My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 13 September: Ace Bhatti, Zygons #3, Hive #3, Planet #2, Battlefield #2, Listen

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

13 September 1914: birth of Max Rosenberg, producer of the 1960s Dalek films.

13 September 1915: birth of Alan Bromly, director of The Time Warrior (Third Doctor, 1973-74) and Nightmare of Eden (Fourth Doctor, 1979).

13 September 1969: birth of Ace Bhatti, who played Rani's father Haresh in the Sarah Jane Adventures.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

13 September 1975: broadcast of episode three of Terror of the Zygons. Harry saves the Doctor; Sarah rescues Harry; the Zygon ship takes off for London.

13 September 1980: broadcast of third episode of The Leisure Hive. The aged Doctor and Romana start to uncover the secrets of Argolis; one of the Argolins is uncovered as a disguised Foamasi.

13 September 1986: broadcast of second episode of The Mysterious Planet (ToaTL #2). The Doctor and Peri, with new friends Glitz abnd Dibber, are trapped between the tribesfolk and the nassty robot…

13 September 1989: broadcast of second episode of Battlefield. Modern troops do battle with ancient magic; the Doctor and Ace discover Arthur's tomb, and trigger a water trap (which proved very dangerous in the studio)

13 September 2014: broadcast of Listen. The Doctor looks into his own childhood – one of my favourite Twelfth Doctor episodes.

Posted in Uncategorised

Annie Hall

Posted on by

Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1977, and won three others, Best Director (Woody Allen), Best Original Screenplay (Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman) and Best Actress (Diane Keaton in the title role). Woody Allen lost Best Actor to Richard Dreyfus in The Goodbye Girl. Star Wars won six Oscars to Annie Hall‘s four.

Star Wars and The Goodbye Girl were also up for Best Pictures; so were Julia and The Turning Point. I have only seen one of those. Star Wars of course won the Hugo and a special Nebula, and is top of both IMDB rankings, with Annie Hall second on one system and seventh on the other. I have seen twelve other films made in 1977, which beats last year’s record. They are: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Saturday Night Fever, The Spy Who Loved Me, The Rescuers, Pete’s Dragon, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (many many times), Capricorn One, Jabberwocky (which has a particular romantic association for me), Candleshoe, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, ABBA: The Movie and The Year of the Hare, this last being a lovely Finnish film which I caught once on late night TV and was absolutely captivated by. To be honest, I would not rank Annie Hall as high up that list as some (Star Wars definitely belongs at the top). Here’s a trailer.

Annie Hall is the story of the love life of New Yorker Alvy Singer, played by writer/director Woody Allen, in particular his on/off relationship with Annie Hall, played by Diane Keaton. I had seen it years ago and found it mildly funny. I’m afraid this time I rather bounced off it, and it’s going three quarters of the way down my table, between two other New York films, ahead of Gentleman’s Agreement (which also tackles anti-semitism, but is even less subtle) and Going My Way (which has better music). Incidentally, this is roughly the 15th of the 50 Oscar-winning films set in and around New York, far more than any other location, or indeed continent.

Returning actors from previous Oscar and Hugo-winning films: well, we start at the top, as both Woody Allen and Diane Keaton starred in the Hugo-winning Sleeper four years earlier.

Diane Keaton was also in both The Godfather and The Godfather II:

A welcome reappearance from an earlier Oscar-winning film is “It Had to Be You”, sung early on by Keaton as Annie Hall, somewhat for laughs:

We had this before in Casablanca:

But in general I found the film falling rather flat. It’s a film about a Jewish guy in which almost all the speaking characters are white. (Allen doesn’t cast black actors.) It really doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test – there is no scene in which two named women talk to each other (Mom Hall and Alvy’s mother are not named, and anyway what we can make out of the conversations over the dinner table seems to be about men.)

Fundamentally, I found Alvy, who we understand to be Allen’s interpretation of himself, just not a very engaging character. There are some funny lines – a few very funny lines – but this is someone who thinks he is much more interesting than he really is, and whose failed relationships are largely his own fault because in the end he cares more about himself than about the other people in his life. We are supposed to find this sympathetic and interesting, but I just found it sad and rather boring.

Fair play to Diane Keaton, who, given the chance to re-enact her own relationship with Allen in a fictionalised way, takes it and runs with it and is much the most sympathetic character in the film. I am glad that she got away.

Also on the plus side, the camerawork is very good, and evokes the different settings of New York and California well (except, as noted above, that there seem to be no black people in either), and it’s fun to see cameos from before-they-were-famous Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Walken and (blink and you’ll miss her) Sigourney Weaver.

