24 November 1999: death of Hilary Minster, who had two rather minor roles as Thals – Marat in Planet of the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1973) and an unnamed soldier in Genesis of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor, 1975), but is of interest to me as the only person to have been semi-regular character in both Secret Army, where he played Hauptmann Muller, and Allo! Allo!, where he played General von Klinkerhoffen – a high ranking Wehrmacht officer in both cases.
ii) broadcast and webcast anniversaries
24 November 1979: broadcast of first episode of Nightmare of Eden. Two spaceships collide coming out of hyperspace; the Doctor, Romana and K9 start to uncover murky doings with the addictive drug vraxoin.
24 November 2008: broadcast of second episode of The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah's parents sacrifice themselves to prevent the Graske's plan.
24 November 2009: release of fourth episode of Dreamland.
iii) date specified in-universe
24 November 2119: setting of most of Under the Lake / Before the Flood (Twelfth Doctor, 2015) – we are told that the very first section is on 21 November 2119 and then the TARDIS arrives three days later.
We saw in the New Year with Anne's brother and his wife, and a big chunk of slow-cooked venison; and then immediately zoomed off to Birmingham to watch John Barrowman in pantomime. While we were in the theatre, it was announced that Matt Smith would be David Tennant's successor on Doctor Who. Otherwise I didn't travel and it was cold.
Sun, 18:39: Which Doctor Who companion became a European Commissioner? Which Doctor Who stories are set in Mechelen, and Ostend? Whose honeymoon in Brussels was a disaster? Who said that Belgium was undramatic? I’ve done the research… https://t.co/t7VYlz6kPt
Sun, 19:00: RT @0tralala: Exactly my kind of investigation! All the times that Doctor Who has referenced Belgium.
Sun, 21:17: RT @GovLarryHogan: If you had done your job, America’s governors wouldn’t have been forced to fend for themselves to find tests in the midd…
23 November 1963: broadcast of "An Unearthly Child", first episode of the story we now cal An Unearthly Child, and the first ever episode of Doctor Who. Teachers Ian and Barbara follow their mysterious pupil home to a police box, which contains the time and space ship – the TARDIS – of the enigmatic Doctor. It transports them – but to where?
23 November 1968: broadcast of fourth episode of The Invasion. The Doctor and UNIT rescue Isobel and Zoe; and Jamie and the Dioctor witness a Cyberman emerging from its cocoon.
23 November 1983: first broadcast of The Five Doctors, in the USA. (British audiences see it two days later.) The First, Second, Third and Fifth Doctors are united on Gallifrey to play the Game of Rassilon.
23 November 1987: broadcast of first episode of Dragonfire, introducing Ace. The Doctor and Mel land on Iceworld where they encounter their old friend Sabalon Glitz, and a stroppy waitress.
23 November 1988: broadcast of first episode of Silver Nemesis. The Doctor and Ace go back and forth between Windsor Castle in 1988 and 1638, dealing with the Nemesis meteor and Lady Peinforte's status; then the Cybermen arrive.
23 November 1989: Silvester McCoy records the voiceover at the end of episode three of Survival, the very last words of Old Who.
23 November 2009: release of third episode of Dreamland.
23 November 2013: broadcast of The Day of the Doctor. The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors get together with the War Doctor to deal with the Zygons, Gallifrey is saved, and who's that at the end?
also 23 November 2013: release of The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, which I would have loved to bits anyway, even without the crucially important fact that I myself am briefly visible in it about 8 minutes in.
ii) births and deaths
23 November 1914: birth of Roger Avon, who played Saphadin in The Crusade (First Doctor, 1965), Daxtar in The Daleks' Master Plan (First Doctor, 1965) and Wells in Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (Cushing movie, 1966)
23 November 1916: birth of Michael Gough, who played the Toymaker in The Celestial Toymaker (First Doctor, 1966) and Hedin in Arc of Infinity (Fifth Doctor, 1983). He was also married to actress Anneke Wills.
23 November 1963: birth of Joe Ahearne, who directed Dalek, Father's Day, Boom Town and Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways (all 2005).
23 November 1966: birth of Michelle Gomez, who played Missy in 2014-17 vs the Twelfth Doctor.
23 November 1990: death of Mostyn Evans, who played Dai Evans in The Green Death (1973) and the masked High Priest in Death to the Daleks (1974).
23 November 2003: death of Bill Strutton, writer of The Web Planet (1965) and the novelisation Doctor Who and the Zarbi.
23 November 2010: death, two days after her 73rd birthday, of Ingrid Pitt, who played Galleia in The Time Monster (Third Doctor, 1972) and Solow in Warriors of the Deep (Fifth Doctor, 1984) and co-wrote The Macros (originally submitted in the mid-80s, made by Big Finish as a Sixth Doctor story in 2010).
iii) dates specified in canon
23 November 1638: The Doctor launches the Nemesis statue into space. (Silver Nemesis, 1988)
23 November 1863: death of Victoria Waterfield's mother (according to Marc Platt's 1996 novel Downtime).
23 November 1963: setting of the K9 story The Cambridge Spy. (For my money, the worst episode of the entire show.)
23 November 1997: Re-coronation of Elizabeth II, attended by the Fourth Doctor, Romana and K9 in Lance Parkin's 1997 novel The Dying Days.
Tomorrow is the 57th anniversary of the first Doctor Who episode. To commemorate the occasion, I've updated my list of all the times Belgium is mentioned on Doctor Who on TV (plus the Sarah Jane Adventures) and compiled them for you, in historical order.
I've also made an even fuller list of all of the references I felt worth including to Belgium in the Whoniverse as a whole. It's striking that the Doctor seems to have been at the famous battlefield football match during the Christmas Truce of 1914 several times over (though perhaps there was more than one football match). The First World War is a favoured topic for writers, so I've given those stories a tinted background. (NB however that the First World War scenes of The War Games are explicitly in France.)
I'm sure that there are some I have missed; do let me know.
Story: The Unicorn and the Wasp
Year of setting: 800 AD (flashback from 1926)
Year of broadcast: 2008
Doctor: Tenth
Medium: TV
Writer: Gareth Roberts
Director: Graeme Harper
DOCTOR: You know, I've been to Belgium. Yeah. I remember I was deep in the Ardennes, trying to find Charlemagne. He'd been kidnapped by an insane computer.
Story: The Lonely Computer
Year of setting: 800 AD
Year of publication: 2008
Doctor: Ten, with Donna
Medium: Short story, on BBC website
Writer: Rupert Laight
'We're heading for Belgium, actually,' said the Doctor, without looking up.
The TARDIS suddenly jolted to a stop.
'Belgium?!' yelled Donna. 'I don't think so!'
But the Doctor had already sprinted over to the main doors and yanked them open. Donna trotted down the ramp to join him.
'I ask you,' she said, 'what's the point in Belgium?'
'They do fantastic lace,' offered the Doctor.
Doctor: Eighth, with Liv Chenka, Helen Sinclair and River Song
Medium: Big Finish audio play
Writer: Matt Fitton
Director: Ken Bentley
Thomas Cromwell decides to leave for Flanders to find a bride for Henry VIII (a bad move, as it turned out) and puts aside thoughts of the supernatural.
Story: The Astrea Conspiracy
Year of setting: 1666
Year of release: 2019
Doctor: Twelfth
Medium: Big Finish audiobook, read by Neve McIntosh
Writer: Lizbeth Myles
Director: Nicholas Briggs
Aphra Behn is in Antwerp, preventing a plot to assassinate Charles II, and a strange Scottish man turns up trying to restore the timeline.
Doctor: Second, with Lady Serenadellatrovella (Serena for short)
Medium: Novel
Writer: Terrance Dicks
Someone is trying to alter the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo, and the Doctor is sent by the Time Lords to set things right. (A Season 6B story.)
The Doctor and Serena sat at a pavement café table in the Grande Place in Brussels and watched the world go by. It was a pleasant sunny morning in June 1815 on the eve of Waterloo. The battle was still unfought, history still unchanged.
‘This mission seems to involve a great deal of sitting in cafés,’ said Serena.
‘It’s the Continental lifestyle,’ said the Doctor.
The Daleks are in 21st century London, but in fact Davros is also trying to alter the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo.
(Several scenes are set in Wavre, the rather nondescript provincial capital of Brabant-Wallon, which I pass through most mornings when I get the train to work. I've never seen any Daleks there myself.)
Story: Year of the Pig
Year of setting: 1913
Year of release: 2006
Doctor: Sixth, with Peri
Medium: Big Finish audio play
Writer: Matthew Sweet
Director: Gary Russell
Toby the sapient pig is in hiding in Ostend.
(Also fearures Adjoa Andoh, who played Martha's mother in New Who, Maureen O'Brien, who played Vicki in Old Who, and Michael Keating, who played Vila in Blake's 7.)
When Gabby and the Doctor arrive by accident in No Man's Land in July, 1916, they're met by Corporal Jamie Colqhoun — a soldier who knows from bitter experience that there are worse things than the Jerries out in the rat-strewn trenches. Things that drift through the smoke of a thousand cannon shells, and move only when you look away. Shadows that flit over artillery-blasted field hospitals and throw their terrifying wings over the living. Statues that steal your life in an instant. The Weeping Angels. But in a conflict where the life of young men is cheap, and thousands die every day — are the Angels actually offering salvation?
