19 August 1969: birth of S.P. Krause, who developed the 2009-10 K9 series and co-wrote seven of its episodes.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
19 August 2011: broadcast of Torchwood episode Immortal Sins, mostly a flashback to Jack’s time in New York in 1927.
iii) dates specified in-universe
19 August 1572: The Doctor and Steven land in Paris; the Doctor goes off to consult the apothecary Charles Preslin while Steven falls in with Huguenots, and the Abbot of Amboise arrives in Paris; guess who he looks like? (as shown in The Massacre, 1966)
19 August 1983: birth of Ianto Jones, later to join Torchwood, as revealed in Fragments (2008).
A month or so ago, I was intrigued to see an early morning tweet from Alexander Stubb, former prime minister of Finland.
My world famous #bananapancakes are back: 2-3 eggs, a mashed banana and 1/2 cup of oats. Today’s toppings: Turkish yougurth, cashews, blueberries and honey. Beat that. pic.twitter.com/eK9yWtQOk0
I’m a fan of breakfast in general. I’ve made myself egg on toast as a matter of routine every morning for about twenty years. I used to have bacon at weekends, but have been warned that it’s not all that good for me, so more recently I’ve been doing a poached egg (with a splash of vinegar in the boiling water) on salmon on buttered toast.
But this looked like an idea worth trying. So I gave it a go.
The banana itself is not all that liquid to start with, but once it has been mashed around a bit and then the grinding effect of the oats, it turns into something very much resembling a batter. I found the Stubb recipe quite large, in fact, but you can use half a banana, one egg and a quarter cup of oats and voila, you have a single banana pancake. (Or you can use the full quantities and make one for a passing friend or relative.)
It’s had a really positive effect on my digestion. I have a rather irritable bowel, unfortunately, and have tried all kinds of solutions to improve my general comfort level over many years. I can honestly say that the banana pancake breakfast has had the most beneficial effect of anything I’ve tried. I guess the oats and the banana together are a powerful combination. (I was eating an egg every day anyway.)
Anyway, it may not work for you, but it made a difference for me. Thanks, Alex!
Mon, 14:33: RT @JolyonMaugham: Northern Ireland is abandoning the algorithm for GCSEs – but maintaining it for A Levels. Not sure why, if it’s unfair f…
Mon, 17:23: RT @10DowningStreet: A Level, AS Level and GCSE results will now be based on teacher-assessed grades. Students will receive the higher of…
Mon, 17:23: RT @Keir_Starmer: The Government has had months to sort out exams and has now been forced into a screeching U-turn after days of confusion.…
Mon, 20:00: RT @BeilinsonOrel: If you’re wondering why you see both LukashenkA and LukashenkO, the answer is basically that the former is Belarusian an…
Tue, 10:33: RT @Radlein: @nwbrux Old news — that was SUNDAY’S temperature. Monday’s temperature there was EVEN HIGHER, IIRC.
Tue, 11:36: RT @JulianHeather1: “Choosing between Edward Davey and Layla Moran” – some excellent insights in this blog by Nicholas Whyte. https://t.co/…
18 August 1925: I know this is a bit marginal, but this was the birth date of Brian Aldiss, one of the greatest ever science fiction writers, who died in 2017 the day after his 92nd birthday. At the age of 85, he had a story in the 2011 Brilliant Book of Doctor Who, which may make him the oldest ever Who writer. I was beyond thrilled to meet him in 2014.
ii) Broadcast anniversaries
None.
iii) date specified in canon
18 August 1951: Sarah Jane Smith's parents die in a car accident after attending the village fete at Foxgrove, as we see in The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith (SJA, 2008).
We spent September 2007 pretty much in limbo waiting for word on B's future accommodation once she returned home after a couple of weeks' respite. At work my Italian intern V left (she went off to run refugee camps and is now raising her family) and was replaced by a Dane, also V (who charmed me on her arrival by revealing that as an exchange student at Michigan State University she had actually shaken hands with Gerald Ford). I had one trip to London, where and put me up.
