Because I know you want to know this: Doctor Who dates

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As I prepare my Whoniversary posts, I’ve been noting the dates of broadcast of Doctor Who stories over the years. Not very surprisingly, they are distributed very unevenly around the calendar.

Month

Old Who episodes

New Who episodes
(inc specials)

Others (1996,
Torchwood, SJA,
Comic Relief since 2005)

Total
January

107

1

6

114
February

95

0

5

100
March

90

2

5

97
April

52

21

1

74
May

51

20

1

72
June

36

20

1

56
July

11

2

6

19
August

11

0

0

11
September

55

0

2

57
October

61

0

18

79
November

69

1

19

89
December

56

5

6

67
Total

693

72

70

835

Not totally sure of the counts there but the overall picture is clear: heavy concentration in the colder months of the year (in the British climate), very little in the summer. There are 48 days on which no Doctor Who (or spinoff) episode has been broadcast, and 21 are in August and 16 in July. The longest run of such dates is 2-7 August inclusive (also 26-31 July if you don’t count the 27 July 2008 Proms concert). On the other hand there’s a complete run of 169 days (170 if it’s a leap year) from 28 December to 14 June inclusive when every day is a broadcast Who anniversary, and another run later in the year of 56 days from 25 October to 19 December.

For Old Who, there are seven dates which saw the original broadcasts of Doctor Who episodes in six different years:

5th January The Time Warrior #4 (1974) The Horns of Nimon #3 (1980) Castrovalva #2 (1982) Arc of Infinity #1 (1983) Warriors of the Deep #1 (1984) Attack of the Cybermen #1 (1985)
12th January Invasion of the Dinosaurs #1 (1974) The Horns of Nimon #4 (1980) Castrovalva #4 (1982) Arc of Infinity #4 (1983) Warriors of the Deep #3 (1984) Attack of the Cybermen #2 (1985)
8th February "The Edge of Destruction" / The Edge of Destruction #1 (1964) The Seeds of Death #3 (1969) The Ark in Space #3 (1975) Kinda #3 (1982) Mawdryn Undead #3 (1983) Resurrection of the Daleks #1 (1984)
15th February "The Brink of Disaster" / The Edge of Destruction #1 (1964) The Seeds of Death #4 (1969) The Ark in Space #4 (1975) The Visitation #1 (1982) Terminus #1 (1983) Resurrection of the Daleks #1 (1984)
2nd March The Web of Fear #5 (1968) Death to the Daleks #2 (1974) Black Orchid #2 (1982) Enlightenment #2 (1983) Planet of Fire #4 (1984) The Two Doctors #3 (1985)
9th March The Web of Fear #6 (1968) Death to the Daleks #3 (1974) Earthshock #2 (1982) Enlightenment #4 (1983) The Caves of Androzani #2 (1984) Timelash #1 (1985)
16th March Fury from the Deep #1 (1968) Death to the Daleks #4 (1974) Earthshock #4 (1982) The King’s Demons #2 (1983) The Caves of Androzani #4 (1984) Timelash #2 (1985)


I had forgotten that the demises of Adric and the Fifth Doctor were precisely two years apart.

For New Who, the winning date is 25th December, Christmas Day, which has seen five specials (The Christmas Invasion in 2005, The Runaway Bride in 2006, Voyage of the Damned in 2007, The Next Doctor in 2008 and The End of Time #1 in 2009). Add to that "The Feast of Steven" / The Daleks’ Master Plan #7, and it gets up to six as well. 

If you add together all incarnations of Who including Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures, 22nd October also joins the list of dates which have had six episodes first broadcast over the years: The Tenth Planet #3 (1966); The Invisible Enemy #4 (1977); the first two episodes of Torchwood, Everything Changes and Day One (2006); Warriors of Kudlak #2 (Sarah Jane Adventures, 2007); and The Mad Woman in the Attic #1 (Sarah Jane Adventures, 2009).

But that also gives you one day of the year which on which seven episodes of Doctor Who and the spinoffs have been broadcast for the first time. That day is 1st January, and the episodes are "Volcano" / The Daleks’ Master Plan #8 (1966); Day of the Daleks #1 (1972); The Face of Evil #1 (1977); the Sarah Jane Adventures pilot, Invasion of the Bane (2007); the two last episodes of the first series of Torchwood, Captain Jack Harkness and End of Days (also 2007), and of course The End of Time #2 (2010) where we bade farewell to David Tennant and heard Matt Smith say ‘Geronimo!’

Well, I hope you appreciate that. It amused me on a wet Sunday afternoon.

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Whoniversaries 8 August: Terry Nation, Reign of Terror #1, Slipback #3 and #4

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i) births and deaths

8th August 1930: birth of Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, writer of The Daleks (1963-64), The Keys of Marinus (1964), The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), The Chase (1965), Mission to the Unknown (1965), The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965-66, with Dennis Spooner who always claimed to have done most of the work), Planet of the Daleks (1973), Death to the Daleks (1974), Genesis of the Daleks (1975), The Android Invasion (1976) and Destiny of the Daleks (1979), as well as the Peter Cushing films Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966). Not to mention Blake’s 7. A couple of years ago, a woman who I had just hired to work in my office spotted that I was a Doctor Who fan, and told me that she had grown up close to Nation in Kent, and had actualy played with the “real” Daleks as a child. If she had put that on her application letter, we could have skipped the rest of the interviewing process. (She has long since gone on to greater things.)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

8th August 1964: broadcast of “A Land of Fear”, first episode of the story we now call The Reign of Terror. The Tardis lands in a quiet wood and the Doctor relents slightly from kicking Ian and Barbara off the Tardis; the team goes off to explore and enter an abandoned farmhouse. They realise that they have landed in Revolutionary France; the Doctor is knocked unconscious and the other three are captured by revolutionary militia, who set the building on fire as they leave, the Doctor trapped inside…

8th August 1985: broadcast of episodes 3 and 4 of Slipback on BBC radio. Peri lands safely on a pair of detectives, with whom she bickers for the next two episodes. Meanwhile the Doctor bickers with the computer for two episodes. And Eric Saward still thinks he is Douglas Adams.

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August Books 5) A Viceroy’s Vindication? Sir Henry Sidney’s Memoir of Service in Ireland, 1556-78

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Reviving my 16th-century history project, I come to this interesting first-person account by the man appointed to rule Ireland by Elizabeth I in 1565–1571 and again in 1575–1578. Let’s bear in mind that in the last hundred years only Bertie Ahern, W.T. Cosgrave and Éamon de Valera (and, stretching a point, Augustine Birrell) have run the Irish government for longer than that, so he demonstrated considerable staying power. In 1583 he wrote a long account of his public life to Sir Francis Walsingham, who was the queen’s Principal Secretary and whose son was about to marry his daughter. It is almost all about his time in Ireland, and in a decent introduction 39 pages, followed by 69 of the main text) Ciarán Brady offers a decent contextualisation of the details, including helpfully pointing out the relatively few instances where Sidney has improved upon the actual facts.