Story: Warfreekz
Year of setting: 1914
Year of publication: 2006
Doctor: Tenth, with Rose
Medium: Comic, in: Doctor Who Adventures issue 5
Writer: Alan Barnes
Artist: John Ross
Colourist: Adrian Salmon
The alien Warfreekz are enjoying the slaughter in the Forest of Mormal; the Doctor and Rose stop them.
(Incidentally the Forest of Mormal is just over the French border, so this may not actually be set in Belgium at all, but of course in the fog of war nobody can be quite sure where they are.)
(Apparently an earlier story in the same magazine but the same authors has the Doctor finding a "Belgian phrasebook" in his pockets. Hmmph.)
Story: Brotherhood of the Daleks
Year of setting: reference to October 1914
Year of release: 2008
Doctor: Sixth, with Charlie Pollard
Medium: Big Finish audio play
Writer: Alan Barnes
Director: Nicholas Briggs
The Doctor recalls his visit to Folkestone where he met Jessica Borthwick in October 1914 when she was taking Belgian refugees across the Channel in her yacht while under fire from the Germans.
Year of setting: 1987 with reference to Belgium in 1914
Year of release: 2013
Doctor: Sixth (twice), with Mel
Medium: Big Finish audio play
Writer: Matt Fitton
Director: Nicholas Briggs
Most of the play is a complicated origin story for Mel, but there's a reference to one character losing her husband in Belgium in 1914.
Story: Twice Upon A Time
Year of setting: Christmas 1914
Year of broadcast: 2017
Doctors: Twelfth and Firist
Medium: TV
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Rachel Talalay
Also 2018 novelisation by Paul Cornell
The First and Thirteenth Doctors, both on the verge of regeneration (or not, depending) get caught up in a final adventure for them both which starts on the battlefield and ends with the Christmas Truce. You've probably seen it.
Story: Deep and Dreamless Sleep
Year of setting: Christmas 1914
Year of publication: 2006
Doctor: Tenth
Medium: Short story, in The Sunday Times
Writer: Paul Cornell
Daniel Francis Thompson, aged four, and the Doctor also visit the battlefield to witness the Christmas Truce, where the Doctor referees the famous football match.
Story: The Little Drummer Boy
Year of setting: Christmas 1914
Year of publication: 2003
Doctor: First, with Steven and Sara
Medium: short story, in Short Trips: Companions edited by Jacqueline Rayner
Writer: Eddie Robson
The Doctor, Steven Taylor and Sara Kingdom, having survived their adventure in Hollywood, find that the TARDIS is constrained to visiting various places at Christmas only, including the Christmas Truce, where Steven participates in the famous football match (maybe there was more than one of them).
The slaughter of the trenches of the First World War was an image that had easily resonated down the four centuries to Steven's time. He'd expected to see tentative men keeping their heads below the tops of the trencftes,a deadly impasse.He hadn't expected to see the opposing forces mingling in the middle of No Man's Land, talking as best they could in spite of the language barrier, and sharing cigarettes. A sizeable group, down in one of the dugouts, was the source of the singing that Steven had heard. There was even a game of football taking place between the enemy trenches.
This seems to be the earliest visit to Belgium in the Doctor's personal timeline.
Story: Never Seen Cairo
Year of setting: Christmas 1914, and briefly a year later
Year of publication: 2004
Doctor: Fifth, with Peri; and briefly Seventh
Medium: short story, in Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, edited by Paul Cornell
Writer: Darren Sellars
The Fifth Doctor and Peri encounter Edward Woodbourne in the trenches (and the football match, again). A year later, the Seventh Doctor delivers a letter from Edward to his widow. (Not a spoiler, the story starts there.)
The Doctor was certainly an odd chap, much more friendly than any of the officers who'd visited the trenches.
Story: Horrors of War
Year of setting: 1914, just after the outbreak of war in Belgium.
Year of release: 2018
Doctor: Third, with Jo Grant
Medium: BBC audiobook, read by Katy Manning
Writer: Justin Richards
The year is 1914, and the Great War is just getting started. In a field hospital in Ypres, Belgium, Nurse Annie Grantham receives two visitors: a distinguished doctor and his administrative assistant, Miss Grant. They have many questions to ask of Annie, and of her distressed and wounded charges.
The Doctor is returning to a scenario he encountered long ago: a version of the First World War where the Archduke Ferdinand wasn’t murdered, leading to changes all along the subsequent timeline. He now suspects that someone is at large in 1914, intervening in events with some unknown purpose.
Story: The Haunting of Malkin Place
Year of setting: Flashbacks to 1917
Year of release: 2017
Doctor: Fourth, with Romana II
Medium: Big Finish audio play
Writer: Phil Mulryne
Director: Nicholas Briggs
It's 1922, and the Doctor and Romana get mixed up with a dubious spiritualist (played by Simon "Arthur Dent" Jones). Young Maurice does not seem to have fully escaped the Third Battle of Ypres.
Writer: Terry Nation (presumably)
Also 2018 audiobook version read by Matthew Waterhouse
A story that is not very subtly based on the 1965 TV story The Chase. The Daleks pursue our protagonists to various places, including the trenches, where they unintentionally blunt a German advance.
(NB the earliest published reference to Belgium in spinoff fiction, as opposed to TV Who.)
The Ardennes, December 1944: the Nazi forces are making their last offensive in Europe — a campaign which will come to be called the Battle of the Bulge. But there is a third side to this battle: an unknown and ancient force which seems to pay little heed to the laws of nature.
Where do the bodies of the dead disappear to? What is the true nature of the military experiments conducted by both sides?
The Doctor, Sam and Fitz must seek out the truth in a battlefield where no one and nothing is quite what it seems…
Writer: Daniel O'Mahoney
Also audio read by Terry Molloy
Protagonist Honoré Lechasseur was wounded fighting in Belgium in 1944.
Story: Good Night
Year of setting: 1952 (probably)
Year of release: 2011
Doctor: Eleventh
Medium: DVD extra
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Richard Senior
Doctor: River! I'll see you in Antwerp! Tell Marilyn she's too late, she'll have to use the biplane. Take care!
Reference presumably to Marilyn Monroe who the Eleventh Doctor met (and possibly married) in 1952.
Story: The Idiot's Lantern
Year of setting: 1953
Year of broadcast: 2006
Doctor: Tenth, with Rose
Medium: TV story
Writer: Mark Gatiss
Director: Euros Lyn
Guard: Wait, wait, wait! Where do you think…
(The Doctor shows him the psychic paper.)
Guard: Oh! I’m very sorry, sir. Shouldn’t you be at the Coronation?
Doctor: They’re saving me a seat.
Tommy: Who did he think you were?
Doctor: King of Belgium, apparently.
(Of course there is no such person as the King of Belgium. Our head of state is the King of the Belgians.)
Story: The Faceless Ones
Year of setting: 1966
Year of broadcast: 1967
Doctor: Second, with Ben, Polly and Jamie
Medium: TV story
Writers: David Ellis & Malcolm Hulke
Director: Gerry Mill
Also novelisation by Terrance Dicks
Commandant: Splendid, Splendid. I'll take that Brussels call now.
Doctor: There's just one thing, Commandant.
Commandant: Yes, yes, right.
Doctor: Our Tardis. Our police box.
Commandant: Ah Bruxelles. Oui, j'écoute. [Excruciating accent]
Doctor: The police box on the runway.
Commandant: Oh, yes, of course. Jean, see that the Doctor gets his property back, will you? Goodbye, Doctor, and thank you so much.
(The first time any part of Belgium was mentioned in the show. Lost from the archives, sadly.)
Story: The Time Monster
Year of setting: UNIT era
Year of broadcast: 1972
Doctor: Third, with Jo, Brigadier, Benton, Yates and the Master
Percival: But I'd stake my reputation on the professor's integrity.
Cook: You already have, Charles. You already have. A foolish gamble gone wrong. Now, it's not surprising that you lost.
Percival: Please, Humphrey!
Cook: I can see no alternative to a full Whitehall inquiry. I can only hope that we don't have to parade our dirty linen at Westminster, not to mention Brussels.
Story: The Man from DOCTO(R)
Year of setting: post-UNIT era
Year of publication: 2003
Doctor: none, just Harry Sullivan
Medium: short story, in Short Trips: Companions edited by Jacqueline Rayner
Writer: Andrew Collins
‘And so the girl gets on this blooming great spaceship with the seeding device to save an entire alien civilisation,and promptly leaves the planet. Leaving me to get back from the Belgian Alps without my passport’ Harry sat back and swirled his brandy. ‘Fortunately, I know a chap at the Embassy…’
Downing their pints, Chumpy Withers and Buffy Worthington were chortling in gleeful disbelief. Buffy gave him a shrewd look. ‘Does Belgium actually have Alps,old man?’ he asked.
Harry looked up sharply, then cleared his throat, ‘My round, I think,’ he said,and headed for the bar.
