• Amnesty: Convicted Sahrawis must receive fair trials in civilian courts | Amnesty International¬es
  
  Regime favoured by the West getting away with blatant human rights violations – as usual.
  (tags: westernsahara )

The littlest Angel

Stephen, One, Dodo (Team TARDIS of mid-1966)

We Dodo fans are a hardcore minority

Barbara as Yetaxa

Snowman and Adipose

followed by K1 the Giant Robot

There is, in fact, a cosplayer in there

Two cats tease a dog

Why Who is different from those other shows

Sam and her leggings

Stephen Thorne (Omega, also Marvin the Paranoid Android – he’s really tall)

Daphne Westbrook (Grace in The Movie)

Mark Strickson (Turlough)

Who she?

Who he!

The setup team for the Loncon 3 tea-party: Andrew, Kathryn, Spike, Alissa and Michael

Alex Wilcock’s guide to Who in London, with locations mapped out

Another version of the map (shower curtain pinned against the window) with extra marker for ExCeL.

Tea in full swing

Merchandise: Big Bang Theory crossover

More merchandise: plush bacteria

Ten and Five – Time Crash reimagined (they weren’t together, just happened to be passing at the same time)

Two, at the tea party

Six, at the tea party

Amy and Nyssa

I got Fraser Hines a cup of coffee

And bumped into Ian McNeice on the way.

A Dalek going past the Loncon 3 desk

They get everywhere.

The singer and the shark

TARDIS group picture

Alissa in her dress (note also temporary tattoo)

The voice of protest

The littlest cosplayer

Peter Purves

Philip Hinchcliffe

Nicholas Briggs

Me with the head of Jon Pertwee

Dalek

Angel

Ten and Rose

Six, Five and Four

K9 and company

Policewoman Amy, Cat and Roman Rory

The TARDIS girls

Expensive autographs (beyond my budget)

I have been enjoying reading Leo's bande dessinée series Aldébaran in the original French, but reflected that actually Flanders has a fairly vibrant graphic novels culture of which I know shamefully little (my previous ventures into Belgian comics have all been Francophone). A little research of recent award-winners gave me a list of five or six writers to try, and this was te one which seemed most appealing.

Randall Casaer actually first achieved prominence as a standup comedian, half of the double act known as Vrolijk België (Happy Belgium) around the turn of the century. I wasn't aware of that either, and in fact little of it translates to Slaapkoppen, apart from a sense of the theatrical. The story – if indeed it is a story – is about a couple, talkative bloke and quiet woman, and their loquacious dog, exploring a series of peculiar dreamscapes – caves, dinosaurs, the ocean floor, clouds, all the interesting places from Freud and Jung. At the same time Olav and Igor, shipwrecked rom a Russian submarine via a Portuguese whaling boat, discuss the meaning of life and the charms of the long-lost Natasha on their desert island.

The art is rather beautiful, and the basic ideas are pretty sound. It is notable, however, that even the dream world is bounded by Portugal to the west and Russia to the east, and Olav and Igor unfortunately lurch into Russian stereotype a bit. I was also a bit confused by repeated references to the sea being to the east, which of course it isn't in Flanders; I suppose it is a wider metaphor about dawn and waking up, but it jars a bit with the sense of Western Europe (even in Britain and Ireland, which do have east coasts, one does not think of the sea as being purely to the east).

Still I think I recommend Slaapkoppen (or the English translation, Sleepyheads, available here and reviewed here) for the reader who wants to try something a bit different.

The much larger Taculbain flying about their heads were providing a diversion, the Mecrim jumping into the air whenever one came close. A ring of Dugarqs with guns had surrounded the beasts.

I found this rather a confused and slightly tedious tale, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe landing on a planet where medievalish humans are dominated by an anti-science cult and various subterranean alien races emerge to do battle or otherwise prop up the plot. The is one nice scene with Jamie and Zoe driving a hovercar together. And there is a nice continuity touch: the I in IMC originally stood for Issigri.