What struck me was that Sidney clearly portrays his mission as one of getting the Irish chieftains to live peacefully under the English crown; and that by his account the problem was the peaceful bit rather than the crown bit. He still wanted to destroy the most powerful alternative power centres. Shane O’Neill actually was killed, and his head sent to Dublin Castle ‘pickled in a pipkin’, as Sidney memorably puts it. He was unable to dislodge the influence of the Earl of Ormond, who was related to the queen through her mother, and so was able to short-circuit the official lines of communication by asking his cousin to curb her annoying bureaucrats.

But there is no question in Sidney’s mind, or in his account in the Irish chieftains’ minds, that they will work out a relationship with the queen’s government in Dublin; the only issue is how long it will take. He has an account of the honest gentry, nobility and business community of Cork beseeching his help for them to "become English, and accordingly to live under English law, and by the same to be defended, each weaker from his stronger neighbour". Of course, Sidney would say that, wouldn’t he; and it has unfortunate overtones of Terence O’Neill’s infamous statement that "if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house, they will live like Protestants because they will see neighbours with cars and television sets; they will refuse to have eighteen children". But it’s interesting because Sidney is actually identified by many historians – including , as he happily admits, Ciarán Brady, the editor of this book – as a key initiator of the policy of colonisation and dispossession which eventually did win the day, rather than of good government and assimilation. There’s little evidence of that from his own account.

Sidney also had a couple of economic policies: he banned the export of unspun wool, so as to boost the native Irish spinning industry; he tried to regulate trade in wine, obviously to boost government revenues but also to promote economic development in the ports which were permitted to import; and he bemoaned the reversal of these policies by his short-termist successors (who he hints were bribed to do so). He has a couple of curious blind spots as well; there’s an anecdote about the difficulty of English officials dealing with Irish-speakers in the administration of justice (in which the day is saved by his bête noir, the Earl of Ormond); he also negotiated with a couple of Catholic bishops who are keen to get royal endorsement as well, implying that he thinks this could have been worked out in the end. There’s a nice note of his meeting with the pirate queen, ‘Grany I’Malley’. And he refers to my ancestor, Nicholas White, on just one page, portraying him as Ormond’s man (but ‘honest’) on a three-man commission dealing with the administration of Munster.

Not really a book for anyone who is not already fairly well-read in sixteenth-century Ireland, but a fascinating primary source.

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August Books 4) The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol X; and my conclusions

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The tenth and last volume of the Blood Sunday Report is lengthy (541 numbered pages) but doen’t really add much substance. The first 36 pages are a two-part appendix, a longish memo about how and to a lesser extent why the Inquiry was set up and then a listing of the lawyers involved; and there then follows another appendix containing Saville’s opening statement, 41 rulings made by the Tribunal in the course of gathering and hearing evidence, and eight court judgements which over-rode the Tribunal’s own rulings. The last three pages are a short bibliography.

The first of these elements is by far the most interesting, explaining the Inquiry’s operations and in particular the difficulties of identifying witnesses (especially former soldiers) after thirty years, and the intricacies of the process of giving evidence. Indeed, most of the second appendix chronicles, in tedious detail, how Saville’s initial (probably over-ambitious) intentions that all, or almost all, hearings should happen in public in Derry, and that the soldiers involved should be identified by surname rather than by cipher, were rolled back by the courts. Saville gets in a barb at this towards the end of the opening memo, when he defends the cost of the whole operation:

There were various judicial reviews and some subsequent appeals. The length and cost of the Inquiry was further increased by moving the sittings from Londonderry to London and back to Londonderry, in consequence of an order by the Court of Appeal.

So it ends.

Well, after 5030 pages, what do I think of it all?

First of all, it was very definitely a worthwhile exercise. The cost was huge, but the cost of failing to address the events of Bloody Sunday in the first place was even greater. It is no exaggeration to say that Bloody Sunday was the single most politically significant act of violence during the entire period of the Troubles. The awful fact that 13 unarmed civilians had been mown down in the streets was exacerbated by the state’s attempts to excuse that awful fact, including the previous inquiry which was set up in its immediate aftermath. On the whole, Saville is discreet about the conduct of the Widgery Inquiry, and almost completely silent about its findings, but at one point the mask slips:

[Appendix 2.8, § 19:] It is clear that the present Inquiry has been instituted because the previous Inquiry did not succeed, for whatever reason, in achieving the general objective of inquiries under the 1921 Act. This objective is, as Lord Justice Salmon said in his report, to restore public confidence where a crisis in that confidence has occurred (see 1966 Cmnd 3121 at paragraph 28). Indeed, there is a substantial body of responsible public opinion to the effect that the Widgery Inquiry, so far from restoring public confidence, compounded the crisis. We consider that our ability to restore confidence will be undermined, unless we can form a wholly independent judgment, based on the facts before us, on the question of anonymity – and indeed on any other questions that we have to consider.

Nobody who reads the 5030 pages of the Saville Inquiry, particularly when compared with the 39 cursory pages of Widgery (dissected by many others in the years since) can doubt that it is a sincere effort to restore that confidence. The whining of the lawyer for the murderous soldiers that Saville ‘cherry-picked’ the evidence simply is not sustainable if you actually read even the initial summary, let alone the entire document.

There is, all the same, room for dispute of some of the findings. I’m not comfortable about the nail-bombs found on Gerard Donaghey’s body; I’m not wholly convinced about the exoneration of the RMP (Saville spends 11 pages in Appendix 2.39 complaining that the victims’ lawyers bungled their examination of this issue); I’m surprised that Saville did not include his devastating conclusions on the illegality of the arrests in the main upfront summary (§3.120 would have been an appropriate place); I think Brigadier McLellan is let off too lightly, and I also agree with my old friend Niall Ó Dochartaigh, who has written both academically and in newspaper articles about Saville’s failure to examine more contextually the role of General Ford. More generally, Saville does not examine – though he drops heavy hints about his views – the overall military culture where you could wander around the Bogside and take pot-shots at civilians in the full knowledge that the moral, legal and political forces of the British state would unconditionally stand behind your actions. I was struck on several occasions that commanding officers would cover up their subordinates’ disobedience by claiming, falsely, that it was all in accordance with their orders. This was true of Lieutenant 119 claiming that Soldiers E, F, G and H advanced to Glenfada Park on their murderous rampage on his instruction, rather than their own initiative; it’s true of Major Loden claiming that all the firing was carried out on his supervision; and it’s true of Brigadier McLellan, claiming in the teeth of the evidence that Colonel Wilford had accurately and precisely carried out the orders he had been given to go into the Bogside in the first place. If the consequences had not been so awful, the loyalty of these officers to those they commanded would be rather laudable.