Story: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith
Year of setting: 2009, Brussels visit implied in early 1990s
Year of broadcast: 2009
Doctor: Tenth, but it's Sarah's show
Medium: TV – Sarah Jane Adventures
Writer: Gareth Roberts
Director: Joss Agnew
Also novelisation by Gareth Roberts
Gita: So, Peter, where are you heading after the reception? Somewhere exotic?
Peter: Afterwards is a surprise.
Gita: It can't be any worse than our honeymoon. Total disaster.
Haresh: I enjoyed it.
Gita: Brussels. There's nothing there!
Story: Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman
Year of setting: 1994
Year of broadcast: 1994
Doctor: no Doctor, just Susan, Ian and Barbara
Medium: BBC audio play
Writer: Adrian Mourby
Jane Asher plays Susan, James Grout is Ian Chesterton, Andrew Sachs is Temmosus, Peter Woodthorpe is the researcher, finding out what exactly happened to her. It turns out that in 1994 she is working in Brussels (in a job that in our time stream was not actually invented until 1999). See the video (well, pic with soundtrack) for the full story.
Story: Escape Velocity
Year of setting: 2001
Year of publication: 2001
Doctor: Seventh, with Fitz Kreiner and introducing Anji Kapoor
Medium: Novel
Writer: Colin Brake
After five years as an item, three living together, Dave and Anji had come to the conclusion that they were meta-morphosing into some kind of off-the-shelf parody of a married couple long before their time. This year they had decided to do something about it, and their joint New Year’s resolution had been to do Wild and Spontaneous Things.
‘I’m really not sure Brussels was quite the right choice to be a Wild and Spontaneous Thing,’ moaned Anji, hugging her elegantly-cut designer coat tighter against the cold, drizzly wind. She started walking again, quick but small steps taking her back towards the centre of the city. Dave hurried after her, speculating – not for the first time – as to whether his long-time girlfriend had hidden powers of telepathy.
Story: Death in Heaven
Year of setting: Unspecified, probably 2014
Year of broadcast: 2014
Doctor: Twelfth, with Missy
Medium: TV
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Rachel Talalay
Missy: In fact, you know what? Just for that, I'm leaving. Boys, blow up this plane and, I don't know, Belgium, yeah? Kill some Belgians. Might as well. They're not even French. Byeeee!
Story: An Extraterrestrial Werewolf in Belgium
Year of setting: Unspecified, probably 2015
Year of broadcast: 2015
Doctor: no Doctor, but Iris Wildthyme
Medium: Big Finish audio play, in the Wildthyme Reloaded collection.
Writer: Scott Handcock
Director: Scott Handcock
Iris Wildthyme and her friend Edwin Turner visit Mechelen, between Brussels and Antwerp, and have a typically eccentric adventure with a Flemish werewolf.
Story: Time Crash
Year of setting: beyond time and space
Year of broadcast: 2006
Doctors: Fifth and Tenth
Medium: TV
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Graeme Harper
The Fifth Doctor: That's an alert, level five, indicating a temporal collision. It like two Tardises have merged, but there's definitely only one Tardis present. It's like two time zones or more at the heart of the Tardis. That's a paradox that could blow a hole in the space time continuum the size of….
I've committed myself to doing updates every ten days on the general situation; there is not much to report from real life since last time, though I was very unreasonably excited about having an actual in-person work meeting last Tuesday. (With an ambassador, who is of course not subject to Belgian rules, though we naturally observed correct hygiene protocols.)
We’re also under stronger restrictions about visiting B, so in retrospect I’m very glad I took her to Hélécine three weeks ago. She’s allowed one regular contact (Anne) and once occasional contact (me), but I can’t see her on my own and can’t touch her (not that she is very touchy-feely anyway). This is annoying, but it’s understandable and it’s nothing like as bad as the spring when we could not see either of the girls for three months. U has continued to go back and forth between us and the residential centre. Her school has closed, of course.
The big story for me is that the numbers are now definitely going in the right direction. Hospital numbers peaked at 7485 on 4 November and are now 5017, almost a third lower. The ICU peak was more recent, on 10 November, at 1474, now 1201, down by 20%. Deaths seem to have peaked at 214 on 6 November, and are at 150-ish for the most recent complete days. Looking back to May, when the restrictions were eased enough for some office work to resume, hospitalisation numbers were then 3,000, ICU numbers 600, and deaths 80-ish, so I think we have some wasy to go still.
It felt like this second wave took longer to peak than the first, but in fact that’s not true. As I said in a previous post, in the spring, the lockdown hit on 17 March, and the peak of hospitalisation was reached on 6 April, 20 days later; the peak in intensive care on 8 April, 22 days later; and the peak of fatalities on 12 April, 26 days later. This time around the lockdown was announced on 16 October but went into effect on 19 October. The peak in hospitalisations was only 15 days later, the peak in deaths 17 days later and the peak in ICU 22 days later. However the peaks were higher in two out of three cases – the exception is deaths, which have been fewer than in the spring, presumably in part because they are now taking better precautions in care homes and in part because the most vulnerable are already dead.
The really encouraging number is the fall in the number of detected infections, a leading indicator (which however is reported late), where the peak weekly average (for 22-28 October) was 16,142 and the most recent number (for 12-18 November) is 4,166, a drop of 74%. The methodology of testing was changed in October but I think before that peak occurred. (They are changing back again tomorrow, to testing anyone who wants to be tested, so that will cause a bump in the figures.) The government’s adviser Steven Van Gucht said a couple of weeks ago that he reckoned the peak had been around 29 October, and he seems to have been about right.
One local point of interest is that our own municipality currently has the fourth lowest infection rate of anywhere in Belgium, and of the big cities Leuven is doing the best by far. We take our crumbs of comfort where we can get them.
Our new prime minister got some headlines by saying that Christmas should not be a time for parties. In the spring it was about eight weeks before we had a partial return to the office. I think it’s likely to be longer this time round.
Sat, 19:29: RT @bbcdoctorwho: ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’, the story of how #DoctorWho was brought to the screen in 1963, first aired 7 years ago…
Sun, 10:45: RT @monicabyrne13: I think about this every time I read about an upcoming scifi flick where some feminine-gendered AI “gets out of control”…
Sun, 10:52: RT @bradheath: This is a victory in the sense that spilling food on yourself helps your strategy of having to do laundry sooner.
22 November 1920: birth of Paul Erickson, author of The Ark (First Doctor, 1966).
22 November 2007: death of Verity Lambert, the very first producer of Doctor Who (1963-65).
ii) broadcast and webcast anniversaries
22 November 1975: broadcast of first episode of The Android Invasion. The Doctor and Sarah arrive at the village of Devesham, to find peculiar behaviour from the villagers, a lost astronaut and sinister guards in white suits.
22 November 1980: broadcast of first episode of State of Decay. The Doctor and Romana explore a very low-tech village, and are attacked by bats.
22 November 1985: Children in Need features four Doctors and fifteen companions.
22 November 1986: broadcast of fourth episode of Terror of the Vervoids (ToaTL #12). The Doctor kills off the Vervoids and is accused of genocide.
22 November 1989: broadcast of first episode of Survival. The Doctor brings Ace back to Perivale, where a black cat is transporting people to another world, where the Doctor meets the Master.
22 November 2009: release of second episode of Dreamland.
iii) date specified in canon
22 November 1963: assassination of John F. Kennedy, as described in Who Killed Kennedy? by David Bishop, and apparently witnessed by the Ninth Doctor according to Clive's research in Rose (2005).
Let me tell you about the glorious and lost Doctor Who story, The Daleks’ Master Plan. Broadcast in 12 weekly episodes in the winter of 1965-66, with a prequel episode five weeks earlier, it was a peak of ambition for the black and white era of the programme. Due to the BBC’s failure to realise that its own product was of future value, it was one of the first stories to be purged from the archives, as early as 1967-9. Two episodes were retrieved from a Mormon temple in London in 1983, in circumstances that remain unclear. A third turned up in the possession of a former BBC engineer in 2004. The other nine (or ten, counting the prequel) are presumed gone for ever. So when we experience The Daleks’ Master Plan today, through whatever medium, we can never experience it as its original viewers would have; but we can approach it through reconstructions, through audio narration by Peter Purves, through John Peel’s novelisation, and also through a recent comics adaptation by Rick Lundeen. I have previously written about it and its various iterations here, here, here, here and here.
The story is set in the year 4000, and concerns the discovery by the Doctor and his friends of a conspiracy between the Daleks and the Guardian of the Solar System, Mavic Chen, who we take to be a benevolent dictator-type figure with a cult of personality, ruling a thriving economy with colonial ambitions, mineral exploitation and a sinister security service – inspired no doubt by Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portuigal, both of whom had been in power for three decades when the story was made. Mavic Chen is one of the great Doctor Who villains, believing that he can use the Daleks for even greater power than he currently holds, via the feared Time Destructor. But the Doctor steals the core of the Time Destructor, and is pursued through time and space by the Daleks.