The elephant in the room, of course, are the allegations about Allen’s private life which inevitably affect how we now look at all of his work. My stomach turned at the scene where young schoolboy Alvy goes to the girl at the next desk and kisses her against her will, so that she jumps up in distress; the film then cuts back to an adult Alvy sitting in the middle of the class. Sorry to be brutal, but this is nothing other than the central character sexually harassing a six-year-old and the film playing it for laughs.

I’ll give the McLuhan moment significant points for being one of the very funny moments in the film, and indeed one of the funnest moments in all of cinema. Unfortunately McLuhan himself muffs the line (or else it was badly written, but I think he mre likely misremembered it): what on earth is meant by “You mean my whole fallacy is wrong”? Surely the one defining thing of a fallacy is that it is, in fact, wrong?

OK, that was not as bad as Patton, but it didn’t work as well for me as it did for the voters of 1978.

So, that’s half a century of Oscar-winning films, three years after I started this project with Wings in September 2017. Here is my official and definitive ranking, the most recent ten in red – half of them in the top half, half in the bottom half, two in the top ten, which I guess is a relatively even distribution.

50) The Great Ziegfeld (Oscar for 1936)
49) Cimarron (1930/31)
48) Cavalcade (1932/33)
47) Wings (1927/28)
46) Broadway Melody (1928/29)
45) All The King’s Men (1949)
44) Patton (1970)
43) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
42) The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
41) Tom Jones (1963)
40) Gone With the Wind (1939)
39) Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
38) Annie Hall (1977)
37) Going My Way (1944)
36) The French Connection (1971)
35) My Fair Lady (1964)
34) How Green Was My Valley (1941)
33) Mrs Miniver (1942)
32) On The Waterfront (1954)
31) The Godfather Part II (1974)
30) In the Heat of the Night (1967)
29) Grand Hotel (1931/32)
28) The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
27) Marty (1955)
26) Rocky (1976)		25) Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
24) Gigi (1958)
23) It Happened One Night (1934)
22) You Can’t Take It With You (1938)
21) The Lost Weekend (1945)
20) Hamlet (1948)
19) From Here To Eternity (1953)
18) Around The World In Eighty Days (1956)
17) Ben-Hur (1959)
16) The Sting (1973)
15) The Godfather (1972)
14) Oliver! (1968)
13) The Apartment (1960)
12) All About Eve (1950)
11) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
10) West Side Story (1961)
9) A Man for all Seasons (1966)
8) Midnight Cowboy (1969)
7) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
6) The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
5) All Quiet on the Western Front (1929/30)
4) Rebecca (1940)
3) An American in Paris (1951)
2) The Sound of Music (1965)
1) Casablanca (1943)

Next up: The Deer Hunter (Oscar) and Superman (Hugo), both of which I have seen.

Winners of the Oscar for Best Picture

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)
2010s: The King’s Speech (2010) | The Artist (2011) | Argo (2012) | 12 Years a Slave (2013) | Birdman (2014) | Spotlight (2015) | Moonlight (2016) | The Shape of Water (2017) | Green Book (2018) | Parasite (2019)
2020s: Nomadland (2020) | CODA (2021) | Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) | Oppenheimer (2023)

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 12 September: Ronald Leigh-Hunt, Reign of Terror #6

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

12 September 2005: death of Ronald Leigh-Hunt, who played Commander Julian Radnor in The Seeds of Death (Second Doctor, 1969) and Commander Stevenson in Revenge of the Cybermen (Fourth Doctor, 1975).

12 September 2014: death of Christopher Wray, who played PC Groom in The Dæmons (Third Doctor, 1972) and Leading Seaman Lovell in The Sea Devils (Third Doctor, 1973).

ii) broadcast anniversary

12 September 1964: broadcast of "Prisoners of the Conciergerie", sixth and final episode of the story we now call The Reign of Terror, ending the original first season of Doctor Who. Ian and Barbara encounter Napoleon; Robespierre is overthrown; the Tardis crew escape, musing on destiny and history. A pretty hefty burden for the team, after nine months of solid performance to turn out the weekly show!

Posted in Uncategorised

January 2008 books

Posted on by

We saw in the new year multinationally, with Belgian friends coming for dinner and cooking a raclette for us (very nice) and then the brother-in-law and his Eastern European fiancée showing up in time for the fireworks. One of F's Christmas presents was a meccano-style Shark Run roller-coaster, which he set up pretty much single-handed.