She was a gigantic holy terror, a fierce tyrannical monster who frightened the life out of the pupils and teachers alike. There was an aura of menace about her even at a distance, and when she came up close you could almost feel the dangerous heat radiating from her as from a red-hot rod of metal… Thank goodness we don't meet many people like her in this world, although they do exist and all of us are likely to come across at least one of them in a lifetime.

For some reason I had never read this particular Roald Dahl book before. It is rather good. Little Matilda has learned to read at a very young age; school and library provide an intellectual refuge from her comically awful dysfunctional family; it turns out that dysfunctional family relationships are at work among the school staff as well; and there is a happy ending, brought about by Matilda's brief acquisition of psychic powers (slightly reminiscent of Henry Sugar). It is interesting to read a children's book where a terrible family background is actually mere coloration for the real story, rather than being awfully earnest about it all; yes, Matilda's parents are odious and the headmistress is a psychopath, but she looks for things in her life to enjoy, and enjoys them. Quentin Blake's illustrations, as ever, multiply the effect of Dahl's prose.

• Ecuador’s Paraplegic Vice President Lenin Moreno a Major Force for Disability Rights
  
  Fascinating.
  (tags: disability )

In case you didn’t know, it is in Dublin, here.

• Azerbaijan: Stop Harassing Writer
  
  Writing the wrong sort of novel gets you in trouble.
  (tags: Azerbaijan )
• The girls are not alright
  
  Maria on the Magdalenes.
  (tags: genderandsexandsexuality Ireland )

• Lobbyists feeding amendments to MEPs – I’m surprised that this is even news (but we need to know) | Jon Worth
  
  Indeed.
  (tags: eu )
• Notes from an unemployable person
  
  More reports from the front line of the war between the UK govt and the disabled.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Undecided Scot decides
  
  Prediction that SNP failure to back equal marriage means they think they’ll lose the referendum
  (tags: scotland ukpolitics sexandgenderandsexuality )
• Kein Nazi-Preis mehr
  
  Swiss journalist forces renaming of prize which commemorated Nazi propagandist.
  (tags: nazis Balkans )

(This entry was originally posted in April 2005. I encourage readers to track down the books on eBay or elsewhere; would be interested to hear what others make of them)

Since it's that time of century, I thought I would dig out of my memory four books I remember having read where the protagonist becomes Pope. I've lost my copies of them, if I ever had them, long ago.

Peter de Rosa, Pope Patrick. Written in 1995, set in 2009 after the death of John Paul II. This has got some quite good reviews, but I don't know why; I thought it was a load of rubbish. Irish country priest gets sort of accidentally elected Pope; outlaws banking (or at least banking with interest); bonds with the (Catholic) US president who defeated Sylvester Stallone in the 2008 election; eventually wiped out in a nuclear war with the Islamic world. Full of cod-Irishry.

Morris West, Shoes of the Fisherman. Written and set in 1963, the year of the death of John XXIII. Starts dramatically as a Ukrainian is elected pope without a ballot, the cardinals being suddenly inspired by the Holy Spirit. Nothing much then happens; the Church attempts to bridge the gap between the Soviet empire and the West, and somebody resembling Teilhard de Chardin gets into theological trouble. Made into a 1968 film with Anthony Quinn, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud. Unlike the other three books I list here, the Pope lives on for two sequels, which I have not read.

Fr Rolfe (Baron Corvo), Hadrian the Seventh. Written and set in 1904. Total wish-fulfillment of the author, himself a failed priest; the Cardinals, unable to agree on the new Pope, come and beg him to take over; he duly does so, sorts out the entire world by allocating large chunks of it to the Germans to run more efficiently, and is, inevitably, assassinated. Horrendously right-wing, even I suspect for 1904, but more passionately written than the above two.