It’s a story that marks an interesting shift in the core narrative of the show, coinciding with the departure of the original producer Verity Newman and her replacement by John Wiles. The Doctor was originally a mysterious and cantankerous eccentric from another time and place; now he becomes a somewhat superhuman hero from a far future society, a vision that has stayed with us ever since. The Doctor spontaneously decides to infiltrate the Daleks’ summit meeting himself and steal the tarranuim core; he is insufferably snobbish about the quaint technology of the year 4000; his non-human physiology survives the Time Destructor. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we only really see this under the new management of Season 3.
The surrounding cast are interesting as well. We start the story proper with the Doctor accompanied by Steven Taylor, a future rocket pilot, and Katarina, a handmaiden to the priestess Cassandra who they have just recued from the fall of Troy. Katarina, the shortest-lived companion of Old Who, is written out in episode four; so is Bret Vyon, a security agent played by Nicholas Courtney, later of course to become the Brigadier, who we meet in the first episode and also looks likely to become a companion (but unlike Katarina, was never billed as such). In the first four episodes, in fact, we have the Doctor with effectively two male companions and one female – a pattern that was not repeated until the arrival of the Thirteenth Doctor in 2018.
Episode four also sees the introduction of Sara Kingdom, another security agent, played by Jean Marsh. She must have been the highest profile actor to appear as a companion so far, other than perhaps William Russell, and after her probably only Bonnie Langford in Old Who (and Billie Piper, Catherine Tate, Matt Lucas and Bradley Walsh in New Who) exceeded her level of celebrity at the point they came on board the Tardis. She
As well as the Daleks, we also encounter a time-travelling Monk, who had previously appeared in an earlier 1965 story in which he attempted to change the outcome of English history in 1066 but was outwitted by the Doctor. Until the end of the Patrick Troughton era, the Monk was the only other member of the Doctor’s own people who we met (except, presumably, his granddaughter Susan). He pops up in two episodes towards the end.
The story is a bleak one. Sorry for the spoiler, but Katarina is killed by launching herself into space with a deranged criminal to save the others; Bret Vyon is killed in error by Sara Kingdom, who turns out to be is own sister; the Monk ends up marooned on an ice planet by the Doctor; and when the Time Destructor is finally activated, Sara Kingdom suffers the same fate as the Daleks and is aged to death (the Doctor being less badly affected). The two credited authors, Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner, both made most of their career in comedy, so it’s impressive that they pull off the tension.
Up to a point. There is a straight comedy episode in the middle of the story, broadcast on Christmas Day 1965; the TARDIS lands at a police station in England and is mistaken for a real police box, and then visits a 1930s film studio in Hollywood for merry chaos. At the end, the Doctor pours champagne for Steven and Sara, and then breaks the fourth wall, wishing “a Merry Christmas to all of you at home”. The next episode has a couple of funny moments at a cricket match and Trafalgar Square, but mostly gets back to the serious business of fighting Daleks. It jars modern sensibilities, but in context I think it works – the previous five episodes of the story (and the last of the previous one) have been unremittingly grim, and there’s more of that to come, so it’s nice to have a change of tone.
I also should mention the single-episode prequel, Mission to the Unknown, the only Doctor Who story in which the Doctor himself does not actually appear. It features special agent Marc Cory on the planet Kembel, uncovering the Daleks’ sinister intentions but losing his life to the sinister pepperpots. The episode is lost, but it was daringly recreated by the drama department of the University of Central Lancashire a couple of years ago, doing their best to be true to the original production values (and coming close to succeeding).
Going back to the original version: there is so much to like about it. It all looks good. Unlike in some later years, the constraints are not so much the production values as the technical limitations – if you know what you are looking for, you can see the actors huddle in the restricted angle of view of the cameras, and the careful choreaography of the Daleks so that they look menacing rather than fragile. The sets are economical but generally impressive as well, as far as we can see through photographs and the surviving episodes. The music is just superb. There’s a compilation on Youtube here:
I first encountered it through the audio narration by Peter Purves, releasaed by the BBC in 2001 and still available at a price. Purves had a deep affection for Hartnell and for this story, and provides the narration of what we would have seen on screen pretty intensely and convincingly. This the first Doctor Who story that I got to know entirely through audio when I was first discovering the black and white era, and I listened to it again the other week; the magic is still there. Also available on Audible since that’s how things go these days. Perfect for a long car journey (and I do mean a long one – it’s a good six hours in total).
The reconstructions of the missing episodes by Loose Cannon are available on Dailymotion as of this writing, and can probably also be obtained by the usual methods. If you’re in a TV watching mood, they are as close to the original experience as you can get, but the three surviving epsiodes really bring home to you what has been lost.
John Peel was given the job of turning the story into a Target novelisation, and was given two books totalling 331 pages to do it – a bit more generous in terms of pages per episode than some of the medium length Old Who stories got. It’s one of the better novelisations, with some of the trickier plot points retconned and a lot of establishing background given for the setting. Chen’s plan turns out to involve eliminating most of humanity, which is more extreme than we are given to understand in the TV version. There’s an odd plot alteration at the end of the second last episode/beginning of the last, where the Doctor is captured along with Steven and Sara rather than evading the Daleks as on TV; perhaps it is a bit more logical. Anyway, there are plenty of copies floating around on the second-hand market; you can get the first volume, Mission to the Unknown, here and the second volume, The Mutation of Time, here.
Also floating around the darker corners of the internet you can find a PDF of a twelve volume comics adaptation of the story by Rick Lundeen. He skips the comedy Christmas episode, but otherwise remains pretty faithful to the script, adapting the visuals for the comics genre. Unconstrained by the technical limitations of the camera, he is able to give the story a lot more colour and movement; well worth trracking down (also, in these hurried times, a quicker read than the novelisations). And he gives Sara Kingdom a very sexy figure.
Here are three different takes on the same scene from the second episode so that you can appreciate the different approaches of each creator in each medium. The Doctor has disguised himself as an alien delegate to infiltrate the meeting (that’s William Hartnell in the hood and cloak). Here is the original TV version.
Here’s John Peel’s adaptation from the first book, Mission to the Unknown:
‘Search for him!’
Watching the Dalek glide away on its task, Mavic Chen felt a deep satisfaction. Capital! The more trouble he could stir up between the Daleks and these ridiculous allies of theirs, the better. When everything was finished, there would be that much more left for him to grasp…
The Doctor watched his three young companions scurry towards the large starship on the launch pad, and nodded with satisfaction. Now it was time for him to make his move. He had managed to conceal his own unease about his foolish plan from the others, but he was not at all sure he was being very wise. Still, they had to know what the Daleks were planning, and this was their best chance.
Pushing his fears down, the Doctor pulled the hood over his head, and started walking towards the doorway to the building.
The door hissed open, and a Dalek glided out. The eye-stick spun to examine him. The Doctor swallowed instinctively, and hoped that his disguise was as effective as he had believed. If the Dalek suspected his identity for a second, his life would be forfeit.
‘Delegate of Zephon,’ the Dalek grated, ‘the meeting is about to begin.’ The Doctor waved his hand, and the Dalek spun about and led the way into the city. As he entered, the Doctor seized his chance to look around. The walls and floors were all constructed of metal, since the Daleks found this easiest to travel over. It also served to carry auxiliary power for their units, in that strange form of static electricity they had mastered centuries before on their home world of Skaro. These Daleks could move freely about without needing metal below them, thanks to solar panels about their mid-sections, but they still constructed their buildings of pure metal.
One large window faced out at the space-port, but there was no one in the room now who might see Bret, Steven and Katarina as they crossed the open space to the Spar.
The Dalek led the Doctor into a short corridor, and from there into a large, dimly lit room. Some twenty feet away, a meeting table was illuminated. About one side was the Black Dalek and several of its minions.
The Black Dalek! This had to be important, then, for the Black Dalek was second in the Dalek hierarchy, and rarely left the planet Skaro. Now, more than ever, the Doctor knew he had to discover what was happening here.
‘You seem lost, representative Zephon,’ said Mavic Chen.
The Doctor recalled seeing him land in the Spar, and there was no doubt now of his identity. ‘Here is your place, next to me.’
The Doctor didn’t dare risk speaking, so he grunted in reply, and moved to the lectern that the traitor had pointed to. Glancing around, the Doctor recognized no more than two of the other species present. These were beings from the outer galactic groups indeed!
The Black Dalek had had enough of delays.
‘Representatives,’ it stated, ‘I have important news. The manufacture of the Time Destructor has now been completed.’
By the sighs and excited looks on the face of the other delegates, the Doctor realized he was the only one who had no idea what a Time Destructor was. Still, it sounded ominous enough, and given the Dalek capacity for inventiveness when it came to mass destruction and murder, it was certainly a weapon to be reckoned with.
Clearly, the Dalek was pleased with the effect its words had had. ‘It lacks only its Taranium core to activate it. Mavic Chen will speak.’
A born politician, Chen could never resist the chance for a speech.
And here is Rick Lundgreen’s economic graphic adaptation:
Anyway, if you are not all that familiar with Old Who, particularly the partially lost episodes, and want to improve your knowledge, I think The Daleks’ Master Plan (and the prequel Mission to the Unknown) will well reward the time investment needed to experience them. Rather a delight to return to it in days of not getting out all that much.