A modest start to the year with eleven books.

Non-fiction 2
Endgame in Ireland, by Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence

Non-genre 1
An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears

SF 5
The Last Hero: A Discworld Fable, by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby
Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
The Rising of the Moon, by Flynn Connolly
Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
National Lampoon's Doon, by Ellis Weiner

Doctor Who 2
Doctor Who – Fury from the Deep, by Victor Pemberton
The City of the Dead, by Lloyd Rose

Comics 1
Macedonia, by Harvey Pekar and Heather Roberson, illustrated by Ed Piskor

4300 pages
4/11 by women
none by PoC

Best books of the month: An Instance of the Fingerpost, which you can get here, and The Last Hero, which you can get here. Worst by far: Interview with the Vampire, which you can get here.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 11 September: Galaxy 4 #1, Masque of Mandragora #2, Series 9 prologue

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

11 September 1921: birth of Edwin Richfield, who played Captain John Hart in The Sea Devils (Third Doctor, 1972) – not the Captain John Hart of later Torchwood! – and also Mestor in The Twin Dilemma (Sixth Doctor, 1984). I think it's reasonably clear which part required more make-up…

11 September 1981: birth of Lachlan Niebohr, who played Jack's brother Gray in the second season of Torchwood (2008). (So what happened to him after the Hub was blown up?)

11 September 1987: death of Hugh David, who directed The Highlanders (Second Doctor, 1966-67) and Fury from the Deep (Second Doctor, 1968). As an actor, he was one of those approached about playing the role of the Doctor back in 1963, but turned it down.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

11 September 1965: broadcast of "Four Hundred Dawns", first episode of the story we now call Galaxy 4, starting Season 3 of Old Who. The Doctor, Steven and Vicki land on a remote planet where the Drahvins and Rills (the latter assisted by the robot Chumblies) are at odds. But the Doctor discovers that the planet will explode the day after next.

11 September 1976: broadcast of episode 2 of The Masque of Mandragora. The Doctor escapes execution, and Sarah escapes sacrifice, but is recaptured by the cultists.

11 September 2015: release of the Prologue to Season 9 of New Who – I admit I hadn't seen this before until I wrote today's entry.

iii) date specified in-universe

11 September 1960: birth of Clara Oswald's mother Ellie (née Ravenswood).

Posted in Uncategorised

Thursday reading

Posted on by

Current
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel
Shadow Scale, by Rachel Hartman
Distraction, by Bruce Sterling

Last books finished
Jerusalem: Vernal’s Inquest, by Alan Moore
The Sky Road, by Ken MacLeod

Next books
East West Street, by Philippe Sands
Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back, by Alison Wilgus

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 10 September: Smugglers #1, Horror #2, Paradise #3, Lost Souls, The Girl Who Waited

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

10 September 1944: birth of Graham Weston, who played Boer War soldier Russell in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969) and De Haan in Planet of Evil (Fourth Doctor, 1975)

10 September 1998: death of Carl Forgione, who played the meditator Land in Planet of the Spiders (Thord Doctor, 1974) and the Neanderthal butler Nimrod in Ghost Light (Seventh Doctor, 1989).

ii) broadcast aniversaries

10 September 1966: broadcast of first episode of The Smugglers, starting the original Season 4. Polly and Ben are astonished to discover that the Tardis is more than a police box, and incredulous at being transported to the late eighteenth century. The local churchwarden gives them a cryptic message and is promptly murdered; Ben and Polly are arrested by the locals, and the Doctor captured by pirates.

10 September 1977: broadcast of episode 2 of Horror of Fang Rock. The shipwreck survivors reach the lighthouse, but an unseen presence is stalking them…

10 September 1993: radio broadcast of episode 3 of The Paradise of Death. The Doctor, Sarah, Jeremy and the Brigadier reach the planet Parakon and are embroiled in a power struggle over agriculture (no, really).

10 September 2008: radio broadcast of Lost Souls (Torchwood). As the Large Hadron Collider at CERN gears up for opening, the Torchwood crew and Martha are summoned to Geneva to investigate mysterious goings-on.

