Who.

Top books of the month: The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi, which you can get here, and Richard Calmady, which you can get here. Worst of the month,and in the running for worst Doctor Who book ever, was Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma, which if you really want you can get here.


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Whoniversaries 18 October: An Unearthly Child [recording], Planet of Evil #4, Meglos #4, Mindwarp #3

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i) births and deaths

18 October 1933: birth of Edward Brayshaw, who played revolutionary Léon Colbert in the story we now call The Reign of Terror (First Doctor, 1964) and the War Chief in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969).

ii) production and broadcast anniversaries

18 October 1963: Studio recording for "An Unearthly Child" (the version that was broadcast).

18 October 1975: broadcast of fourth episode of Planet of Evil. The Doctor clears the antimatter from the ship and restores Sorenson (who doesn't really deserve it in my view) to his normal self.

18 October 1980: broadcast of fourth episode of Meglos. The Doctor frustrates the evil cactus's plans, Brotadac accidentally destroys Zolfa-Thura, and the Deons and Savants agree to get along better in future.

18 October 1986: broadcast of third episode of Mindwarp (ToaTL #7). Brain transplants and battles; Peri is captured and prepped for her 'orrible fate.

18 October 1989: broadcast of third episode of Ghost Light (the last episode made of Old Who). Light is displeased; the women turn to stone; Control turns into a woman; and I'm sure it made sense to me when I watched it.

18 October 2010: broadcast of first episode of The Vault of Secrets (SJA).

18 October 2011: broadcast of second part of The Man Who Never Was, the very last ever episode of the Sarah Jane Adventures (sob).

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The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

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The Empire Strikes Back won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1981. The other finalists were Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (the Carl Sagan TV series); the glorious Flash Gordon movie, which Ian wrote about only yesterdayThe Lathe of Heaven (TV adaptation) and The Martian Chronicles (TV series). It was actually quite unusual for TV to get a majority of the spots on the Hugo ballot around this time. It's also a bit surprising not to see The Shining, Friday the 13th or Superman II on the list. I suspect that if I'd been voting in 1981, I'd probably have been caught up in the hype and voted for this one too.

This is the first (but not the last) sequel to win the Hugo, and not surprisingly we have a lot of returnees from previous Hugo (and Oscar) films; I'm also going to note the few Doctor Who crossovers. In order of billing, here's Mark Hamill, now 29 instead of 26.

Here's Harrison Ford, now 37 instead of 34 (and coming back next year in Raiders of the Lost Ark):


Here's Carrie Fisher, now 24 instead of 21:

Anthony Daniels, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Peter Mayhew and Kenny Baker are all back as well, but we don't see any of their faces. We do see the face of Alec Guinness, who we also saw in Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai.


Less famously, Denis Lawson returns as fighter pilot Wedge Antilles.

John Hollis, who is Lando's aide Lobot here, was a dimly seen Elder of Krypton in Superman two years ago, but also played Professor Sondergaard in the Doctor Who colonialism parable The Mutants in 1972:

Julian Glover is General Veers here; he was previously nasty Northerton in 1963 Oscar-winner Tom Jones. At about the same time as The Empire Strikes Back, he was Count Scarlione/Scaroth, Last of the Jagaroth in the great Doctor Who story City of Death, and also King Richard the Lion-Heart in the 1964 First Doctor story that we now call The Crusade.


Michael Shear, who plays Admiral Ozzel here, was a true Doctor Who stalwart, having played played Rhos in The Ark (First Doctor, 1966), Dr. Summers in The Mind of Evil (Third Doctor, 1971), Laurence Scarman in Pyramids of Mars (Fourth Doctor, 1975), Lowe in The Invisible Enemy (Fourth Doctor, 1977), the Mergrave in Castrovalva (Fifth Doctor, 1982), and the Headmaster in Remembrance of the Daleks (Seventh Doctor, 1988). I'm not sure if any other actor has played six different Doctor Who parts of that weight.



John Ratzenberger, later to become famous in Cheers, is Major Derlin (of the rebels) here and is another returnee from Superman, where he was a missile controller.