Walter F. Murphy, Vicar of Christ. I think I have listed these in reverse order of when I read them and this was the first. Written and set in 1979. The hero in this case is much more interesting, an American war hero who has served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and then abruptly retires to a monastery after his wife is killed in a car crash. Like de Rosa's book, set after the death of John Paul II (but in this case after a one-year rather than a thirty-year reign); like in Hadrian the Seventh, the cardinals are deadlocked and go for an outside candidate, ie our protagonist. He proceeds to reform the Church drastically (reforms that are all still needed) and is, of course, assassinated at the end.

All of these books veer from earnest to silly, and I haven't read any of them for around a decade. To be honest I think Murphy's Vicar of Christ is the only one I would seek out again.

• Thorbjørn Jagland concerned by the recent events in Azerbaijan
  
  Council of Europe Secretary-General speaks on arrests of Ilgar Mammadov and Tofig Yagublu.
  (tags: azerbaijan )
• Statement by Ashton and Füle on Azerbaijan
  
  EU concerned by arrests of Ilgar Mammedov and Tofig Yagublu.
  (tags: eu azerbaijan )
• PACE Monitoring Committee co-rapporteurs express deep concern at worrying developments in Azerbaijan
  
  Agramunt and Debono Grech speak out too.
  (tags: azerbaijan )
• Azerbaijan: Government Detains Outspoken Critics
  
  Human Rights Watch reports in detail on Ilgar Mammadov and Tofig Yagublu.
  (tags: azerbaijan )
• Azerbaijan responds to the EU
  
  It is an earthly paradise, and only deluded fools think otherwise.
  (tags: Azerbaijan )
• Azerbaijan is rich, now wants to be famous
  
  Arresting the opposition is the way to go!!! (Ilgar Mammadov is quoted,though not named)
  (tags: Azerbaijan )

We look at the Doctor, awkward and impossible in a given place and time, old-fashioned, beset by lace cuffs and red-lined capes and jingoism, and we reverse him. We reverse his polarity until he works the way he's supposed to, over and over and over, and makes us better so that we, in turn, can make him better – bravely, courageously, with conviction. (Amal El-Mohtar on Season 8, ending the book.)

A sister book to Chicks Dig Time Lords, this is a set of essays by women on each season/series of Doctor Who, old and new. One or two are sheer squee, but most are serious examinations of the show, usually (but not always) positive, often looking at gender issues, and one or two commentaries on race (also one chapter on "The Doctor's Balls" and another on "David Tennant's Bum".). From my own LJ friends list I spotted , , , , , , and among the contributors, and there may well be others whose names I did not recognise. I particularly enjoyed the chapters which were constructively critical – thinking of Caroline Symcox and Aliette de Bodard in particular – but almost all of them are good and thought-provoking. (But I discover that I have a finite tolerance for sheer squee.)

Recommended for thoughtful Who fans.

As soon as the last gloopy globs of the anti-grav beam had faded, the Soul Pirates cranked up their hoses and turned them on their latest victims, blasting Susan, the Doctor and the four others into a heaped hotchpotch of limbs and torsos in the corner of the pit.

Oh dear. This is the first of the planned 11 short Penguin ebooks to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who, one Doctor per month, the books to be released for £1.99 on the 23rd of every month up to November. It is by Eoin Colfer, best known for the Artemis Fowl books, but also author of an authorised sequel to the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which I may not get around to reading, and it is about the First Doctor in London in 1900 trying to get a cybernetic replacement hand and defeat the Soul Pirates. There are meant to be lots of references to Peter Pan, which mostly passed me by. The central character bears little resemblance to any other interpretation of the First Doctor on screen, audio or page. The author’s Guardian interview about the book is much shorter and much more interesting.

Fails Bechdel at the first hurdle: Susan is the only named female character. (The Doctor’s mother appears separately in a flashback passage.)

The last (so far) of the six two-in-one books featuring the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory, and aimed at younger readers.

Extra Time, by Richard Dungworth

Syd watched the group of youngsters move off along the street. He shook his head and tutted.
‘Look at ’em, officer,’ he muttered. ‘Right bunch of peacocks, these young ’uns, ain’t they? My missis don’t approve of them new “miniskirts”. Says they’re not decent.’