10 September 2011: broadcast of The Girl Who Waited. Poor Amy gets caught in a horrible timewarp.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

  • Tue, 20:48: RT @BillKristol: Donald Trump Jr.: “As we drove past the rows of white grave markers [at Arlington Cemetery], in the gravity of the moment.…
  • Wed, 09:05: RT @JamesCrisp6: Brussels folk! A musician pal of mine had his viola stolen in the city centre & is desperate for his rare and valuable ins…
  • Wed, 09:30: Whoniversaries 9 September: Janet Fielding, Tomb of the Cybermen #2, The Ribos Operation #2 https://t.co/Rpd83t4Geh
  • Wed, 10:24: RT @JohnGPeet: Stick or twist – Britain suggests it may overturn parts of the EU withdrawal agreement, my quick take: https://t.co/21x96NXJ…
  • Wed, 10:32: RT @pmdfoster: Good Morning. It’s #Brexit “break the law day” today. So question (1): what does it mean? Is it serious? And question (2…
  • Wed, 10:45: Chinese Nationalist Narratives and Xinjiang Filming of ‘Mulan’ Are a Disgrace https://t.co/c6uUKSz8JQ ‘Mulan’ Has a Message: Serve China and Forget About the Uighurs – Disney filmed partly in Xinjiang amid mass human rights abuses. @jeannette_ng in @foreignpolicy

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 9 September: Janet Fielding, Tomb of the Cybermen #2, The Ribos Operation #2

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

9 September 1953: birth of Janet Fielding, who played Tegan Jovanka, companion to the Fourth and Fifth Doctors.

9 September 1960: birth of Hugh Grant who played the Twelfth Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death (1999). (What do you mean, it's not canon?)

9 September 1968: birth of Julia Sawalha, who played Emma in The Curse of Fatal Death (1999). (Exactly.)

9 September 1987: death of John Flint, who played William des Preaux, a knight loyal to King Richard, in the story we now call The Crusade (First Doctor, 1965) and also Urquhart, the Concorde pilot in Time-Flight (Fifth Doctor, 1982).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

9 September 1967: broadcast of episode 2 of Tomb of the Cybermen. The expedition explores the vaults, and the Cybermen awake!

9 September 1978: broadcast of episode 2 of The Ribos Operation. The Doctor and Romana escape the shrivenzale, but are captured by the Graff Vynda-K, who orders their immediate execution.

9 September 2011: broadcast of The Dead Line, last episode (so far) of Torchwood. Lots of people die.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

  • Tue, 10:02: Mairead McGuinness gets financial services, Dombrovskis gets trade. Swapping Irish and Latvian portfolios.
  • Tue, 10:42: RT @MehreenKhn: Today’s reshuffle means the Eurogroup post, financial services commissioner and head of DG Fisma are all
  • Tue, 10:45: I’ve dug a bit more into this, and the descent from Lord Baltimore looks a lot weaker than I had first thought. So I’m writing it off as wishful thinking! https://t.co/uQN7q7wN6O

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 8 September: Louis Mahoney, Destiny of the Daleks #2, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

8 September 1922: birth of Royston Tickner, who played Steinberger P. Green in "The Feast of Steven", the lost seventh episode of what we now call The Daleks' Master Plan (First Doctor, 1965) and Robbins in The Sea Devils (Third Doctor, 1972).

8 September 1938: birth of Louis Mahoney who played a newscaster in Frontier in Space (Third Doctor, 1973), Ponti in Planet of Evil (Fourth Doctor, 1975), and the older Billy Shipton in Blink (Ninth Doctor, 2007).


8 September 2014: death of Jane Baker, who with her husband Pip Baker wrote two and a half Sixth Doctor stories and a Seventh Doctor story.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

8 September 1979: broadcast of second episode of Destiny of the Daleks. The Doctor resurrects Romana; the Daleks resurrect Davros! And the Doctor taunts the Daleks for not being able to climb.

8 September 2012: broadcast of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. The Eleventh Doctor, Amy, Rory, Rory's dad Brian and Queen Nefertiti of Ancient Egypt team up with a big game hunter to save the Indian Space Agency's mission from a giant reptile infestation.

Posted in Uncategorised

More genealogical connections: The Star-Spangled Banner

Posted on by

By consideration and consolidation of the various bits and pieces that have come my way, I have discovered that I am related to the writer of "The Star-Spangled Banner".

Phillip Keye (1696-1764) and Susannah Barton Gardner (1705-1742) moved to Maryland in 1740, which was obviously not so great for her; they were my 7xgreat grandparents.

Two of their sons were my 6x great-grandfather, Richard Ward Key (1727-1765) and his younger brother Francis Key (1731-1770).

Richard's daughter Mary Key (1752-1796) was my 5x great-grandmother. Her first cousin was John Ross Key (1754-1821).