As mentioned back in Volume VIII, while I appreciate the conclusions on the four senior officers, it would have been good to have expanded that section also with conclusions on the individual soldiers, which are nowhere tabulated. I do that here as follows, more or less in the chronological order adopted by Saville:

Soldier

killed

wounded

Corporal A or Private B 

Damien Donaghey (deliberately)
John Johnston (injured by shoot-through or ricochet)

Private R

Jackie Duddy

 
Lance Corporal V 

Margaret Deery

Lieutenant N 

Michael Bridge

Private Q 

Michael Bradley

Sergeant O, Private R and/or Private S 

Patrick McDaid
Pius McCarron

Private T or possibly Private S 

Patrick Brolly

Lance Corporal F

Michael Kelly

 
Corporal P, and possibly Lance Corporal J and/or Corporal E

William Nash
John Young
Michael McDaid

 
Private U

Hugh Gilmour

 
Private L or Private M (ordered by Colour Sergeant 002 and/or Corporal 039)

Kevin McElhinney

 
possibly Corporal P or Lance Corporal J 

Alexander Nash (shot while tending to his dying son William Nash)

Corporal E 

Patrick O’Donnell

Lance Corporal F or Private H

William McKinney

Joe Mahon

Private G or Private H

Jim Wray (shot a second time as he lay dying)

Michael Quinn

Lance Corporal F or Private G

 

 

Joe Friel

E, F, G or H 

Daniel Gillespie

Private G

Gerard McKinney
Gerald Donaghey

 
Lance Corporal F

Bernard McGuigan
Patrick Doherty

Patrick Campbell
Daniel McGowan

Obviously a good day’s work for Lance Corporal F and Private G, who between them killed at least five and maybe seven of the thirteen fatalities, and wounded another two to six. They will, of course, never be prosecuted; nobody will.

I have a couple of other complaints about the presentation of the evidence.

i) There is no map of the overall sequence of events, and while some of the sectors are mapped out in detail, others are not. For that level of cartographical detail you have to go to the Guardian, whose plotting of the fatalities I reproduce here:

This map of course lacks the time dimension. The first fatality was Jackie Duddy, at top right, in the courtyard of the Rossville Flats; then the six near the Rossville Street barricade; then the four in and around Glenfada Park; and finally the two to the south of the Rossville Flats, shot at long range from Glenfada Park. (I considered dotting in the locations of the wounded as well, but my graphic skills are not up to it; there were two at the very beginning near William Street to the north of Columbcille Court, six in the Rossville Flats courtyard, only one at the barricade, five in Glanfada Park North and two more to the south of the flats at the end.)

ii) While the website heroically includes all the text of the report, hyperlinked to the relevant testimony where appropriate, the actual search function on the site is pretty poor – doesn’t seem to include the body of the report, for instance – and it is almost impossible to drill down to find particular nuggets, particularly in the very long documents submitted to the Inquiry by the lawyers. In addition, while apparently the DVD (which I realise I must now buy) does include audio and video files from the day, these have not been put online and are therefore not accessible to the wider public.

iii) The final volume refers (Vol.X, A1.1.90) to

the creation of a virtual reality model of the relevant part of the city [which] contained a photographic panorama of the Bogside as it was in the late 1990s. However, the user could switch to another version in which artists’ impressions of the buildings that had been present in 1972 had been superimposed on the modern panorama. The virtual reality model was used to assist many witnesses. They could use it to identify particular locations and could also, using a stylus on the screen, mark “still” versions of the panorama with arrows or lines in order to pinpoint a particular place. The marked versions could then be preserved for future reference. When in use, the virtual reality images were displayed on the public screens.

A lawyer friend, who knows Saville personally, tells me that he too has seen extracts from this virtual reality system; it would be a shame if it has now been packed away never to be seen by the public.

These are minor quibbles. The report is a triumph of investigation. Its publication was greeted by whining from the Tory right and from some Unionists. (Though not, to do him credit, Lee Reynolds.) But the fact is that British soldiers had slaughtered their fellow citizens, and a truthful accounting was needed. No state handles the violence of its own agents well, and the disgrace of the Widgery report showed how badly the UK can deal with it. (English readers may by now be thinking of the more recent cases of Ian Tomlinson and Jean-Charles de Menezes.) The truth sometimes hurts, especially if it comes 38 years late. But that can be a good thing too.

Volume I | Volume II | Volume III | Volume IV | Volume V | Volume VI | Volume VII | Volume VIII | Volume IX | Volume X and conclusions

Whoniversaries 7 August: Kenneth Kendall, Alexei Sayle, Ric Felgate

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births and deaths

7th August 1924: birth of Kenneth Kendall, who appeared as a newsreader in The War Machines (1966), the first celebrity to portray himself on Doctor Who (unless you count the Beatles).

7th August 1952: birth of Alexei Sayle, who plays the DJ in Revelation of the Daleks (1986). ‘Allo John, got a new motor? Is there life on Mars? Is there life in Peckham?

7th August 1999: death of Ric Felgate who played Roy Stone (the American reporter) in The War Machines (1966), Brent (Ms Kelly’s assistant) in The Seeds of Death (1969) and Van Lyden (the astronaut sent to look for the others) in The Ambassadors of Death (1970)

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In case any readers are interested…

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I see that the German Marshall Fund is offering a prize for a 2500 word essay on the future of the transatlantic relationship. Essays must ostensibly be by a joint team of one North American and one European, however defined, both under 30. Registration of entrants by 15 August (ie end of next week), essay deadline is in November. Prize is €2500 each. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as we used to say back home.

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August Books 3) Black Blade Blues, by J.A. Pitts

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Sarah Beauhall is a blacksmith living in modern Seattle, who is grappling a) with the fact that her favourite sword turns out to be a relic from the Norse mythos, pursued by dwarves and dragons, and b) with her own relationship with her girlfriend. It’s not the first urban fantasy I’ve read set in the Pacific North-West – ‘s Walker Papers series are also set there, though her central character is a police mechanic swept into a combination of Celtic and Native American myth. Oddly enough the last fiction I read outside my self-set reading lists was also sfnal, also set in Seattle, and also had a title whose first word was “Black”.