The Doctor and friends arrive in 1966 at the World Cup Final, to find emotion-sucking aliens threatening invasion. the Doctor and Amy deal with them while Rory substitutes for linesman Tofik Bahranov, who is indisposed. This is really a bit lightweight, struggling to fill its 200 pages, and not very original, and the scene-setting bits are a bit gor-blimey. I guess the kids will love it as long as they take the 1966 World Cup Final seriously. (Fails Bechdel at the first hurdle as Amy is the only named female character.)

The Water Thief, by Jacqueline Rayner

[Amy said] “I suppose it’s different if you’re a thousand years old. all these human lives must seem like mayflies to you.”
For a moment the Doctor didn’t answer. He was staring into the distance. Without looking at her he said, “Is that how you see me? Is that how I appear to you?”

This is a different matter. Rayner consistently has good ideas for her Who stories, and on a good day she delivers them too – I think her Winner Takes All, about computer games, is the best of the (sadly few) Ninth Doctor novels. Here she has the Doctor and friends landing in Egypt as the Oxyrhynchus papyri are being unearthed, with Amy and the Doctor then needing to visit ancient Egypt to sort out the inevitable alien invasion (though the water-slurping alien is a very nice touch). Contains gruesome details of the mummification process, but also a murder mystery and lots of nice character moments for our protagonists. Great stuff. (Bechdel pass: Amy befriends an ancient Egyptian woman and they talk about many things.)

• The World Decrypted: Mali, and the banks
  
  Carne digs into the background.
  (tags: carneross waronterror )

The authorities, returning, would find the prison empty. He couldn’t rid the place of all traces, of course; there was a lot of blood, on the walls and in the tunnel, and it would be a simple matter for the Police to DNA it and determine from whom it had come. But it was as much misdirection as Jac could manage.

I was at a conference the day that the BSFA nominations were announced, and as speakers around the table opined on the future of the European Union, I was utilising the hotel wifi to download copies of the books to my iPad and iPhone, which in itself was a delightfully futuristic experience. I’m working through the shortlist, as I like to do, in reverse order of popularity on LibraryThing, so will follow with Dark Eden, Empty Space, Intrusion and finally 2312 (which is owned by twice as many LibraryThing users, and almost four times as many GoodReads users, as the other four combined).

Jack Glass is not in fact about the famous bigot, but about a master criminal in the far future, in a solar system dominated by a few rich families. The novel is divided into three parts: in the first, our legless hero escapes from an apparently escape-proof cell; in the second, he helps spoiled rich girl Diana Argent solve a murder on her own estate; and in the third, he and Diana together work out how they were rescued from capture by her enemies. There’s a lot of clever stuff; there’s a lot of entertaining writing; there’s a lot of interesting speculation about how a future society will divide between the ultra-rich and the poor, in what is recognisably a world related to last year’s By Light Alone. I felt that the solution to the third of the three mysteries was a bit too clever, and I also would have liked a bit more of a sense of place from the passages set in the Eastern Mediterranean, but basically I enjoyed it and my BSFA reading is off to a good start – as usual.

Bechdel pass: Diana and her sister discuss faster than light travel.

   Varney took a step back: a mistake. There was a knife at his temple, the point of the blade next to his eye.
   "Further movements are not recommended," said Mr. Croup, helpfully. "Mister Vandemar might have a little accident with his old toad-sticker. Most accidents do occur in the home. Is that not so, Mister Vandemar?"
   "I don't trust statistics," said Mr. Vandemar's blank voice.

I first read Neverwhere around the time that the TV series was broadcast in 1996, though it was years before I actually saw it. I am eagerly anticipating the star-studded radio version which apparently will be out in the next few weeks. (The contrast in star level between the 1996 and 2013 broadcasts is an indicator of just how much Gaiman's profile has risen in the meantime.)