Mary married Daniel Charles Heath (1744-1797) and their daughter Susanna Gardner Heath (1780–1827) was my 4x great grandmother. Her second cousin Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) was the writer of "The Star-Spangled Banner". They all lived in Maryland and the various generations were close in age, so they probably knew each other.

Susanna married the somewhat older Matthias Bordley (1757-1828); they moved to Pennsylvania, and their multiply named daughter Sally Rebecca Heath Sims Bordley (1805–1884) was my 3x great-grandmother.

She also married a somewhat older man, a homeopathic doctor (!!!), Richard Grafton Belt (1784-1855), and the love letters of their daughter Fanny, my great-great-grandmother, survive.

So, it's a small world sometimes. Francis Scott Key was my second cousin, six times removed. Am chasing another interesting Maryland connection, but one of the crucial early links is weak…

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 7 September: Ewen Solon, Rona Munro, The Dominators #5, Time and the Rani #1

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

7 September 1917: death of Ewen Solon, who played Chal in The Savages (First Doctor, 1966) and Vishinsky in Planet of Evil (Fourth Doctor, 1975).

7 September 1959: birth of Rona Munro, so far the only person to have written TV stories for both Old Who and New Who. She wrote Survival, the very last story of the 1963-89 series (Seventh Doctor, 1989), and The Eaters of Light (Twelfth Doctor, 2017).

7 September 1960: birth of Christopher Villiers, who played Hugh Fitzwilliam in The King's Demons (Fifth Doctor, 1983) and Professor Moorhouse in Mummy on the Orient Express (Twelfth Doctor, 2014)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

7 September 1968: broadcast of episode 5 of The Dominators. The Doctor disposes of the invaders by planting their bomb on their own ship; but the Tardis is engulfed by lava…

7 September 1987: broadcast of first episode of Time and the Rani, starting Season 24. The Doctor unexpectedly falls off his exercise bike and regenerates; the Rani then captures him. Mel attempts to escape the bubble-traps but is caught.

Posted in Uncategorised

December 2007 books and 2007 reading

Posted on by

The Lib Dems elected Nick Clegg, Belgium got a new government, and I borrowed my brother-in-law's suit. No travel for me, but meanwhile little U got birthday cake at school, F got what he wanted for Christmas, and B settled into the snoezelruimte in her new home.

Not so many books in December 2007 – still a bit shell-shocked by B's departure.

Non-fiction 6 (YTD 78)
About Time 5: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1980-1984, by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood
Who's Next: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, by Mark Clapham, Eddie Robson and Jim Smith
Back in Time: A Thinking Fan's Guide to Doctor Who, by Steve Couch, Tony Watkins and Peter S. Williams
Time And Relative Dissertations In Space: Critical Perspectives on Doctor Who, edited by David Butler
Latin Palaeography: Antiquity & the Middle Ages, by Bernhard Bischoff, translated by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín & David Ganz
Slide Rule: An Autobiography, by Neville Shute

non-genre 1 (YTD 33)
Sodom and Gomorrah, by Marcel Proust

sf (non-Who) 2 (YTD 75)
At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien
Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 27)
Doctor Who: The Official Annual 2008
Sting of the Zygons, by Stephen Cole
Doctor Who – Remembrance of the Daleks, by Ben Aaronovitch
Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster, by Terrance Dicks

4,100 pages (2007 total 69,900)
none by women (2007 total 53/236)
none by PoC (2007 total 5/236)

The best and worst of these were all about Doctor Who. I loved both the About Time volume, which you can get here, and the David Butler essay collection, which you can get here. But the Back in Time volume tried constrained its analysis of the programme to a Christian perspective, which misses the mark. You can get it here.


2007 books roundup

I did a roundup at the time, but am now reformatting to my current system (and reclassifying a few books as well).

Non-fiction: 78 (33%, almost as high as 2006 which is the highest for any year I have on record)

Best of 2007: A Time of Gifts / Between the Woods and the Water, by Patrick Leigh Fermor (here and here) and James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips (here)
The one you haven't heard of: Presidents I've Known and Two Near Presidents, by Charles W. Thompson (here)
Worst of 2007: After Dinner Speaking, by Fawcett Boom (here).