Fri, 12:21: RT @tconnellyRTE: New: Member states have been told by the European Commission that 95pc of the EU-UK future relationship treaty has been c…
Fri, 14:12: RT @pritipatel: Resorting to bullying & intimidation is not the type of the leadership or behaviour anyone should sanction or endorse. In a…
Fri, 16:05: No, judges don’t overturn elections because of isolated irregularities. https://t.co/LFIBB5IRLw At least, as far as normal practice goes in the USA.
Fri, 20:07: RT @JoeBiden: To transgender and gender-nonconforming people across America and around the world: from the moment I am sworn in as presiden…
Fri, 22:27: RT @DalrympleWill: RIP the great Jan Morris- a lifelong literary inspiration and one of the funniest, liveliest and most wonderful people I…
Sat, 10:11: RT @SJAMcBride: Understanding another extraordinary week at Stormont: The internal DUP meeting on Thursday night, what Mrs Foster’s aides h…
21 November 1924: birth of Malcolm Hulke, co-author of The Faceless Ones, The War Games and (uncredited) The Ambassadors of Death, sole author of Doctor Who and the Silurians, Colony in Space, The Sea Devils, Frontier in Space, and Invasion of the Dinosaurs, and writer of seven novelisations (DW&t Cave-Monsters, DW&t Doomsday Weapon, DW&t Sea Devils, DW&t Green Death, DW&t Dinosaur Invasion, DW&t Space War and DW&t War Games) and co-writer of The Making of Doctor Who. See in particular this long and fascinating blog post: Doctor Who and the Communist: the work and politics of Malcolm Hulke (1924-1979), by Michael Herbert
21 November 1937: birth of Ingrid Pitt, who played Galleia in The Time Monster (Third Doctor, 1972) and Solow in Warriors of the Deep (Fifth Doctor, 1984) and co-wrote The Macros (originally submitted in the mid-80s, made by Big Finish as a Sixth Doctor story in 2010).
21 November 2015: death of Anthony Read, script editor in 1978/79 for the final Leela stories and the complete Key to Time season, author of The Horns of Nimon (Fourth Doctor, 1979-80) and co-author of The Invasion of Time (Fourth Doctor, 1978).
ii) broadcast and webcast anniversaries
21 November 1964: broadcast of "World's End", first episode of the story we now call The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The Tardis lands in a future devastated London; Susan and Barbara fall in with the human resistance, and the Doctor and Ian are captured by the Daleks.
21 November 1990: broadcast of Search Out Space, an episode of the BBC show Search Out Science featuring Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, Sophie Aldred as Ace and John Leeson as the voice of K9. Haven't seen it and it's not in most people's concept of canon.
21 November 2009: release of first episode of Dreamland, animated story starring David Tennant as the Doctor, Georgia Moffatt as Cassie Rice and Tim Howar as Jimmy Stalkingwolf. The Doctor lands at a diner in Nevada, where a mysterious artifact attracts the Men in Black…
21 November 2015: broadcast of Face the Raven. Clara takes on the burden of the death tattoo – with consequences.
iii) date specified in canon
21 November 2059: setting for most of the events of The Waters of Mars (2009).
That song had been silent ever since, silent until Caryl brought it back, and I bitterly regretted telling Dr. Davis about her. After a year spent following orders and eating institutional food, a dose of reality was exactly the last thing I needed.
I got this back in 2017 when it was a Nebula finalist, but only now got around to reading it. As with the October Daye books by Seanan McGuire, I completely bounced off the core concept of a Celtic otherworld conveniently located on the US West Coast, with no visible representation from other less foreign supernatural traditions. However it has some positive aspects as well – the protagonist has disabilities both visible (double amputee) and invisible (borderline personality disorder, hence the title), and this is very emotionally effectively portrayed. It was beaten for the Nebula by All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (which I loved, but could not say so at the time as I was Hugo administrator), also a finalist for the World Fantasy Award (beaten by The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North, which I also loved) and the Tiptree Award (beaten by When the Moon Was Ours, by Anna-Marie McLemore, which I have not read yet). First of a trilogy which was shortlisted as a whole for the Mythopoeic Award (but beaten by Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik, which got my second preference for the Hugos last year). You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2017. Next on that list is Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, by Nick Mason, which has really climbed up the LibaryThing charts this year – back in January, there were two dozen books on my 2017 list between it and Borderline.
Thu, 13:41: RT @tconnellyRTE: Here’s my latest on the Brexit negotiations… There’s a lot of talk about time pressure +who that benefits. The EU ha…
Thu, 13:41: RT @JohnGPeet: As so often, the consensus today is that we will get a Brexit trade deal, probably during next week. But I have my doubts.(T…
Thu, 15:36: RT @RozKaveney: @nwbrux @ansiblemag Our editor Geraldine asked us about a bunch of continuity points from the first collection TEMPS and I…
Thu, 16:05: How to save the United Kingdom https://t.co/y4ABl15b7k Long but fascinating and passionate from former PM Gordon Brown. A lot to agree with here – if you think the UK is worth saving.
Thu, 17:15: RT @anthonyzach: Really interesting compared to UK “save Christmas” hype-disappointment-outrage cycle. Mainstream Belgian politics is all n…
20 November 1930: birth of Bernard Horsfall, who played Gulliver in The Mind Robber (Second Doctor, 1968), a Time Lord in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969), Taron in Planet of the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1973) and Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin (Fourth Doctor, 1976).
20 November 1984: death of Peter Welch, who played Sergeant Klegg in The Highlanders (Second Doctor, 1966-67) and Morgan the pub landlord in The Android Invasion (Fourth Doctor, 1975).
20 November 1994: death of John Lucarotti, writer of the stories we now call Marco Polo (First Doctor, 1964), The Aztecs (First Doctor, 1964) and The Massacre (First Doctor, 1966).
20 November 2000: death of Morris Barry, who directed The Moonbase (Second Doctor, 1966), Tomb of the Cybermen (also Second Doctor, 1966) and The Dominators (Second Doctor, 1967), and then appeared as Tollund in The Creature from the Pit (Fourth Doctor, 1980).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
20 November 1965: broadcast of "Day of Armageddon", the second episode of The Daleks' Master Plan. The Doctor infiltrates the Daleks' meeting in disguise, and seizes the terranium core from Mavic Chen. I just watched this again the other day, and it's really good! (Though what happens to Mavic Chen's crew???)
20 November 1976: broadcast of fourth episode of The Deadly Assassin. The Master fakes his death and attempts to unleash the forces of the Eye of Harmony. The Doctor defeats him, though with much devastation to the Capitol.
20 November 2003: webcast of second episode of Scream of the Shalka. The Doctor blows up Alison's cafe and her house to stop the aliens, but then gets taken up by the army; meanwhile the Master [played by Derek Jacobi] has got into the Tardis.
20 November 2009: broadcast of second episode of The Gift, ending the third season of the Sarah Jane Adventures. K9 persuades the Rakweed to explode, killing off the Blathereen / Slitheen.
20 November 2013: broadast of The Last Day, another of the 50th anniversary prequel minisodes.
iii) date specified in-universe
20 November 1987: Energize!!! (Seen in Father's Day, Ninth Doctor, 2006)
Current Ash: A Secret History, by Mary Gentle Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake SS-GB, by Len Deighton The Inside of the Cup, by the other Winston S. Churchill Doctor Who: The Mutation of Time, by John Peel
Last books finished Mahatma Gandhi: His Life and Times, by Louis Fischer The Daleks’ Master Plan, adapted by Rick Lundeen Doctor Who: Mission to the Unknown, by John Peel
Next books Painless, by Rich Larson After Me Comes the Flood, by Sarah Perry
Wed, 12:13: RT @tconnellyRTE: Some arresting detail from @MichaelAodhan, NI Retail Consortium, to HoC NI Affairs cttee: £2.6bn in agrifood produced in…
Wed, 12:56: Scottish nationalists’ love of North Sea oil sours https://t.co/0Wuyr4R0jq Article suggests this is a new development, but in fact renewable energy has been central to SNP policy for years.
Thu, 08:08: As Brexit pressure builds, EU red lines shine bright UK’s hardball tactics completely backfire, stimulating some EU voices to mutter that maybe no deal *is* better than a bad deal. https://t.co/tYuahyfrO9
Thu, 10:45: RT @davidallengreen: Wait until those who complain about Sainsbury’s depiction of a Christmas get-together hear about where the Magi came f…
Thu, 11:00: RT @bbcdoctorwho: London 1965! A very happy birthday to William Russell, who played one of the first ever companions, Ian Chesterton http…
19 November 1920: birth of Richard Shaw, who played Governor Lobos in The Space Museum (First Doctor, 1965), treacherous prisoner Cross in Frontier in Space (Third Doctor, 1973) and also Lakh, one of the imperviously helmeted Seers in Underworld (Fourth Doctor, 1978).
19 November 1924: birth of William Russell, who played Ian Chesterton from 1963 to 1965 and has done a number of Big Finish plays, including most recently an episode of Susan's War.