Black Blade Blues is not terribly profound, and probably won’t win any awards. But I thoroughly enjoyed it: Sarah getting to grips with the sword and Katie, and the dragon in pursuit of both, in the context of the Renaissance Faire / SCA subculture of the states of Washington and Oregon, makes a cracking good yarn, with groundwork laid for more books to come – which I will certainly try and get. If you’re not sure if you like urban fantasy, this is not a bad place to start; if you do like it, you’ll probably like this.

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Oneira

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This was a five-part series first broadcast on radio in 2007. I’ve seen a couple of other reviews on the web which were distinctly underwhelmed, but I rather enjoyed it. The title character is a museum attendant who gets swept into a search for the Lux Ater, the Book of Black Light, which will provide a link between string theory and alchemy, at the behest of 400-year-old alchemist Nikolai, who steps out of one of the paintings in the museum. Other incidental characters include Oneira’s odious boyfriend who spends most of the sequence reduced to a bucket of water and able to communicate only by farting gurgles. There are some sophisticated jokes about philosophy and some nice one-liners.

The episode titles are 1) The Big Chill (featuring a mutating fridge), 2) Sleight of Mind, featuring the powers of the electric company, 3) A String of Time, featuring Philip K. Dick and Roger Bacon, 4) The Thing with Two Cappuccinos, with a horde of android baristas, and 5) Mind the Gap, where Oneira spends most of the episode talking to herself. I had not previously heard of the author, Robert Easby, or of either of the two leads, Lindsay Marshall as Oneira and Peter Marinka as Nikolai, but they all impressed me and I shall look out for them in future. Not quite as profound as perhaps it aspired to be, but I enjoyed it.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

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Whoniversaries 5 August: Wanda Ventham, Matt Jones, Paul Kasey, Brian Minchin, second Cushing film

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i) births and deaths

5th August 1935: birth of Wanda Ventham, who played Jean Rock in The Faceless Ones (1967), Thea Ransome and the Fendahl Core in Image of the Fendahl (1977) and Faroon in Time and the Rani (1987), a nice regular spacing of her appearances over the decades. Incidentally, her son, Benedict Cumberbatch, is currently starring in the title role of Steven Moffat’s Sherlock.

5th August 1968: birth of Matt Jones, author of TV stories The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (Doctor Who, 2006) and Dead Man Walking (Torchwood, 2008), as well as the excellent Bernice Summerfield story Beyond The Sun (novel, 1997; audio play, 1998).

5th August 1973: birth of Paul Kasey, who has played literally dozens of short monsters in New Who and its spinoffs, and has appeared in more New Who episodes than anyone except David Tennant and Billie Piper.

Last but by no means least, 5th August 1978 saw the birth of Brian Minchin, script editor for the first two series of Torchwood and for eight episodes of New Who, assistant producer of Torchwood: Children of Earth last year, and producer of the next series of Sarah Jane Adventures. He is also my first cousin. Happy birthday, Brian!

ii) cinematic anniversary

5th August 1966: general cinema release date of Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD, starring Peter Cushing as human scientist Dr. Who and guest starring Bernard Cribbins as police constable Tom Campbell. It is a rather cut-down version of The Dalek Invasion of Earthhere. We have previously debated the correct anniversary.

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Whoniversaries 4 August: Martin Jarvis, Fenella Woolgar, Maurice Colbourne

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births and deaths

4th August 1941: birth of Martin Jarvis who played Hilio in The Web Planet (1963), Butler in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974), and the Governor in Vengeance on Varos (1985).

4th August 1971: birth of Fenella Woolgar who played Agatha Christie in The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008).

4th August 1989: death of Maurice Colbourne who played Lytton in Resurrection of the Daleks (1984) and Attack of the Cybermen (1985).

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Whoniversaries 3 August: Denis Carey, Carmen Silvera, the end of Old Who

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i) births and deaths

3rd August 1909: birth of Denis Carey, who played Professor Chronotis in Shada (unbroadcast but would have been 1980), the Keeper in The Keeper of Traken (1981), and the Old Man in Timelash (1985).

3rd August 2002: death of Carmen Silvera, who played several parts in The Celestial Toymaker (1966) and also Ruth in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974), better known in later years as René Artois’s long-suffering wife Edith in ‘Allo! ‘Allo!.

ii) production anniversary

3rd August 1989: I don’t usually do anniversaries of the often tediously well-documented process of making Who, but this one is special: the final day of filming of Ghost Light, the last scene ever made of Old Who being the one where Gwendoline and her mother are turned to stone. And that, as it turned out, was the end, save the final voiceover for the last episode of Survival.

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August Books 2) The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol IX

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Now that the main story and conclusions are done, Volume IX looks at some issues of evidence and legality, a couple of which struck me as important enough that they should really have been included in the main findings of the report. Although at 253 pages this is by far the shortest volume, the points raised are interesting and I go into them in great length below, with some pretty full quotations from both the report and the evidence given to the inquiry.

Fully a quarter of the report is taken up with examining the procedures by which the Royal Military Police took statements from the soldiers involved with the events of Bloody Sunday and drew maps of the shots fired. I was not hugely surprised to learn that the usefulness of these statements had been challenged at the inquiry; I was, however, surprised to see that this was generally by the lawyers representing the soldiers. But it seems that the issue is the occasional inconsistencies between the soldiers’ statements given immediately after Bloody Sunday to the RMP, and their later statements to the Widgery Tribunal, to Saville, and in some cases elsewhere. There were one or two cases, which I noted earlier, where the soldiers themselves explained such differences by accusing the RMP of putting words in their mouths. Saville’s reaction then was that it was more likely that the soldiers changed their story than that the RMP had made it up for them, and in general I think I agree now, though I was dubious before. There is no generally visible pattern of the RMP over-egging the pudding, and the soldiers concerned generally turn out to be unreliable witnesses of their own actions for other reasons. There is clear evidence of the RMP clearing up terminology, which occasionally did result in useful details being lost, but my previous suspicions are allayed.