SF (other than Doctor Who): 75 (32%)

Best of 2007: The splendid Sailing to Sarantium / Lord of Emperors duology by Guy Gavriel Kay (here and here), and the first two of the Sharing Knife books, Beguilement and Legacy, by Lois McMaster Bujold (here and here).
The one you haven't heard of: The Way to Babylon, by Paul Kearney (here)
The one to avoid: First Lensman, by E.E. "Doc" Smith (here)

Non-genre: 33 (14% – a bit less than usual)

Best of 2007: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (here), and The Steep Approach to Garbadale, by Iain Banks (here).
The one you haven't heard of: The Successor, by Ismail Kadarë (here)
The one to avoid: Wilt in Nowhere, by Tom Sharp (here)

Doctor Who: 27 (11% – a bit less than 2006)

Best of 2007: counting non-fiction, the About Time series (here, here, here and here) and the Butler collection of essays (here).
Best fiction: Salvation, by Steve Lyons (here)
The one you haven't heard of: The Masters of Luxor (here)
The one to avoid: John Lucarotti's novelisation of The Aztecs (here)

Comics: 20 (8% – average before 2013)

Best of 2007: Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, followed by Craig Thompson's Blankets (here)
The one you haven't heard of: The Age of Chaos, a Sixth Doctor comic by Colin Baker (here)
The one to avoid: Pussey! by, for the third year in a row, Dan Clowes (here)

Book of the year 2007: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomedy, by Alison Bechdel, a brilliant exploration of growing up with family secrets, and your own secrets too. You can (and should) get it here.

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 6 September: Zygons #2, Hive #2, ToaTL #1, Real Time ends

Posted on by

only broadcast anniversaries today, but gosh there are plenty of them.

6 September 1975: broadcast of second episode of Terror of the Zygons. The Zygons brag to captive Harry about their control of the Loch Ness Monster / Skarasen, and unleash it on the Doctor… There's also a particularly chilling scene with the Zygon which is imitating Harry Sullivan.

6th September 1980: broadcast of second episode of The Leisure Hive. The Doctor is forced to age by the Argolins.

6 September 1986: broadcast of first episode of The Forbidden Planet (Trial of a Time Lord #1), starting the belated Season 23. The Doctor is captured and put on trial; flashback to the somewhat incomprehensible beginning of the adventure on Ravalox.

6 September 1989: broadcast of first episode of Battlefield, starting the last season of Old Who. Yay Brigadier! Lots of nice scene-setting, and then a knight materialises and addresses the Doctor as 'Merlin'.

6 September 2002: webcast of final episode of Real Time. Evelyn is saved from cyber-conversion, but the ending is kinda confusing.

6 September 2014: broadcast of Twelfth Doctor story Robot of Sherwood. Who was Robin? And what is a legend anyway?

Posted in Uncategorised

Star Wars (now episode IV, but that wasn’t what we called it back then)

Posted on by

Star Wars won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1978, and a special Nebula for Best Dramatic Presentation as well – the category had been discontinued, and was not revived until 2000. The other Hugo finalists were Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Ralph Bakshi animated film Wizards, the TV animated adaptation of The Hobbit, and a two-record album of Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison reading their own stories with the title Blood! The Life And Future Times Of Jack The Ripper. The Hugo voters got it right, and Star Wars is rated the top film of 1977 on both IMDB rankings. Where there are both Hugo and Oscar winning films to write up for a particular year, I’ll take the highest scoring film first, so Annie Hall comes next.

Being the sort of film it is, there are a lot of actors who have appeared either in Hugo-winning filmns I have already written up, or in Oscar-winning films, or in Doctor Who. To take it from the top, I already wrote up Raiders of the Lost Ark out of sequence; Harrison Ford is obviously Indiana Jones there and Han Solo here.


Peter Cushing is the evil Grand Moff Tarkin here and was Dr Who, the genial eccentric English scientist, in the two cinema films of the 1960s (actually looking a bit older in films made over a decade before) as well as being a rather camp Osric in Olivier’s Oscar-winning Hamlet.



Alec Guinness, here the warrior sage Obi Wan Kenobi, was of course in both Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai.



Mad Magazine suspected that he was not entirely happy about the role:

Confirmed by his own correspondence at the time.

David Prowse’s face does not appear here, but he is under Darth Vader’s cloak; unmasked, he was in Hugo-winning A Clockwork Orange, and masked as the Minotaur in the Doctor Who story The Time Monster


.

Meanwhile the voice of Darth Vader is provided by James Earl Jones, previously in Dr Strangelove.

Three more Doctor Who crossovers. In the very same year that he played Chief Bast, one of the Death Star officers, Leslie Schofield also played Calib in The Face of Evil, and eight years previously had been a French soldier Leroy, in The War Games.