19 November 1945: birth of Morgan Deare, who played Hawk, the American who isn't played by Stubby Kaye, in Delta and the Bannermen (Seventh Doctor, 1987) and an old man at a bus stop in Rosa (Thirteenth Doctor, 2018).
19 November 1971: birth of Katherine Kelly who played Miss Quill, my favourite of the regular characters in Class (2016).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
19 November 1966: broadcast of third episode of The Power of the Daleks. The rebels capture Polly, and the Doctor and Ben erode Lesterson's trust in the Daleks.
19 November 1977: broadcast of fourth episode of Image of the Fendahl. The Doctor kills the Fendahleen with salt, blows up the cottage and drops the skull into a supernova.
19 November 2006: broadcast of Countrycide (Torchwood), the one with the cannibalistic villagers.
19 November 2007: broadcast of second episode of The Lost Boy (SJA), ending the first series of Sarah Jane Adventures. Luke defeats the Slitheen and K9 reappears to deal with Mr Smith.
19 November 2009: broadcast of first episode of The Gift (SJA). The Blathereen, hunting the Slitheen, give Rani the Rakweed which however starts to take over the world.
19 November 2016: broadcast of Detained (Class). Everyone except Miss Quill is stuck in the physics classroom, which gets marooned in space and time.
iii) historical event in canon
19 November 1863: Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address, as observed by the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara in The Chase (First Doctor, 1965).
Second paragraph of third essay ("Edax on Appetite"):
You must know, then, that I have been visited with a calamity ever since my birth. How shall I mention it without offending delicacy? Yet out it must. My sufferings, then, have all arisen from a most inordinate appetite——
Collection of Lamb's writings on literature etc, but I'm afraid I found my general lack of interest in the subject matter too profound to appreciate the occasional rhetorical flourishes of his writing and gave up sixty pages in. You can get it here.
This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next ought to be Tomb Travel, A Guide to Northern Ireland's Megalithic Monuments, but I can't find it and so will probably go to Our War: Ireland and the Great War, by John Horne.
Tue, 13:51: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged: One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. https://t.co/c1tBODKl6f
Tue, 17:11: A UK-EU deal is needed for Northern Ireland https://t.co/ehTt0fU8qS by @JulianBKing, former British Ambassador in Dublin, head of the Northern Ireland Office, and the last British Commissioner in Brussels.
Tue, 20:48: How the Electoral College Was Nearly Abolished in 1970 https://t.co/bcYg8kN7A5 Fascinating. Strom Thurmond killed off the initiative. (Would have had a runoff round if winners of popular vote had less than 40% of it.)
Tue, 22:37: RT @SOFIAtelescope: We detected water on the Moon’s sunlit surface. Understanding the Moon’s water helps piece together the history of…
18 November 1932: birth of Trevor Baxter, who played Professor Litefoot in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Fourth Doctor, 1977) and reprised the role for Big Finish
18 November 1934: birth of Mitzi McKenzie, who played Mrs Martin in Colony in Space (Third Doctor, 1971) and Nancy in The Green Death (Third Doctor, 1973).
18 November 1948: birth of Paul Jerricho who played the Castellan in both Arc of Infinity (Fifth Doctor, 1983) and The Five Doctors (Fifth Doctor era, also 1983).
18 November 1953: birth of Alan Moore, acclaimed comics writer whose early work included five stories published in Doctor Who Weekly (as it then was) in 1980.
18 November 1961: birth of Steven Moffat, head writer and executive producer on Doctor Who for the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor eras, also for ClassThe Curse of Fatal Death (1999) and the Hugo-winning The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (Ninth Doctor, 2005), The Girl in the Fireplace (Tenth Doctor, 2006), Blink (Tenth Doctor, 2007) and The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang (Eleventh Doctor, 2010). He has the distinction of writing for the most number of Doctors on-screen than any other writer for the show, with a total of (at least) 8.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
18 November 1967: broadcast of second episode of The Ice Warriors. Varga captures Victoria and prepares to unfreeze his comrades.
18 November 1978: broadcast of fourth episode of The Stones of Blood. The Doctor evades the "justice" of the Megara and transforms the Great Seal of Diplos into the third segment of the Key to Time.
18 November 2005: broadcast of the first New Who Children in Need Special. The new Doctor tries to reassure Rose of his identity.
18 November 2011: broadcast of another Children in Need special minisode. All the Eleventh Doctor’s clothes come off!
18 November 2013: Yet another Children in Need special previews the 50th anniversary.
18 November 2018: broadcast of Kerblam! The Doctor and friends intervene to save capitalism, or something like that.
I had one of the strangest days ever at work on 11 December 2008, when I had not one but two presidents of unrecognised states in my office at different times. (They did not and still do not recognise each other, so I had to juggle schedules carefully.) Sadly, neither is in office any more; Mehmet Ali Talat lost his re-election bid in 2010, and Mohamed Abdelaziz died a couple of years ago.
I put a lot of energy into following the fall of the Belgian government the following week. All forgotten now. I joined Twitter, and my first Tweet was a link to my review of Terry Pratchett's Nation.
I was in London in the first week of the month, but otherwise in Belgium. Christmas seems to have been just us, with a bit of a rabbit theme.
I read only 16 books in December, the end of an epic year where my 371 books was a record that still stands.
4,100 pages (total 89,400)
2/16 by women (total 49/371)
None by PoC (total 6/371)
Again, I'm going to be nice and single out four good books here:
The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, which is my book of the year for 2008; you can get it here.
As You Like It, a Shakespeare play I had not previously encountered; you can get it here.
Nation, by Terry Pratchett: "the perfect world is a journey, not a place"; you can get it here.
The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo, by Joe Sacco, a tremendous evocation of a tragic time and place; you can get it here.
2008 books roundup
The 371 books I read in 2008 remain my record for a single year – boosted by easily digestible Doctor Who novelisations and fairly brief Shakespeare plays. I did a roundup at the time, but am now reformatting to my current system (and reclassifying a few books as well).
Doctor Who: 172 (46% – biggest of any year)
Best of 2008: Two of the First Doctor novelisations, the very first one, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, which you can get here, and Donald Cotton's Doctor Who – The Romans, which you can get here.
Best original fiction: All-Consuming Fire, by Andy Lane, in which the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny encounter Sherlock Holmes and the Great Old Ones. You can get it here.
Best non-fiction: Who Goes There, by Nick Griffiths, exploring the locations of Doctor Who filming around England and Wales; you can get it here.
The one you haven't heard of: Time and Relative, by Kim Newman, a novella set on Earth in 1963 before the Doctor and his granddaughter meet Ian and Barbara. At a cost, you can get it here.
The one to avoid: Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma, a dreadful adaptation of a dreadful story. You can get it here.
Non-fiction: 70 (19%, a tad below average)
Best of 2008: Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girlyou can get it here.
Runner-up: The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi; you can get it here.
The one you haven't heard of: Brussels Versus the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union, by Christine Mahoney, a great explanation of the world of my work; you can get it here.
Worst of 2007: J.R.R.Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth, by Daniel Grotta, a poor effort. You can get it here.
SF (other than Doctor Who): 54 (15%, lowest of any year – squeezed out by Doctor Who books)
At the top, it's difficult to choose between Romeo and Juliet (which you can get here), A Midsummer Night's Dream (here) and As You Like It (here) as my favourite Shakespeare of the year; also enjoyed the two rather less well known scripts I read, Improbable Frequency (about Schrodinger in Ireland, here) and The Office (here).
However I really bounced off both The Taming of the Shrew (here) and Love's Labour's Lost (here).
Comics 6 (2%, a record low)
Best of 2008: The Fixer (here), as noted above, and Jessica Jones vol 4 (here).
The one you haven't heard of: Macedonia, written by Harvey Pekar, Heather Roberson, art by Ed Piskor; you can get it here.
The one to avoid: Tales of Human Waste, by Warren Ellis; you can get it here.
My book of the year 2008, as noted above, was Anne Frank's Diary, which I have also writen about here and here. If you haven't yet read it, you should. And as mentioned twice above, you can get it here.
Mon, 12:56: The Distinguished Medieval Penis Investigators https://t.co/l2ZranpU4n In fourteenth-century England, one of the only ways a woman could get a divorce was if her husband was impotent. But first, she had to prove it in court.
Mon, 23:16: RT @alexwilcock: OTD 1969: #Clangers Flying The beginning of something quite, quite wonderful. Only fascinated glimpses as a boy; always a…
Tue, 09:10: RT @HarrocknRoll: @nwbrux “One wonders why anyone would go to the trouble of forging Belgian francs in Scotland (or indeed anywhere at all)…
17 November 1979: broadcast of fourth episode of The Creature from the Pit. The wolf weeds kill Adrasta; Erato eats the wolf weeds; the Doctor prevents Chloris from being destroyed.
17 November 2008: broadcast of first episode of The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith. The Trickster persuades Sarah to prevent her parents' deaths.