3,800 pages (YTD 56,900)
1/13 by women (YTD 47/193)
None by PoC (YTD 4/193)
My two favourite books of the month were the longest and the shortest: Proust's second volume, which you can get here, and the lovely wee guide to the history of Belfast, which you can get here. Wooden spoon to E.E. "Doc" Smith's First Lensman, which you can get here.
Sun, 12:56: RT @NatalieZed: Who wants to look at a late night nightmare house with me?? There is a very, very SHARP turn this property takes. (endle…
Sun, 13:51: Great stuff from Steve Mollmann (who doesn’t seem to be on Twitter) analyzing the performance of No Award in this y… https://t.co/QevzlezOvF
Sun, 13:55: Two died long before I was born (both in the 1940s; I was born in ‘67), one when I was 9, one when I was 12. My o… https://t.co/Q0awrlCtY1
Sun, 14:48: RT @archer_rs: Just spoke with an old friend who works in investment banking in the City of London. He’s just been told his entire departm…
Sun, 16:05: Anne Applebaum and the Tragic Romance of the Middle-Aged Western Liberal https://t.co/3hDppOlCO7 Ivan Krastev’s insightful review.
Sun, 17:07: RT @wadhamoxford: Wadham College will admit all 2020 offer-holders. Those applicants whose courses are now full will be guaranteed deferred…
Sun, 18:02: RT @CER_Grant: Many wise words from Alexievich on the situation in #Belarus, including the advice to Lukashenka that he should step down be…
Mon, 08:42: RT @Keir_Starmer: The Tories’ chaotic and incompetent handling of this year’s exams is robbing a generation of their future. https://t.co/o…
Mon, 09:19: RT @peterweirmla: After consulting @CCEA_info & having listened to the concerns of principals, teachers, parents & young people, I have dec…
17th August 1990: death in a shooting accident of Graham Williams, producer of the 15th to 17th seasons of Doctor Who (the fourth to sixth Fourth Doctor seasons, from Horror of Fang Rock to ShadaThe Invasion of Time and City of Death, and author of the unbroadcast story The Nightmare Fair which brought back the Celestial Toymaker (and was released in audio format by Big Finish in 2009).
ii) broadcast anniversary
17th August 1968: broadcast of episode 2 of The Dominators. The Doctor and Jamie are examined by the Dominators; Zoe goes to the capital and tries but fails to charm the Dulcian leadership. When she and Cully return to the island, the Dominators and Quarks blow up their cave…
iii) date specified in-universe
17 and 18 August 1947 are the setting of Demons of the Punjab (Thirteenth Doctor, 2018).
I've reported on my vote in previous Lib Dem leadership elections in 2006, 2007, 2015 and 2019. I found it difficult to care as much this time round. The Lib Dems' catastrophic performance in last December's election and subsequent cratering in the polls perhaps make this the least important choice of the century. On the other hand, who knows? Perhaps the new leader will be able to generate a revival if the right choice is made.
I have not met either candidate, though I vaguely know Layla Moran's father from Brussels circles. I voted against Ed Davey last time, for what seemed to me good reasons, but it was clearly the wrong choice, as is obvious from the party's painful post-mortem on the election result and from the information I've gleaned from my (few) Lib Dem insider sources. So I'm being a bit careful with my own gut reactions this time.
In normal times I am strongly impressed by the endorsements each candidate is able to gain from fellow MPs, who work with them most closely. However the split is 5 for Davey and 3 for Moran, hardly an overwhelming majority especially when two of Davey's five are his immediate neighbours in London. On the other hand, I have to say that I have heard of precisely none of Moran's non-MP endorsers, whereas Davey's list includes Richard Kemp, Sarah Ludford, several former MEPs who I know (13 of the 16 of the 2019-20 class), and (though I have never met her) Floella Benjamin. (PS – I see on Twitter that Duncan Brack has endorsed Layla Moran, which I do take seriously, but it's not on her website.)
So I watched today's hustings for Lib Dem members outside the UK, chaired by my friend Hannah, with a genuinely open mind, with the impression beforehand that Moran is more discursive and Davey more wonkish. There is not a lot to choose between the two candidates; they are closely politically aligned. Their style is very different. To my surprise, I did not find that Moran had a decisive edge on charisma, and she notably over-ran her time allowance several times. She does come over as a teacher, as she proclaims herself to be, which is both good and bad; Davey more of the standard politician though with some added depth, citing personal experience of implementing policy rather than experience from outside the Westminster bubble as Moran did.