Finally, the body of Boba Fett is played by Jeremy Bulloch, who played Tor the rebel in the 1965 Doctor Who story The Space Museum, and Hal the archer in the 1974 story The Time Meddler.

There are inevitably a couple of others, but I've gone on long enough.

Well. The conventional wisdom is that this is the best of the original Star Wars trilogy. I do not agree with the conventional wisdom. To start with our old friend Alison Bechdel: there are not even two named women characters in The Empire Strikes Back. True, we do have Lando Calrission as a pretty prominent non-white role, which is a step ahead of the original film, but that's not saying much. However, Calrissian's flip-flops of loyalty (and his rather relaxed attitude to personal security on his own patch) are not very convincing. The Imperial Storm-Troopers' March is a great piece of music, but we hear it OVER and OVER again.

Though this does give us the funniest joke I know in French (I don't know many jokes in French) about Darth Vader at the bakery, surpriszed that they find his usual order so easy to remember.

The Vader punchline, and Luke's shick mutilation, are of course dulled by the passage of forty years. As the only named woman in the film, Carrie Fisher carries off the Leia/Han relationship very well, especially now that we know what the behind-the-scenes story is. And Yoda, I must admit, is a triumph of cinematography, exceedingly well done.

You can almost forget that Yoda has the same voice as Fozzie Bear.

But, despite my cavilling, the whole thing is still pretty good fun, even if it seems less of an artistic achievement to me now. I'm putting The Enpire Strikes Back a third of the way down my Hugo films list, behind Dr Strangelove but ahead of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The next Hugo winner is Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I already wrote it up a few months ago, so you'll have to endure a couple more Oscar winners before I get to Blade Runner.

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Whoniversaries 17 October: Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who Weekly, Damaged Goods

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i) births and deaths

17 October 1936: birth of Timothy Combes, director of Doctor Who and the Silurians (Third Doctor, 1970) and The Mind of Evil (Third Doctor, 1971).

17 October 1966: birth of Mark Gatiss, author of eight New Who TV stories, An Adventure in Space and Time (First Doctor dramadoc, 2013), four novels and two Big Finish audios, and also plays the eponymous scientist in The Lazarus Experiment (2007) and the Captain in Twice Upon A Time (Twelfth Doctor, 2017; incidentally the only televised Who set in Belgium, though some of The War Games is set in a depraved alien simulation of the landscape).

17 October 1971: birth of Patrick Ness, show-runner for Class (2016).

17 October 2018: death of Derrick Sherwin. On paper, he was producer of Doctor Who for only two stories and 14 episodes, the shortest tenure of anyone in the old regime. In fact he was the man who rescued the programme from collapse in Seasons 5 and 6 (as script editor and de facto assistant producer), invented UNIT and the Time Lords, and successfully rebooted the show in colour with a new Doctor in 1970. He also wrote, uncredited, one of the best single episodes of the entire original run, the first part of The Mind Robber.

ii) publication and broadcast anniversaries

17 October 1979: cover date of first issue of Doctor Who Weekly, now of course Doctor Who Magazine.

17 October 1996: publication of New Adventures novel Damaged Goods, by one Russell T. Davies. I wonder if he kept up his interest in Doctor Who?

17 October 2011: broadcast of first episode of The Man Who Never Was (SJA). Awkward meeting between Clyde and Rani; meanwhile tech guru Joseph Serf has invented a new computer, the Serfboard.

17 October 2015: broadcast of The Girl Who Died. The Doctor and Clara are kidnapped by Vikings who are also having trouble with alines; one of the Vikings will be very familiar to Game of Thrones fans.

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Darwin’s Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England, by Steve Jones

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Men do fall into insanity in such places, but much as vengeful right-wingers might celebrate such mental decay, some among them would be dismayed to learn that Moussaoui will lose his mind for Darwinian reasons. Guy the Gorilla, star of London Zoo in the 1950s, was admired for his solemn disposition. In fact the animal was deeply depressed, kept as he was for years alone in a small cage. Homo sapiens is a social primate, descended, like gorillas or chimpanzees, from an ancestor with the same habits. Had our fore-fathers been more solitary beasts like the orangutan (which spends much of the year alone), the worst of all punishments would not be solitary confinement but an endless dinner party. The constant exchange of subtle emotional cues around the table would drive those present to their wits' end.