A few weeks ago I bit the bullet and sent a DNA sample off to Ancestry.com, having already done so for 23andMe a while back. The fact that it ties the DNA into the genealogy side of things makes for a snowstorm of new distant relatives of whom I have never heard. Most of them were people who were well enough off in their time and place for official records to be kept of their birth, marriage, offspring and death, but otherwise unremarkable. But I’ve come up with a lovely connection, my third cousin three times removed (ie his great-great-grandparents were also my great-grandmother’s great-great-grandparents) and his daughter, my fourth cousin twice removed: Howard Gardiner Cushing and Lily Cushing
Howard was born in 1869 in Boston, to a wealthy family – his paternal grandfather had made a fortune in Chinese opium smuggling. (I am related to his mother, not his father.) He had the usual elite Groton and Harvard education, but then went to Paris to study art under Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. I have found only one portrait of him – a phtograph of him posing with vine leaves in his hair, taken around 1885 when he would have been a teenager. It’s in the Isabella Stewart Gardiner musem in Boston (I assume that she was a relative).
He came back, made a career of his art, and in 1903 married Ethel Emerson Cochrane, who was also from Boston (the ceremony was in Trinity Church). She is the subject of a lot of his best work.
Some of the paintings feature Ethel with a child. Going by the dates, it is probably their oldest, Olivia, who died in 1908 three months after her third birthday.
His portrait of his friend and patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was sold at auction a few years ago; the art world is coy about prices, but I see a note on one site that the reserve was $5000-$7000, and on another that it made 50% more than the reserve.
One evening in 1916, Ethel went out to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s for the evening, Howard staying home because he had not been feeling well for several days. When she came home, Ethel slipped in quietly so as not to disturb him, and then found him dead in his bed in the morning. He was only 47, and their three surviving children were all under ten. Their house in New York, where they had lived since 1910, is still standing. The largest collection of his work is held at the Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island, which had a major exhibition about him last year.; the Cushings’ holiday home, The Ledges, is near Newport (and still in the family).
As I mentioned, there were three surviving children. Ethel married again to a stockbroker; the older son, also Howard Gardiner Cushing, followed his stepfather and also became a stockbroker; the younger son, Alexander, was a lawyer who founded the Squaw Valley ski resort in California; and Lily followed her father and became an artist.
Here she is in 1939, admiring the newly acquired Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, at the Museum of Modern Art on New York. She is the young woman on the left, partially concealed behind John Hay Whitney, then the Museum’s President; the older man next to them is a former Presdient of the museum, A. Conger Goodyear; pointing to the picture is another former President of the museum, and future Governor of New York and Vice-President of the United States, Nelson Rockefeller; the older woman with the hat is identified as Jeannie Sheppard; the other man is Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford and head of the family firm; the woman on the right is art collector Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson.
We have another photograph of her in 1942, at the age of 33, taken by Horst P. Horst.
From the same year, a less flattering portrait by her friend Walt Kuhn:
And another photo by Toni Frissell with her daughters, dated 1960, but I think it must be from a few years earlier judging by the apparent ages – her daughters, both for the second of her three marriages, were born in 1933 and 1937; she’s seated on the left and was born in 1909. The older daughter, another Lily, married Antony West, the son of Rebecca West and H.G. Wells; she died only last January. The younger daughter, Alexandra, married the historian Arthur Schlesinger.
Never mind other people’s portrayals: here is her own self-portrait (date given is 1952, but that is surely wrong; she looks younger than 43).
She painted interesting if discreetly faint nudes:
Her clothed women are striking as well.
She was happy to go commercial: here’s her 1949 portrait of opera singer Patrice Munsel for Avon Cosmetics:
Here’s her extraordinary “Mrs Onassis”.
And her landscapes and streetscapes are sort-of wistful.
Lily’s middle name was Dulany, in honour of our mutual ancestor Walter Dulany (1723-1773) of Annapolis, Maryland, whose wife was a Delaware girl, Mary “Molly” Grafton (1727-1812); their home is now the US Naval Academy. The Cushings are descended through their oldest son, another Walter (1757-1807), and his only son Grafton (1794-1863) whose daughter Olivia (1839-1906) married Robert Maynard Cushing (1836-1907). (So Howard Gardiner Cushing lost his parents and his oldest child in quick succession.)
I’m descended from the older Walter’s daughter Catherine “Kitty” (1764-1830); she married Horatio Sharp Belt (1746-1796), whose son Richard Grafton Belt, a homeopathic doctor (well dodgy) was the father of my great-great-grandmother Fanny. Any artistic genes were not really passed on to me, and quite likely came from elsewhere.
And just to add one more connection: William Temple Emmet, Lily’s second husband and the father of her daughters, was descended from Thomas Addis Emmet and was also the grandfather of a good friend of mine, who I’ve known since 2008 without realising that we had a (weak) family link as well.
Sun, 12:56: RT @RaoulRuparel: Ahead of a crucial week in Brexit talks, issue of level playing field (beyond state aid) has become a major obstacle to a…
Sun, 15:15: RT @AndrewPRLevi: @nwbrux Great review. Thanks. Robert’s a rare, genuinely (rather than merely aspiringly) thoughtful career diplomat. He u…
Sun, 17:24: RT @SPazosVidal: “The problem with academic analysts is that they are not practitioners; and the problem with practitioners is that they ar…
Sun, 17:26: RT @stephenkinsella: @nwbrux The Origins of You is well worth your time, it’s got facts galore from the Dunedin studies.
Sun, 19:57: RT @MrBeamJockey: @nwbrux Sometimes editors will encourage an author to include a more famous person into a book, to make it a bit more sal…
Sun, 21:44: RT @tconnellyRTE: Here’s an update ahead of the Brexit negotiations resuming in Brussels:
Mon, 06:52: RT @CiolosDacian: Exceptional preliminary results from the Republic of Moldova: @sandumaiamd is set to become the next President, in a reco…
Mon, 06:54: RT @DionisCenusa: 53. This is the end. Sandu is ahead with 100k. 97% of the ballots is done. Sandu is the president of Moldova. Thank you f…
Mon, 10:45: RT @ChelseaClinton: There are Trump supporters outside my parents’ house shouting through megaphones “Lock Her Up,” and I just keep thinkin…
Mon, 11:06: RT @Tom_deWaal: Maia Sandu’s election as #Moldova‘s president is good news for pro-Europeans, as is Dodon’s concession (take note, Trump) b…
16 November 1931: birth of Kenneth Watson, who played Craddock in Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (Cushing movie, 1966) and engineer Duggan in The Wheel in Space (Second Doctor, 1968).
16 November 1956: birth of Karl Zwicky, who directed several episodes of the Australian K9 (2010).
16 November 1967: birth of Alexa Havins, who played CIA analyst Esther Drummond in Torchwood: Miracle Day (2008).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
16 November 1963: broadcast of the first ever trailer for Doctor Who, a week before the first episode.
16 November 1969: broadcast of third episode of The Invasion. Vaughn takes the Doctor and Jamie to meet Professor Watkins; they escape, and Jamie has an encounter with a sinister cocoon.
16 November 1987: broadcast of third episode of Delta and the Bannermen. The Chimeron child is growing and Billy opts to become one too; the Americans and the Doctor defeat the Bannermen.
16 November 1988: broadcast of third episode of The Happiness Patrol. The Doctor and Earl bring the blues back, and Helen A is defeated.
16 November 2007: broadcast of Time Crash. The Tenth Doctor and Fifth Doctor meet when their Tardises crash.
16 November 2010: broadcast of second episode of Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith, ending the fourth series of Sarah Jane Adventures. This was the last episode to be broadcast during Elizabeth Sladen's lifetime. I have to say I found something in my eye at the end of it.
16 November 2012: broadcast of minisode The Great Detective, a prequel for that year's Christmas episode The Snowmen.
iii) date specified in-universe
16 November 1982: the date given by impostor Adam as his date of birth in the Adam episode of Torchwood (2008).
Gandhi won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1982, and also seven others, Best Director (Richard Attenborough), Best Actor (Ben Kingsley in the title role), Best Original Screenplay (John Briley), Best Art Direction (beating Blade Runner, that year’s Hugo winner), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Editing. So far only Gigi (9), West Side Story (10) and Ben-Hur (11) have won more. Blade Runner was also nominated for Best Visual Effects, but lost to E.T.
The other films up for Best Picture were E.T. and Tootsie, which I have seen, and Missing and The Verdict, which I haven’t. IMDB users rank it 5th of the year on one list but only 22nd on the other. Apart from Blade Runner, the other films from that year that I have seen are Wrath of Khan, The Wall, Fanny and Alexander, Airplane II, The Year of Living Dangerously, Fitzcarraldo, Night Shift, The Draughtsman’s Contract and Who Dares Wins. Apart from the last, these are all films I very much enjoyed, or maybe that’s just my uncritical fifteen-year-old self. Here’s a contemporary trailer for the US market, leading with future President Bartlett.
This is the fifth or sixth biopic to win Best Picture (after The Great Ziegfeld, The Life of Emile Zola, Lawrence of Arabia, Patton and maybe A Man for All Seasons which was adapted from a stage play). It was two in a row for British directors and a largely British cast, though as it turned out this was a blip rather than a trend. I saw it in the cinema when it first came out, and felt that it held up very well. I had been prepared for it by hearing the BBC radio play, No Ordinary Light, also about the life of Gandhi, by Hallam Tennyson and starring Sam Dastor.