The basic concept is superb, that there is a parallel London where there is a real Angel Islington, where the sinister Black Friars guard a secret, where Old Bailey and the Earl of Earl's Court and Night's Bridge all have their realities. London is a city which exercises a strong fascination, with its layers of history, architecture and literature, and Gaiman – who is very comfortable writing about slipping between our world and Elsewhere – is on a winner by exploring that. The descriptive passages are excellent, both in terms of attention to detail and atmosphere; one can practically smell Earl's Court in its decrepit nightmare Tube carriage.

However, this is minor Gaiman. It was his first solo novel – and novels are not his forte. It is an adaptation of quite a visual script. The plot, a basic quest runaround complete with a sudden yet inevitable betrayal, doesn't really match the excellence of the setting. And I found the most memorable characters to be the sinister Croup and Vandemar, themselves based presumably on Oak and Quill from the Doctor Who story Fury from the Deep, but realised much better as a concept in the single character of the Man Jack in The Graveyard Book. Of the good guys, the most interesting is the Marquis de Carabas (memorably played by Paterson Joseph in the original TV series) and the nominal protagonists are rather flat on the page. It is entertaining enough, but not the top rank.

Scrapes through the Bechdel test with a conversation between Door, Hunter and Serpentine on pages 167-168 where they all ignore Richard and talk about each other.

    Finishing his drink, the Doctor placed his mug on the table with a grim look.
    ‘So,’ he said at last, ‘the question is, Constable Briggs, who do you think is responsible for all these strange happenings?’
    Briggs gave him his most serious look. That trench today had clinched it for him. Those footprints disappearing into nowhere like that. No sign of mud on the road. Although he was facing a man from the Ministry and obviously a learned man as well, without a trace of embarrassment Briggs told the Doctor exactly what he thought.
    ‘I think,’ he said, ‘it’s ghosts.’

An Eighth Doctor book which is set during the First World War, with the amnesiac Doctor now investigating mysterious happenings in a hospital for convalescent soldiers. For what is basically a zombie story, it is done rather well, with a particularly good one-off companion (Mary, the village midwife) whose emotional path is similar to many of the New Who companions, and other nicely depicted supporting characters. Would appeal to non-Who fans more than most.

I am still way behind with writing up January’s books; expect a few more catchup posts this weekend.

Bechdel pass, as Mary and two other women discuss the weather in Chapter Four, though they go on to discuss the Doctor.

• Could the Next Doctor Who Showrunner Already Be Chosen?
  
  I hope this isn’t wishful thinking!
  (tags: doctorwho )
• Twitter Search Gets Big Upgrade, Archiving Of Tweets Continues
  
  Good news.
  (tags: Twitter )
• Amnesty: Azerbaijan opposition candidate arrested
  
  My former colleague İlgar, imprisoned by Әliyev’s goons on bogus charges.
  (tags: Azerbaijan )

• Northern Ireland surrenders powers over Antarctica
  
  Just as well really.
  (tags: Northernireland )
• Grammar and punctuation test: take our quiz
  
  There is a trick question…
  (tags: Language )
• Pop culture quiz
  
  I had no idea!
  (tags: Films )

• The First Doctor
  
  BBC America documentary on William Hartnell’s time in the Tardis.
  (tags: Doctorwho )
• In The Future, All Space Marines Will Be Warhammer 40K Space Marines
  
  M.C.A. Hogarth’s problems with Fames Workshop.
  (tags: Sf copyright )
• Verified Facts
  
  Generate your own conspiracy theory!
  (tags: funny Wing nuts )
• Does Ireland need a “Borgen” government?
  
  Jason on parliamentary minorities.
  (tags: ireland poliics )

Continuing the New Who rewatch with the rest of Torchwood's first season and a couple of other Whoniverse stories first shown around the same time.