An interesting book by geneticist Steve Jones. It's the fourth in a series about Darwin, reflecting his interests and updating them to the present day (which I think is about 2005); I haven't read the others, so I was missing some of the context. However, Darwin's thoughts on worms, barnacles, insects, insectivore plants, sexual selection and our facial expressions are interesting in themselves, and Jones' updating to current research is also pretty fascinating. I felt however that it lacked an overarching structure; the book is fairly granular, each chapter taking one (or more) of Darwin's publications on a particular subject, and linked to the others only in that Darwin cared about the topic. The title is provocative, making the point that the island that really mattered to Darwin was not one of the Galapagos archipelago but the one he was born, married and died on; but we don't get any corresponding exploration of Darwin's Englishness or Britishness. (I'd love to know where he stood on Irish issues, for instance.) It's also just a little out of date – Jones proclaims firmly that modern humans have no Neanderthal DNA, a view that was overturned in 2005. However, the writing is good and engaging, and I might look out for some of the earlier books in this series. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2015. Next on that pile is After Me Comes The Flood, by Sarah Perry.

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Whoniversaries 16 October: Myth Makers #1, Hand of Fear #3, Prisoner of the Judoon #2

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broadcast anniversaries

16 October 1965: broadcast of "Temple of Secrets", the first episode of the story we now call The Myth Makers. Achilles slays Hector (who was distracted by the Tardis appearing) and decides that the Doctor is Zeus. Steven is captured by Odysseus, and the Tardis stolen.

16 October 1976: broadcast of third episode of The Hand of Fear. The RAF fail to destroy the reactor; but the hand regenerates into Eldrad the Kastrian. The Doctor agrees to take her home, but she is impaled by a booby-trap.

16 October 2009: broadcast of second episode of Prisoner of the Judoon (SJA). Luke stops the countdown; more Judoon arrive, and terrify Rani's parents, but leave with their prisoner and without causing further damage.

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My secret addiction: Reddit’s r/AmItheAsshole

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I'm going to admit it. When I am awake in the wee small hours of the night, or need to fill in five minutes of time between tasks, I often turn to the moral dilemmas presented on Reddit's "Am I The Asshole" subreddit, to deliver quick anonymous drive-by judgements of other people's deepest problems. I've always been darkly fascinated by advice columns; AITA offers you the opportunity to participate for yourself. The format constrains you to make one of four possible calls on a story of interpersonal conflict: YTA (you're the asshole), NTA (you're not the asshole and the other person is), NAH (no assholes here) and ESH (everybody suck here). Like rating books on Goodreads or LibraryThing, this reductive approach concentrates the mind.

To give some examples, the top three posts on AITA at the moment are:

daisynet911 was told not to try and contact her sister who was in an addiction clinic. When she next got together with her sister and the rest of the family, she was made to listen to a litany of complaints about the sisterly relationship over the years, starting with her failure to contact her sister, and blocked from replying. A pretty clear consensus in the responses, turning into therapy-by-internet, with an update.

gay-girl-throwaway was insulted about her sexuality by someone in her friends group, swore back at him and was kicked out of the group. She wonders if she was in fact in the wrong? Again, pretty clear consensus in the responses.

PhysicalLoss7706, a kindergarten teacher, was out for a birthday meal with her besties and her strong language was overhead by some of the kids she teaches, leading to an official complaint. Is she in the wrong? The consensus here is a bit more mixed.

But the fascinatingly awful posts on AITA are those from people who actually are in the wrong and do not recognise it. The saddest one of these that I've seen is from dadosashes, a dying man who had a chance to reconcile with his estranged daughter and screwed it up. "She just hung up on me without even letting me explain and blocked us everywhere again. I am feeling like shit, my wife has not stopped crying. I feel like I lost my last chance of having my daughter back." Although the narrator is going through a truly horrible time (that is, if it's all true), by his own account he and his wife are very clearly in the wrong.