And I have made up my mind and cast my vote for Ed Davey. He said two things that caught my imagination; Layla Moran said two things that put me off her. These were:
Ed Davey will use the House of Lords to give representation to UK citizens abroad. A slightly wacky idea, I thought at first; surely the Lib Dems want to replace the House of Lords with an elected chamber? But a moment's reflection reminded me that actually this is a policy I personally disagree with, and even if I agreed with it there is no harm in exploiting the existing system in order to fill gaps in representation.
Ed Davey's personal story of having been a carer for close relatives with difficult health situations obviously spoke to me. He did not go on about it; he mentioned it once and let us draw our own conclusions.
Very minor, but not insignificant: Layla Moran called Donald Trump "deranged". He is, of course, but the serious leader of a serious British political party cannot say so.
Whoever wins has a serious challenge ahead of them. I can’t be the only person who is wondering if I will still be a paid-up party member next year. As a citizen of Belgium who does not expect to ever vote in another UK election, my views don’t matter that much, but I suspect my emotions are not untypical. We’ll find out soon enough if others go the same way.
Sat, 13:20: RT @CoNZealand: If you missed out on the Sir Julius Vogel Award voting packet the first time, we are pleased to announce that it is now ava…
Sat, 16:39: RT @archer_rs: Overheard ten minutes ago at the boulangerie, two British women in the queue, “Bloody EU, they imposed a 14 day quarantine…
Sat, 20:48: Tank Girl 25th anniversary: Rachel Talalay looks back at comic book adaptation https://t.co/3FN7UuL6yO Missed this great piece at the time.
Sat, 21:55: RT @DoctorWho_BBCA: “You know the sound the TARDIS makes? That wheezing, groaning. That sound brings hope wherever it goes.” #DoctorWho htt…
Sat, 23:02: RT @anders_aslund: 10. That Lukashenko organized a media meeting today to appeal to Putin for a conversation indicates that Putin really do…
Sun, 10:45: RT @StuartHumphryes: These magical autochromes were taken 107 years ago at Lulworth Cove in Dorset, in August 1913 – less than a year befor…
16 August 1935: birth of Janet Henfrey, who played Miss Hardaker in The Curse of Fenric (Seventh Doctor, 1989) and Mrs Pitt in Mummy on the Orient Express (Twelfth Doctor, 2014).
16 August 1950: birth of Robert Pugh, who played the aged Jonah in the 2008 Torchwood episode Adrift, and local villager Tony Mack in The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood (Eleventh Doctor, 2010).
16 August 1958: birth of Rachel Talalay, who directed all three Twelfth Doctor finales and the regeneration story Twice Upon a Time (2017). She is a source of much wisdom; my favourite story from her is that she asked a taxi driver not to give away spoilers for the latest Marvel film, and in exchange he asked her if she'd ever seen this amazing comic book movie from the 90's called Tank Girl. Which she directed.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
16 August 2002: webcast of episode 3 of Real Time. More messing around the time portal with Six, Evelyn and the Cybermen. Turns out the Tardis won't fit through it.
iii) dates specified in canon and spinoff fiction
16 August 1978: possibly birth of Gwen Cooper, who grows up to be a Cardiff policewoman who joins Torchwood. (Though other sources say 5 May.)
16 August 1979: The First Doctor and Susan encounter the snail-like Slarvians who are planning to take over Earth by hatching their eggs all over the planet. (As told in Samantha Baker's "Childhood Living", in the 2006 Short Trips: The Centenarian anthology).
16 August 2017: a holiday liner sank, as revealed in The Enemy of the World (Second Doctor, 1968).
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1975, and picked up the other four of the magic five – Best Director (Miloš Forman), Best Actor (Jack Nicholson as McMurphy), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched), and Best Screenplay Adapted from Other Material, the first film to do this since It Happened One Night in 1934. It lost four – Best Supporting Actor (Brad Dourif as Billy Bibbit), Best Original Score, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing.