However, a much more serious issue is clear: the RMP do not seem to have been adequately empowered or equipped for criminal investigations against soldiers who had used unlawful force against civilians. Their statements were mandatory, ie made as a military duty; if a soldier admitted committing a crime, in theory, they were to be handed over to civilian investigators, but I don’t know (and Saville doesn’t tell) of any case where this actually happened. In the context of an incident like Bloody Sunday, the role of the RMP was to gather sufficient facts for the army leadership to get its story straight, and not, apparently, to investigate wrong-doing by soldiers. To quote the submission from the lawyers representing the victims:

5.1.3.9. A statement was taken from a soldier as witnesses, not a suspect, without caution. This was done because, firstly, the soldier was not expected to make any admission of criminal responsibility and, secondly, the investigator would not be trying to obtain any incriminating admissions. Major INQ3 [the Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal on the day] accepted both these propositions.

5.1.3.10. Major INQ3 also accepted that this was all explained to the soldier. Major INQ3 was questioned about the consequence of this procedure as follows:

‘Q. So a soldier knew that really so long as he did not make any incriminating admissions, his account would not be tested and he would be in the clear as far as prosecution was concerned?

A. Possibly. That was up to him.

Q. There was certainly nothing to discourage a soldier from fabricating an account was there?

A. No.

Q. In fact, you can see how this procedure would have positively encouraged soldiers to fabricate accounts where the soldier had something to hide?

A. It is possible.’

5.1.3.11. Even if a soldier volunteered an admission of criminal conduct, there were checks and safeguards against the soldier maintaining such an admission. First, if this happened the interview would be stopped. Secondly, the matter would be referred to an officer ‘for confirmation’. Thirdly, the matter would be referred to the Army Legal Services. Fourthly, a caution would be administered.

5.1.3.12. The knowledge that the police would not get involved in an investigation meant that both the SIB investigator and the soldier being questioned knew that matters could be kept in-house within the Army and no criminal charges brought as long as no soldier insisted on claiming criminal responsibility.

Saville is (almost) silent about whether or not this can be considered a satisfactory state of affairs; while admitting that there is something in it, he also stresses the value of the RMP statements as early records of what was said to have happened. However, he goes on:

173.139: In the first place, there was evidence that at the time there was in the Army in Northern Ireland what could be described as a culture of closing ranks, in the sense of soldiers not only refraining from saying anything that might incriminate their colleagues or put their regiment or the Army as a whole in a bad light; but also going out of their way to be less than candid when questioned about matters that might have had such effects.

173.140: In a memorandum dated 13th April 1972 from the Vice Adjutant General to the Adjutant General, which was principally concerned with misbehaviour on the part of soldiers unconnected with Bloody Sunday, the Vice Adjutant General recorded:

“3. More generally General Tuzo expressed his disquiet at what would appear to be a growing habit of commanding officers to cover up on allegations made against their soldiers. He says it is extremely difficult for him to obtain the true facts when such charges are levelled by police and/or civilians because commanding officers appear to feel it incumbent upon them to stand up for their subordinates in all circumstances and at all costs. In a situation such as Northern Ireland this kind of attitude can be selfdefeating, particularly since the GOC has clearly got as great an interest in the morale and well-being of his units as have their commanding officers. He wondered whether it would be possible for commanding officers of units under orders to proceed to Northern Ireland to be more fully briefed than at present appears to be the case on the need for them to investigate in a totally unprejudiced fashion all charges levelled against their soldiers; instead of, as at present, taking the attitude, ‘My soldiers right or wrong.’ I told him I would discuss this matter with you on your return and that it might well be that you would consider writing to Commanders-in-Chief drawing their attention to this particular problem.”

173.141: Major INQ 3 agreed that General Tuzo’s complaint corresponded with his own experience. The protocol drafted by Warrant Officer Class I Wood specifically warned SIB officers that they would find that a soldier’s superior officers might be over-eager to support their men’s actions and try to incorporate statements such as “In my opinion Private … acted correctly when he fired on the man” in their evidence. When asked to
confirm that “soldiers tended to close ranks when they were being questioned about the possibility of either themselves or other soldiers committing criminal acts”, Major INQ 3 said: “Of course, that is part of unit loyalty.” He also said “that goes without saying” and when it was suggested that this unit loyalty extended through all levels of the Army his reply was “I presume so”.  Colonel INQ 1383, the APM, also agreed that one could rely on soldiers to “close ranks”.

More on this below; but it is worth noting that the officers giving evidence to Saville simply agreed with the proposition that the Army would protect its own.

There are then chapters looking at how the trajectory photographs of the soldiers’ shots were compiled; what might have happened to various photographs known to have been taken on the day but since missing (the soldiers’ lawyers arguing that their absence was evidence of a vast pro-IRA conspiracy, Saville disagreeing); the provenance of one particular photograph of people in Glenfada Park North; the question of psyops, linked with the colourful figure of Colin Wallace but of marginal relevance to events on the day; and the dramatic story told by Private 027, whose media interviews were a major part of the process leading to the setting up of the Saville Inquiry, but who does not really seem to have come through witt the goods:

179.18: In his oral closing submissions, counsel for the majority of the families described Private 027 as “a wretched witness”. To a substantial extent we agree that this comment was justified. At the same time, we take the view that Private 027’s evidence cannot be wholly dismissed on the basis that it is such exaggeration, fantasy and deceit as to be of no assistance. Our conclusion is that it would be wrong to ground any of our findings about Bloody Sunday on his evidence alone, but equally wrong to ignore it where there is other material that tends to support what he told us.

Which is rather a good encapsulation of Saville’s cautious but comprehensive approach to the entire enquiry. (Incidentally the costs of providing security, including a change of identity, for Private 027 must have been a substantial element of the huge overall cost of the Inquiry.)

There are then sixty pages or so of entirely factual reporting of the system of army and police radio communications in operation in Northern Ireland generally and on Bloody Sunday in particular, detailed but not particularly interesting. One civilian listening in to the army went off on the march, leaving his twelve-year-old daughter to change the tapes over ever 45 minutes. The lawyers for the victims tried to argue that the Paras were not using a secure system, so the fact that there was no record of the order to go into the Bogside being made meant that it was never given, but the evidence is pretty clear that they did have a secure system and everyone behaved as if the order had been duly given, so it’s difficult to see what they were trying to prove.

The last 45 pages of the volume tackle an earlier theme from a different angle: what exactly were the legal powers of the soldiers in Northern Ireland? A few weeks after Bloody Sunday, John Hume and others won a court case quashing their arrest by the army, on the grounds that the arrests were made under a law of the Northern Ireland Parliament, which however had no power to instruct the British army. (I have heard, but have been unable to verify, that Paddy Ashdown was one of the soldiers who arrested Hume on the occasion in question.) Saville examines the agreement on mutual jurisdiction betweem the RMP and the RUC, and comes back to the question of a culture of institutional impunity:

194.15 … here we should draw attention to the submissions made by representatives of the majority of the families to the effect that the agreement between the GOC and the Chief Constable “removed soldiers from the normal operation of the criminal justice system and involved the establishment of an alternative structure operated and controlled by the military”, which in turn meant that “the soldier was operating in an environment designed to assist him in protecting himself from the threat of criminal sanction”, and that this contributed significantly “to a culture within which soldiers could shoot, and kill, with impunity”, because they knew that their use of lethal force would not be subject to scrutiny.