Garrick Hagon, who is Luke’s boyhood friend Biggs, was revolutionary/evolutionary leader Ky in The Mutants. and then the undertaker Abraham in A Town Called Mercy.


And a bit more obscurely, Graham Ashley who is rebel pilot Gold Five was the Overseer in the justly forgotten Second Doctor story The Underwater Menace.

Well, after all that throat-clearing, I loved the film when it first came out in 1977, and I love it now. It has its flaws: despite the melting pot of Mos Eisley, and the happy collaboration of humans and non-humans, there is no visible non-white human character, and James Earl Jones scandalously is not even credited as the voice of Vader. Also, I don’t think it passes the second leg of the Bechdel Test, never mind the third. (Not to mention what Carrie Fisher has told us about her relationship with Harrison Ford at the time.) As fans we accept that the things we love have flaws.

Brian Aldiss described Star Wars as giving him the "thrill of recognition", and I think I know exactly what he meant. Having now watched all of the Hugo and Retro Hugo winning films up to 1977, very few actually feel like movies rooted in the written science fiction genre. The War of the Worlds and 2001 come closest, but the former was more than two decades previously and the latter starts and ends in very different territory. (Maybe Soylent Green too, though its future New York is clearly mean to be a reflected present New York). Yes, as Alec Guinness pointed out at the time, a lot of it makes no sense and there are plot holes you could drive a Death Star through. But it's so much fun.

The effects are dazzling and brilliant, and the music thoroughly memorable.

The script may not make much sense, but it iis witty, the cast are giving it their all (even Alec Guinness) and it's just a joy to watch again.

I'm now up to twenty films which won the Hugo, Retro-Hugo and/or Nebula, so here is my ranking so far. (In red are those I've seen since I watched 2001 in February.)

20) The Canterville Ghost (Retro Short, 1945)
19) Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Retro Short, 1944)
18) Curse of the Cat People (Retro Short, 1945)
17) Heaven Can Wait (Retro Long, 1944)
16) The Incredible Shrinking Man (Outstanding Movie, 1958)
15) A Boy and His Dog (1976)
14) Pinocchio (Retro Short Form, 1941)
13) Destination Moon (Retro, 1951)
12) Slaughterhouse-Five (1973)
11) The War of the Worlds (Retro, 1954)
10) Sleeper (Hugo/Nebula 1974)
9) Fantasia (Retro Long Form, 1941)
8) Bambi (Retro, 1943)
7) Young Frankenstein (Hugo/Nebula 1975)
6) Soylent Green (Nebula 1973)
5) The Picture of Dorian Gray (Retro, 1946)
4) Dr Strangelove (1965)
3) A Clockwork Orange (1972)
2) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
1) Star Wars (Hugo/Nebula 1978/77)

Obviously the film was an original script, but in the days before home video, let alone DVDs, we were able to relive the cinema experience only by getting the comic book, by two Marvel luminaries, Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin. The second frame of the third chapter is:

Of course it's not a match for the big screen (or even small screen, these days), but it's a faithful and enjoyable adaptation with a couple of wrinkles – notably an early scene with Luke and his friend Biggs, which was cut from the film, survives here.

And while we are on comics, I still have an affection for Mad Magazine's musical parody, already excerpted above. You can find it in issue 203, from October 1978, online here. I learned the song that goes to "Do-Re-Me" off by heart when I was twelve.


Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 5 September: Stephen Greenhorn, Reign of Terror #5 (both 1964)

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

5 September 1964: birth of Stephen Greenhorn, writer of The Lazarus Experiment (2007) and The Doctor's Daughter (2008).

5 September 1987: death of Bill Fraser, who played General Grugger in Meglos (Fourth Doctor, 1980) and Bill Pollock in K9 and Company.

ii) broadcast anniversary

5 September 1964: broadcast of "A Bargain of Necessity", fifth episode of the story we now call The Reign of Terror. Ian is rescued; the Doctor attempts to rescue Susan; but is forced to  cooperate with Lemaitre instead. A lost episode, sadly, but it has been animated.

iii) date specified in-universe:

5 September 2954: birth of Chris Cwej, one of the Seventh Doctor’s companions in the New Adventures.

Posted in Uncategorised

Etymology thread: दिल मेरा बंजारा, Dil mera banjaara, my heart is a wanderer

Posted on by

Today's etymological thread was inspired by the utterly bonkers song "बंजारा / Wanderer" in the Bollywood film Ek Tha Tiger. India looks at Dublin. Our hero, in love with the mysterious woman who is actually on the other side, falls into a reverie:

So, my eye was caught by the second line, दिल मेरा बंजारा, Dil mera banjaara, my heart is a wanderer, which is repeated throughout the song (sometimes doubled, दिल मेरा दिल मेरा बंजारा, Dil mera dil mera banjaara). दिल dil means "heart" in Hindi. Where did that come from?