Forward-Race-1017 did not tell his brother that their father had died and seems to think he was doing him a favour. To put it mildly, this is not a widely shared view. And IDGAF_GOMD decided to tell their 13-year-old relative who his biological father was, and is surprised at the pushback.

More trivially uotoora and her boyfriend are arguing about putting the lights on at bedtime. This is a good example of "Everybody sucks here".

And there are thrilling moments of catharsis. This extraordinary story starts off with what sounds like a fairly standard family wedding row about nothing very important, and escalates beyond all expectation. There's a sad update as well.

clothesindrawers was upset with her teenage children for not being tidy enough and could not understand why her family did not support her. Reddit provided her with a startling reality check, and she actually changed her mind.

I admit that part of my attracion to it is performative. Good comments get upvoted and give you karma. (My own top comment, supporting a poster over a row at a funeral, got 20,000 upvotes.) You also get bragging points every time your comment ends up as the top one on a particular post. (I'm on over 50, after a year.)

Tove Danovitch asks if AITA can actually make people better. It can, of course; but I think more importantly it makes us wiser. Human nature is fascinating. Almost all of these posts are a short story in themselves. (The wedding one involving the demented sister is a novel.) And it's all, or mostly, true.

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Thursday reading

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Current
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
This Must be the Place, by Maggie O'Farrell

Last books finished
Survivants, Tome 4, by Leo
Survivants, Tome 5, by Leo
To Be Taught, if Fortunate, by Becky Chambers
Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, by M. Mitchell Waldrop
Secret Army, by John Brason
Helen Waddell, by Felicitas Corrigan

Next books
The Tropic of Serpents, by Marie Brennan
Wild Life, by Molly Gloss

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My tweets

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Whoniversaries 15 October

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broadcast anniversaries

15 October 1966: broadcast of second episode of The Tenth Planet. The Cybermen take over the base. "Our scientists and doctors devised spare parts for our bodies until we could be almost completely replaced."

15 October 1977: broadcast of third episode of The Invisible Enemy. Leela and K9 defend the laboratory while the cloned Doctor and Leela explore the real Doctor's brain. And what is that giant prawn thing at the end?

15 October 2007: broadcast of first episode of Warriors of Kudlak (SJA). Children who play Combat 3000 are going missing; Luke and Clyde investigate and get teleported away…

15 October 2009: broadcast of first episode of Prisoner of the Judoon (SJA) starting the third season of SJA. A Judoon spaceship crashes and the evil Androvax escapes; it possesses poor old Sarah and prepares to destroy Bannerman Road.

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Palestine +100: Stories from a century after the Nakba, ed. Basma Ghalayini

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Second paragraph of third story (“N” by Majd Kayyal, translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes)

N’s response today surprised me. I asked him: ‘Is it cold over there?’ He fidgeted, contemplating the question. When ideas move through his head, his mouth twists up along with his cheek and shoulders and he shifts around in his seat. He replied: ‘People move around at night… a lot…” He swallowed the rest of the sentence and awaited my reaction to the truth he’d just divulged.

It's fair to say that there is not a lot of Palestinian science fiction out there (NB I have previously written up anthologies of Jewish sf, not the same as Israeli sf of course, here and here). Here, Twelve Palestinian writers were asked to imagine life in their country in 2048, a hundred years after the displacement of half of their population. They are not very cheerful stories, some imagining a sclerotic peace process agreed between now and then that fails to deliver much improvement in the lives of those affected, but most expecting continued stalemate and corrosion. “N” by Majd Kayyal imagines parallel worlds, one Palestinian, one Israeli, controlling the same territory in adjacent universes. The black humour of “Application 39” by Ahmed Masoud sees the Olympic Games brought to Gaza. Sad and effective. You can get it here.

This was next in my pile of unread books by non-white authors. Next on that list is Painless, by Rich Larson.