194.16: Any attempt to establish whether there was in the period leading up to Bloody Sunday a culture among soldiers which led them to believe that they could shoot with impunity would have required a detailed investigation into the previous incidents of shooting by soldiers, apart from those on Bloody Sunday itself, and consideration of whether these incidents demonstrated that soldiers were using lethal force with impunity, without paying any or any proper regard to whether they were justified in firing. Such an investigation would have necessarily taken a great deal of time and in our view was, in the context of what was already a very large inquiry, a wholly impracticable course to take. In these circumstances, we are not in a position to express a view either as to whether or not such a culture existed among soldiers before Bloody Sunday or, if it did, as to whether it had any influence on those who fired unjustifiably on that day.

As I mentioned way back at the start, Saville’s omission of any counter-argument to this theory, particularly considering the amount of space devoted to knocking down other conspiracy theories, is itself an eloquent silence.

There is one more sting to come. Saville looks at the actual powers of arrest as legally allocated to, and as actually used, by soldiers on Bloody Sunday. He identifies a serious lacuna in that, on the one hand, soldiers were legally no more capable of making arrests than any citizen, but in practice actually behaved as auxiliary policemen. Except rather less so. The whole Bloody Sunday Report concludes as follows:

196.19: Instructions sent by signal from the headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland to all Brigades on 13th October 1971, and reiterated on 17th December 1971, had set out the procedure for making arrests under Regulation 11, including an appropriate form of words to be used.

“THE SOLDIER MAKING THE ARREST UNDER REGULATION 11 SHOULD SAY QUOTE I AM ARRESTING YOU UNDER REGULATION 11 OF THE CIVIL AUTHORITIES (SPECIAL POWERS) ACT ON THE GROUND THAT I SUSPECT (AS APPROPRIATE):

(1) YOU OF HAVING ACTED IN A MANNER PREJUDICIAL TO THE PRESERVATION OF PEACE (.)

(2) YOU OF BEING ABOUT TO ACT IN A MANNER PREJUDICIAL TO THE PRESERVATION OF PEACE (.)

(3) YOU OF BEING A MEMBER OF THE IRA, UVF, ETC (.)

(4) THAT THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR POSSESSION IN INTENDED TO BE USED FOR A PURPOSE PREJUDICIAL TO THE PRESERVATION OF PEACE.”

196.20: However, it is highly doubtful whether these instructions were followed on Bloody Sunday or that those arrested on Bloody Sunday were told either under what power they were being arrested or on what grounds the arrest was being made. In the course of the oral evidence to this Inquiry of Warrant Officer Class II Lewis (the Company Sergeant Major of Support Company, 1 PARA), there was this exchange:

“Q. The next heading in your statement is ‘Moving to the north side of Rossville Flats Block 1,’ and you describe how that came about. Could we move on, please, to B2111.018 and paragraph 116, where you say: ‘While in the lee of Block 1 I was not in a position to see the direct actions of soldiers as they were making arrests, although I knew that arrests were still being made. I saw nothing untoward. In Northern Ireland …’ should that say ‘there were proper arrest procedures and we had to conform to these’?

A. No, sir, ‘These were proper arrest procedures and we had to conform to these’.

Q. ‘These were proper arrest procedures …’

A. Yes.

Q. What were the proper procedures that had to be followed when making an arrest in Northern Ireland?

A. To grasp the arrestee, sir, and take him as quickly as possible to the holding area with – using minimum force.

Q. That was all that the procedure involved?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Were the soldiers expected to tell the person concerned that he was being arrested?

A. Not to my knowledge, sir, not to my recollection.

Q. Or to explain why he was being –

A. No, sir.

Q. – arrested or anything like that?

A. No, sir.

Q. Or under what legal power he was being arrested?

A. No, sir.”

196.21: In the light of this evidence it appears doubtful, either as a matter of common law or on the basis of the retrospective validation of the regulations relating to soldiers under the Special Powers Act, that the arrests made on Bloody Sunday were lawfully made. We consider elsewhere in this report the question whether arrests were made in good faith.

So in other words, the entire arrest operation, in the name of which the victims of Bloody Sunday were killed and wounded, was carried out completely illegally by the army. It’s a bit surprising that this did not make it into the main conclusions of the report as publicised in June.

I probably will trudge through the legal annexes of Volume X after this, just for completeness, and so that if people ask me if I have read the whole report I can give a better answer than that I managed nine of the ten volumes.

Volume I | Volume II | Volume III | Volume IV | Volume V | Volume VI | Volume VII | Volume VIII | Volume IX | Volume X and conclusions

August Books 1) Longest Day, by Mike Collier

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Basically a fairly standard adventure of the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones arriving in the middle of a conflict on an alien planet; time eddies and nasty villains complicate the situation (though some of the characters seem to have remarkable powers of surviving major injuries). Remarkable for insisting, more than I remember previous volumes doing, on Sam’s falling in love with the oblivious Doctor, which is of course now standard fare for New Who but was a new departure back them. And of course it turns out that this is a set-up for the ending when she and the Doctor are parted by circumstance, with several volumes to go before they are reunited.

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Whoniversary 2 August: Real Time #1

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webcast anniversary

2nd August 2002: release of the first episode of Real Time on the BBC website. The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn Smythe land on a deserted planet to investigate rumours of Cybermen. One of the scientists who they encounter there closely resembles Chang Lee from The Movie because they are both played by Yee Jee Tso

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Whoniversaries 1 August: The Sensorites #6

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broadcast anniversary

1st August 1964: broadcast of “A Deperate Venture”, the sixth and final episode of the series we now call The Sensorites. Barbara reappears (after several weeks’ holiday) and sorts out the Sensorites; meanwhile the Doctor and Ian have tracked down the deranged astronauts in the tunnels. So everyone’s a winner! Except the Second Elder and the Engineer, of course. This is the episode where Susan says, of her home planet,

at night the sky is a burnt orange, and the leaves on the trees a bright silver.

Ends on a dramatically sour note as the Doctor takes offence at Ian and promises to put him and Barbara off at the next landing.