English heart is obviously related to Dutch hart, German Herz, Yiddish האַרץ‎/harts, Danish/Norwegian hjerte, Swedish hjärta, Icelandic/Faroese hjarta, Gothic /hairtō, from ancient Germanic root *hertô from Proto-Indo-European root *ḱḗr with stem *ḱr̥d-.

That *ḱḗr / *ḱr̥d- root is pretty widespread with very little change of meaning in Indo-European languages. Irish croidhe / croí (also sweetheart), Welsh craidd (middle), Greek κῆρ / καρδία, Latin cor / cordis, French cœur, extended a bit for Spanish corazón, Portuguese coração.

That Latin root also gives us courage, accord, concord, discord, record; and the Greek gives us cardiology etc. And related Indo-European *ḱréddʰh₁eti, believe, gives us Latin crēdō and therefore credit, incredible, etc. And Irish creid, to believe, has the same root.

But what about farther East? Well, the Sanskrit word for heart is हृदय, hṛ́daya, which is obviously related and gives the Hindi word हिया hiyā meaning heart. But the Hindi word दिल dil, also meaning heart, is a loan from Persian دل dil (also Urdu دِل and Punjabi ਦਿਲ).

It's not at all obvious, but दिल دل ਦਿਲ dil is also descended from Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥d- via Proto-Indo-Iranian *ȷ́ʰŕ̥d-. There's apparently a well documented phonetic shift *ȷ́ŕ̥d- > *dŕ̥d > *dŕ̥l > dil., a similar shift giving us Persian گل gol for rose.

Of the other two words in that catchy line, दिल मेरा बंजारा, Dil mera banjaara, My heart is a wanderer, मेरा mera is easy – the word for "my" in most Indo-European languages begins with m (mon, mein/mijn, мой/мој/moj, mo, etc).

बंजारा banjaara, the title of the song, is also the name of a nomadic people in India, but the more I dig into it the less I realise I know about Indian history and geography.

The point is that our hero is lost in love, so let's leave it there.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 4 September

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

4th September 1975: birth of Kai Owen, who played Rhys Williams in Torchwood.

ii) broadcast anniversary

4th September 1976 – broadcast of first episode of The Masque of Mandragora, starting Season 14. The Doctor and Sarah find an older console room in the Tardis, and then find themselves in a part of Renaissance Italy which looks just like a set from The Prisoner. Inevitably they are captured by the bad guys and the Doctor is made ready for the executioner's axe…

Posted in Uncategorised

Thursday reading

Posted on by

Current
Jerusalem: Vernal’s Inquest, by Alan Moore
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel
The Sky Road, by Ken MacLeod

Last books finished
Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
Star Wars IV: A New Hope, by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin
The Conqueror’s Child, by Suzy McKee Charnas

Next books
Shadow Scale, by Rachel Hartman
East West Street, by Philippe Sands

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 3 September

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

3 September 1940: birth of Pauline Collins, who memorably played companion-that-never-was Samantha Briggs in The Faceless Ones (Second Doctor, 1967) and Queen Victoria in Tooth and Claw (Tenth Docrtor, 2006).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

3 September 1977: broadcast of first episode of Horror of Fang Rock, starting Season 15. The Fourth Doctor and Leela land at the lighthouse of Fang rock, where the two keepers, Reuben and Vince, are behaving oddly (indeed, Reuben so oddly that he is dead). And a ship is wrecked on the Rock…

3 September 1993 – broadcast of second episode of The Paradise of Death. The Third Doctor rather bizarrely recovers from his fall because he is able to turn his whole body to jelly. The bad guys capture Sarah Jane Smith and take her to the planet Parakon, while the Doctor, Jeremy and the Brigadier set off in pursuit but land insyead on the planet Blestinu.

3 September 2011: broadcast of Eleventh Doctor story Night Terrors. What's up with George's cupboard? Or, indeed, with George?


iii) date specified in canon

3 September 2007 [?] – events of Revenge of the Slitheen (SJA 2008), where the slimy green gits attempt to infiltrate Park Vale Comprehensive School, attended by Luke (and Clyde, and Maria) but are foiled by our young heroes and Sarah Jane Smith.

Posted in Uncategorised