I won’t list the actors who appeared in Gandhi as well as in earlier Oscar-winning or Hugo-winning films, let alone Doctor Who; there are just so many of them. Basically every moderately well-known British actor aged between 40 and 70 seems to have been transported to India to play one or other clueless imperialist. Three have reappeared from last year’s Chariots of Fire – John Gielgud, Ian Charleson and Richard Griffiths. Three also appeared in the only other Oscar-winning film set (partly) in India, Around the World in Eighty Days – Gielgud again, Trevor Howard and John Mills (though all three are only in the London bits of the earlier film).
No fewer than nineteen of the cast also appeared in Doctor Who, chronologically from Ron Howard, an extra in a crowd scene here and also in The Ark (1966), to Colin Farrell who plays a clerk here and was in this year’s Who story Orphan 55. Shane Rimmer was in Doctor Who and Dr Strangelove. John Savident was in Doctor Who and A Clockwork Orange. Jack McKenzie and John Ratzenberger were in The Empire Strikes Back. John Boxer was in Bridge on the River Kwai.
So for my photo comparisons this time, I’m going to switch fandoms to Secret Army. Bernard Hepton, star of the show as Albert Foiret, turns up here as the GOC, and Terrence Hardiman, who plays doomed Luftwaffe Major Reinhardt in the third series, makes a brief appearance here as Ramsay MacDonald.
Well. This is a film about a famous man, and the women get a look-in only in so far as they are important in his life; plus it has to be said that while the real-life Gandhi was very firm for his time on the emancipation of women, the film is rather less so. It easily clears the first leg of the Bechdel test, but I am not sure that we ever see two named women having a conversation, and if they do I am sure that it’s about the central character. Rohini Hattangadi, aged 27, is tremendously convincing as Kasturba Gandhi from young mother to old age, but doesn’t get a lot to say.
However, it’s undeniable that just four years after the unapologetically racist The Deer Hunter won the Oscar for Best Picture, here we have a film which is unambiguously about racism, oppression, and the ultimate defeat of white supremacy. I guess that many viewers were able to explain it away as a movie about things happening to other people in other countries. For myself, watching it in Belfast in 1982, there were strong local resonances: discriminatory legislation, hunger strikes, British soldiers firing indiscriminately into a crowd. (Also, Lord Mountbatten.) The Amritsar sequence is possibly the most effective seven minutes of the film.
The film generally looks brilliant. With the full support of both Columbia Pictures and the Indian government, one should hope so too. The 300,000 extras in the funeral scene are the largest number ever assembled for a film.
And it’s a convincing portrait of a remarkable man. It errs of course on the side of Gandhi’s saintliness (more on that below), and cannot conceal the fact that having spearheaded the cause of Indian independence, he was left behind by political developments on the ground; his answer to tensions between Hindus and Muslims was to refuse to eat until they stopped fighting, which did not work as a long-term solution. Still, he was much more often right than wrong. Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji) truly inhabits the role; occasionally you can see Ben Kingsley looking at you out of Gandhi’s face, rather than the other way round, if you see what I mean.
Anyway. The film is a bit hagiographic, and a bit long, and a bit male, so even though it looks great and its heart is (mostly) in the right place, I’m not putting it right at the top of my list but about a fifth of the way down, between West Side Story and The Best Years of Our Lives.
Next up: Return of the Jedi and Terms of Endearment, in that order.
The Oscar for Best Original Screenplay was not completely fairly awarded this year, as the screenplay was not particularly original. The film is pretty strongly based on Louis Fischer‘s 1950 biography of Gandhi, the second paragraph of whose third chapter is:
In an out-of-doors group picture of the 1890 Vegetarians’ Conference at Portsmouth, Gandhi was wearing a white tie, hard white cuffs and a white dress handkerchief in his front pocket. His hair is neatly dressed. He used to spend ten minutes every morning combing and brushing it.
Written soon after Gandhi’s death, it is largely positive but does not gloss over some of the negative aspects of Gandhi’s beliefs and behaviour. He was a terrible parent to his sons, emotionally distant and borderline abusive. He was also an anti-vaxxer who believed that all illness could be healed by meditation and diet. As noted above, he lost touch with his own political movement towards the end. One also has to wonder what Kasturba really thought; we don’t hear much from her between their marriage as horny young teenagers to her death sixty years later.
However, Fischer as a journalist does very well at explaining the situation of both South Africa and colonial India to the general reader, and making it clear just how important Gandhi was to the political developments of both. In particular, he stresses Gandhi’s commitment to non-violence even more than the film does. And I think it’s fair to say that without a Gandhi-like figure, India would certainly have become independent, probably somewhat sooner, but at a much greater cost of lives lost in conflict.
I was also interested to learn that Gandhi’s family were always political – his grandfather served as prime minister of Porbandar, the small state where he was born, and his father was successively prime minister there and in three other states, Rajkot, Wandaner and Bikaner. The book does get a little unmoored at the end when Fischer appears in his own narrative and gives us verbatim notes of his (many, long) conversations with Gandhi, but in general I found it readable enough.
Sat, 13:50: For those of you looking for a nice excursion not too far from Brussels, now that most things are closed, let me recommend the outdoor exhibition of sculptures by Jean-Michel Folon at @abbayedevillers in Villers-La Ville. Get there before 4pm, any day up to 21 February. https://t.co/uTUPOFdR8C
Sat, 17:11: RT @sarahkmarr: It is time! to bring us together for a hauntological, folk-horror look at the Stonehenge tunnel. I hope you enjoy it: RT if…
Sun, 10:45: Why Negotiations Failed – The Armenian Mirror-Spectator https://t.co/EStDx7H7KO An Armenian perspective, but a realistic one, from the week before the ceasefire.
15 November 1910: birth of Geoffey Toone, who played Temmosus in Doctor Who and the Daleks (Cushing Doctor, 1965) and Hepesh in The Curse of Peladon (Third Doctor, 1972).
15 November 1926: birth of Richard Steele, who played Commandant Gorton in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969), Sergeant Hart in Doctor Who and the Silurians (Third Doctor, 1970)
15 November 1933: birth of Donald Pickering, who played prosecutor Eyesen in The Keys of Marinus (First Doctor, 1964), Blade and his alien double in The Faceless Ones (Second Doctor, 1967), and Lakertyan leader Beyus in Time and the Rani (Seventh Doctor, 1987).
15 November 2016: death of Ken Grieve, who directed Destiny of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor, 1979).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
15 November 1975: broadcast of fourth episode of The Pyramids of Mars. The Doctor is forced to transfer Scarman to Mars, where he destroys the Eye of Horus, liberating Sutekh. But the Doctor manages to trap Sutekh in a time tunnel, destroying him and the priory.
15 November 1980: broadcast of fourth episode of Full Circle. The Doctor helps the Starliner to leave Alzareus, and Adric stows away on the Tardis.
15 November 1986: broadcast of third episode of Terror of the Vervoids (ToaTL #11). The Vervoids are gradually killing off passengers and crew; Bruchner sets the ship's controls for a black hole to destroy them all.
15 November 1989: broadcast of fourth episode of The Curse of Fenric. The Ancient One arises to challenge the Doctor; Ace realises that Audrey's baby is her mother; and the Doctor challenges Ace's faith in him to release the Ancient One who then kills Fenric.
streage but true: The four episodes of The Pyramids of Mars, Full Circle and The Curse of Fenric were all broadcast on the same four dates in 1975, 1980 and 1989.
15 November 2009: broadcast of The Waters of Mars. The Doctor lands at Bowie Base One on Mars, on the day he knows it will be destroyed; he tries to change the history of the day, but is thwarted by Adelaide.
15 November 2010: broadcast of first episode of Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith (SJA). Sarah believes that she has dementia. Can her replacement be trusted?
iii) date specified in canon
15 November 1966 (some sources have 1964): birth of Perpugilliam "Peri" Brown.
A couple of months ago, Anne and I went to the Fondation Folon in La Hulpe to see the art of Jean-Michel Folon on display. Like all other indoor cultural attractions, the Fondation is closed at the moment; but if you're in central Belgium and you feel like sampling his work, you can see a number of his sculptures on display at Villers Abbey, no reservation necessary, last admission at 4pm, get there before 21 February.
The biggest of the installations is the Alley of Thoughts, eight sculptures from the late 1990s, set up in the nave of the ruined Abbey church.
In the south transept you'll find Folon's Everyman as a guardian angel.
In the gardens he is carrying fish.
There are real fish too.
Like all of us, he's ready for a journey.
But what's in his case? The journey itself?
Or the destination? (Note the birds flying out of the suitcase towards me.)
This was Folon's final sculpture.
Even without Folon, the abbey is tremendously atmospheric.
It's only 45 minutes by car from Brussels, and for a bonus you can take a short detour to the Pierre-Qui-Tourne at Court-Saint-Étienne. Well worth a trip in these darker times.