The other Oscar-nominated films of 1976 were Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws and Nashville; the only one I have seen is Jaws. Other films of the year which I have seen are Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (many many times), The Return of the Pink Panther, Love and Death and One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is one of my favourite films, but I have no hesitation in admitting that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the best of them (IMDB users agree, on bothratings). Here’s a trailer.
In case you did not know, it is the story of a petty criminal who gets himself referred to the state psychiatric hospital, and leads the other inmates in various acts of empowering rebellion against the oppressive nurses, until a final reckoning with a tragic ending. I confess that because of my close personal connection with the subject of people living in institutions, I postponed watching this for a few weeks. Against my expectations, I found myself really liking it, and I’m putting it 7th in my overall list, behind Bridge on the River Kwai but ahead of Midnight Cowboy. In some ways I thought it was better than the book (which as usual I reread after watching the film).
I did not find any actors who had previously appeared in Oscar-winning films. I found one who had been in a Hugo-winning film – Marya Small, now known as Mews Small, who is Candy here and was Dr Nero, in charge of brainwashing Woody Allen, in Sleeper.
To start with the less good points, it’s our old friends race and gender. This is a story about white men having problems with women and with non-white men. The patients are all white (apart from one Native American who barely speaks – more on that when we get to the book). The orderlies are black. The evil nurses are women. The good women are sex workers. The film is a bit more balanced than the book in giving us the nurses’ point of view; but it’s even less balanced than the book on race. An extraordinary bit of erasure is that one of the psychiatrists, Dr Sonjee, is played by a real psychiatrist, Prasanna K. Pati, who is simply not credited anywhere despite getting several spoken lines in the film. (I see claims that he is the only person of Oriya origin to have appeared in an Oscar-winning film, though I would be surprised if there were nonw at all in Gandhi.)
Having said that, kudos to Dr P.K. Pati and even more so to Dean Brooks, who was in fact the real-life director of the Oregon State Hospital at the time the film was made, and plays his own fictional counterpart Dr Spivey. Several other staff – and indeed apparently patients – at the hospital were involved with the production of the film, either in front of or behind the camera, but here let Dean Brooks stand for them all. I was talking to a psychiatrist friend the other day, who told me that as a student her class had had to watch the film to be sensitised to popular culture perceptions of their chosen profession; it does not show them in an unambiguously good light, and they would have known this going in. (This is a step further than The French Connection, in which a very small part was played by the same guy who had done it in real life, and the policemen on whom the two central characters were based themselves appeared as secondary characters, all very heroic in each case.)
The soundscape and landscape are both well done here. The music, with use of bowed saw and stroking wineglasses, is eerie and extraordinary.
And the cinematography is generally compelling – my favourite scene, as it is for may viewers, is the fishing expedition:
Though this is possibly one of the few scenes that isn’t improvised – the immersion of the cast and crew in the culture of the real hospital, with cameras on all the time and sometimes catching the actors flashing their own character instead of their parts, makes for an extraordinary viewing experience.
The tragic ending is signalled way in advance, but all the more effective for the way it is done, and I am glad that the film-makers did not cop out and stayed true to the book in that regard. Tremendous stuff.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of the original novel is:
“What, Miss Ratched, is your opinion of this new patient? I mean, gee, he’s good-looking and friendly and everything, but in my humble opinion he certainly takes over.”
This is a pretty tough book, in many ways: the violence and abuse perpetrated by the staff of the mental institution where the story is set is uncomfortable to read (and I have a daughter who is permanently institutionalised, so it cuts rather close to home). Also I was rather dismayed by the racism and sexism of the story: the only black characters are the brutal male nurses (though the narrator is half Native American); the main female character is the Big Evil Nurse (the other women depicted are two prostitutes and the Little Good Nurse, who comes in only at the end). It was probably not Kesey’s intention, but I could see white American men who believe that they are being oppressed taking comfort and inspiration from this novel.
Having said that, it would be the wrong message. The book is about disorder and development – disorder in two senses, the mental disorders that many of the patients suffer and the disorder and subversion that McMurphy brings to the ward, and the opportunities he offers for his fellow inmates to develop n new directions. There is a tremendously cathartic couple of chapters about a deep-sea fishing expedition which almost summarises the entire book. The violent conclusion leaves several key characters dead but gives others the means of liberating themselves. So in the end I was glad to have read it, though I will not come back to it any time soon.