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July Books

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Non-Fiction 11 (YTD 41)
Hope-In-The-Mist, by Michael Swanwick
The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol II
The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol III
The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol IV
A Fortunate Life: The Autobiography of Paddy Ashdown
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vols I & II, by Edward Gibbon
The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol V
The Stuff of Thought, by Steven Pinker
The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol VI
The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol VII
The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol VIII

Fiction (non-genre) 3 (YTD 31)
Dead Souls, by Ian Rankin
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

SF (non-Who) 1 (YTD 46)
Faust, by Goethe

Doctor Who etc 5 (YTD 37)
In The Shadows, by Joseph Lidster
Martha In The Mirror, by Justin Richards
Everyone Says Hello, by Dan Abnett
Doctor Who Annual 1973
The Highest Science by Gareth Roberts

Comics 1 (YTD 9)
Black Hole, by Charles Burns

Rather appallingly 0/21 (YTD 34/165) by women
Equally appallingly 0/21 (YTD 11/165) by PoC (as far as I know)
6/21 owned for more than a year (Dead Souls, Highest Science, Martha In The Mirror, The Stuff of Thought, The Sun Also Rises, Oliver Twist)
Unusually, and for a second month running, no rereads. (YTD rereads 11/165)
~9,200 pages (YTD 52,100)

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July Books 21) The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol VIII

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We’re in the final stages now, and as with the previous volume, this is a bit of a grab-bag of disparate topics.

More than half of this volume is taken up with an overall assessment of the activities of paramilitary organisations. Indeed, almost half of it is taken up with an in-depth analysis of the staffing, capabilities and activities of the Provos, the Stickies, and the Fianna in Derry at the time of Bloody Sunday. The longest chapter in the book (Chapter 147, 109 pages out of 586) deals with a paramilitary organisation which was not in fact active as such during the army shootings, the Provisional IRA. This seems to reflect partly the availability of information, partly the level of interest generally because of Martin McGuinness’s role (he was essentially second-in-command of the Provos at the time) and partly also because the lawyers representing the soldiers had concocted an argument that there was a massive cover-up of Provisional IRA shooting at the Paras, and followed by a deep conspiracy of silence to conceal the deaths of the real gunmen shot by the soldiers on the day. The Provos actually come off rather well; they assured the organisers of the civil rights march that they would not be active, and stuck to that, other than firing a few symbolic shots which missed an army outpost some time after the main action had concluded. Much was made of Saville’s finding that Martin McGuinness had had a sub-machine gun on his person on the day, and might have fired a shot, but a close reading of the relevant passage indicates to me that Saville doubted very much that it was true and certainly did not think it made any difference to his main findings.

The Official IRA come off rather worse. They too had assured the organisers of the march that they would stay away on the day, but clearly were in fact the source of both the drainpipe shot from early on during the crucial minutes and Bishop Daly’s gunman from later on. I must look out for the recent book about them (which concentrates of course on the subsequent period) but they come across here as incompetent and dangerous, in that order. Saville concludes,

[148.156} we regard with some scepticism the evidence of former members of the Official IRA that they were well organised and disciplined and kept tight control of their weapons. Although we cannot be certain, we are of the view that it is likely that much if not all of the paramilitary activity in the five sectors, to which we have referred in our consideration of the events of those sectors, was that of members of the Official IRA, though we cannot exclude the possibility that there was some Provisional IRA activity as well.

The evidence on the Fianna, the youth wing of the IRA, is heavily confused by 29 pages dealing with one witness whose dramatic evidence was contradicted by almost everyone else in a position to know what was going on. This actually gave me my one and only laugh-out-loud moment of the entire grim report:

149.150: Patrick Ward’s accounts to the Inquiry involve him in being: (i) in charge of an attempt to nail-bomb buildings in Guildhall Square; (ii) involved in a narrow escape when a bullet was fired through the roof of his car; (iii) the saviour of Martin Doherty (PIRA 9), to whom he gave covering fire; and (iv) responsible for shooting at and probably hitting an Army helicopter. He was 16 at the time. To our minds such activity on the part of a young teenager is also inherently implausible.

However, I must say that the section on the Fianna did turn me round on my scepticism about Gerald Donaghey’s possession of nail-bombs; I reckon he was assisting the Stickies with their hasty removal of stocks from Glenfada Park North to Abbey Park, and jammed a few nail-bombs into his pockets before running for it (and being shot dead by a bullet aimed at someone else). The evidence on where the nail-bombs might have come from is pretty confused, but it would seem to me slightly more likely to have been the Stickies than the Provos who ran a tighter audit on who had access to explosives. (Though there remains the possibility that the Provos lied to Saville on this point.)

108 pages then deal with evidence for abuse of those arrested when they were taken to the detention centre at Fort George by the Paras. No particular surprise for anyone who has been following the story so far, but Lance Corporal F (who had killed at least three and possibly five people already that afternoon) is identified as particularly aggressive and abusive towards the prisoners, none of whom were subsequently charged with anything relating to the events of the afternoon. Quite apart from the specific allegations of abuse, Saville points out that due procedure was simply alien to the Paras:

[162.6] the identification process conducted by those members of 1 PARA who went to Fort George was in significant respects entirely arbitrary, soldiers having no proper basis for the descriptions or reasons they gave. There appears to have been a large-scale failure to act in good faith, and their actions illustrate that many soldiers were prepared to lie.

Of course, we knew that from what had come before.

There are then four short chapters dealing with minor issues relatiing to the army, three where Saville finds that the army is mor or less in the clear (the composition of Major Loden’s list of engagements, the accounting for the rounds of ammunition which were actually fired, and the question of whether or not soldiers fired from the City Walls of Derry) and one rather embarrassing incident where a soldier shot himself in the foot. Saville notes of this last,

168.4: The injury to Gunner INQ 1255 was the only gunshot wound sustained by any soldier in Londonderry during Bloody Sunday.

That trenchantly brief paragraph closes the narrative of events on the day.

Volume VIII ends with assessments of the four key senior officers of the British army involved with Bloody Sunday. General Ford at the top is mildly criticised for sending the Paras to Derry in the first place, though he could not have known that they would start shooting innocent civilians; Brigadier McLellan is cleared; Colonel Wilford is most at fault; and Major Loden, as the commander of Support Company, is cleared. The condemnation of Colonel Wilford, is, however, nuanced; it is not his fault that the soldiers, haviong followed the orders he wrongly gave, then started shooting civilians:

Assessment of the responsibility of Lieutenant Colonel Wilford

171.37: What happened with the arrest operation was not what Colonel Wilford had initially suggested and Brigadier MacLellan had ordered. Instead of an operation in which soldiers would stay in or close to William Street, Colonel Wilford sent them into the Bogside, where they chased people down Rossville Street, into the car park of the Rossville Flats, into Glenfada Park North and as far as Abbey Park.