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My tweets

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  • Wed, 10:45: RT @LaurenceBroers: There are voices rightly highlighting relentless focus on geopolitics in the tragedy in + around #Karabakh. Geopolitics…
  • Wed, 11:01: RT @bbcdoctorwho: “I’m your new assistant…” and what an incredible journey! ✨ A very happy birthday to Katy Manning, who played Jo Jones…
  • Wed, 11:33: Alas, this turns out to be satire (at best). Leaving my original tweet up, though, because it was funny. https://t.co/EUfdN7w8kA

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Whoniversaries 14 October: Katy Manning, Abominable Snowmen #3, Pirate Planet #3, Ghost Monument

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i) births and deaths

14 October 1919: birth of Shaun Sutton, BBC executive who had a key role in casting Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.

14 October 1949: birth of Katy Manning, who played Jo Grant from 1971 to 1973, does both Jo and Iris Wildthyme for Big Finish, was also in SJA as Jo.

ii) broadcast and production anniversaries

14 October 1963: rehearsals began for the first episode of Doctor Who actually shown on TV (as opposed to the unshown pilot episode).

14 October 1967: broadcast of third episode of The Abominable Snowmen. Khrisong decides to trust the Doctor, but the dormant Yeti is animated by the mising sphere…

14 October 1978: broadcast of third episode of The Pirate Planet. The Doctor hears the story of Queen Xanxia and sees the crushed remains of plundered planets, and is thrown off the bridge.

14 October 2018: broadcast of The Ghost Monument. The new TARDIS crew have lost the TARDIS, but get caught up in the final stage of the Rally of the Twelve Galaxies.

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Barcelona, Catalonia: A View from the Inside, by Matthew Tree

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

This week, for example, I visited Peru for the first time (one stop on the metro) courtesy of the Cebichería-Marisqueria restaurant. Luckily, I was with friends who were regular customers (he Catalan, she Peruvian) because although the menu was written in Spanish, it was a Spanish liquidised over the centuries with Quechua (now the fifth most spoken language in Catalonia), not to mention Aymara and the numerous tongues of the Amazon. Not understanding a word, I stared, nonplussed, at dishes such as cebiche, chicharrón, and papa a la huancaina until my friends did the ordering for me and I discovered that huancaina was a yellow sauce served on baked potato, that chicharrón was fish (or octopus) fried in bread crumbs, and that cebiche—the Peruvian national dish—was one of the most delicious things I’d eaten for years: raw fish marinated in lime juice and served with chili, tomato, and thinly sliced onion. In the restaurant they had local Estrella beer, but I decided to stay in Peru and ordered Cristal, a fine, mild lager brewed in Lima. The Cebichería-Marisquería is on Rosselló, 530. As you can see, I’m plugging it for all it’s worth, and it’s worth plenty, and costs little, and it’s like travelling without the jet lag. Go!

A collection of pieces by Matthew Tree, a British writer who moved to Barcelona many years ago and has gone thoroughly native, being now more pro-independence than a large proportion of the Catalan population. The essays are a mixture of personal reflection on age and relationships, advocacy for the Catalan cause, advocacy of Catalan literature, and restaurant reviews. It's fronted by a strong piece on the independence issue, but the rest is fairly light. You can get it here.

This was the shorter of the two remaining books on my shelves acquired in 2013. Next, and last, on that list is Felicitas Corrigan's biography of Helen Waddell.

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Whoniversaries 13 October

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i) births and deaths

13 October 1923: birth of Cyril Shaps, who played Viner in The Tomb of the Cybermen (Second Doctor, 1967), Lennox in The Ambassadors of Death (Third Doctor, 1970), Professor Clegg in Planet of the Spiders (Third Doctor, 1974) and the Archimandrite in The Androids of Tara (Fourth Doctor, 1978).

John_Viner[1].jpg LennoxTAOD[1].jpg Herbert_Clegg[1].jpg Archimandrite[1].jpg

13 October 1997: death of Ian Stuart Black, author of The Savages (First Doctor, 1966), The War Machines (First Doctor, 1966) and The Macra Terror (Second Doctor, 1967).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

13 October 1979: broadcast of third episode of City of Death. The Doctor goes back to Leonardo's studio; and poor old professor Kerensky meets his end.

13 October 2008: broadcast of second episode of Day of the Clown. Clyde defeats the bad guy by telling jokes (great scene with a sea of red balloons being released), and Rani accepts Sarah's invitation to join her team.

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