The crucial difference with the film is that the Native American patient is the narrator and viewpoint character of the entire novel, whereas he is one of the supporting cast in the film – an important one, but largely silent; and the fact that the focus therefore moves away from him makes the film all the whiter. (It was apparently this specific change that Ken Kesey cited as his reason for never watching the film.)
Next up is Rocky, for which I have no expectations; but I will watch the Hugo-winning A Boy and His Dog first.
Fri, 15:14: RT @AmIRightSir: Kamala Harris was born on the same day that the 31st President, Herbert Hoover, died at the age of 90 (he held the record…
Fri, 17:17: RT @laevisiloki: Haven’t seen these circulating on twitter yet so here are open letters for Oxbridge alumni to sign to encourage their univ…
15 August 1963: birth of Con O'Neil, who played April's father in Class.
ii) broadcast anniversary
15 August 1964: broadcast of "Guests of Madame Guillotine", the second episode of the story we now call The Reign of Terror. The Doctor narrowly escapes both the burning barn and a forced labour gang; Ian, Susan and Barbara are imprisoned in the Conciergerie, and, as the episode ends, Susan and Barbara are taken off for the chop…
iii) date specified in canon
15 August 2003: The Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice Summerfield visit the Pinehill Crest Hotel in Kent which is hosting three very different events: a cross-stitch convention, an experiment in time travel and… the summoning of the Scourge. (Big Finish audio play, The Shadow of the Scourge, October 2000.)
Thu, 20:31: RT @tmtm: I think I’ve now added every information to Wikidata about every candidate in every historic UK Parliamentary Election for the cu…
Correction: Ten years ago I listed this as being Alexander Armstrong's birthday, which it isn't. Can't find anyone else who satisfies my usual criteria.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
14 August 2011: release of the prequel for Let's Kill Hitler.
iii) date specified in-universe
14 August 1819: The Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan land in the outskirts of Manchester, in 2016 Big Finish audio The Peterloo Massacre.
Current Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel The Maze of Doom, by David Solomons Jerusalem: Mansoul, by Alan Moore One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
Last books finished Jerusalem: The Boroughs, by Alan Moore
Next books The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel East West Street, by Philippe Sands
When I first did these posts in 2010-11, I skipped this date because I could not find anything relevant. There still isn't much, but there's more than nothing.
i) births and deaths
13 August 2017: death of Victor Pemberton, the first person to have both written a Doctor Who story and also acted in one. He was also script editor of the show in 1967. He wrote Fury from the Deep (Second Doctor, 1968) and Doctor Who and the Pescatons (Fourth Doctor audio, 1976), and appeared as the minor character Jules Faure, a crewman who gets converted into a Cyberman, in The Moonbase (Second Doctor, 1967).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
None.
iii) dates specified in-universe
This is really clutching at straws. On 13 August 1945, Daniel O'Kane kills most of his family, as later recounted by his surviving brother to his long-lost son (see pic below) in P.R.O.B.E.: The Zero Imperative, which stars Caroline John as Liz Shaw and some other Whoniverse actors in other roles. The specific mention of 13 August is at the 48 minute mark. (Audio here is not very good but you can probably get a better copy easily enough.)
Following the early Saxon occupation the area was returned to agriculture, as shown by the cultivation horizon which accumulated over the early Saxon features. Apparently this persisted throughout the middle Saxon period. A single ditch may have formed a field boundary relating to this cultivation which divided the area along a line mid-way between the main palaeochannel and the southern course of the Cotton Brook. In the north-western corner of the site faint linear "features" may represent plough-furrows aligned parallel with the suggested field boundary.
Back in the autumn of 1985, when I was 18, I spent two months working as a volunteer on the dig at West Cotton, just outside the obscure village of Raunds in Northamptonshire. It was a growing experience for me – the first time I had been working outside of home (I was 18). Most of my fellow diggers were local unemployed people supplied by the Manpower Services Commission (as it then was), overseen by a trio of real archaeologists, Dave Windell, Andy Chapman and Jo Woodiwiss, who published this slim booklet about their initial findings a few years later. You can (probably) download it here.