With Random Shoes we somehow seem to change gear for a couple of stories which are not so much about Torchwood as about other people being affected by Torchwood. It is a little odd to have this story and Love and Monsters so close to each other, and perhaps the two could have been brought into closer dialogue – there's a feeling of trying to pull off the same trick again in terms of the experimental double-banked format, though there are some very important differences: Eugene Jones dies and his mother and his romantic interest both live (whereas Elton Pope lives, but his mother dies and his romantic interest is turned into a paving slab), and where Love and Monsters is more about fandom as seen from the inside, Random Shoes is more the experience of fans in conflict both with the mundane world and with the objects of their own interest. Also I have to say that I find Random Shoes the more effective drama of the two; the mystery of Eugene's death has an unexpected, plausible and surprisingly mundane answer, and I confess I had something in my eye in the final moments. Good for Paul Chequer who carries it as Eugene.

Out of Time is my favourite Torchwood episode from this season. It's not just Louise Delamere's performance as Diane, though that certainly helps; it's also that this feels like a real sf story, for once, and the dilemmas of the three stranded travellers from 1952 – and their different solutions – are compelling, and throw a new light on Jack's character as time-travelling immortal and also on Owen as he moves on from his implausible fling with Gwen to a much more believable entanglement with Diane. Mark Lewis Jones is also good as John Ellis, and his choice devastatingly plausible. Not so sure about Emma, though it gives Eve Myles some nice "am-I-turning-into-my-mother" moments as Gwen and also tells us more about her relationship with Rhys. Once again I found I had something in my eye at the end.

There's a trivia question that starts by listing Victor Pemberton, Glyn Jones, Mark Gatiss… And then someone buzzes in to say that Noel Clarke has both appeared in Doctor Who and written a TV story for the franchise, the only regular cast member to do so (though of course Colin Baker has written several short stories and a comic, Ian Marter wrote novelisations and a spinoff novel, and Big Finish allows us to invoke others such as Nick Briggs, Barnaby Edwards, and rather surprisingly Ingrid Pitt).Combat is a solid enough piece about Owen exploring his masculinity and taking out his grief at losing Diane (and I suppose at ending his fling with Gwen) by beating up weevils. I wasn't completely sure about Alex Hassell who had to carry a lot of the story as Mark, but he seemed to acquire some depth before the end, and the whole thing is directed well and looks appropriately good or sordid, depending. It's not a terribly advanced topic, but this is Torchwood after all.

And, because we are doing these in original broadcast order, we suddenly switch from Torchwood to a couple of episodes from the two other main BBC Whovian shows. Luckily for my schedule, these two hour-long stories fitted into my weekend, rather than having to be chopped into different parts of the commute.

As it happens I wrote a very long piece about The Runaway Bride shortly after it was broadcast, and I stand by most of what I said there. In particular, I am pleased that I spotted Donna as one of the great Doctor Who creations; watching again, there are many moments from Catherine Tate that shine, whether she is being jilted bride, kidnap victim, or fellow adventurer. And it is good that she spots the Doctor's darker side and calls him on it, up to and including her detecting his lie when he says he will come for Christmas dinner just as soon as he's checked something in the Tardis. (I also love the way that she is the first companion to see the inside of the Ship before the outside.) We did not know when first watching that this was to be the first of many single-episode stories with one-off companions. That format will never be where Who's heart is, but this is a good first attempt. (And of course Donna turned out not to be a one-shot after all.)

Three Whoniverse stories were broadcast for the first time on 1 January 2007, which is a record. 1 January is also the anniversary of the last appearance of the Meddling Monk (1966), the first TV Daleks in colour (1972), the first appearance of Leela (1977), and the regeneration of David Tennant into Matt Smith (2010). But none of the three broadcast on 1/1/7 were Doctor Who per se; we were treated to the first of The Sarah Jane Adventures in the afternoon and then the two final parts of the first Torchwood season late at night. This time I took three days over it. I think I would recommend dedicated rewatchers to do it all in one go; that way one is sufficiently worn down to be less perturbed by the awfulness of the closing episode of the three.