171.38: In our view Colonel Wilford decided to send Support Company into the Bogside because at the time he gave the order he had concluded (without informing Brigadier MacLellan) that there was now no prospect of making any or any significant arrests in the area he had originally suggested, as the rioting was dying down and people were moving away. In addition it seems to us that he wanted to demonstrate that the way to deal with rioters in Londonderry was not to shelter behind barricades like “Aunt Sallies” while being stoned, as he perceived was what the local troops had been doing, but instead togo aggressively after them, as he and his soldiers had been doing in Belfast.

171.39: What Colonel Wilford failed to appreciate, or regarded as of little consequence, was that his soldiers, who had not been in a position to observe the rioting that had been going on at the Army barriers, would almost certainly be unable to identify anyone as a rioter, save where, when they arrived, they were met by people who were rioting at that time.

171.40: Colonel Wilford failed to inform Brigade that in his view the situation had changed and that the only prospect of making any arrests was to send his soldiers along Rossville Street into the Bogside. He then failed to obey the order that Brigadier MacLellan gave, which prohibited any such movement. He thus created a situation in which soldiers chased people down Rossville Street and beyond, in circumstances where it was not possible to distinguish between those who had merely been marching and those who had been rioting. In other words he set in train the very thing his Brigadier had enjoined him from doing. He should not have ordered his soldiers to go in vehicles along Rossville Street and into the Bogside.

171.41: In our view Colonel Wilford can also be criticised on the grounds that he should not have sent his soldiers into an area which he regarded as dangerous and which he had told his soldiers was dangerous, in other words an area which his soldiers did not know and where they might come under lethal attack from paramilitaries, who dominated part of the city. He knew that his soldiers would accordingly be very much on their guard, ready to respond instantly with gunfire at identified targets, as they were trained to respond, if they did come under such attack. He knew that his soldiers would not withdraw if they came under lethal attack but were trained not just to take cover, but instead to move forward and, as he himself said, seek out the “enemy”.

171.42 In these circumstances, on his own estimation of the danger of lethal attacks by paramilitaries, Colonel Wilford must have appreciated that there was a significant risk that sending his soldiers into the Bogside on an arrest operation could lead to an armed engagement with republican paramilitaries. He should have appreciated that if this did happen, then there was also, in view of the numbers of people around, a significant risk that people other than soldiers’ justifiable targets would be killed or injured, albeit by accident, from Army gunfire. To our minds this was another reason why Colonel Wilford should not have launched an incursion into the Bogside.

171.43 The fact that what in the event happened on Bloody Sunday when the soldiers entered the Bogside was not a justifiable response to a lethal attack by republican paramilitaries, but instead soldiers opening fire unjustifiably, cannot provide an answer to this criticism, which is based not on what happened, but what at the time Colonel Wilford thought might happen.
[…]
171.47: In summary, therefore, in our view Colonel Wilford should not have sent soldiers of Support Company into the Bogside for the following reasons:

  1. because in doing so he disobeyed the orders given by Brigadier MacLellan;
  2. because his soldiers, whose job was to arrest rioters, would have no or virtually no means of identifying those who had been rioting from those who had been taking part in the civil rights march; and
  3. because he should not have sent his soldiers into an unknown area which he and they regarded as a dangerous area, where the soldiers might well come under attack from paramilitaries, in circumstances where the soldiers’ response would run a significant risk that people other than paramilitaries engaging the soldiers would be killed or injured by Army gunfire.

171.48: Colonel Wilford did not foresee that his soldiers would act as in the event they did; and we consider that in this regard he cannot be fairly criticised.

It’s a minor lacuna, given the catalogue of evidence in the report as a whole, but it would have been good to have had a summary at the end of this section listing also the responsibilities of individual soldiers as described in previous volumes. Colonel Wilford now lives about an hour’s drive from me in Belgium, but I do not think I will drop round and ask for a cup of tea.

One more to go.

Volume I | Volume II | Volume III | Volume IV | Volume V | Volume VI | Volume VII | Volume VIII | Volume IX | Volume X and conclusions

Whoniversaries 31 July

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i) births and deaths

31 July 2004: death of Robert James, who played Lesterson in The Power of the Daleks (1966) and the High Priest in The Masque of Mandragora (1976)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

None.

iii) date almost specified in canon

31 July 1977: the latter part of episode 3 and all of episode 4 ofImage of the Fendahl (1977) are set on a day specified as ‘Lammas Eve’ (the day before 1 August, ie 31 July) by Mrs Tyler. There is no reason to suppose that the year is other than 1977.

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Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-31-2010

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  • SPIEGEL Interview with Craig Venter: 'We Have Learned Nothing from the Genome' – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International
    SPIEGEL: So the Human Genome Project has had very little medical benefits so far?
    Venter: Close to zero to put it precisely.

    SPIEGEL: You stored a code in the genome of this cell. Has anyone decoded it?
    Venter: Yes, it is the first genome in the world to include an e-mail address. So far, 50 scientists have cracked the code and answered us.

    SPIEGEL: It took eight years from the time the first bacterial genome was decoded until the human genome was completed. How much time will elapse between the creation of the first synthetic bacteria and the creation of the first synthetic human?
    Venter: There is currently no reason for us to synthesize human cells. I am, for example, a fan of the work that was done a short time ago that led to the decoding of the Neanderthal genome. But we don't need any more Neanderthals on the planet, right? We already have enough of them.

    (tags: biology)
  • xkcd: University Website
    notes on website design
    (tags: web humour)
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Salukes

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In local dialect, people often wish each other Salukes on parting. (Stress on the second vowel, which is pronounced like German ü.) This curious word is a combination of the French salut, which is a slang greeting, with the plural of the Flemish diminutive -ke. I hear it often from our neighbours on the bus to Leuven in the morning; I wonder how wide-spread it is in Flanders?

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Whoniversary 30 July

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date almost specified in canon

30 July 1977: Most of episode 1, all of episode 2 and the first part of episode 3 of Image of the Fendahl (1977) appear to be set on this date, for reasons which will be explained tomorrow.

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Whoniversaries 29 July

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date almost specified in canon

29 July 1977: first scenes of Image of the Fendahl (1977) as the hiker meets his doom and the scientists play with their pet skull. (Will give reasons for this dating on Saturday.)

date of real event, almost but not quite specified in canon

29 July 1890: death of Vincent van Gogh

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