West Cotton was known to have been an Anglo-Saxon settlement, which survived the Norman invasion and became deserted in the decades following the Black Death in the mid 1300's. It only gradually became apparent (and the first signs were there in my time) that this minor rise in the valley of the river Nene had also been a centre of Neolithic and Bronze Age ritual three thousand years earlier. In the initial phase of excavation, while I was there, it became clear that there was a three-ringed barrow under the highest point of the (low-lying) Saxon village; subsequent exploration uncovered a whole ritual landscape.
The site seems to have been little used once the Bronze Age properly kicked in, including through Roman times (in my day a Roman villa was discovered a few fields away). But in Saxon times it once again became a centre of activity, a farmstead built unknowingly where the ancestors had worshipped three millennia before.
Even in the early days of 1985, some fascinating finds were made. A number of flat stones were discovered with an engraved pattern of three suares connected by vertical and horizontal lines – boards for the ancient game of Nine Men's Morris. I wondered then if the all-England Nine Men's Morris Championships for the year 985 had taken place in West Cotton. Apparently the boards have now been dated to the end of the settlement in the village, ie 13th and 14th centuries, but I still wonder. (This graphic and the next photograph are from a different paper.)
Most poignant of all, one of the boards was found at the feet of the only representative art found on the site, which I remember causing much excitement when it was uncovered back in 1985 – a sculpture of a praying figure, some thought a knight (though I don't see any evidence of armour or arms). Did this come from the end of days in West Cotton, as the plague hit and the villagers realised that their way of life had become unsustainable? The look of concern and worry in the face of an incomprehensible pandemic speaks to us across the centuries. I leave you with this message from 650 years ago; we don't know exactly what it says, but we can make a darn good guess.
Wed, 10:45: RT @AlishaRai: This headline reminds me of the time my friend’s mom pitched a fit when she found out my mom made us tandoori for dinner bec…
12 August 1947: birth of John Nathan Turner, producer of Doctor Who for the last nine seasons of the classic run, starting with the Fourth Doctor's final season and continuing for the whole of the last three Doctors of Old Who. Controversial and colourful, like him or loathe him, nobody can dispute the depth of his influence on the show. I recommend Richard Marson's biography.
12 August 1969: birth of Nev Fountain, author of many tie-in media and Nicola Bryant's other half.
12 August 2003: death of Anne Tirard, who played Locusta the poisoner in the story we now call The Romans (First Doctor, 1965) and the Seeker in The Ribos Operation (Fourth Doctor, 1978).
12 August 2004: death of Alec Wallis, who played Leading Telegraphist Bowman in The Sea Devils (Third Doctor, 1972) and Warner the communications technician in Revenge of the Cybermen (Fourth Doctor, 1975).
ii) broadcast anniversary
12 August 2011: first showing of The Middle Men, sixth episode of the fourth series of Torchwood. Gwen and Rhys bust her father out of the Cowbridge camp, but when she reaches L.A. she gets a call to tell her that her family have been captured.
iii) date specified in-universe
Same picture as yesterday; apparently Wilmington emerged victorious over Kinsbroke on 12 August 1904, as seen in the 2008 Torchwood episode, From Out of the Rain.
The first part of August 2007 was spent on holiday in Northern Ireland as usual, with MeCon a particular high point. My account of it here and here, but my favuourite picture, for sentimental reasons, is this one:
We got back to a very grim situation with B, which culminated in her being removed from the house at the end of the month by three burly ambulancemen to give us a break for a few weeks, still waiting for a permanent residential place to become available. In the meantime we got very little sleep, and were very stressed.
So I only read 13 books that month, mostly non-fiction.