The first episode of the Sarah Jane Adventures, Invasion of the Bane, gets 2007 off to an excellent start. Yasmin Paige is excellent as the audience identification figure, getting to know the neighbour who gets such weird visitors; it's nice to see Elisabeth Sladen back, and to hear John Leeson (again) and Alexander Armstrong (for the first time); the CGI monster is absolutely superb, one of the best realised aliens in the whole of the Whoniverse, and the scene of it clambering all over the domestic cosines of Sarah's house is a brilliant illustration of Jon Pertwee's line about the effectiveness of a Yeti on a loo in Tooting Bec. Kelsey was clearly being written out from quite an early stage of scripting; she's actually quite an unpleasant character. More on Luke when I get to the first season. It's a much stronger start than Torchwood had.

I know that Captain Jack Harkness as an episode is a fan favourite. I think a lot of it is well done – in particular Murray Melvin as Bilis Manger, and the spectacle of Toshiko trying to send Blink-like messages through the decades. The cast do emotional intensity well as ever. But the romance of the Jack Harknesses is treated with extraordinary gravity for what is basically a one-night stand, and Owen's breach of the Rift is painfully contrived in  execution (and in plot terms both makes a mockery of Tosh's heroic communication efforts and provides a partial excuse for the nonsense which is to follow). It looks good, and sounds good, but I find it a bit lacking. (Note the "Vote Saxon" posters.)

Doing these write-ups, I often find myself noting that stories are not as bad as I remembered, End of Days is far far worse than I remembered, and it is no exaggeration to say that the high point of the episode is Rhys's arse, less than 90 seconds in. It is generally well acted (with a couple of slips – I am sure Eve Myles is on the edge of giggles in several scenes, and there are some breathing corpses) and generally well directed (with a couple of slips – Bilis's rather obviously collapsible knife, Rhys's horizontal viewpoint the wrong way round) but it doesn't compensate for the awfulness of the script and the incoherence of the plot. This really is terrible stuff, from the Torchwood team's sensitive and professional approach to human resources management, to the mispronounced Latin of the shouty time travelling soldier, to Gwen's disturbing treatment of Rhys, to the ludicrous CGI monster, to the arbitrary killing off of Rhys and Jack with no emotional impact on us viewers because we just know they'll be resurrected, to Jack being brought to life by Gwen's wuv… I am trying to think of a worse written story in the whole of Who. The Twin Dilemma, perhaps, or The Dominators, or The Celestial Toymaker, or the misogynist stories never made for TV (but unwisely produced by Big Finish in recent years). And where I can partially forgive Cyberwoman and Countrycide because they have at least got comprehensible plots and are interesting to look at, End of Days lacks even those redeeming features. RTD-era Who habitually fumbled its grand finales, and – with some hefty competition – this is the worst case of that phenomenon.

Well, the first season of Torchwood has its ups and downs, but most of the latter stories (with one crashing exception) are actually decent efforts, with the peaks good enough to show that it had potential for more. It is notable that most of the better episodes were written by women. (Audience ratings were consistently more positive than the fannish consensus, or even my more charitable views, which indicates that the show was delivering on some metrics anyway.) The rewatch mix is greatly improved by the Donna Noble and Sarah Jane episodes.

OK, it's the Doctor and Martha next. That will be fun.

< The Curse of Fatal Death | The Webcasts | Rose – Dalek | The Long Game – The Parting of the Ways | Comic Relief 2006 – The Girl in the Fireplace | Rise of the Cybermen – Doomsday | Everything Changes – They Keep Killing Suzie | Random Shoes – End of Days | Smith and Jones – 42 | Human Nature / The Family of Blood – Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords & The Infinite Quest | Revenge of the Slitheen – The Lost Boy & Time Crash | Voyage of the Damned – Adam | Reset – Exit Wounds

• ATOS declare Richard III fit for work
  
  “The dead monarch, Richard Plantagenet, was called for a reassessment of his fitness for work by ATOS – which carries out disability assessments on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – after it was discovered the deposed King had spent years lying in a Leicester City Council car park doing absolutely nothing.”
  (tags: ukpolitics death funny disability )
• Peter Sellers: A Hard Day’s Night
  
  …in the style of Lawrence Olivier as Richard III.
  (tags: funny Shakespeare )

• Richard III: unveiling day arrives for skeleton that would be king
  
  Announcement due Monday morning!
  (tags: archaeology )

Way behind with bookblogging as with other things. Still weight out of 16 to write up for January.Anyway here is the snapshot as of last Thursday.