Mon, 12:56: RT @tombennett71: This letter, from Albert Camus immediately after he was awarded the Nobel Prize,to his childhood teacher Louis Germaine,…
11 August 1922: birth of Ron Grainer, who composed the Doctor Who theme tune. According to the lore, he was so gobsmacked by Delia Derbyshire's electronic arrangement of the music that he asked her, "Did I really write this?" "Most of it," she replied. Of course he got the on-screen credit and she didn't. This is maybe how he would have expected it to sound:
11 August 1932: birth of John Gorrie, director of The Keys of Marinus (1964) and the third episode of The Reign of Terror (1964)
11 August 1939: birth of Ian Thompson, who played Hetra, leader of the Optera, in the story we now call The Web Planet (First Doctor, 1965) and Malsan the Aradian in the story we now call The Chase (also First Doctor, 1965).
11 August 1979: birth of Niky Wardley, who played Eighth Doctor audio companion Tamsin Drew in 2010-11, and also appears in the 2007 Comic Relief sketch with the Tenth Doctor and as Steven Moffat's receptionist in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot (2013).
11 August 1994: death of Peter Cushing, who played Doctor Who in Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966), and much else besides.
11 August 1996: death of Derek Newark, who played caveman Za in the story we now call An Unearthly Child (First Doctor, 1963) and engineer Greg Sutton in Inferno (Third Doctor, 1970).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
None.
ii) date specified in-universe
11 August 1901: eight people go missing from Chuirch Stretton, as reported in the 2008 Torchwood episode, From Out of the Rain.
Sun, 12:56: RT @CelestialGinger: I am halfway through season 2 of Sex & the City and I don’t understand how this show about four single New York career…
Sun, 14:48: RT @hradzka: One of those stories, which I shall now tell, was the story of how Jon Pertwee got a pet cheetah.
Sun, 15:47: RT @SFFANZ_News: SJV Award Statement: The following is a statement from John Toon, President of SFFANZ…. As President of SFFANZ, I would li…
Sun, 16:05: Dear Philosophers, You Can Trust the Feminist Consensus: Gender-Critical Radical Feminism is Bogus… https://t.co/7Dq8x1xTVh
Sun, 20:27: RT @kayleegolding_: I just experienced the strangest thing. I’ve moved into a luxury apartment in London, after saving for a home I deserve…
Sun, 20:48: RT @AmbJohnBolton: Since when did eviscerating the Constitutional separation of powers become conservative? When re-election becomes more…
Sun, 23:10: RT @maxseddon: Things are getting serious in Belarus. Protests against Lukashenko’s apparent rigging of the election across the country. Ri…
10 August 1929: birth of Peter Diamond, who was fight arranger for eight stories between The Dalek Invasion of Earth (First Doctor, 1964) and The Dæmons (Third Doctor, 1971), and played a number of minor parts of which the most important was Delos in The Romans (First Doctor, 1965).
10 August 1939: birth of Kate O'Mara, who played the Rani in The Mark of the Rani (Sixth Doctor, 1985) and Time and the Rani (Seventh Doctor, 1987).
10 August 1996: death of Rex Tucker, who directed The Gunfighters (First Doctor, 1966) but had also been an important force behind the scenes of the creation of Doctor Who in 1963. Following a dispute with Innes Lloyd his credit as producer was excised from episode 4 of The Gunfighters, so the on-screen evidence of his contribution to the show is even slimmer.
ii) broadcast anniversary
10 August 1968: broadcast of episode 1 of The Dominators, the earliest H2 start for any full Doctor Who season. The Second Doctor, Jamie, and new companion Zoe land on an island on the planet Dulkis; so do two sinister Dominators, Toba and Rago, with their robot servants, the Quarks; so do a group of young Dulkians led by Cully, who sees the Dominators casually kill off his friends and then tries to get help. At the end of the episode, the Quarks ask permission to destroy the Doctor and Jamie… The costuming of the native Dulkians is not the show’s finest hour.
A year or so ago, the group of friends with whom I had previously read War and Peace and Anna Karenina at the rate of a chapter a day decided to give Charles Dickens’ last complete novel a go, but with the twist of reading each of the monthly installments of four to six chapters at the start of each month, simulating how the book’s original readers would have encountered it.
I bought it then, but failed to get with the programme when it started; then a couple of months ago Our Mutual Friend bubbled anyway to the top of two of my lists (books bought in 2018, and non-genre fiction) and so I joined the party rather late, catching up to where everyone else in the group had reached and then doing the monthly thing until we finished last week. I must say I did appreciate this format – the book was originally written to have mini-cliffhangers every few chapters, and saving the dénouements for four weeks does mean you savour them a bit more.
However, I confess I did not really get as much our of Our Mutual Friend as I did from our previous reads. None of the characters and little of the writing particularly grabbed me. The core plot is a chap who fakes his own death and then deceives his wife about who he really is, partly to test her character, which I find utterly repulsive behaviour, presented by Dickens as moral courage and heroism. (She passes the test, of course; Dickens is reticent about what would have happened if she had not.) The lower-class couple who had accidentally become rich joyfully surrender their undeserved fortune to our hero, which again I found rather grating. There are some meandering side plots on the banks of the Thames, upstream and in London, but they seemed to me both moralising and far-fetched.
There was one bit of writing that particularly caught me in Book 4 Chapter 11:
Then, the train rattled among the house-tops, and among the ragged sides of houses torn down to make way for it, and over the swarming streets, and under the fruitful earth, until it shot across the river: bursting over the quiet surface like a bomb-shell, and gone again as if it had exploded in the rush of smoke and steam and glare. A little more, and again it roared across the river, a great rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father Time goes to his. To whom it is no matter what living waters run high or low, reflect the heavenly lights and darknesses, produce their little growth of weeds and flowers, turn here, turn there, are noisy or still, are troubled or at rest, for their course has one sure termination, though their sources and devices are many.
In the middle of writing Our Mutual Friend, Dickens was caught up in a major train accident, escaping with only minor injuries himself but rescuing other victims, some of whom died in front of him. I found it really interesting that in this imagery of the train of agent of destruction and destiny, it is not the Christian God but the abstract Father Time who is invoked in the end.
This is not one of Dickens’ better-known works, and there’s good reason for that. But you can get it here.
(Our group will tackle the Gormenghast trilogy next, going back to the chapter-a-day paradigm.)
Sat, 12:56: Anyone who has missed this glorious literary experience – scroll right up to the very top, weeks ago, and read from… https://t.co/7EAjKUPImt
Sat, 14:48: A Question of Retribution? by Anthony Blunt https://t.co/QdlMrSuNHm An interesting case of supposed “cancel culture” from forty years ago.
Sat, 16:05: RT @igorvolsky: 1/ I just finished reading @NewYorkStateAG’s 169 page lawsuit against @NRA and I’m shocked beyond belief at the level of co…
9 August 1920: birth of Graham Leaman who played four roles in five Old Who stories: the captive Controller in The Macra Terror (1967), Price the communications office in Fury from the Deep (1968), the Grand Marshall of the Ice Warriors in The Seeds of Death (1969), and an un-named Time Lord in Colony in Space (1971) and The Three Doctors (1973). (Some dispute whether it is actually the same Time Lord.)
9 August 1931: birth of Alethea Charlton who plays Hur in An Unearthly Child (First Doctor, 1963) and Edith in The Time Meddler (First Doctor, 1965). Here she is from the same angle in both stories.
9 August 1940: birth of Bernard Holley, who plays Peter Haydon in Tomb of the Cybermen (Second Doctor, 1967) and the voice of Axos in The Claws of Axos (Third Doctor, 1971)
9 August 1953: birth of Roberta Tovey who plays Dr. Who's granddaughter Susan Who in the two Peter Cushing films, and also recorded a justly forgotten single, "Who's Who".
9 August 1968: birth of Sanne Wohlenberg, producer for three Eleventh Doctor stories in 2010-11.
ii) webcast anniversary
9th August 2002: webcast release of the second episode of Real Time, in which one of the scientists has been transformed into a Cyberman and they all try to acquire the Tardis.
iii) dates specified in-universe
9 August 1794 is when the Doctor and disposable Time Lord companion Serena arrive in revolutionary France in Terrance Dicks' 2005 Second Doctor Season 6B novel, World Game.
9 August 1932 and 9 August 1945 are critical dates for the character Rita Hay in Mike Tucker and Robert Perry's 2003 Seventh Doctor novel Loving the Alien, the first being the day she was born and the second her 13th birthday when the UK used an atomic bomb (in a slightly divergent history of course).