Non-fiction 5
The Doctor’s Monsters, by Graham Sleight
Making Ireland English, by Jane Ohlmeyer
Challenges for EU foreign policy in 2013, ed. Giovanni Grevi and Daniel Keohane
TARDIS Eruditorum – An Unauthorized Critical History of Doctor Who, Volume 2: Patrick Troughton by Philip Sandifer
Chicks Unravel Time, ed. Deborah Stanish and L.M. Myles

fiction (non-sf) 1
Faces in the Pool, by Jonathan Gash

sf (non-Who) 3
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Jack Glass by Adam Roberts

Doctor Who 6
The Indestructible Man, by Simon Messingham
Human Nature, by Paul Cornell
Casualties of War by Steve Emmerson
Step Back in Time: Extra Time, by Richard Dungworth
Step Back in Time: The Water Thief, by Jacqueline Rayner
A Big Hand for the Doctor, by Eoin Colfer

Comics 1
The Hive, by Charles Burns

~4,200 pages
4/16 by women (Ohlmeyer, Stanish/Myles, Collins, Rayner)
0/16 by PoC
Bechdel pass 7/11
Bechdel fail 4/11 – 2 at first step, 1 at second step, 1 at third.

Rereads: 2 (Neverwhere, Human Nature)
Acquired 2011 or before: 4 (Neverwhere, Human Nature, Casualties of War, The Indestructible Man)
Acquired 2012: 7 (Step Back in Time x2, Faces in the Pool, The Hive, The Hunger Games, Making Ireland English, The Doctor’s Monsters)
Acquired 2013: 5 (Chicks Unravel Time, TARDIS Eruditorum 2, Jack Glass, Challenges for European Foreign Policy in 2013, A Big Hand For The Doctor)

2013 reading project: up to chapter 11 of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Also started:
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
London Falling by Paul Cornell
Slaapkoppen by Randall.C

Coming next (perhaps):
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
The Castle by Franz Kafka
The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
Swallows And Amazons by Arthur Ransome
1632 by Eric Flint
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
Doors Open by Ian Rankin
The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple
A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor
The Peoples of Middle-Earth by Christopher Tolkien
Toward the End of Time by John Updike
Daystar and Shadow by James Weldon Johnson
The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century by Brendan Bradshaw
Starship Fall by Eric Brown
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Menagerie by Martin Day
Original Sin by Andy Lane
The Turing Test by Paul Leonard
Fugitive by Tony Lee
Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
The Unfree French by Richard Vinen
Empty Space: A Haunting by M. John Harrison

• Malaria in England in the Little Ice Age
  
  Argument framed in an odd climate change way, but interesting evidence.
  (tags: disease )
• Paperman
  
  #fb Lovely short film with romantic enchanted paper aeroplanes.
  (tags: Films )
• Interactive 360° Video From A Helicopter Flying Over Four Erupting Volcanoes
  
  Amazing. #fb
  (tags: geology Films )
• Live Thog’s Masterclass (2004)
  
  It will be twenty years this Easter since Thog emerged.
  (tags: funny sf )
• Applebee’s Overnight Social Media Meltdown: A Photo Essay « R.L. Stollar, Journalist.
  
  How to lose the argument, in a few easy steps.
  (tags: Socialmedia )

• Mercator Puzzle!
  
  Fantastic – there was one country at the end that took me a while to get!
  (tags: maps )
• My Big Study
  
  Francis tells us about his PhD, in Up-Goer Five.
  (tags: Philosophy )